The Act of Answering Questions Elicited Differentiated Responses in a Concealed Information Test.

The concealed information test (CIT), a psychophysiological detection of deception test, compares physiological responses between crime-related and crime-unrelated items. In previous studies, whether the act of answering questions affected physiological responses was unclear. This study examined effects of both question-related and answer-related processes on physiological responses.

Entire Sound Representations Are Time-Compressed in Sensory Memory: Evidence from MMN.

In order to examine the encoding of partial silence included in a sound stimulus in neural representation, time flow of the sound representations was investigated using mismatch negativity (MMN), an ERP component that reflects neural representation in auditory sensory memory. Previous work suggested that time flow of auditory stimuli is compressed in neural representations. The stimuli used were a full-stimulus of 170 ms duration, an early-gap stimulus with silence for a 20-50 ms segment (i.

A temporal window for estimating surface brightness in the Craik-O'Brien-Cornsweet effect.

The central edge of an opposing pair of luminance gradients (COC edge) makes adjoining regions with identical luminance appear to be different. This brightness illusion, called the Craik-O'Brien-Cornsweet effect (COCe), can be explained by low-level spatial filtering mechanisms (Dakin and Bex, 2003). Also, the COCe is greatly reduced when the stimulus lacks a frame element surrounding the COC edge (Purves et al.

An odorant congruent with a colour cue is selectively perceived in an odour mixture.

Odour identification can be influenced by colour cues. This study examined the mechanism underlying this colour context effect. We hypothesised that a specific odour component congruent with a colour would be selectively perceived in preference to another odour component in a binary odour mixture.

The relationships among trait anxiety, state anxiety and the goal performance of penalty shoot-out by university soccer players.

The present study examined how the level of trait anxiety, which is a personality characteristic, influences state anxiety and penalty shoot-out performance under pressure by instruction. The high and low trait anxiety groups were selected by using Spielberger's Trait Anxiety Scale, with trait anxiety scores, and control and pressure conditions manipulated by instructions. The participants were two groups of eight university male soccer players.

Awareness of Central Luminance Edge is Crucial for the Craik-O'Brien-Cornsweet Effect.

The Craik-O'Brien-Cornsweet (COC) effect demonstrates that perceived lightness depends not only on the retinal input at corresponding visual areas but also on distal retinal inputs. In the COC effect, the central edge of an opposing pair of luminance gradients (COC edge) makes adjoining regions with identical luminance appear to be different. To investigate the underlying mechanisms of the effect, we examined whether the subjective awareness of the COC edge is necessary for the generation of the effect.

Smooth pursuit eye movements improve temporal resolution for color perception.

Human observers see a single mixed color (yellow) when different colors (red and green) rapidly alternate. Accumulating evidence suggests that the critical temporal frequency beyond which chromatic fusion occurs does not simply reflect the temporal limit of peripheral encoding. However, it remains poorly understood how the central processing controls the fusion frequency.

Saccadic compression of rectangle and Kanizsa figures: now you see it, now you don't.

Background: Observers misperceive the location of points within a scene as compressed towards the goal of a saccade. However, recent studies suggest that saccadic compression does not occur for discrete elements such as dots when they are perceived as unified objects like a rectangle.

Methodology/principal Findings: We investigated the magnitude of horizontal vs.

The effect of lutein supplementation on visual fatigue: a psychophysiological analysis.

We used psychophysiological technology to examine the effect of an oral supplement, a combination of lutein, zeaxanthin and blackcurrant extract (LUT), on visual fatigue, within the context of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over trial. The LUT supplement and placebo samples were randomly assigned to thirteen participants, who took the samples for two LUT (and vice versa) for another 2 week. Each participant completed visual proof reading tasks for 2h during each of four testing sessions.

Strength and variability of the backscroll illusion.

When a walking person is presented in a movie, the background image appears to move in a direction opposite to that of the person's locomotion. This study aimed to quantify the strength of this backscroll illusion and to examine interobserver and intraobserver variability. Stimuli were movie clips that presented a walking person in profile against a background of dynamic grating composed of two vertical sinusoidal gratings moving in opposite directions.

Biological motion alters coherent motion perception.

When a movie presents a person walking, the background appears to move in the direction opposite to the person's gait. This study verified this backscroll illusion by presenting a point-light walker against a background of a random-dot cinematogram (RDC). The RDC consisted of some signal dots moving coherently either leftward or rightward among other noise dots moving randomly.

Asymmetry in the perception of motion in depth induced by moving cast shadows.

An expanding object, which may represent an approaching motion, is easier to detect than a contracting one, which may represent a receding object. To confirm the generality of asymmetry in the detection of approaching and receding motions, we focused on the perception of apparent motion in depth created by moving cast shadows. The visual search for an approaching target among receding distractors was more efficient than for the opposite condition (Experiment 1).

Effects of communication skills on stress responses while speaking Japanese and English.

The present study was conducted to examine the effects of communication skills on stress responses, such as physiological (blink and heart rate), emotional (state of anxiety and mood), and behavioral responses (smiling and expressing an opinion) in stressful communication situations, specifically answering questions and giving a speech in Japanese and English. Participants were 32 students (16 men and 16 women; Mage = 19.5 yr.

