To See is to Perceive

A blog for Psychology 135: Sensation and Perception, written by aspiring psychologists from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Head to the links to see individual entries.

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Why Don’t You Tell Me Where It Hurts Now, Baby?

by: Jed Abarro

When was the last time you bumped into something? Do you remember how you would react everytime you got wounded when you were younger? Definitely, pain is around us and has always been an integral part of our lives. You know what they say, pain makes us stronger. Pain, as stated in Goldstein (2014) is basically an “unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such change.” There are different types of pain but most perception research focuses on nociceptive pain or the type of pain that is caused by activation of receptors on the skin, called nociceptors, which respond to tissue damage or potential tissue damage.

How does pain go through one’s system? Several models of pain have been proposed in the past but one model probably stood out the most: The Gate Control Model. Basically, the gate control model states that the perception of pain goes through three different pathways. First, nociceptors activate a circuit consisting of excitatory synapses which then send signals to transmission cells in the dorsal horn. These excitatory signals increase or intensify the experience of pain. Second, mechanoreceptors send signals to the transmission cells in the dorsal horn which, in this case, are inhibitory by nature. The mechanoreceptors respond to the “non-experience” of pain like rubbing or touching of the skin. These inhibitory signals then decrease the experience of pain. Lastly, the central control system which consists of fibers which contain information related to cognition and mental concepts such as expectations, attention, and distraction carry signals to the cortex which also decreases the experience of pain. Together, these three pathways interact to create an overall, summative experience of pain.

In a study done by Bisogni and colleagues (2014), the experimenters explored the cultural differences in the experience of pain. For the study, the experimenters had a sample of Italian and Chinese children who had to undergo venepuncture (think injections!). The study was a cross-cultural, cross-sectional study of pain. Scales measuring self-reported pain and behavioural distress were administered after the experiment. Data show that Chinese children experience a higher level of pain compared to Italian children. However, when it comes to behavioural distress, Chinese children showed a higher level of self-control in emotional distress when experiencing pain compared to Italian children.

Based on the study above, we can see that there are a lot factors that influence pain, in general. One of these factors includes culture. Interestingly, these cultural differences can affect human cognition such as expectation, attention, and distraction. For one, Italian children possibly experience a lower level of pain because they are told to expect an experience of pain. On the other hand, Chinese children controlled their distress better because this was what is expected of them by possibly their family and society. Thinking about all of these things, I kind of realized that people who say that “I have high pain tolerance” probably aren’t lying at all.  

References:

Bisogni, S., et.al. (2014 Aug 12). Cross-Sectional Study on Differences in Pain Perception and Behavioral Distress During Venepuncture between Italian and Chinese Children. Pediatric Reports, (6): 5660. doi: 10.4081/pr.2014.5660.

 Goldstein, E. (2014). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

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Usap Tayo!

by: Jed Abarro

Speech is an integral part of human life. Everywhere we go, we hear sounds and we turn these sounds into meaningful bits of information. Speech is very important because it allows for communication and even for survival. Speech perception, especially for humans, has been widely studies. One property of speech is that it is multimodal or in simpler terms, involves different senses. To most people, speech perception would simply invoke the sense of hearing because, obviously, we need to hear speech sounds in order to perceive speech. However, have you even considered that simply looking at the movements of the mouth can lead to perception of speech?

The phenomenon described above is the McGurk Effect which states that although auditory information is the main source of information for speech perception, visual information can also have an impact or influence on our ability to perceive speech. Where do we actually see the McGurk Effect? Imagine yourself partying with your friends on a Friday night with the speakers booming ever so loudly that you can barely hear what your friends are saying. In this case, one would normally make signals with one’s mouth, spelling words to communicate a message. Although auditory information is virtually absent in this situation, visual information did provide sufficient details to perceive speech. Another example is making mouth signals in a classroom silently while the professor is discussing.

In a study by Kuhl and colleagues (1991), the effect of biological sex on the McGurk Effect was explored. In his study, he divided his participants into two groups. The first group was shown incongruent videos wherein a video of a female talker was shown but was dubbed with a male voice. The second group was shown congruent videos wherein the sex of the talker matched the sex of the talker in the video. Interestingly, the data showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups showing that sex does not interfere with the integration of information from both visual and auditory modalities despite the obvious discrepancy in sex. This implies that the ability to point out details and information about the sounds produced by a talker is developed earlier on even before the system gains the ability to integrate auditory and visual information.

This study on the McGurk Effect is very interesting because it shows how the human mind and system can actually fill in the gaps (a la Gestalt Psychology) in different stimuli. One would think that the voice-sex discrepancy would actually interfere with the perception of speech but it did not really turn out that way. This study shows us how amazing our minds are at making sense of things that seem ambiguous. The power of the human minds has no known limits and there are more to be discovered in the future.

