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A mini-review of the literature, supporting the view on the psychophysical origins of some user acceptance effects of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), is presented and discussed in this paper. Psychophysics implies the existence of a lawful functional dependence between some aspect/dimension of the stimulation from the environment, entering the senses of the human, and the psychological effect that is being produced by this stimulation, as reflected in the subjective responses. Several psychophysical models are discussed in this mini-review, aiming to support the view that the observed effects of reactance to a robot or the uncanny valley phenomenon are essentially the same subjective effects of different intensity. Justification is provided that human responses to technologically and socially ambiguous stimuli obey some regularity, which can be considered a lawful dependence in a psychophysical sense. The main conclusion is based on the evidence that psychophysics can provide useful and helpful, as well as parsimonious, design recommendations for scenarios with CPSs for social applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During visual processing, input that is continuous in space and time is segmented, resulting in the representation of discrete tokens—objects or events. And there has been a great deal of research about how object representations are generalized into types—as when we see an object as an instance of a broader category (e.g., an animal or plant). There has been much less attention, however, to the possibility that vision represents dynamic information in terms of a small number of primitive event types (such as twisting or bouncing). (In models that posit a "language of vision," these would be the foundational visual verbs.) Here we ask whether such event types are extracted spontaneously during visual perception, even when entirely task irrelevant during passive viewing. We exploited the phenomenon of categorical perception—wherein differences are more readily noticed when they are represented in terms of different underlying categories. Observers were better at detecting changes to images or short videos when the changes involved switches in the underlying event type—even when the changes that maintained the same event type were objectively larger (in terms of both brute image metrics and higher level feature change). We observed this categorical "cross-event-type" advantage for visual working memory for twisting versus rotating, scooping versus pouring, and rolling versus bouncing. Moreover, additional control experiments confirmed that such effects could not be explained by appeal to lower-level non-categorical stimulus differences. This spontaneous perception of "visual verbs" might promote both generalization and prediction about how events are likely to unfold. Public Significance Statement: Suppose that you see two photographs or short movies—each presented for only a moment, one after the other—and then you must indicate whether they were identical or not. How would you do this? What sorts of differences would your mind automatically latch onto? Your ability to notice changes might be controlled by the low-level properties of the stimuli—the precise placements of colored pixels and objects here and there. In contrast, this project shows that your ability to notice changes also depends on how your mind automatically and spontaneously categorizes them into distinct "event types"—such as bouncing, rolling, pouring, or scooping—with differences that involve changes in perceived event types being easier to notice (controlling for lower level image properties). This shows how perception involves representations of the world in terms of a foundational set of "visual verbs," which might be a core part of scene understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals from Western cultures exhibit categorical perception (CP) in their judgments of emotional faces. However, the extent to which this phenomenon characterises the judgments of facial expressions among East Asians remains relatively unexplored. Building upon recent findings showing that East Asians are more likely than Westerners to see a mixture of emotions in facial expressions of anger and disgust, the present research aimed to investigate whether East Asians also display CP for angry and disgusted faces. To address this question, participants from Canada and China were recruited to discriminate pairs of faces along the anger-disgust continuum. The results revealed the presence of CP in both cultural groups, as participants consistently exhibited higher accuracy and faster response latencies when discriminating between-category pairs of expressions compared to within-category pairs. Moreover, the magnitude of CP did not vary significantly across cultures. These findings provide novel evidence supporting the existence of CP for facial expressions in both East Asian and Western cultures, suggesting that CP is a perceptual phenomenon that transcends cultural boundaries. This research contributes to the growing literature on cross-cultural perceptions of facial expressions by deepening our understanding of how facial expressions are perceived categorically across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ensemble coding allows observers to form an average to represent a set of elements. However, it is unclear whether observers can extract an average from a cross-category set. Previous investigations on this issue using low-level stimuli yielded contradictory results. The current study addressed this issue by presenting high-level stimuli (i.e., a crowd of facial expressions) simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2), and asked participants to complete a member judgment task. The results showed that participants could extract average information from a group of cross-category facial expressions with a short perceptual distance. These findings demonstrate cross-category ensemble coding of high-level stimuli, contributing to the understanding of ensemble coding and providing inspiration for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic categories can impact visual perception. For instance, learning that two objects have different names can enhance their discriminability. Previous studies have identified a typical pattern of categorical perception, characterized by faster discrimination of stimuli from different categories, a neural mismatch response during early visual processing (100–200 ms), and effects restricted to the right visual field. However, it remains unclear whether language affects perception online or through long‐term changes to mental representations in memory. To address this, we tested the impact of newly learned object categories with and without memory consolidation during sleep. We replicated the canonical pattern of categorical perception for categories that underwent consolidation. Without consolidation, linguistic categories still influenced early visual processing but with distinct neural dynamics. Therefore, we found evidence of both transient and long‐term effects of language on perception and conclude that memory consolidation plays a crucial role in shaping how linguistic categories modulate perception. A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in nontechnical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mini-review of the literature, supporting the view on the psychophysical origins of some user acceptance effects of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), is presented and discussed in this paper. Psychophysics implies the existence of a lawful functional dependence between some aspect/dimension of the stimulation from the environment, entering the senses of the human, and the psychological effect that is being produced by this stimulation, as reflected in the subjective responses. Several psychophysical models are discussed in this mini-review, aiming to support the view that the observed effects of reactance to a robot or the uncanny valley phenomenon are essentially the same subjective effects of different intensity. Justification is provided that human responses to technologically and socially ambiguous stimuli obey some regularity, which can be considered a lawful dependence in a psychophysical sense. The main conclusion is based on the evidence that psychophysics can provide useful and helpful, as well as parsimonious, design recommendations for scenarios with CPSs for social applications.

