Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 4016–4022 Saturday Noon
istic stimuli allowed for semantic categorization. We examined the uptake
of visual information from highly complex scenes with two actors
involved in a meaningful action (agent position was balanced).
Participants’ task was to indicate the patient’s position by buttonpress.
Eyetracking revealed the tendency to fixate agents and action regions
first. In most cases, both actors were inspected before an overt response
was made. However, brief presentation (150 msec) of stimuli
also produced highly accurate answers (about 95% correct). Under
this condition, correct naming of actions was achieved only where
body posture allowed few alternative actions. Apparently, visual event
recognition is characterized by a rapid analysis that allows for role
identification and a subsequent period of attention shifts that are necessary
for more complex processes, such as verb retrieval.
(4016)
Event Clustering and Event Chaining: Associations in Autobiographical
Memory. JENNIFER M. TALARICO, Duke University
(sponsored by David C. Rubin)—Previous research has identified
“event-clusters” as groups of autobiographical memories that cue one
another, that share narrative elements, and that are thought to inform
our understanding of autobiographical memory organization. However,
the way in which these memories are recalled (event cuing) may
determine a specific retrieval strategy, and it may be this strategic retrieval
that produces the similarities between memories, not overall
memory organization. A similar paradigm, “memory chaining,” has
been developed that relies on associatively cued memories that is believed
to be a more effective procedure for revealing the structure of
autobiographical memory.
(4017)
Do Observers Encode Goal–Subgoal Structure Through Embodied
Simulation? BRIDGETTE MARTIN, SANDRA C. LOZANO, &
BARBARA TVERSKY, Stanford University—Hierarchical encoding
of activities—that is, segmenting them into discrete actions organized
as goals and subgoals—enhances learning (Martin, Lozano, & Tversky,
2005). Surprisingly, segmenting and describing actions from the
actor’s perspective promotes hierarchical encoding and learning more
than does segmenting and describing them from one’s own perspective
(Lozano, Martin, & Tversky, 2005). Are enhanced hierarchical
encoding and learning achieved through embodied simulation of observed
actions? To test this, participants segmented an assembly task
that they later performed, without warning. Participants segmented
and described the activity from an actor- or self-perspective while attending
to (1) movements of objects to different table sides, (2) actions
completed on different table sides, or (3) actions completed by different
hands. In accord with embodied simulation, hierarchical encoding
and learning were best for actor-perspective describers who attended
to action by hand, then to action by table side and object
movement. For self-perspective participants, the order was reversed.
(4018)
The Effects of Elaboration on Confidence Inflation for Counterfactual
Events. DIANNE M. LEARNED & MARIA S. ZARAGOZA,
Kent State University (sponsored by F. Robert Treichler)—Imagination
Inflation is the finding that imagining counterfactual autobiographical
events from childhood increases participants’ confidence that the
events transpired. Participants who imagine events are usually asked
to elaborate on different aspects of the false events. However, it has
been shown that participants are more likely to misattribute false
events to a witnessed crime if they are asked to elaborate on the false
events (Drivdahl & Zaragoza, 2001). The present study attempts to explore
the effects of elaboration on confidence inflation for imagined
counterfactual events. Three groups of participants were asked to
imagine counterfactual events. The number of elaboration questions
asked for each event varied between groups: six, three, or zero. The
results of this study indicate that participants are more likely to increase
in confidence and to endorse memories for counterfactual life
events the more they are asked to elaborate on the events.
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• IMAGE PROCESSING •
(4019)
Using Visual Masking to Explore the Nature of Scene Gist.
LESTER C. LOSCHKY, Kansas State University, AMIT SETHI &
DANIEL J. SIMONS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, &
DANIEL OCHS, JEREMY CORBIELLE, & KATIE GIBB, Kansas
State University—We used visual masking to explore scene gist acquisition
and to determine whether the meaning of a mask or its spatial
frequency amplitude spectrum contributes more to visual masking of
scene photographs. We systematically varied the recognizability of
scenes, as both targets and masks, by parametrically randomizing their
image phase, while maintaining their spatial frequency amplitude
spectra. Increasing phase randomization reduced scene recognition
and induced less masking of other scenes. Several types of meaningless
masks that varied in spatial frequency amplitude spectra were
equally ineffective—all were substantially less effective masks than
were recognizable scenes. Together, the results of four experiments
suggest that scene meaning plays a greater role in masking visual
scenes than does the match in the amount of energy at various spatial
frequencies. This further supports the psychological construct of conceptual
masking and calls into question the value of spatial frequency
amplitude information for acquiring scene gist.
(4020)
Correlating Adjacent Local Texture Elements to Recognize Natural
Scenes. HIROYUKI WASHINO, Kyoto University, & JUN SAIKI,
Kyoto University & JST—Our visual system can rapidly recognize complex
natural scenes in the visual world. An important issue is how much
bottom-up processing alone can account for scene categorization. Some
previous works proposed that statistics of spatial frequencies or local texture
elements are useful for rapid scene categorization (e.g., natural/
artificial or forest/other). In this study, we proposed a computational
model of basic-level scene categorization (e.g., forest, kitchen, etc.) that
used the correlation of adjacent local texture elements. To examine this
correlation’s efficiency in scene recognition, we investigated how people
categorize a visual scene having only limited exposure time. Human
accuracy data as a function of exposure time were well accounted for by
the model using the number of sampled texture elements. The confusion
matrices of humans and the model did not significantly differ. These results
suggest that the correlation of local texture statistics can account
for our scene categorization performance.
(4021)
Effects of Zoom and Field of View on Relative Distance Judgments.
JOCELYN M. KEILLOR, PAYAL AGARWAL, & JENNIFER
JEON, Defence R&D Canada, & MICHAEL E. PERLIN, CMC Electronics—When
a nonorthogonal sensor image is projected onto a rectangular
display, the observer is not typically shown the viewing frustum
and may, therefore, be unable to compensate for the ensuing
distortion. The present experiment was designed to evaluate whether
this type of distortion affects relative distance judgments. In a synthetic
environment, three different fields of view were selected by adjusting
zoom such that the size of a central object remained the same
in all three conditions but the surrounding objects were subject to differential
foreshortening and size distortion as a function of condition.
In addition, a moving sensor was simulated to determine whether motion
parallax allowed viewers to overcome any effects of the different
fields of view and zoom settings. Despite the presence of multiple
cues to depth in the scene, relative depth judgments were affected by
the distortion introduced by the projection, and the addition of motion
parallax did not reduce this effect.
(4022)
“Lightning Bolts” Reveal Categorical Coding of Relative Orientation.
ERIC E. COOPER, GLENN E. CASNER, & ALEXANDER M.
O’BRIEN, Iowa State University—The research tested whether orientation
is categorically coded during object perception for T-vertex,