References:

Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.).     Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

Kuhl, P., Meltzoff, A., & Stevens, E. (1991). Integrating speech information across talkers, gender, and sensory modality: Female faces and male voices in the McGurk Effect. Perception & Psychophysics, (50) 6, 524-536.

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Objectifying Objects

by: Jed Abarro

Walking around campus, strolling through parks, crossing the street, or climbing a mountain, we encounter a lot of different objects and scenes.  In the psychology of perception, objects in scenes are perceived in a quite straightforward way. In most cases, focused attention will provide a more detailed idea of what is present in a scene. For example, if we look at a city scene for a longer period of time, we begin to notice different shapes and sizes that we usually take for granted in our day to day lives. For one, we fail to notice that some buildings aren’t as straight as they seem. We fail to notice that the poodle that has been for sale at a pet shop for the longest time has been purchased already. There are a lot of things that we don’t notice in our everyday lives.

In perception psychology, perceiving objects and scenes usually come hand in hand. The most crucial concept to take note of is the gist of a scene. Basically and quite simply, the gist of a scene is the “summary” of the location or scene one is looking at. It basically gives us an idea of what is present in the scene and the specific features that these objects have. Similar to the basic paradigm of the broad idea of perception, it takes attention, specifically focused attention, to be able to add more and more specific details to the gist of a scene. Focusing and staring at the things present at a scene will most probably allow for a more detailed “summary” or “mental image” of the scene. In 1976, Mary Potter ran an experiment to illustrate how the gist of a scene works. The experiment required the participants to view a series of sixteen pictures for 250 milliseconds and had to look for target picture which was shown before the series of pictures was presented. Her study showed 100% accuracy in detecting the target picture. Also, she added a minor twist to her experiment. In another setup, she changed some of the pictures into words such that, for example, a picture of a girl clapping was replaced by words which stated “clapping girl”. Despite this change, the participants still managed to detect the target picture. Another study by Li Fei-Fei shows us that focused attention and increased time focusing on a scene most will increase the specificity of the features and details seen in a specific scene. The participants were asked to look at an office scene and describe what they have seen. At the shortest time given to look at the picture, the participants merely described the scene as an office scene without pointing out specific features. However, when the time to look at the picture was increased, the specificity and quality of the participants’ descriptions of the features and details present in the scene increased.

A 2005 study by Evans and Treisman tried to challenge the importance of focused attention in detecting and identifying objects. In the study, the experimenters used two treatment conditions. The first treatment condition showed pictures of animal targets. The second treatment condition showed pictures of vehicle targets. For both treatment conditions, a distractor using a human picture was used also to minimize the memory load brought about by the series of pictures. The pictures were presented in rapid succession. The results of the study show that although the participants correctly detected the pictures and even categorized them as animals or vehicles, they could not specifically identify or localize (tell which part of the screen the pictures appeared) them. This shows us that focused attention is necessary for higher-level processing (for identification and possibly, consolidation into memory).

Personally, I think this study was a very good example of how attention is crucial in our day to day activities. As I’ve said earlier, we take a lot of things for granted because we only notice and focus on the “shallow” features in scenes but not on the specifics present. I think that the study can serve as a good proof that “there is more than meets the eye.”

References:

Evans, K. & Treisman, A. (2005). Perception of Objects in Natural Scenes: Is It Really Attention Free?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, (31) 6, 1476-1492. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.31.6.1476.

Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

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Simon says--wait, what?

Written by: Jed Abarro, Coleen Defensor, Livvy Perez, Elysia Santos, and Mara Taguinod

Have you ever realized later on that you didn’t notice something change even though it happened right in front of you? Like your friend changing their shirt and you only realizing when they pointed it out, even if you were together all day? This phenomenon is called “change blindness”, and from the name it means you are blind a change that happens right in front of you (Goldstein, 2010).

To get an idea of how important attention is to detecting something like change, watch this interesting video about the art of misdirection. (It’s cool, pls. watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGY0wPAnus) What happens in this video is the phenomenon called “inattentional blindness”, and since it’s not entirely different from change blindness, it’ll give you an idea about the topic (change blindness also happens sometime in the video, you’ll see!).

(^They use the concept of misdirection in this anime.)