Abstract The .05 boundary within Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing (NHST) “has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move” (to quote Douglas Adams). Here, we move past meta-scientific arguments and ask an empirical question: What is the psychological standing of the .05 boundary for statistical significance? We find that graduate students in the psychological sciences show a boundary effect when relating p-values across .05. We propose this psychological boundary is learned through statistical training in NHST and reading a scientific literature replete with “statistical significance”. Consistent with this proposal, undergraduates do not show the same sensitivity to the .05 boundary. Additionally, the size of a graduate student’s boundary effect is not associated with their explicit endorsement of questionable research practices. These findings suggest that training creates distortions in initial processing of p-values, but these might be dampened through scientific processes operating over longer timescales.

The.05 boundary within Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing (NHST) "has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move" (to quote Douglas Adams). Here, we move past meta-scientific arguments and ask an empirical question: What is the psychological standing of the.05 boundary for statistical significance? We find that graduate students in the psychological sciences show a boundary effect when relating p-values across.05. We propose this psychological boundary is learned through statistical training in NHST and reading a scientific literature replete with "statistical significance". Consistent with this proposal, undergraduates do not show the same sensitivity to the.05 boundary. Additionally, the size of a graduate student's boundary effect is not associated with their explicit endorsement of questionable research practices. These findings suggest that training creates distortions in initial processing of p-values, but these might be dampened through scientific processes operating over longer timescales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Categorization is an essential cognitive and perceptual process, which happens spontaneously. However, earlier research often neglected the spontaneous nature of this process by mainly adopting explicit tasks in behavioral or neuroimaging paradigms. Here, we use frequency-tagging (FT) during electroencephalography (EEG) in 22 healthy human participants (both male and female) as a direct approach to pinpoint spontaneous visual categorical processing. Starting from schematic natural visual stimuli, we created morph sequences comprising 11 equal steps. Mirroring a behavioral categorical perception discrimination paradigm, we administered a FT-EEG oddball paradigm, assessing neural sensitivity for equally sized differences within and between stimulus categories. Likewise, mirroring a behavioral category classification paradigm, we administered a sweep FT-EEG oddball paradigm, sweeping from one end of the morph sequence to the other, thereby allowing us to objectively pinpoint the neural category boundary. We found that FT-EEG can implicitly measure categorical processing and discrimination. More specifically, we could derive an objective neural index of the required level to differentiate between the two categories, and this neural index showed the typical marker of categorical perception (i.e., stronger discrimination across as compared with within categories). The neural findings of the implicit paradigms were also validated using an explicit behavioral task. These results provide evidence that FT-EEG can be used as an objective tool to measure discrimination and categorization and that the human brain inherently and spontaneously (without any conscious or decisional processes) uses higher-level meaningful categorization information to interpret ambiguous (morph) shapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the perception of Mandarin lexical tones and stops to examine the degree of overlap between music and language. Eighteen musicians and 21 nonmusicians participated in a typical categorical perception task. Results showed that musicians and nonmusicians had comparable degree of categorical perception of tones and stops. Compared to nonmusicians, musicians exhibited enhanced sensitivities to within-category lexical tone stimuli. However, this improved ability was not observed in the perception of stops. These findings imply that musical experience strengthens the acuity of subtle low-level acoustic variations between within-category lexical tone stimuli without interfering with the high-level phonological representations of lexical tones, and this facilitatory effect is selective and could not readily extend to stop consonants in native language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the phenomenon of categorical perception, the success of which the author suggests can be expressed by the formula “this is exactly X from the category ‘X’.” The lexemes ‘neopredeljonnyj’ [indefinite] vs. ‘neulovimyj’ [elusive] are considered as units that verbalize the subject’s categorization difficulties in perception. Based on a comparison of the use of the adjectives ‘neopredeljonnyj’ [indefinite] vs. ‘neulovimyj’ [elusive] with nominations of different types of perceptual perception, it is established in which cases the object of perception, causing categorization difficulties, is designated as ‘neopredeljonnyj’ [indefinite] X and in which cases it is designated as ‘neulovimyj’ [elusive] X. The study is carried out using methods of definitional, componential, distributive, and contextual analysis based on explanatory dictionaries and data from the Russian National Corpus. As a result of the analysis of linguistic material, it was revealed that the combination ‘neopredeljonnyj’ [indefinite] X denotes that a certain X is well perceived by the sense organs, but the subject is unaware (it is absent from their lexicon) of the designation for this X. The combination ‘neulovimyj’ [elusive] X denotes that the sense organs only register the presence of a certain X, while X manifests itself too quickly/weakly or is heterogeneous, making it unrecognizable.

Ensemble coding allows observers to form an average to represent a set of elements. However, it is unclear whether observers can extract an average from a cross-category set. Previous investigations on this issue using low-level stimuli yielded contradictory results. The current study addressed this issue by presenting high-level stimuli (i.e., a crowd of facial expressions) simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2), and asked participants to complete a member judgment task. The results showed that participants could extract average information from a group of cross-category facial expressions with a short perceptual distance. These findings demonstrate cross-category ensemble coding of high-level stimuli, contributing to the understanding of ensemble coding and providing inspiration for future research.