Infants' sensitivity to shading and line junctions.

We examined the sensitivity to shading and line junction cues in human infants aged 5-8 months using computer-generated displays containing a rectangular-wave grating and a serrated aperture. In Experiment 1, infants were presented with a pair of displays: a two-dimensional to three-dimensional (2D-3D) display, alternating between 2D and 3D images, and a 2D-2D display, alternating between two 2D images. The 3D image consisted of black-and-white borders aligned with the peaks of a serrated aperture, creating the appearance of a 3D folded surface.

Reduction of stimulus visibility compresses apparent time intervals.

The neural mechanisms underlying visual estimation of subsecond durations remain unknown, but perisaccadic underestimation of interflash intervals may provide a clue as to the nature of these mechanisms. Here we found that simply reducing the flash visibility, particularly the visibility of transient signals, induced similar time underestimation by human observers. Our results suggest that weak transient responses fail to trigger the proper detection of temporal asynchrony, leading to increased perception of simultaneity and apparent time compression.

The effects of linear perspective on relative size discrimination in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans (Homo sapiens).

In this study, we tested the corridor illusion in three chimpanzees and five humans, applying a relative size discrimination task to assess pictorial depth perception using linear perspective. The subjects were required to choose the physically larger cylinder of two on a background containing drawn linear perspective cues. We manipulated both background and cylinder size in each trial.

Backscroll illusion in far peripheral vision.

The backscroll illusion refers to the apparent motion perceived in the background of a movie image that presents a locomotive object such as a person, an animal, or a vehicle. Here, we report that the backscroll illusion can occur in far peripheral visual fields at retinal eccentricity of more than 30 degrees. In psychological experiments, we presented a walking person in profile against an ambiguously moving background of vertical counterphase grating.

Perception of motion trajectory of object from the moving cast shadow in infants.

A moving cast shadow of the object affects the perception of the object's trajectory in adults [Kersten, D., Mamassian, P., & Knill, D.

A continuously lit stimulus is perceived to be shorter than a flickering stimulus during a saccade.

When subjects made a saccade across a single-flashed dot, a flickering dot or a continuous dot, they perceived a dot, an array (phantom array), or a line (phantom line), respectively. We asked subjects to localize both endpoints of the phantom array or line and calculated the perceived lengths. Based on the findings of Matsumiya and Uchikawa (2001), we predicted that the apparent length of the phantom line would be larger than that of the phantom array.

Comparison of blinking behavior during listening to and speaking in Japanese and English.

Blinking behavior during conversation may be different between conditions in listening and responding to questions because sifting attention from external to internal is possibly associated. The purpose of this study was to compare blinking behavior, duration, heart rates, and mental states during the tasks of listening to and responding to questions in Japanese and English. Participants were 67 (35 men and 32 women) undergraduate students.

The difference between flipping strategy and spinning strategy in mental rotation.

Murray (1997 Memory & Cognition 25 96-105) showed that, when an inverted object was mentally rotated to upright, the reaction time (RT) of flipping strategy (rotating in depth about the horizontal axis) was shorter than that of spinning strategy (rotating in the picture plane). We hypothesised the absence of representation at the intermediate position between the inverted and the upright representations in the flipping strategy, and investigated this hypothesis by a priming paradigm that included prime and probe tasks within one trial. In the prime task, participants were asked to mentally rotate an inverted object to upright.

Comparison between the lambda response of eye-fixation-related potentials and the P100 component of pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials.

The purpose of this study was to compare the lambda response of eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRPs) with the P100 component of pattern-reversal visual-evoked potentials. EFRPs were obtained by averaging EEGs time-locked to the offset of the saccade. The dipole of the lambda response and that of the P100 component were estimated by the dipole-tracing method (Musha & Homma, 1990).

Information flow related to visual search assessed using magnetoencephalography.

The sequence of neural activation during a visual search task was investigated using magnetoencephalography and the source locations for the activations were analyzed using a single-dipole algorithm. Five components (M1-5) were detected at mean latencies of 110, 146, 196, 250 and 333 ms in both of two different stimulus conditions; a target popped out in one stimulus condition (pop-out), while it did not in the other condition (non-pop-out). Statistical analysis showed that the M3 amplitude was larger and the M5 latency was shorter in the pop-out condition than in the non-pop-out condition, while there was no difference in the other components between the conditions.

Global interference: the effect of exposure duration that is substituted for spatial frequency.

In this study, participants were required to identify hierarchically structured patterns that appeared at either global or local level. Paquet and Merikle (1984 Canadian Journal of Psychology 381 45-53) showed that global interference is affected by exposure duration in the processing of a hierarchical structure. They showed that only global-to-local interference occurred at short exposure durations.

Inhibitory tagging on randomly moving objects.

Inhibitory tagging is a process that prevents focal attention from revisiting previously checked items in inefficient searches, facilitating search performance. Recent studies suggested that inhibitory tagging is object rather than location based, but it was unclear whether inhibitory tagging operates on moving objects. The present study investigated the tagging effect on moving objects.