But, aside from the phenomenon of change blindness, there is also the phenomenon called “change deafness”, which, well, is basically the same as change blindness, but instead of not being able to see the change, you don’t hear the change. For example, you may have experienced listening to music while you’re doing something, but even though the music playing on your playlist had already changed, you don’t notice it until later on because you were so busy doing something else (you know, like writing a paper or preparing for a report). There have been some studies on change deafness, such as Vitevitch’s (2003) study, where participants engaged in a shadowing task, and 40% of them weren’t able to detect the change.

Being the curious psychology students we are, we decided to do an experiment on this interesting phenomenon of change deafness. But we didn’t just test change blindness on it’s own--we added two more different variables to see if they had an effect on our ability to detect change deafness. These two variables were task difficulty and pleasurable background music. We hypothesized that an easy level of task difficulty and the group with music would do best at detecting change.

So, how did we manipulate task difficulty? If you’re still familiar with the game Simon Says, congratulations! You’re officially old! (Because seriously, some of the participants didn’t know what Simon Says was). Okay, kidding aside, our change deafness experiment involved the game Simon Says. For the kids reading this, Simon Says is a game where if an instruction is preceded with “Simon says…” you do the instruction, but if the instruction has no “Simon says” before it you don’t do it.

Basically:

“Simon says jump”  -- You should jump

“Sit down” -- You don’t do it

For the easy tasks, we only asked them to do one instruction (Simon says sit). For the difficult tasks, we asked them to do three different instructions (Simon says, jump two times, do a full turn, and clap your hands).

As for pleasurable background music, we asked the participants what their “feel-good” music was for the day, and we would play it if they were assigned to the with music group. The reason why we added pleasurable background music as a factor was because we thought it would help them detect the change.

Our experiment simply went like this:

80 participants were asked to play Simon Says. The instructions were the key points to this experiment--it was where the change was happening. Basically, two different males voiced the instruction: one did the first half, and the other did the second. There were two variations to this: the easy and the difficult task, which we explained earlier. And then as for the music, there were two groups: with music, and without music.

Interestingly!! There were people that did say that they didn’t realize the voice change, even though they were there listening to the instructions the entire experiment. Sadly though, even though the number of people who detected the change were more than those who did not detect it, statistically speaking, our results weren’t significant D: (which means it can’t be said with certainty that this phenomenon can be generalized).

However, analysis of the results showed that those who did the easy task was able to detect the change more than those who did the difficult task. Makes sense, don’t you think? Because, really, your brain probably can’t process too much information. This is what we’d call cognitive load which Sweller (1988) defines as the amount of mental effort taking place in our working memory. Causse and colleagues (2016) did a study on the impact of cognitive load on inattentional blindness, and they confirmed that an increased cognitive load decreased the ability to detect differences.

Also, those in the with music group were able to detect the change more than those who were in the without music group. Just like what we thought, music did help in detecting the changes! Know why? You guys may have heard about the Mozart Effect, a phenomenon that occurs when being in a positive frame of mind improves one’s intellectual performance (Wolfe, 2015). This may be one reason why music can help when we’re doing some tasks.But since our results weren’t considered significant, we have to consider why music didn’t help. The reason for this might be because instead of helping, the music may have just distracted the participants. Huang & Shih (2011) found in their study that the more the participants like the music, the worse their performance was, so it may not always be the case that your preferred music will help you :(

Since we are not pros at researching yet, our research may have had some setbacks that made the results insignificant. One, the number of participants may have been too small. The more, the better, but we weren’t able to find more participants due to limited time. Second, the music may have not induced a pleasant mood to the participants. There may be other ways to induce pleasant mood, and it might also be a good idea to test not just pleasant mood, but also unpleasant mood (e.g. sad). Third, maybe we should’ve used natural voices instead of computer generated ones.

To the researchers who want to know more, and to the curious ones who have any questions, please feel free to contact us through this blog!

That’s our team, tuning out! ;D

References

Causse, M., Imbert, J. P., Giraudet, L., Jouffrais, C., & Tremblay, S. (2016). The role of cognitive and perceptual loads in inattentional deafness. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 10. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00344

Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

Huang, R.H., & Shih, Y.N. (2011). Effects of background music on concentration of workers. IOS Press,Work 38 (2011) 383–387 383. doi 10.3233/WOR-2011-1141

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12 (2),257-285. doi: 10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4

Vitevitch, M. S. (2003). Change deafness: The inability to detect changes between two voices. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29(2), 333-342. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.29.2.333

Wolfe, J.M., et al. (2015). Sensation and Perception (4th edition). USA: Sinauer Associates.

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#TBT with Smell

Written by Elysia Santos

Have you ever experienced a moment when you smell something and then suddenly memories of your childhood come back? Like when you smell some food, and then suddenly you remember memories of when you were a kid, eating your mother’s cooking?