Introduction: Processing the wealth of sensory information from the surrounding environment is a vital human function with the potential to develop learning, advance social interactions, and promote safety and well-being. Methods: To elucidate underlying processes governing these activities we measured neurophysiological responses to patterned stimulus sequences during a sound categorization task to evaluate attention effects on implicit learning, sound categorization, and speech perception. Using a unique experimental design, we uncoupled conceptual categorical effects from stimulus-specific effects by presenting categorical stimulus tokens that did not physically repeat. Results: We found effects of implicit learning, categorical habituation, and a speech perception bias when the sounds were attended, and the listeners performed a categorization task (task-relevant). In contrast, there was no evidence of a speech perception bias, implicit learning of the structured sound sequence, or repetition suppression to repeated within-category sounds (no categorical habituation) when participants passively listened to the sounds and watched a silent closedcaptioned video (task-irrelevant). No indication of category perception was demonstrated in the scalp-recorded brain components when participants were watching a movie and had no task with the sounds. Discussion: These results demonstrate that attention is required to maintain category identification and expectations induced by a structured sequence when the conceptual information must be extracted from stimuli that are acoustically distinct. Taken together, these striking attention effects support the theoretical view that top-down control is required to initiate expectations for higher level cognitive processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard assumption for what perception must do in order to represent a "higher level" content—say, tiger—is that it must represent the kind as such. I argue that this "as such condition" is not constitutive of what it means for a content to be "higher‐level", and that embracing it produces a range of unfortunate dialectical consequences. After offering this critique, I give an alternative construal, the "extended perceptual space" view of higher‐level contents. This view captures the phenomena targeted by the "higher‐level content" thesis, is empirically supported, and avoids the negative dialectical consequences of the as such condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work has investigated the origin of infant colour categories, showing pre‐linguistic infants categorise colour even in the absence of colour words. These infant categories are similar but not identical to adult categories, giving rise to an important question about how infant colour perception changes with the learning of colour words. Here we present two novel paradigms in which 12‐ and 19‐month‐old participants learning English as their first language were assessed on their perception of colour, while data on their colour word comprehension were also collected. Results indicate that participants' perception of colours close to the colour category boundaries dramatically change after colour word learning. The results highlight the shift made from infant colour categories to adult‐like linguistically mediated colour categories that accompanies colour word learning. Research Highlights: We aimed to test whether colour perception is linguistically mediated in infants.We used novel eye‐tracking and pupillometry paradigms to test infant colour perception either side of learning colour words.Infants' discrimination of colour changes after learning colour words, suggesting a shift due to colour word learning.A shift from pre‐linguistic colour representation to linguistically mediated colour representation is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous studies comparing the intonation of questions and statements in German, greater f0 excursions of phrase-final rises have been associated with questions in both read speech and spontaneous speech. This holds for production studies as well as perception studies. However, a major question remains whether these differences are perceived categorically or continuously. Furthermore, we ask whether the differences in f0 scaling correspond to categorical linguistic functions or rather an attitudinal continuum. We conducted three different perception experiments: a classical categorical perception task, an imitation task, and a semantic evaluation task. The results suggest that f0 scaling in phrase-final rises is perceived as a phonetic continuum rather than in phonological categories. Furthermore, the gradual increase of the final rise is associated with a gradual increase in perceived questioning. Lastly, the phonetic cues to this degree of questioning are distinct from those to the other investigated meanings surprise and uncertainty. Accordingly, this study supports the assumption that questioning constitutes an attitudinal meaning in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although object categorization is a fundamental cognitive ability, it is also a complex process going beyond the perception and organization of sensory stimulation. Here we review existing evidence about how the human brain acquires and organizes multisensory inputs into object representations that may lead to conceptual knowledge in memory. We first focus on evidence for two processes on object perception, multisensory integration of redundant information (e.g. seeing and feeling a shape) and crossmodal, statistical learning of complementary information (e.g. the 'moo' sound of a cow and its visual shape). For both processes, the importance attributed to each sensory input in constructing a multisensory representation of an object depends on the working range of the specific sensory modality, the relative reliability or distinctiveness of the encoded information and top-down predictions. Moreover, apart from sensory-driven influences on perception, the acquisition of featural information across modalities can affect semantic memory and, in turn, influence category decisions. In sum, we argue that both multisensory processes independently constrain the formation of object categories across the lifespan, possibly through early and late integration mechanisms, respectively, to allow us to efficiently achieve the everyday, but remarkable, ability of recognizing objects. This article is part of the theme issue 'Decision and control processes in multisensory perception'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhythm perception helps young infants find structure in both speech and music. However, it remains unknown whether categorical perception of suprasegmental linguistic rhythm signaled by a co‐variation of multiple acoustic cues can be modulated by prior between‐ (music) and within‐domain (language) experience. Here we tested 6‐month‐old German‐learning infants' ability to have a categorical perception of lexical stress, a linguistic prominence signaled through the co‐variation of pitch, intensity, and duration. By measuring infants' pupil size, we find that infants as a group fail to perceive co‐variation of these acoustic cues as categorical. However, at an individual level, infants with above‐average exposure to music and language at home succeeded. Our results suggest that early exposure to music and infant‐directed language can boost the categorical perception of prominence. Research Highlights: 6‐month‐old German‐learning infants' ability to perceive lexical stress prominence categorically depends on exposure to music and language