An analysis of individual differences in similarity judgments about complex random forms (original) (raw)
Related papers
A multidimensional scaling analysis of judged similarity of complex forms from two task situations
Perception & Psychophysics, 1972
Ss provided judgments of pairwise stimulus similarities for 21 12-tum random forms in two experimental tasks: a scaling task, involving a variant of the method of graded dichotomies, and a sorting task, which simply required Ss to categorize the forms. The grouped data from both tasks, when analyzed using nonmetric multidimensional scaling techniques, yielded five-dimensional configurations with euclidean distances. The correspondence of these two spaces, assessed using canonical correlations, was extremely good. The psychological dimensions derived from both tasks were related to two sets of physical measures on the forms: the factor space suggested by Brown and Owen and a set of more basic physical measures. Physical cues of greatest importance involved size, dispersion, angularity, and rotation measures. The value of the tasks and the utility of the Brown and Owen measures were discussed.
Subjectively interpreted shape dimensions as privileged and orthogonal axes in mental shape space.
Journal of Experimental …, 2011
The shape of an object is fundamental in object recognition but it is still an open issue to what extent shape differences are perceived analytically (i.e., by the dimensional structure of the shapes) or holistically (i.e., by the overall similarity of the shapes). The dimensional structure of a stimulus is available in a primary stage of processing for separable dimensions, although it can also be derived cognitively from a perceived stimulus consisting of integral dimensions. Contrary to most experimental paradigms, the present study asked participants explicitly to analyze shapes according to two dimensions. The dimensions of interest were aspect ratio and medial axis curvature, and a new procedure was used to measure the participants’ interpretation of both dimensions (Part I, Experiment 1). The subjectively interpreted shape dimensions showed specific characteristics supporting the conclusion that they also constitute perceptual dimensions with objective behavioral characteristics (Part II): (1) the dimensions did not correlate in overall similarity measures (Experiment 2), (2) they were more separable in a speeded categorization task (Experiment 3), and (3) they were invariant across different complex 2-D shapes (Experiment 4). The implications of these findings for shape-based object processing are discussed.
Representations of Shape during Mental Rotation
National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2010
How is shape represented during spatial tasks such as mental rotation? This research investigated the format of mental representations of 3-D shapes during mental rotation. Specifically, we tested the extent to which visual information, such as color, is represented during mental rotation using methods ranging from reaction time studies, verbal protocol analysis, and eyetracking. Another set of studies examined whether people use piecemeal or holistic strategies to rotate complex objects. Results show that individuals with good rotation ability do not represent color during mental rotation and rotate whole shapes; whereas poor rotators do represent color and rotate individual pieces of the shape using piecemeal strategies. This work contributes to theories about cognitive shape processing by showing that different information processing strategies may be one cause of individual differences in mentally rotation performance.
Representations of Shape during Mental Rotations
AAAI Spring Symposium Series, 2010
How is shape represented during spatial tasks such as mental rotation? This research investigated the format of mental representations of 3-D shapes during mental rotation. Specifically, we tested the extent to which visual information, such as color, is represented during mental rotation using methods ranging from reaction time studies, verbal protocol analysis, and eyetracking. Another set of studies examined whether people use piecemeal or holistic strategies to rotate complex objects. Results show that individuals ...
The perception of rotated shapes: A process analysis of shape constancy
Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 1973
Ss made objective shape judgments of circular objects rotated in depth to provide a process analysis of shape constancy. The significant finding was that task difficulty, as reflected by proportion errors and correct reaction times; increased with increases in rotation from the frontal-parallel plane. This effect was located at the perceptual encoding stage of the shape judgment process. It was demonstrated that, in contrast to true shape information, the time to interpret slant and two-dimensional projected shape information was not critically dependent on degree of rotation. These results and a number of other additional observations demonstrate that the invariance hypothesis does not provide a sufficient account of shape constancy. Although projected shape and’ slant judgments can be made easily, perception of true shape involves encoding a figure-ground relationship by a process that does not rely exclusively on the discrete values of projected shape and slant.
2022
30). Supplemental materials for "Shape-context congruence effects: angularity vs. curvature preferences in different visual and semantic contexts." Retrieved from osf.io/98d7g. The related report "Relationships between angular vs. curved shape evaluations and individual differences in emotional and aesthetic processing" by Blazhenkova, O., Dogerlioglu-Demir, K., & Booth, R. W. (2023, January 9) is shared at psyarxiv.com/8tnmp Author Note. We have no known conflict of interest to disclose. Declaration of Conflicting Interests. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 2 Funding. The author(s) did not use any additional funding to support this research. Acknowledgements. We want to thank Petr Grigorash who created the 'Curved vs. Angular shapes set: unframed, square-framed, round-framed' (shared at https://osf.io/zrn29/) and Daphne Maurer for allowing us to use her stimuli in our research.
Psychological norms for simple three-line graphic shapes
Behavior Research Methods, 2007
There is a longstanding tradition in psychological research for norming lists of words that are used in experimental studies. The present study extends this practice to graphic imagery by obtaining norming data on 24 simple abstract graphic shapes composed of three straight-line segments. The attributes obtained in the norming procedure were the shapes’ familiarity, describability, associability, availability, and potential for word association. Results from rating data indicate significantly different, yet reliable, responses by participants to the various shape configurations. Multidimensional scaling analysis of shape ratings identified two underlying dimensions of perceived differences: thecontinuity of a shape’s linear direction and theconsistency or regularity of its interior angles. By contrast, performance in generating word associations for figures appeared to be linguistically driven, with initial responses related to the similarity of shapes to letters of the alphabet. The norms and the computer program used to collect them can be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.
Psychophysical maps for subadditive dissimilarity ratings
Attention Perception Psychophysics, 1987
Earlier findings on pairwise dissimilarity ratings of "flat" rectangles (Sehonemann, Dorcey, & Kienapple, 1985) were replicated with a larger stimulus set, which included squares and "tall" rectangles. The data were again strongly subadditive and indicated systematic individual differences in judgment strategies. A metric for bounded response scales (MBR) with slightly reduced upper bound gave the best fit among several negatively accelerated response functions that might account for the subadditivity. Simple four-parameter psychophysical maps of the general form d = 9 tanh (E.a..x.), k = 1,4 (where the x. are simple functions of physical height and width, and the a. parameters are ofthe order of .2) reproduced the 120 average ratings within each strategy group with squared etas in the high 90s. These results suggest that subjects use simple composition rules for rating dissimilarities of rectangles. The judgments can be explained without appeal to any global internal spatial representation of the stimuli solely in terms of the constraints of the pairwise rating task. (In an Appendix, the MBR is generalized to m > 2 dimensions.)