(Pancakes smell like the Sundays when my mom and I used to eat ‘em after church when I was a kid!)

Well, that’s what we call the Proust effect which is a phenomenon that occurs when you remember past memories because of taste and smell.

But what do these senses have to do with memory?

As a demonstration in class, the reporters of the day “volunteered” me into participating their activity which was where I had to describe the smell of something, but they didn’t tell me beforehand what it actually was--they just let me smell it. Being someone who hates the smell of anything (whether it smells good or not does not matter, I just hate any smell), I was really distracted, and could not think of anything to describe the smell. The only thing I could think of to describe the smell was, “Uh, it smells like the ocean?” even though I felt like I’ve smelled that something before. Turns out it was sunblock!

Well, at first, that’s what I thought--that me getting super distracted was the reason that I couldn’t think of anything. But I found out later on that it’s actually normal to find it hard to describe smell. 

Apparently, according to Cain (1979, as cited in Goldstein, 2010), it’s our memory’s fault that we can’t retrieve the name of something when only the smell is presented. Despite that, our sense of smell is actually one of the best cues to remember something. Which may be why, even though I had no idea that what I was smelling was sunblock, I suddenly remembered memories of me in the ocean.

ON THE PROUST EFFECT

Willander and Larsson (2006, 2007) were one of the first researchers to study olfaction-evoked memories.

In their first experiment, they presented 3 types of cues (words, pictures, and odors) to 93 participants and asked them to relate memories for each cue. Interestingly, while words and pictures cued memories from late childhood to adolescence (11-20 years old), odors cued memories from before middle childhood (<10 years old). (Willander and Larsson, 2006)

In their second experiment where they aimed to determine why odors cue memories from when we were younger than visual cues do, they found out that the reason why we are more likely to remember something because of smell was because of the emotional factor that isn’t really present when our brain is processing words and pictures. (Willander and Larsson, 2007)

So, if any of you thought that your sense of smell isn’t really that important (like I did, to be honest), think again! Because you may come to remember some nostalgic memories by encountering a specific odor.

Also, don’t forget that smell is extremely important for flavor, too. Without it, you won’t ever enjoy eating again!

References

Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

Willander, J. & Larsson, M. (2006). Smell your way back to childhood: Autobiographical odor memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 13: 240. doi:10.3758/BF03193837

Willander, J. & Larsson, M. (2007). Olfaction and emotion: The case of autobiographical memory. Memory & Cognition. 35: 1659. doi:10.3758/BF03193499

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Christmas is coming and that means Christmas parties are coming. And with parties comes the...booze!

Wherever you are in the world, there are only three universal languages and that is love, music, and... beer. Beer is drank all over the world, with each country having their own specialty. Originally, it was created from barley by monks so they could drink it and not break their fasting. Now, it’s drank mostly for social drinking.

Personally, I hate the taste of beer. It’s my least favourite alcoholic drink (or maybe I’m really just a hard liquor kind of person, #GoHardOrGoHome lol). I think beer tastes like what I imagine pee would taste and I’ve had different kinds of beer but I’ve never liked the taste of any, so I don’t understand why people drink this. 

After studying about how taste works, I’ve learned that--like the other senses--taste is also a multimodal sense. I think it’s established that smell is important in perceiving flavour and vision also works in making food seem more appetizing. 

But today I learned that hearing also plays a role in influencing taste perception. Yes, hearing. At first I was like, “how is this even remotely possible”? but there is an actual study involving... music’s role in taste ratings of beer.

Carvalho, et. al (2016) conducted a study on taste ratings of beer in relation to music. 

An experiment is reported in which different groups of customers tasted a beer under three different conditions (N = 231). The control group was presented with an unlabeled beer, the second group with a labeled beer, and the third group with a labeled beer together with a customized sonic cue (a short clip from an existing song). In general, the beer-tasting experience was rated as more enjoyable with music than when the tasting was conducted in silence. In particular, those who were familiar with the band that had composed the song, liked the beer more after having tasted it while listening to the song, than those who knew the band, but only saw the label while tasting. These results support the idea that customized sound-tasting experiences can complement the process of developing novel beverage (and presumably also food) events. We suggest that involving musicians and researchers alongside brewers in the process of beer development, offers an interesting model for future development. Finally, we discuss the role of attention in sound-tasting experiences, and the importance that a positive hedonic reaction toward a song can have for the ensuing tasting experience

This sounds a lot like the Mozart Effect, where music uplifts your mood to improve your performance in a task, but slightly different. In this scenario, music uplifts your mood--especially familiar music--and it improves your perception of the taste of a food or drink. I find this to be very interesting because you can possibly change your taste for food and improve the flavor of something not by changing the actual dish but by changing your mood. I didn’t even realize that mood could influence something like taste or flavour. 