at home.Infants with high exposure to music show categorical perception.Infants with high exposure to infant‐directed language show categorical perception.Co‐influence of high exposure to music and infant‐directed language may be especially beneficial for categorical perception.Early exposure to predictable rhythms boosts categorical perception of prominence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionProcessing the wealth of sensory information from the surrounding environment is a vital human function with the potential to develop learning, advance social interactions, and promote safety and well-being.MethodsTo elucidate underlying processes governing these activities we measured neurophysiological responses to patterned stimulus sequences during a sound categorization task to evaluate attention effects on implicit learning, sound categorization, and speech perception. Using a unique experimental design, we uncoupled conceptual categorical effects from stimulus-specific effects by presenting categorical stimulus tokens that did not physically repeat.ResultsWe found effects of implicit learning, categorical habituation, and a speech perception bias when the sounds were attended, and the listeners performed a categorization task (task-relevant). In contrast, there was no evidence of a speech perception bias, implicit learning of the structured sound sequence, or repetition suppression to repeated within-category sounds (no categorical habituation) when participants passively listened to the sounds and watched a silent closed-captioned video (task-irrelevant). No indication of category perception was demonstrated in the scalp-recorded brain components when participants were watching a movie and had no task with the sounds.DiscussionThese results demonstrate that attention is required to maintain category identification and expectations induced by a structured sequence when the conceptual information must be extracted from stimuli that are acoustically distinct. Taken together, these striking attention effects support the theoretical view that top-down control is required to initiate expectations for higher level cognitive processing.

Earlier research reported a category boundary effect on perception: differences between stimuli belonging to the same category are perceived as smaller than differences between stimuli belonging to different categories even when the physical dissimilarity between the stimuli in the pairs is the same. In this article, we propose that the existence of reference points (i.e., exemplars that serve as a point of comparison) can explain the occurrence of the category boundary effect as well as the directional asymmetries in within-category pairs. We investigated how reference points influence categorization and discrimination performance, using three different tasks: categorization, successive discrimination, and similarity judgment. We used both recognizable and non-recognizable morph figures as stimuli, assuming that recognizable series have clearer reference points. We replicated the overall category boundary effect for both discrimination and similarity and show the effect's dependence on the strength of the reference points involved. The general category boundary effect is not a proper category boundary effect, however: rather than the type of stimulus pair presented (i.e., within- or between-category) one needs to take into account the distance from the reference points for each of the individual stimuli in the pair to actually predict discrimination performance and similarity judgments. These results provide evidence that reference points on a dimension and their strength have tangible consequences for how we perceive, categorize, and react to stimuli on that dimension. Moreover, our findings remind us of the danger of averaging without looking at underlying data patterns, and of the gains that can be made by seriously exploring consistent variability in extensive data sets. Public Significance Statement: We replicate the general category boundary effect across tasks and stimuli: Keeping physical distance equal, differences between stimuli belonging to the same category are perceived as smaller than differences between stimuli belonging to different categories. This effect is however not an effect of the category boundary: the "goodness" or clarity of the individual stimuli involved affects discrimination performance and similarity judgments in pairs of stimuli. The results remind us of the danger of averaging without looking at the underlying data patterns, and of the gains that can be made by seriously exploring consistent variation in extensive data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhanced pitch perception has been identified in autistic individuals, but it remains understudied whether such enhancement can be observed in the lexical tone perception of language-delayed autistic children. This study examined the categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones in 23 language-delayed autistic children and two groups of non-autistic children, with one matched on chronological age (n = 23) and the other on developmental age in language ability (n = 23). The participants were required to identify and discriminate lexical tones. A wider identification boundary width and a lower between-category discrimination accuracy were found in autistic children than their chronological-age-matched non-autistic peers, but the autistic group exhibited seemingly comparable performance to the group of developmental-age-matched non-autistic children. While both non-autistic groups displayed a typical categorical perception pattern with enhanced sensitivity to between-category tone pairs relative to within-category ones, such a categorical perception pattern was not observed in the autistic group. These findings suggest among language-delayed autistic children with a developmental age around 4, categorical perception is still developing. Finally, we found categorical perception performance correlated with language ability, indicating autistic children's language disability might be predictive of their poor categorical perception of speech sounds. Some theories suggested that autistic people have better pitch perception skills than non-autistic people. However, in a context where pitch patterns are used to differentiate word meanings (i.e. lexical tones), autistic people may encounter difficulties, especially those with less language experience. We tested this by asking language-delayed autistic children to identify and discriminate two Mandarin lexical tones (/yi/ with Tone 1, meaning 'clothes'; /yi/ with Tone 2, meaning 'aunt'; /yi/: the standard romanization of Mandarin Chinese). On average, these autistic children were 7.35 years old, but their developmental age in language ability was 4.20, lagging behind 7-year-old non-autistic children in terms of language ability. Autistic children's performance in identifying and discriminating lexical tones was compared with two groups of non-autistic children: one group was matched with the autistic group on age, and the other was matched based on language ability. Autistic children performed differently from the non-autistic children matched on age, while autistic and non-autistic children matched on language ability exhibited seemingly similar performance. However, both the non-autistic groups have developed the perceptual ability to process lexical tones as different categories, but this ability was still developing in autistic children. Finally, we found autistic children who performed worse in identifying lexical tones had poorer language ability. The