The non-specificity of prosopagnosia: Can prosopagnosics distinguish sheep?

The impact that prosopagnosia (face-blindness) has on the human visual system has long been hypothesized with regard to the specifics of the impairment. The leading hypothesis in the literature, the face-specificity hypothesis, proposes that prosopagnosia is specific only to human faces. Other hypotheses have offered alternative explanations for what sorts of identification tasks might be affected by damage to the fusiform face area resulting in prosopagnosia, including the biological recognition, expert recognition, and subordinate-level recognition hypotheses. An additional hypothesis, the coordinate relations hypothesis, offers a compelling explanation for the underlying process disrupted by prosopagnosia: that the brain’s ability to detect metric changes has been damaged resulting in a deficit to face recognition. This hypothesis was tested by looking for deficits in performance in a prosopagnosic when identifying non-faces, because such differences would not be explained by the face-specificity hypothesis. Therefore, sheep faces were used as a class of stimuli to explore whether prosopagnosia affects identification of sheep faces in much the same way that it affects identification of human faces. Results of two experiments showed that a prosopagnosic was impaired on identification of sheep faces, providing support for the coordinate relations hypothesis

Study strategies and beliefs about learning as a function of academic achievement and achievement goals

Prior research by Hartwig and Dunlosky [(2012). Study strategies of college students: Are self-testing and scheduling related to achievement? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(1), 126–134] has demonstrated that beliefs about learning and study strategies endorsed by students are related to academic achievement: higher performing students tend to choose more effective study strategies and are more aware of the benefits of self-testing. We examined whether students’ achievement goals, independent of academic achievement, predicted beliefs about learning and endorsement of study strategies. We administered Hartwig and Dunlosky’s survey, along with the Achievement Goals Questionnaire [Elliot, A. J., & McGregor, H. A. (2001). A 2 × 2 achievement goal framework. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 80, 501–519] to a large undergraduate biology course. Similar to results by Hartwig and Dunlosky, we found that high-performing students (relative to low-performing students) were more likely to endorse self-testing, less likely to cram, and more likely to plan a study schedule ahead of time. Independent of achievement, however, achievement goals were stronger predictors of certain study behaviours. In particular, avoidance goals (e.g., fear of failure) coincided with increased use of cramming and the tendency to be driven by impending deadlines. Results suggest that individual differences in student achievement, as well as the underlying reasons for achievement, are important predictors of students’ approaches to studying

Clarifying aphantasia

In a series of four studies, relationships between subjective and objective measurements of mental imagery vividness and use were examined for participants with developmental aphantasia compared to control participants. Study 1 reports demographic differences and results from subjective measurements of mental imagery. Subjective scores of control participants were impacted by an instructional video manipulation, showing that control participants may be naïve about individual differences in mental imagery. Study 2 examined the relationship between a conventionally used measure of mental imagery, the VVIQ, and several cognitive tasks previously reported by the literature to be related to mental imagery vividness: the backwards spelling task, the snowy pictures task, and the tail length task. Study 2 found that none of those three tasks seem appropriate for research into developmental aphantasia due to no detectable group differences in performance after accounting for both accuracy and response times, and no reliable relationships with VVIQ scores. Study 3 makes use of an established imagery paradigm, mental scanning, and applies the square donut scanning task in a novel way to developmental aphantasia research. Study 3 demonstrates an important interaction between the difficulty of the task and group (aphantasia vs. control) of the participants, revealing an objective cognitive difference between the groups. Study 4 uses a change identification task to also demonstrate that there is a significant difference in the cognitive strategy used by the aphantasia group relative to the controls, made evident by significant interactions between trial complexity and group as measured by trial performance

Clarifying aphantasia

In a series of four studies, relationships between subjective and objective measurements of mental imagery vividness and use were examined for participants with developmental aphantasia compared to control participants. Study 1 reports demographic differences and results from subjective measurements of mental imagery. Subjective scores of control participants were impacted by an instructional video manipulation, showing that control participants may be naïve about individual differences in mental imagery. Study 2 examined the relationship between a conventionally used measure of mental imagery, the VVIQ, and several cognitive tasks previously reported by the literature to be related to mental imagery vividness: the backwards spelling task, the snowy pictures task, and the tail length task. Study 2 found that none of those three tasks seem appropriate for research into developmental aphantasia due to no detectable group differences in performance after accounting for both accuracy and response times, and no reliable relationships with VVIQ scores. Study 3 makes use of an established imagery paradigm, mental scanning, and applies the square donut scanning task in a novel way to developmental aphantasia research. Study 3 demonstrates an important interaction between the difficulty of the task and group (aphantasia vs. control) of the participants, revealing an objective cognitive difference between the groups. Study 4 uses a change identification task to also demonstrate that there is a significant difference in the cognitive strategy used by the aphantasia group relative to the controls, made evident by significant interactions between trial complexity and group as measured by trial performance