Now I know that, if I ever need to drink beer at a party, I’ll put on my favourite songs on full blast before I take a sip of the devil’s juice. Maybe I’ll grow to like the taste (I Doubt) if I do this too.

Reference:

Carvalho, F. R., Velasco, C., van Ee, R., Leboeuf, Y., & Spence, C. (2016). Music influences hedonic and taste ratings in beer. Frontiers in psychology, 7.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to feel pain?

Written by: Elysia Santos

Please listen to this song while reading this to get how I’m trying to be witty with my title. If you still don’t get it, check the references to know what the song is! ;D (or you could check the post after this for the song)

Figuratively speaking it would be great if we couldn’t feel pain, but if we’re being the logical beings that we are--there’s no way that would happen. Also, pain is important since it’s our body’s way of telling us that something is wrong. Anyway, what I want to talk about this time is how music affects our perception of pain.

A few years ago, when I was in high school, I remember being extremely terrified when I was told that I had to go through surgery to take out two of my wisdom teeth. Okay--I know that for some people these minor surgeries are no big deal, but for me, I was plain terrified. (I don’t deal well with the concepts of pain and blood.)

So, on the day of the surgery, I did the only thing I could do to try and distract myself from the surgery itself: I brought my mp3 player that was full of songs that I love (Smartphones weren’t a thing back then...wow, I feel old). I was ready to tune out to everything else except my music so that I wouldn’t hear anything.

Before the surgery, I was injected with anesthesia so that I wouldn’t feel the pain as much. Note: “as much”. I still could feel a bit of pain. But despite that, I remember that listening to my fave tunes helped me calm down a bit and forget about the surgery. (Though, in all honesty, I was also so scared that I couldn’t think properly at all.)

Was it just me who thought that listening to music helped me feel less pain? Maybe. But science/research has proven that music does relieve pain.

MUSIC AS PAIN RELIEVER

How does music help relieve pain?

Various studies have proven that music relieves pain. But how?

Studies by Juslin and Vastfjall (2008), Salimpoor et al. (2011), Koelsch (2009), and others (as cited Hsieh et. al., 2014) have suggested that when we are listening to music, not only is our primary auditory cortex activated, other parts of our brain get activated as well. And what they have found is that it is possible that the part that lessens pain or acts as an analgesic is also activated. Gardner (1960 as cited in Hsieh et. al., 2010) found out using music + white noise, analgesic wasn’t needed for 1/4 of the 1000 patients during dental procedures.

What kind of music is best for relieving pain?

According to Mitchell & MacDonald’s (2006) study, the best music for relieving pain is music that you prefer or like. 

In their study, they had 3 different treatment conditions where they used different types of music to find which one lessened pain more. Among white noise, a specially designed relaxation music, and the participant’s preferred music, the participant’s preferred music was the most effective. Hseih et. al.’s (2014) study also found that personally preferred music was the most effective pain reliever, rather than just positive expectancy. 

So, the next time you’ll have to go through a possibly painful procedure, don’t forget to bring your own music!

Also following these findings, listening to your preferred music when you feel emotional pain (maybe after a heartbreak or after watching something really painful and sad) may improve your mood! Because as one of my professors said, pain is pain--no matter if it’s physical or emotional. So yeah, it might be effective too!

References

1.  Hsieh, C., Kong, J., Kirsch, I., Edwards, R. R., Jensen, K. B., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Gollub, R. L. (2014). Well-loved music robustly relieves pain: A randomized, controlled trial. PLoS One, 9(9), e107390. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107390

2.  Mitchell, L. A., & MacDonald, R. A. R. (2006). An experimental investigation of the effects of preferred and relaxing music listening on pain perception. Journal of Music Therapy, 43(4), 295-316. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/223549558?accountid=47253

3. The song is a cover of The Beach Boy’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”. This cover was used as part of the original sound track of the Japanese movie Hidamari no Kanojo. 

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My Study Playlist

By Livvy Perez

Finding the perfect study music is so important to me because 1) I study almost everyday, 2) if I don’t listen to music while sleeping I will fall asleep for sure.

Many of the online study playlists I see around the internet are never effective because they’re mainly instrumentals or classical music. I personally cannot stand this type of music for studying because I know I will fall asleep for sure. I prefer music with lyrics that’s upbeat. 

I don’t know why people like listening to music like this? Some friends tell me they study to classical because it’s said to make you smarter--but I know this is a myth! The Mozart Effect is based on the idea that music that uplifts your mood makes you perform better, and not that listening to classical music directly influences intelligence.