results suggest that language disability might have adverse influence on the development of skills of speech sound processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals differ in their ability to perceive and learn unfamiliar speech sounds, but we lack a comprehensive theoretical account that predicts individual differences in this skill. Predominant theories largely attribute difficulties of non-native speech perception to the relationships between non-native speech sounds/contrasts and native-language categories. The goal of the current study was to test whether the predictions made by these theories can be extended to predict individual differences in naive perception of non-native speech sounds or learning of these sounds. Specifically, we hypothesized that the internal structure of native-language speech categories is the cause of difficulty in perception of unfamiliar sounds such that learners who show more graded (i.e., less categorical) perception of sounds in their native language would have an advantage for perceiving non-native speech sounds because they would be less likely to assimilate unfamiliar speech tokens to their native-language categories. We tested this prediction in two experiments in which listeners categorized speech continua in their native language and performed tasks of discrimination or identification of difficult non-native speech sound contrasts. Overall, results did not support the hypothesis that individual differences in categorical perception of native-language speech sounds is responsible for variability in sensitivity to non-native speech sounds. However, participants who responded more consistently on a speech categorization task showed more accurate perception of non-native speech sounds. This suggests that individual differences in non-native speech perception are more related to the stability of phonetic processing abilities than to individual differences in phonetic category structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In speech, listeners extract continuously-varying spectrotemporal cues from the acoustic signal to perceive discrete phonetic categories. Spectral cues are spatially encoded in the amplitude of responses in phonetically-tuned neural populations in auditory cortex. It remains unknown whether similar neurophysiological mechanisms encode temporal cues like voice-onset time (VOT), which distinguishes sounds like /b/ and/p/. We used direct brain recordings in humans to investigate the neural encoding of temporal speech cues with a VOT continuum from /ba/ to /pa/. We found that distinct neural populations respond preferentially to VOTs from one phonetic category, and are also sensitive to sub-phonetic VOT differences within a population's preferred category. In a simple neural network model, simulated populations tuned to detect either temporal gaps or coincidences between spectral cues captured encoding patterns observed in real neural data. These results demonstrate that a spatial/amplitude neural code underlies the cortical representation of both spectral and temporal speech cues.

Auditory discrimination, the hearing ability crucial for speech and language development, allowing one to perceive changes in volume, duration and frequency of sounds, was assessed for 366 participants with normal peripheral hearing: 220 participants with auditory processing disorders (APD) and 146 typically developing (TD) children, all aged 6–9 years. Discrimination of speech was tested with nonsense words using the phoneme discrimination test (PDT), while pure tones—with the frequency pattern test (FPT). The obtained results were statistically analyzed and correlated. The median of the FPT results obtained by participants with APD was more than twice lower than those of TD (20% vs. 50%; p < 0.05), similarly in the PDT (21 vs. 24; p < 0.05). The FPT results of 9-year-old APD participants were worse than the results of TD 6-year-olds (30% vs. 40%; p < 0.05), indicating that the significant FPT deficit strongly suggests APD. The process of auditory discrimination development does not complete with the acquisition of phonemes but continues during school age. Physiological phonemes discrimination is not yet equalized among 9-year-olds. Nonsense word tests allow for reliable testing of phoneme discrimination. APD children require testing with PDT and FPT because both test results allow for developing individual therapeutic programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Spoken language comprehension requires listeners map continuous features of the speech signal to discrete category labels. Categories are however malleable to surrounding context and stimulus precedence; listeners' percept can dynamically shift depending on the sequencing of adjacent stimuli resulting in a warping of the heard phonetic category. Here, we investigated whether such perceptual warping--which amplify categorical hearing--might alter speech processing in noise-degraded listening scenarios. Methods: We measured continuous dynamics in perception and category judgments of an acoustic-phonetic vowel gradient via mouse tracking. Tokens were presented in serial vs. random orders to induce more/less perceptual warping while listeners categorized continua in clean and noise conditions. Results: Listeners' responses were faster and their mouse trajectories closer to the ultimate behavioral selection (marked visually on the screen) in serial vs. random order, suggesting increased perceptual attraction to category exemplars. Interestingly, order effects emerged earlier and persisted later in the trial time course when categorizing speech in noise. Discussion: These data describe interactions between perceptual warping in categorization and speech-in-noise perception: warping strengthens the behavioral attraction to relevant speech categories, making listeners more decisive (though not necessarily more accurate) in their decisions of both clean and noise-degraded speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the middle of East and West, Saudi Arabia is a society that has been the object of a socioeconomic plan to engineer a sustainable, knowledge-driven, and market-based economy since before the pandemic. The plan, which heavily relies on young college-educated women, requires a traditional collectivistic ethos to adjust to an individualistic one. The pandemic has temporarily interrupted the execution of the plan. The main aim of the present study is two-fold: (a) determine whether female college students’ cultural dispositions and conceptual organization habits (similarity-driven versus function-driven ways of organizing information) have changed after the pandemic and (b) assess whether dispositions and habits contribute to academic attainment (as measured by GPA) differently before and after the pandemic. To this end, through a cross-sectional design, this retrospective study examines the cultural dispositions and conceptual organization habits of a sample of bilingual female college students 3 years apart before and after the pandemic. It finds no differences in conceptual organization habits as a function of time and no relationship between either cultural dispositions or conceptual organization habits and academic attainment. However, horizontal individualism is found to increase after the pandemic as well as to be negatively related to function-driven conceptual organization habits. Although these findings underlie the increasing individualism that accompanies socioeconomic development globally, they question common assumptions of a straightforward link between academic attainment and cultural differences.

