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Conversations with Caves? Understanding the role of visual psychological phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic cave art making
How central were psychological features deriving from our visual systems to the early evolution of human visual culture? Art making emerged deep in our evolutionary history, with the earliest art appearing over 100,000 years ago as geometric patterns etched on fragments of ochre and shell, and figurative representations of prey animals flourishing in the Upper Palaeolithic (c. 40,000 – 15,000 years ago). The latter reflects a complex visual process; the ability to represent something that exists in the real world as a flat, two-dimensional image. In this presentation, I argue that pareidolia – the psychological phenomenon of seeing meaningful forms in random patterns, such as perceiving faces in clouds – was a fundamental process that facilitated the emergence of figurative representation. The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in Upper Palaeolithic art examples, particularly cave art where the topographic features of cave wall were incorporated into animal depictions. Using novel virtual reality (VR) light simulations, I tested three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in the caves of Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the caves of Las Monedas and La Pasiega (Cantabria, Spain). To evaluate this further, I also developed an interdisciplinary VR eye-tracking experiment, where participants were immersed in virtual caves based on the cave of El Castillo (Cantabria, Spain). Together, these case studies suggest that pareidolia was an intrinsic part of artist-cave interactions (‘conversations’) that influenced the form and placement of figurative depictions in the cave. This has broader implications for conceiving of the role of visual psychological phenomena in the emergence and development of figurative art in the Palaeolithic.
Applying Structural Alignment theory to Early Verb Learning
Learning verbs is difficult and critical to learning one's native language. Children appear to benefit from seeing multiple events and comparing them to each other, and structural alignment theory provides a good theoretical framework to guide research into how preschool children may be comparing events as they learn new verbs. The talk will include 6 studies of early verb learning that make use of eye-tracking procedures as well as other behavioral (pointing) procedures, and that test key predictions from SA theory including the prediction that seeing similar examples before more varied examples helps observers learn how to compare (progressive alignment) and the prediction that when events have very low alignability with other events, that is one cue that the events should be ignored. Whether or how statistical learning may also be at work will be considered.
Real-world scene perception and search from foveal to peripheral vision
A high-resolution central fovea is a prominent design feature of human vision. But how important is the fovea for information processing and gaze guidance in everyday visual-cognitive tasks? Following on from classic findings for sentence reading, I will present key results from a series of eye-tracking experiments in which observers had to search for a target object within static or dynamic images of real-world scenes. Gaze-contingent scotomas were used to selectively deny information processing in the fovea, parafovea, or periphery. Overall, the results suggest that foveal vision is less important and peripheral vision is more important for scene perception and search than previously thought. The importance of foveal vision was found to depend on the specific requirements of the task. Moreover, the data support a central-peripheral dichotomy in which peripheral vision selects and central vision recognizes.
Novel word generalization in comparison designs: How do young children align stimuli when they learn object nouns and relational nouns?
It is well established that the opportunity to compare learning stimuli in a novel word learning/extension task elicits a larger number of conceptually relevant generalizations than standard no-comparison conditions. I will present results suggesting that the effectiveness of comparison depends on factors such as semantic distance, number of training items, dimension distinctiveness and interactions with age. I will address these issues in the case of familiar and unfamiliar object nouns and relational nouns. The alignment strategies followed by children during learning and at test (i.e., when learning items are compared and how children reach a solution) will be described with eye-tracking data. We will also assess the extent to which children’s performance in these tasks are associated with executive functions (inhibition and flexibility) and world knowledge. Finally, we will consider these issues in children with cognitive deficits (Intellectual deficiency, DLD)
Neural mechanisms of active vision in the marmoset monkey
Human vision relies on rapid eye movements (saccades) 2-3 times every second to bring peripheral targets to central foveal vision for high resolution inspection. This rapid sampling of the world defines the perception-action cycle of natural vision and profoundly impacts our perception. Marmosets have similar visual processing and eye movements as humans, including a fovea that supports high-acuity central vision. Here, I present a novel approach developed in my laboratory for investigating the neural mechanisms of visual processing using naturalistic free viewing and simple target foraging paradigms. First, we establish that it is possible to map receptive fields in the marmoset with high precision in visual areas V1 and MT without constraints on fixation of the eyes. Instead, we use an off-line correction for eye position during foraging combined with high resolution eye tracking. This approach allows us to simultaneously map receptive fields, even at the precision of foveal V1 neurons, while also assessing the impact of eye movements on the visual information encoded. We find that the visual information encoded by neurons varies dramatically across the saccade to fixation cycle, with most information localized to brief post-saccadic transients. In a second study we examined if target selection prior to saccades can predictively influence how foveal visual information is subsequently processed in post-saccadic transients. Because every saccade brings a target to the fovea for detailed inspection, we hypothesized that predictive mechanisms might prime foveal populations to process the target. Using neural decoding from laminar arrays placed in foveal regions of area MT, we find that the direction of motion for a fixated target can be predictively read out from foveal activity even before its post-saccadic arrival. These findings highlight the dynamic and predictive nature of visual processing during eye movements and the utility of the marmoset as a model of active vision. Funding sources: NIH EY030998 to JM, Life Sciences Fellowship to JY
What to consider, when making strategic social decisions? An Eye-tracking investigation
In many societal problems, individuals exhibit a conflict between keeping resources (e.g., money, time or attention) to themselves or sharing them with another individual or group. The reasons motivating decisions in favor of others welfare can thereby vary from purely altruistic to completely strategic. Be it the stranger making an effort returning a lost valet to its rightful owner or a co-worker pitching in her fair share in a joint project. Actions like that create an environment that makes living together a pleasant experience. Hence, understanding how decisions determining the welfare of oneself and others are made is important for facilitating this behavior by building institutions that maximize the rate of cooperation in a society. To shed new light on such decision making processes I will present recent evidence from a set of process tracing experiments utilizing eye-tracking and economic games. Experiments will focus on the role of social preferences in the choice construction process and will identify mechanisms (i.e., search and processing depth, information weighting, and ignorance) through which they guide choice behavior. I will in particular focus on the differences and commonalitiesbetween strategic and altruistic decisions. Specifically, investigating to which extent people direct attention towards certain components of the decision situation in a context-dependent manner.