People comment on my “weird” preference for listening to upbeat music and those with lyrics because they say it distracts, but for me it really doesn’t. Maybe it’s because my study playlist consists mostly foreign songs, and I can’t really understand most of the lyrics. But also, I memorize the songs so i can sing along to it, but it still doesn’t really distract me when I’m study. It becomes good, motivational background noise!

The effect of background music on learning and academic performance is highly relevant to the everyday lives of millions of students worldwide. To investigate this, we recruited 165 undergraduate students (71 males and 94 females, mean age of 21.87 years) to complete arithmetic, reading comprehension, and word memory tasks while exposed to familiar or unfamiliar, foreign or first language music, and no music. With the task scores as dependent variables, a significant main effect was observed for music familiarity but not for language. Further analysis showed that only the word memory task was affected by music with significantly higher scores in the familiar than unfamiliar music conditions. Despite a slight negative trend, no significant effect was found in the interaction between music and language conditions. Depending on the task, familiarity but not language of music affected learning and task performance when compared to the no music condition.

According to the above study by Chew, Yu, Chua, and Gan (2016), language didn’t have a significant effect on the  task done by the students. Only familiarity had a significant effect. This could explain how even if I listen to foreign music sometimes it distracts me and sometimes it doesn’t depending on how familiar I am with the piece. Now that I know this, I’ll know how to create my future study playlists from now on!

To end this blog, I attached my study playlist as of recently and it consists of purely foreign songs! I hope you like it :)

Reference:

Chew, Agnes Si-Qi, et al. "The effects of familiarity and language of background music on working memory and language tasks in Singapore." Psychology of Music (2016): 0305735616636209.

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The Fear in Your Eyes

Written by: Mara Taguinod

Since Halloween is just right around the corner, it’s the perfect time to torture ourselves with horror movies for some good amount of self-induced fear. Have you ever felt that you seem to notice more things around you after watching a scary flick? Like how the curtain is billowing in the wind? Or that shiny, metal object that might or might not be a knife? Do we actually see better when experiencing fear?

Before delving into the intricacies of fear and visual perception, let us first take a look at what fear actually does to our body. When faced with life-threatening situations, the two branches of our autonomic nervous system dictates what our bodies’ response will be. When the sympathetic branch takes over, the body experiences the fight-or-flight response which is characterized by an increased heart rate (Fanselow, 1994). Now, we can’t always be trained super spies that could outrun danger or dropkick it in the ass. The parasympathetic branch has a less impressive but nonetheless important response -- freezing.

When we exhibit freezing behavior, we also undergo fear bradycardia or a deceleration of our heart rate. If the fight-or-flight response prepares the muscles for action, what purpose does freezing serve for survival? According to Campbell and colleagues (1997), freezing is probably a prey’s response to avoid being detected by predators. Another explanation is that the freezing behavior is a critical decision-making stage wherein the body decides the best course of action to take, either remain frozen or switch to fight-or-flight (Eliam, 2005). Scientists have hypothesized that at this point, the organism has enhanced perception to help it make the best possible decision. So do we temporarily gain superpowers in moments of fear? A team of scientists conducted a series of experiments to discover what actually happens in our visual perception when we are frozen in fear.

Lojowska and her colleagues from Radboud University first induced freezing to their participants by conditioning them that a red dot has a 50% chance of being followed by a mild electric shock. The fear is therefore elicited, not by the electric shock itself, but by the anticipation of the electric shock. Their heart rate and other physiological responses are measured throughout the experiment.

To judge the performance of their visual perception under a relaxed and threatened (fear-induced) condition, the participants are then subjected to a series of trials wherein they will have to judge whether the picture that was flashed had a clockwise or counter-clockwise grating. The pictures (see below) were of gray squares with either several lines (right), meaning highly detailed, or few lines (left), low on details .

The researchers had two important findings. First, when threatened, participants are able to process the low-detail pictures better than the high-detail ones. And second, participants who showed a greater decrease in heart rate were able to discriminate the low-detail pictures better. What does this findings say about our visual processing when we are frozen in fear?

Simply put, when we are frozen in fear, our brains are more attuned to the basic information from our surroundings rather than the meticulous details. Rather than process every single details, our brain most likely draws from our past experiences and knowledge to judge the threat.This allows for our brain to react faster to the threat rather than waste precious seconds which could be the difference between life and death.

However, there could also be a downside to the way we process visual information when feeling fear. We are just as likely to jump into wrong conclusions and react to it before fully processing what is happening. This could explain why I tend to jump at the sight of a strangely shaped shadow after watching Lights Out or jump away from a billowy curtain in my peripheral vision after seeing Drag Me to Hell.