Consumers often encounter product-related numerical information, such as attribute ratings and version numbers. This research demonstrates that a smaller (compared to a larger) numerical difference can increase perceived improvement and enhance product appeal. We find that when a product's version number or rating changes from a decimal number to an integer (e.g. 2.4 to 3), product appeal is enhanced compared to when the change is between two integers (e.g. 2 to 3), even though the latter difference is mathematically larger. This effect occurs when the meaning of the numerical information is unclear, leading consumers to try to infer what it represents. We suggest that a decimal number is inferred to be part of a fine-grained scale, in which decimals are the intermediate values and integers are endpoints or category boundaries. The switch from a decimal to an integer is therefore perceived as skipping over intermediate values and crossing a category boundary. This suggests that the product has made a substantive improvement, making it more appealing. A consecutive integer-to-integer change does not provide a cue to support such inferences. In five studies, we demonstrate the decimal-to-integer effect, its underlying process, and its boundary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech input is often noisy and ambiguous. Yet listenersusually do not have difficulties understanding it. A keyhypothesis is that in speech processing acoustic-phoneticbottom-up processing is complemented by top-downcontextual information. This context effect is larger when theambiguous word is only separated from a disambiguating wordby a few syllables compared to many syllables, suggesting thatthere is a limited time window for processing acoustic-phoneticinformation with the help of context. Here, we argue that therelative weight of bottom-up and top-down processes may bedifferent for languages that have different phonologicalproperties. We report an experiment comparing two closelyrelated languages, Danish and Norwegian. We show thatDanish speakers do indeed rely on context more thanNorwegian speakers do. These results highlight the importanceof investigating cross-linguistic differences in speechprocessing, suggesting that speakers of different languagesmay develop different language processing strategies.

A novel experimental method is motivated and applied in aneffort to test for effects of category learning on perceptualdiscrimination so as to clearly distinguish category boundaryeffects of expansion and compression from changes insensitivity to stimulus dimensions. The method includes acontrol group performing a task that, like category learning,requires attention to one systematically varying stimulusdimension rather than another. Discrimination accuracy istracked over time and measured using a psychophysicalstaircase procedure tailored to individual participants thatdoesn’t rely on memory. Initial results suggest improvementin discrimination accuracy over time, particularly on thedimension relevant to the categorization or control task, butno evidence of category boundary effects or effects ofcategory learning on dimension perception stronger than thoseof the control task. Possible reasons for this and directions forfurther research are briefly discussed .

IntroductionSpoken language comprehension requires listeners map continuous features of the speech signal to discrete category labels. Categories are however malleable to surrounding context and stimulus precedence; listeners’ percept can dynamically shift depending on the sequencing of adjacent stimuli resulting in a warping of the heard phonetic category. Here, we investigated whether such perceptual warping—which amplify categorical hearing—might alter speech processing in noise-degraded listening scenarios.MethodsWe measured continuous dynamics in perception and category judgments of an acoustic-phonetic vowel gradient via mouse tracking. Tokens were presented in serial vs. random orders to induce more/less perceptual warping while listeners categorized continua in clean and noise conditions.ResultsListeners’ responses were faster and their mouse trajectories closer to the ultimate behavioral selection (marked visually on the screen) in serial vs. random order, suggesting increased perceptual attraction to category exemplars. Interestingly, order effects emerged earlier and persisted later in the trial time course when categorizing speech in noise.DiscussionThese data describe interactions between perceptual warping in categorization and speech-in-noise perception: warping strengthens the behavioral attraction to relevant speech categories, making listeners more decisive (though not necessarily more accurate) in their decisions of both clean and noise-degraded speech.