Attentional Foundations of Framing Effects
Framing effects in individual decision-making have puzzled economists for decades because they are hard, if at all, to explain with rational choice theories. Why should mere changes in the description of a choice problem affect decision-making? Here, we examine the hypothesis that changes in framing cause changes in the allocation of attention to the different options – measured via eye-tracking – and give rise to changes in decision-making. We document that the framing of a sure alternative as a gain – as opposed to a loss – in a risk-taking task increases the attentional advantage of the sure option and induces a higher choice frequency of that option – a finding that is predicted by the attentional drift-diffusion model (aDDM). The model also correctly predicts other key findings such as that the increased attentional advantage of the sure option in the gain frame should also lead quicker decisions in this frame. In addition, the data reveal that increasing risk aversion at higher stake sizes may also be driven by attentional processes because the sure option receives significantly more attention – regardless of frame – at higher stakes. We also corroborate the causal impact of framing-induced changes of attention on choice with an additional experiment that manipulates attention exogenously. Finally, to study the precise mechanisms underlying the framing effect we structurally estimate an aDDM that allows for frame and option-dependent parameters. The estimation results indicate that – in addition to the direct effects of framing-induced changes in attention on choice – the gain frame also causes (i) an increase in the attentional discount of the gamble and (ii) an increased concavity of utility. Our findings suggest that the traditional explanation of framing effects in risky choice in terms of a more concave value function in the gain domain is seriously incomplete and that attentional mechanisms as hypothesized in the aDDM play a key role.
Super-Recognizers: facts, fallacies, and the future
Over the past decade, the domain of face identity processing has seen a surging interest in inter-individual differences, with a focus on individuals with superior skills, so-called Super-Recognizers (SRs; Ramon et al., 2019; Russell et al., 2009). Their study can provide valuable insights into brain-behavior relationships and advance our understanding of neural functioning. Despite a decade of research, and similarly to the field of developmental prosopagnosia, a consensus on diagnostic criteria for SR identification is lacking. Consequently, SRs are currently identified either inconsistently, via suboptimal individual tests, or via undocumented collections of tests. This state of the field has two major implications. Firstly, our scientific understanding of SRs will remain at best limited. Secondly, the needs of government agencies interested in deploying SRs for real-life identity verification (e.g., policing) are unlikely to be met. To counteract these issues, I suggest the following action points. Firstly, based on our and others’ work suggesting novel and challenging tests of face cognition (Bobak et al., 2019; Fysh et al., in press; Stacchi et al., 2019), and my collaborations with international security agencies, I recommend novel diagnostic criteria for SR identification. These are currently being used to screen the Berlin State Police’s >25K employees before identifying SRs via bespoke testing procedures we have collaboratively developed over the past years. Secondly, I introduce a cohort of SRs identified using these criteria, which is being studied in-depth using behavioral methods, psychophysics, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging. Finally, I suggest data acquired for these individuals should be curated to develop and share best practices with researchers and practitioners, and to gain an accurate and transparent description of SR cases to exploit their informative value.
Analogical Reasoning and Executive Functions - A Life Span Approach
From a developmental standpoint, it has been argued that two major complementary factors contribute to the development of analogy comprehension: world knowledge and executive functions. Here I will provide evidence in support of the second view. Beyond paradigms that manipulate task difficulty (e.g., number and types of distractors and semantic distance between domains) we will provide eye-tracking data that describes differences in the way children and adults compare the base and target domains in analogy problems. We will follow the same approach with ageing people. This latter population provides a unique opportunity to disentangle the contribution of knowledge and executive processes in analogy making since knowledge is (more than) preserved and executive control is decreasing. Using this paradigm, I will show the extent to which world knowledge (assessed through vocabulary) compensates for decreasing executive control in older populations. Our eye-tracking data suggests that, to a certain extent, differences between younger and older adults are analogous to the differences between younger adults and children in the way they compare the base and the target domains in analogy problems.