References

Eilam, D. (2005). Die hard: A blend of freezing and fleeing as a dynamic defense: Implications for the control of defensive behavior. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 29

Fanselow, M. S. (1994). Neural organization of the defensive behavior system responsible for fear. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1, 429 – 438. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03210947

Lojowska, M., Gladwin, T., Hermans, E., & Roelofs, K. (2015). Freezing promotes perception of coarse visual features. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144 (6), 1080-1088 DOI:10.1037/xge0000117

[toseeistoperceive-blog]

The Uncanny Valley: Why Things Are ‘Creepy’

Written by: Livvy Perez

As a self-proclaimed lover of all things horror, and in line with the Halloween season, this entry will be about the concept of the uncanny valley, and why it is that the more something physically resembles a human (but not 100% like a human), the more we feel creeped out looking at them?

The term “uncanny valley” was first coined in 1970 by robotics expert Masahiro Mori and it comes from the Japanese phrase “Bukimi no Tani” which literally means valley of eeriness. 

In a nutshell, the more something looks like a human, or resembles human physical features, the more uncanny it seems and the more creeped out we feel looking at it. 

If you can’t quite grasp the concept, the next few pictures will show you what the uncanny valley effect is, and tell me what kind of reaction you had upon seeing them :^)

(Img Source: Tara the Android from youtube.com)

(Img Source: CB2 Robot from images.google.com)

Feel creeped out? 

We can’t explain why we feel creeped out by these things, but we do. 

Mori (1970) says that this negative emotional reaction was a self-preservation response. It’s not straight up fear because fear is an evolutionary response to actual threat of danger or death, like a rabid dog chasing after you. This usually triggers a response in the amygdala, responsible for the fight-or-flight instinct. The reaction we have to these uncanny stimuli is more accurately a sense of discomfort or of the creeps--it’s fear but without the real threat of danger or death. We can’t die by looking at these photos but it elicits the same fear response in us.  

Other hypotheses say that looking at these uncanny human-like objects makes triggers our fear of death as we look at these eerily human-like, but lifeless, things (MacDorman & Ishiguro, 2006, as cited in Gray and Wegner, 2012). Makes sense when you realize why we are scared of zombies or dolls

(Img source: images.google.com // I for one, am Terrified of dolls. Why do people own these things........)

The uncanny valley effect doesn’t only work for lifeless/robotic objects but also to humans--like clowns, or people in masks. What do clowns and masks have in common? You can’t tell what the person underneath is really feeling because you can’t see their “real face”. This ambiguity makes us feel creeped out, again because of the evolutionary sense of self-preservation--if we can’t see their real intentions, then they are threatening to us. 

(Img source: images.google.com -- MAN I HATE CLOWNS!!!!!!!! THAT PERPETUAL SMILING FACE IS SO CREEPY AND SKETCHY)

(Img source: images.google.com -- IT’S...JUST A PLAIN MASK....BUT WHY IS THIS SO CREEPY)

SO you might be wondering, what are the possible ~scientific~ reasons for this?

In a paper by MacDorman, et. al. (2009) they say that

Recognition deficits caused by brain injury (e.g., prosopagnosia; Farah, Rabinowitz, Quinn, & Liu, 2000), face inversion and configurational effects, and the results of brain imaging studies and singleneuron studies in nonhuman primates indicate that face recognition is anatomically and functionally specialized (Carmel & Bentin, 2002), involving as many as six regions in the ventral visual pathway (Barbeau et al., 2008). Brain imaging has revealed that the fusiform face area (FFA) of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex responds with high selectivity to faces (Kanwisher, McDermott, & Chun, 1997). The FFA has been shown to be more active when the participant sees the stimulus as a face during the bistable oscillation of the Rubin face-vase illusion (Andrews, Schluppeck, Homfray, Matthews, & Blakemore, 2002; Hasson, Hendler, Ben Bashat, & Malach, 2001) or in near-threshold images (Grill-Spector, Knouf, & Kanwisher, 2004).

In my understanding of this ~very technical excerpt: our brain has a special part responsible for recognizing faces (the FFA or Fusiform Face Area) and it responds to standard features of a face (i.e. symmetry, variety in expressions, etc). If these faces are not the conventional structure or “look”, then the FFA reacts to it differently and may signal other responses in the brain (e.g. fear).

While the uncanny valley effect extends to other parts of the body (e.g. limbs) it is strongest when responding to the human-but-not-quite-human facial features. The fear response, then, I assume, is because of how we perceive and recognize faces. Because these uncanny images or things do not match our brain’s idea of a standard human face, a response triggers in our brain that we can’t help. And this response is usually fear, disgust, anxiety, or all three at the same time.