The question of whether intonation events are speech categories like phonemes and lexical tones has long been a puzzle in prosodic research. In past work, researchers have studied categoricality of pitch accents and boundary tones by examining perceptual phenomena stemming from research on phoneme categories (i.e., intonation boundary effects—peaks in discrimination sensitivity at category boundaries, perceptual magnet effects—sensitivity minima near the best exemplar or prototype of a category). Both lines of research have yielded mixed results. However, boundary effects are not necessarily related to categoricality of speech. Using improved methodology, the present study examines whether pitch accents have domain-general internal structure of categories by testing the perceptual magnet effect. Perceived goodness and discriminability of re-synthesized productions of Dutch rising pitch accent (L*H) were evaluated by native speakers of Dutch in three experiments. The variation between these stimuli was quantified using a polynomial-parametric modeling approach. A perceptual magnet effect was detected: (1) rated “goodness” decreased as acoustic-perceptual distance relative to the prototype increased (Experiment 1), and (2) equally spaced items far from the prototype were more frequently discriminated than equally spaced items in the neighborhood of the prototype (Experiment 2). These results provide first evidence for internal structure of pitch accents, similar to that found in color and phoneme categories. However, the discrimination accuracy gathered here was lower than that reported for phonemes. The discrimination advantage in the neighborhood far from the prototype disappeared when participants were tested on a very large number of stimuli (Experiment 3), similar to findings on phonemes and different from findings for lexical tones in neutral network simulations of distributional learning. These results suggest a more transient nature of the perceptual magnet effect in the perception of pitch accents and arguably weaker categoricality of pitch accents, compared to that of phonemes and in particular of lexical tones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of categorizing sounds into distinct phonetic categories is known as categorical perception (CP). Response times (RTs) provide a measure of perceptual difficulty during labeling decisions (i.e., categorization). The RT is quasi-stochastic in nature due to individuality and variations in perceptual tasks. To identify the source of RT variation in CP, we have built models to decode the brain regions and frequency bands driving fast, medium and slow response decision speeds. In particular, we implemented a parameter optimized convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify listeners' behavioral RTs from their neural EEG data. We adopted visual interpretation of model response using Guided-GradCAM to identify spatial-spectral correlates of RT. Our framework includes (but is not limited to): (i) a data augmentation technique designed to reduce noise and control the overall variance of EEG dataset; (ii) bandpower topomaps to learn the spatial-spectral representation using CNN; (iii) large-scale Bayesian hyper-parameter optimization to find best performing CNN model; (iv) ANOVA and posthoc analysis on Guided-GradCAM activation values to measure the effect of neural regions and frequency bands on behavioral responses. Using this framework, we observe that α − β (10–20 Hz) activity over left frontal, right prefrontal/frontal, and right cerebellar regions are correlated with RT variation. Our results indicate that attention, template matching, temporal prediction of acoustics, motor control, and decision uncertainty are the most probable factors in RT variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether intonation events are speech categories like phonemes and lexical tones has long been a puzzle in prosodic research. In past work, researchers have studied categoricality of pitch accents and boundary tones by examining perceptual phenomena stemming from research on phoneme categories (i.e., intonation boundary effects—peaks in discrimination sensitivity at category boundaries, perceptual magnet effects—sensitivity minima near the best exemplar or prototype of a category). Both lines of research have yielded mixed results. However, boundary effects are not necessarily related to categoricality of speech. Using improved methodology, the present study examines whether pitch accents have domain-general internal structure of categories by testing the perceptual magnet effect. Perceived goodness and discriminability of re-synthesized productions of Dutch rising pitch accent (L*H) were evaluated by native speakers of Dutch in three experiments. The variation between these stimuli was quantified using a polynomial-parametric modeling approach. A perceptual magnet effect was detected: (1) rated “goodness” decreased as acoustic-perceptual distance relative to the prototype increased (Experiment 1), and (2) equally spaced items far from the prototype were more frequently discriminated than equally spaced items in the neighborhood of the prototype (Experiment 2). These results provide first evidence for internal structure of pitch accents, similar to that found in color and phoneme categories. However, the discrimination accuracy gathered here was lower than that reported for phonemes. The discrimination advantage in the neighborhood far from the prototype disappeared when participants were tested on a very large number of stimuli (Experiment 3), similar to findings on phonemes and different from findings for lexical tones in neutral network simulations of distributional learning. These results suggest a more transient nature of the perceptual magnet effect in the perception of pitch accents and arguably weaker categoricality of pitch accents, compared to that of phonemes and in particular of lexical tones.

For much of its history, categorical perception was treated as a foundational theory of speech perception, which suggested that quasi-discrete categorization was a goal of speech perception. This had a profound impact on bilingualism research which adopted similar tasks to use as measures of nativeness or native-like processing, implicitly assuming that any deviation from discreteness was a deficit. This is particularly problematic for listeners like heritage speakers whose language proficiency, both in their heritage language and their majority language, is questioned. However, we now know that in the monolingual listener, speech perception is gradient and listeners use this gradiency to adjust subphonetic details, recover from ambiguity, and aid learning and adaptation. This calls for new theoretical and methodological approaches to bilingualism. We present the Visual Analogue Scaling task which avoids the discrete and binary assumptions of categorical perception and can capture gradiency more precisely than other measures. Our goal is to provide bilingualism researchers new conceptual and empirical tools that can help examine speech categorization in different bilingual communities without the necessity of forcing their speech categorization into discrete units and without assuming a deficit model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mandarin-speaking children with speech sound disorders (SSD) often show difficulties in producing alveolar and velar plosives contrasts (e.g., /t/ vs. /k/). But it remains unclear whether such phonological disorder correlates with the perception of the contrast between alveolar and velar plosives. The present study assessed whether Mandarin-speaking children with SSD who substituted [t] for /k/ in production could perceptually distinguish between /t/ and /k/, and compared their results with those from typically developing children (TDC) and typically adults (TA). We adopted a categorical