448 research outputs found
Perceived Speed of Compound Stimuli Is Moderated by Component Contrast, Not Overall Pattern Contrast
The perception of speed is susceptible to manipulations of image contrast, both for simple sine wave and more complex stimuli, such that low-contrast patterns generally appear slower than their high-contrast equivalents. It is not known whether the crucial factor is the contrast of the underlying Fourier components or the contrast of the overall complex pattern. Here, two experiments investigate this issue using compound gratings, comprising two vertical sine wave stimuli with equal contrast, but a 3:1 spatial frequency ratio. Component gratings were summed in ââpeaks addââ and in ââpeaks subtractââ phase, creating conditions with either (a) identical component contrasts, despite differences in overall pattern contrast or (b) differences in component contrasts despite identical overall pattern contrast. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the perceived speed is determined by the contrast of the components regardless of relative phase and hence of overall pattern contrast. Experiment 2 replicated this result while eliminating potential explanations based on differences in spatial frequency content. Along with previous compound grating and plaid studies, the data support a two-stage velocity estimation process involving the derivation of separate speed signals for each Fourier component, followed by integration of these signals across spatial scales
Shining a light on race: Contrast and assimilation effects in the perception of skin tone and racial typicality
Published: 27 November 2020Researchers have long debated the extent to which an individualâs skin tone influences their perceived race. Brooks and Gwinn (2010) demonstrated that the race of surrounding faces can affect the perceived skin tone of a central target face without changing perceived racial typicality, suggesting that skin lightness makes a small contribution to judgments of race compared to morphological cues (the configuration and shape of the facial features). However, the lack of a consistent light source may have undermined the reliability of skin tone cues, encouraging observers to rely disproportionately on morphological cues instead. The current study addresses this concern by using 3D models of male faces with typically Black African or White European appearances that are illuminated by the same light source. Observers perceived target faces surrounded by White faces to have darker skin than those surrounded by Black faces, particularly for faces of intermediate lightness. However, when asked to judge racial typicality, a small assimilation effect was evident, with target faces perceived as more stereotypically White when surrounded by White than when surrounded by Black faces at intermediate levels of typicality. This evidence of assimilation effects for perceived racial typicality despite concurrent contrast effects on perceived skin lightness supports the previous conclusion that perceived skin lightness has little influence on judgments of racial typicality for racially ambiguous faces, even when lighting is consistent.Kevin R. Brooks, Daniel Sturman and O. Scott Gwin
The movement advantage in famous and unfamiliar faces: a comparison of point-light displays and shape-normalised avatar stimuli.
Facial movement may provide cues to identity, by supporting the extraction of face shape information via structure-from-motion, or via characteristic patterns of movement. Currently, it is unclear whether familiar and unfamiliar faces derive the same benefit from these mechanisms. This study examined the movement advantage by asking participants to match moving and static images of famous and unfamiliar faces to facial point-light displays (PLDs) or shape-normalised avatars in a same/different task (experiment 1). In experiment 2 we also used a same/different task, but participants matched from PLD to PLD or from avatar to avatar. In both experiments, unfamiliar face matching was more accurate for PLDs than for avatars, but there was no effect of stimulus type on famous faces. In experiment 1, there was no movement advantage, but in experiment 2, there was a significant movement advantage for famous and unfamiliar faces. There was no evidence that familiarity increased the movement advantage. For unfamiliar faces, results suggest that participants were relying on characteristic movement patterns to match the faces, and did not derive any extra benefit from the structure-from-motion cues in the PLDs. The results indicate that participants may use static and movement-based cues in a flexible manner when matching famous and unfamiliar faces
Transverse NMR relaxation as a probe of mesoscopic structure
Transverse NMR relaxation in a macroscopic sample is shown to be extremely
sensitive to the structure of mesoscopic magnetic susceptibility variations.
Such a sensitivity is proposed as a novel kind of contrast in the NMR
measurements. For suspensions of arbitrary shaped paramagnetic objects, the
transverse relaxation is found in the case of a small dephasing effect of an
individual object. Strong relaxation rate dependence on the objects' shape
agrees with experiments on whole blood. Demonstrated structure sensitivity is a
generic effect that arises in NMR relaxation in porous media, biological
systems, as well as in kinetics of diffusion limited reactions.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Investigation of conduction band structure, electron scattering mechanisms and phase transitions in indium selenide by means of transport measurements under pressure
In this work we report on Hall effect, resistivity and thermopower
measurements in n-type indium selenide at room temperature under either
hydrostatic and quasi-hydrostatic pressure. Up to 40 kbar (= 4 GPa), the
decrease of carrier concentration as the pressure increases is explained
through the existence of a subsidiary minimum in the conduction band. This
minimum shifts towards lower energies under pressure, with a pressure
coefficient of about -105 meV/GPa, and its related impurity level traps
electrons as it reaches the band gap and approaches the Fermi level. The
pressure value at which the electron trapping starts is shown to depend on the
electron concentration at ambient pressure and the dimensionality of the
electron gas. At low pressures the electron mobility increases under pressure
for both 3D and 2D electrons, the increase rate being higher for 2D electrons,
which is shown to be coherent with previous scattering mechanisms models. The
phase transition from the semiconductor layered phase to the metallic sodium
cloride phase is observed as a drop in resistivity around 105 kbar, but above
40 kbar a sharp nonreversible increase of the carrier concentration is
observed, which is attributed to the formation of donor defects as precursors
of the phase transition.Comment: 18 pages, Latex, 10 postscript figure
Lepton flavor violation decays in the topcolor-assisted technicolor model and the littlest Higgs model with parity
The new particles predicted by the topcolor-assisted technicolor ()
model and the littlest Higgs model with T-parity (called model) can
induce the lepton flavor violation () couplings at tree level or one loop
level, which might generate large contributions to some processes. Taking
into account the constraints of the experimental data on the relevant free
parameters, we calculate the branching ratios of the decay processes
with = , and
in the context of these two kinds of new physics models. We find
that the model and the model can indeed produce significant
contributions to some of these decay processes.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figure
Spatial distribution of bivalves in relation to environmental conditions (middle Danube catchment, Hungary)
The spatial distribution of bivalves in relation to environmental conditions was studied along a second- and third
order stream â medium-sized river (River Ipoly) â large river (River Danube) continuum in the Hungarian Danube River system.
Quantitative samples were collected four times in 2007 and a total of 1662 specimens, belonging to 22 bivalve species were identified. Among these species, two are endangered (Pseudanodonta complanata, Unio crassus) and five are invasive (Dreissena polymorpha, D. rostriformis bugensis, Corbicula fluminea, C. fluminalis, Anodonta woodiana) in Hungary. The higher density presented by Pisidium subtruncatum, P. supinum, P. henslowanum and C. fluminea suggests that these species may have a key role in this ecosystem. Three different faunal groups were distinguished but no significant temporal change was detected. The lowest density and diversity with two species (P. casertanum and P. personatum) occurred in streams. The highest
density and diversity was found in the River Ipoly, in the side arms of the Danube and in the main arm of the Danube with sand and silt substrate, being dominated by P. subtruncatum and P. henslowanum. Moderate density and species richness were observed in the main arm of the Danube with pebble and stone substrate, being dominated by C. fluminea and S. rivicola. Ten environmental variables were found to have significant influence on the distribution of bivalves, the strongest explanatory factors being substrate types, current velocity and sedimentological characteristics.The project was financially supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund under the contract No. OTKA T/046180. Special thanks to the DanubeIpoly National Park for the help in field work.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA
Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5
GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS
detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the
centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total
transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly
a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4
GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This
observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with
a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil
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