Now when you’re watching a horror movie or you’re in a haunted house attraction, just remember, these monsters/creatures/ghosts can’t hurt you...it’s all in your brain. But I guess convincing yourself that won’t make you any less scared. Happy Halloween anyway!

(Img source: images.google.com)

References:

Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2012). Feeling robots and human zombies: Mind perception and the uncanny valley. Cognition, 125(1), 125-130.

Mori M. (1970). Bukimi no tani [The uncanny valley]. Energy, 7(4):33–35.

MacDorman, K. F., Green, R. D., Ho, C. C., & Koch, C. T. (2009). Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces. Computers in human behavior, 25(3), 695-710.

Steckenfinger, S. A., & Ghazanfar, A. A. (2009). Monkey visual behavior falls into the uncanny valley. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,106(43), 18362-18366.

[toseeistoperceive-blog]

Playing with Perceiving: 5 Ways to Add Depth to Your Photos

Written by: Elysia Santos

Ever think that your photos look boring? Or that it’s not striking enough? Then perhaps this guide will help you in your next photo shoot!

Disclaimer: I am not a professional photographer. Just an amateur photographer who is trying to relate what I learned in class to my favorite hobby.

In this guide, I’ll be talking about how to add depth to your photos with the power of psychology! …Or, well, in other words, some of the concepts of depth perception—particularly pictorial cues which are information from 2D pictures that provide information about depth (Goldstein, 2010).

Adding depth to your photos make it look more dramatic, no matter how simple the object or scene you are taking photos of. So, by using pictorial cues to your advantage, it might just give your photograph more impact.

The first four cues I’ll be talking about is included in the list of pictorial cues by Goldstein (2010). The last cue isn’t included in the list, however, according to Mather’s (1996) research, it is also an important cue for depth perception (I’ll expand on that later).

1. Hide and Seek - Occlusion

At times, we might think that objects that are blocking the scenery will ruin the picture. But on the contrary, you can use this to your advantage and use those objects to purposely block or “occlude” the main subject of your photo. Of course, you shouldn’t block the entire photo, but blocking parts of it (e.g. the sides) would give more information on how far the subject really is.

In this case, I used the trees to obstruct the view of Mt. Fuji. And even though Mt. Fuji is partially blocked, it clearly still remains as the main subject of the photo. 

2. Spread Out! - Relative Size

We know, by fact, that all these bells are of the same size. But because some of the bells are placed nearer to us and some are placed farther, it gives off a more dynamic feeling.

Imagine having all the bells lined up in the same place. Sure, it would make a nice and interesting photo in its own way (hey, I love being minimalist, too!), but placing the bells in different distances add depth to it.

3. A “Never-ending Journey” - Perspective Convergence

One of my favorite ways to make places in photos look bigger than they actually are is to highlight the convergence of the location. And believe it or not, convergence isn’t really that hard to find--in fact, it’s everywhere!

Notice the invisible “lines” that make it seem like the canal is getting smaller towards the middle of the picture. It gives off “a road that goes on forever” feeling and is a great way to show that there is more to see than what’s in the photo.

This cue is really important in showing depth and is used by many artists, architects, interior designers, etc.

4. Get Close ;D - Texture Gradient

In photos like this, it always seems like the objects that are “nearer” to us seem to have more space in between, and things “farther” seem to be closely packed together. 

Find a good angle to show a large quantity (of flowers, people, animals, etc) even if there isn’t that much in reality!

5. Focus, focus, focus! - Blur

An experiment done by Mather (1996) showed that blur provides information about depth as well as other cues. In his experiment, he removed other pictorial cues in simple random-dot images and was able to find that blur also acts as a pictorial cue. The difference between boundaries (of the sharp regions and blurred regions) is used by our visual system to determine depth.

In the past where cameras didn’t exist and the only way to capture an image was through art, it was probably more difficult to create this effect. But in this day and age where cameras and computers have become very high-tech, we can manipulate the blur easily using lenses and other photo editing programs. Many people use the blur to create dramatic effects not only in photographs, but also in movies.

Blurring an image does not only add depth perception to the image (everything behind the focused object looks far, right?), it seems to enhance the details of the subject of focus.

So, how about trying these tricks to make your photos more dramatic? ;)

The photos used were all taken by me at various places in Japan (2015-2016).

References:

Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

Mather, G. (1996). Image Blur as a Pictorial Depth Cue. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: 263 169-172. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.1996.0027.

[jhbrd-old]

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anais Nin

[bigblueboo]

cube inversion