perception paradigm with a /ta/-/ka/ continuum. The continuum included nine stimuli, which were synthesized from a naturally-produced /ta/. The SSD, TDC, and TA groups completed both identification and discrimination tasks that required perceptual judgment of individual stimulus and pairs of stimuli from the continuum. The results showed that the TDC and TA groups showed typical patterns of categorical perception in the continuum. But the SSD group only reached or was slightly above the chance level in the identification task and did not show significant difference among pairs of stimuli in the discrimination task. Their performance was significantly different from that of the TDC and TA groups and lacked typical patterns of categorical perception. The results suggested that their perception of /t/ vs. /k/ may be impaired. Considering the SSD group's speech errors, this perception defect may be a cause for their tendency of substituting [t] for /k/ in production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Deficits in phonological processing are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises reading is scant. This 2-year longitudinal ERP study investigates changes in pre-attentive auditory processing that underlies categorical perception of mandarin lexical tones during the years children learn to read fluently. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the development of lexical tone categorical perception to see if it can predict children's reading ability. Methods: Both behavioral and electrophysiological measures were taken in this study. Auditory event-related potentials were collected with a passive listening oddball paradigm. Using a stimulus continuum spanning from one lexical tone category exemplar to another, we identified a between-category and a within-category tone deviant that were acoustically equidistant from a standard stimulus. The standard stimulus occurred on 80% of trials, and one of two deviants (between-category or within-category) equiprobably on the remaining trials. 8-year-old Mandarin speakers participated in both an initial ERP oddball paradigm and returned for a 2-year follow-up. Results: The between-category MMN and within-category MMN significantly correlate with each other at age 8 (p = 0.001) but not at age 10. The betweencategory MMN at age 8 can predict children's ability at age 10 (p = 0.03) but the within-category cannot. Conclusion: The categorical perception of lexical tone is still developing from age 8 to age 10. The behavioral and electrophysiological results demonstrate that categorical perception of lexical tone at age 8 predicts children's reading ability at age 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For two decades, the formalism of quantum mechanics has been successfully used to describe human decision processes, situations of heuristic reasoning, and the contextuality of concepts and their combinations. The phenomenon of 'categorical perception' has put us on track to find a possible deeper cause of the presence of this quantum structure in human cognition. Thus, we show that in an archetype of human perception consisting of the reconciliation of a bottom up stimulus with a top down cognitive expectation pattern, there arises the typical warping of categorical perception, where groups of stimuli clump together to form quanta, which move away from each other and lead to a discretization of a dimension. The individual concepts, which are these quanta, can be modeled by a quantum prototype theory with the square of the absolute value of a corresponding Schrödinger wave function as the fuzzy prototype structure, and the superposition of two such wave functions accounts for the interference pattern that occurs when these concepts are combined. Using a simple quantum measurement model, we analyze this archetype of human perception, provide an overview of the experimental evidence base for categorical perception with the phenomenon of warping leading to quantization, and illustrate our analyses with two examples worked out in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of its history, categorical perception was treated as a foundational theory of speech perception, which suggested that quasi-discrete categorization was a goal of speech perception. This had a profound impact on bilingualism research which adopted similar tasks to use as measures of nativeness or native-like processing, implicitly assuming that any deviation from discreteness was a deficit. This is particularly problematic for listeners like heritage speakers whose language proficiency, both in their heritage language and their majority language, is questioned. However, we now know that in the monolingual listener, speech perception is gradient and listeners use this gradiency to adjust subphonetic details, recover from ambiguity, and aid learning and adaptation. This calls for new theoretical and methodological approaches to bilingualism. We present the Visual Analogue Scaling task which avoids the discrete and binary assumptions of categorical perception and can capture gradiency more precisely than other measures. Our goal is to provide bilingualism researchers new conceptual and empirical tools that can help examine speech categorization in different bilingual communities without the necessity of forcing their speech categorization into discrete units and without assuming a deficit model.

[Display omitted] • Gradient/continuous listeners had better speech-in-noise comprehension than discrete/categorical listeners. • More gradient listening was associated with smaller noise related shifts in neural response latency. • Responses in the left superior temporal gyrus were stronger and faster with more gradient listening. Acoustic information in speech changes continuously, yet listeners form discrete perceptual categories to ease the demands of perception. Being a more continuous/gradient as opposed to a more discrete/categorical listener may be further advantageous for understanding speech in noise by increasing perceptual flexibility and resolving ambiguity. The degree to which a listener's responses to a continuum of speech sounds are categorical versus continuous can be quantified using visual analog scaling (VAS) during speech labeling tasks. Here, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to vowels along an acoustic–phonetic continuum (/u/ to /a/) while listeners categorized phonemes in both clean and noise conditions. Behavior was assessed using standard two alternative forced choice (2AFC) and VAS paradigms to evaluate categorization under task structures that promote discrete vs. continuous hearing, respectively. Behaviorally, identification curves were steeper under 2AFC vs. VAS categorization but were relatively immune to noise, suggesting robust access to abstract, phonetic categories even under signal degradation. Behavioral slopes were correlated with listeners' QuickSIN scores; shallower slopes corresponded with better speech in noise performance, suggesting a perceptual advantage to noise degraded speech comprehension conferred by a more gradient listening strategy. At the neural level, P2 amplitudes and latencies of the ERPs were modulated by task and noise; VAS responses were larger and showed greater noise-related latency delays than 2AFC responses. More gradient responders had smaller shifts in ERP latency with noise, suggesting their neural encoding of speech was more resilient to noise degradation. Interestingly, source-resolved ERPs showed that more gradient listening was also correlated with stronger neural responses in left superior temporal gyrus. Our results demonstrate that listening strategy modulates the categorical organization of speech and behavioral success, with more continuous/gradient listening being advantageous to sentential speech in noise perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]