Clarifying aphantasia

In a series of four studies, relationships between subjective and objective measurements of mental imagery vividness and use were examined for participants with developmental aphantasia compared to control participants. Study 1 reports demographic differences and results from subjective measurements of mental imagery. Subjective scores of control participants were impacted by an instructional video manipulation, showing that control participants may be naïve about individual differences in mental imagery. Study 2 examined the relationship between a conventionally used measure of mental imagery, the VVIQ, and several cognitive tasks previously reported by the literature to be related to mental imagery vividness: the backwards spelling task, the snowy pictures task, and the tail length task. Study 2 found that none of those three tasks seem appropriate for research into developmental aphantasia due to no detectable group differences in performance after accounting for both accuracy and response times, and no reliable relationships with VVIQ scores. Study 3 makes use of an established imagery paradigm, mental scanning, and applies the square donut scanning task in a novel way to developmental aphantasia research. Study 3 demonstrates an important interaction between the difficulty of the task and group (aphantasia vs. control) of the participants, revealing an objective cognitive difference between the groups. Study 4 uses a change identification task to also demonstrate that there is a significant difference in the cognitive strategy used by the aphantasia group relative to the controls, made evident by significant interactions between trial complexity and group as measured by trial performance

The non-specificity of prosopagnosia: Can prosopagnosics distinguish sheep?

The impact that prosopagnosia (face-blindness) has on the human visual system has long been hypothesized with regard to the specifics of the impairment. The leading hypothesis in the literature, the face-specificity hypothesis, proposes that prosopagnosia is specific only to human faces. Other hypotheses have offered alternative explanations for what sorts of identification tasks might be affected by damage to the fusiform face area resulting in prosopagnosia, including the biological recognition, expert recognition, and subordinate-level recognition hypotheses. An additional hypothesis, the coordinate relations hypothesis, offers a compelling explanation for the underlying process disrupted by prosopagnosia: that the brain’s ability to detect metric changes has been damaged resulting in a deficit to face recognition. This hypothesis was tested by looking for deficits in performance in a prosopagnosic when identifying non-faces, because such differences would not be explained by the face-specificity hypothesis. Therefore, sheep faces were used as a class of stimuli to explore whether prosopagnosia affects identification of sheep faces in much the same way that it affects identification of human faces. Results of two experiments showed that a prosopagnosic was impaired on identification of sheep faces, providing support for the coordinate relations hypothesis.</p

Clarifying aphantasia

In a series of four studies, relationships between subjective and objective measurements of mental imagery vividness and use were examined for participants with developmental aphantasia compared to control participants. Study 1 reports demographic differences and results from subjective measurements of mental imagery. Subjective scores of control participants were impacted by an instructional video manipulation, showing that control participants may be naïve about individual differences in mental imagery. Study 2 examined the relationship between a conventionally used measure of mental imagery, the VVIQ, and several cognitive tasks previously reported by the literature to be related to mental imagery vividness: the backwards spelling task, the snowy pictures task, and the tail length task. Study 2 found that none of those three tasks seem appropriate for research into developmental aphantasia due to no detectable group differences in performance after accounting for both accuracy and response times, and no reliable relationships with VVIQ scores. Study 3 makes use of an established imagery paradigm, mental scanning, and applies the square donut scanning task in a novel way to developmental aphantasia research. Study 3 demonstrates an important interaction between the difficulty of the task and group (aphantasia vs. control) of the participants, revealing an objective cognitive difference between the groups. Study 4 uses a change identification task to also demonstrate that there is a significant difference in the cognitive strategy used by the aphantasia group relative to the controls, made evident by significant interactions between trial complexity and group as measured by trial performance

Clarifying aphantasia

In a series of four studies, relationships between subjective and objective measurements of mental imagery vividness and use were examined for participants with developmental aphantasia compared to control participants. Study 1 reports demographic differences and results from subjective measurements of mental imagery. Subjective scores of control participants were impacted by an instructional video manipulation, showing that control participants may be naïve about individual differences in mental imagery. Study 2 examined the relationship between a conventionally used measure of mental imagery, the VVIQ, and several cognitive tasks previously reported by the literature to be related to mental imagery vividness: the backwards spelling task, the snowy pictures task, and the tail length task. Study 2 found that none of those three tasks seem appropriate for research into developmental aphantasia due to no detectable group differences in performance after accounting for both accuracy and response times, and no reliable relationships with VVIQ scores. Study 3 makes use of an established imagery paradigm, mental scanning, and applies the square donut scanning task in a novel way to developmental aphantasia research. Study 3 demonstrates an important interaction between the difficulty of the task and group (aphantasia vs. control) of the participants, revealing an objective cognitive difference between the groups. Study 4 uses a change identification task to also demonstrate that there is a significant difference in the cognitive strategy used by the aphantasia group relative to the controls, made evident by significant interactions between trial complexity and group as measured by trial performance