More Like this

1. Holistic processing is modulated by the probability that parts contain task-congruent information

   https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02738-w  

   Curby, Kim M; Teichmann, Lina; Peterson, Mary A; Shomstein, Sarah S (February 2024, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics)

   Abstract Holistic processing of face and non-face stimuli has been framed as a perceptual strategy, with classic hallmarks of holistic processing, such as the composite effect, reflecting a failure of selective attention, which is a consequence of this strategy. Further, evidence that holistic processing is impacted by training different patterns of attentional prioritization suggest that it may be a result of learned attention to the whole, which renders it difficult to attend to only part of a stimulus. If so, holistic processing should be modulated by the same factors that shape attentional selection, such as the probability that distracting or task-relevant information will be present. In contrast, other accounts suggest that it is the match to an internal face template that triggers specialized holistic processing mechanisms. Here we probed these accounts by manipulating the probability, across different testing sessions, that the task-irrelevant face part in the composite face task will contain task-congruent or -incongruent information. Attentional accounts of holistic processing predict that when the probability that the task-irrelevant part contains congruent information is low (25%), holistic processing should be attenuated compared to when this probability is high (75%). In contrast, template-based accounts of holistic face processing predict that it will be unaffected by manipulation given the integrity of the faces remains intact. Experiment 1 found evidence consistent with attentional accounts of holistic face processing and Experiment 2 extends these findings to holistic processing of non-face stimuli. These findings are broadly consistent with learned attention accounts of holistic processing. 

   more » « less
2. Holistic face recognition is an emergent phenomenon of spatial processing in face-selective regions

   https://doi.org/0.1038/s41467-021-24806-1  

   Poltoratski, Sonia Kay (August 2021, Nature communications)

   Spatial processing by receptive fields is a core property of the visual system. However, it is unknown how spatial processing in high-level regions contributes to recognition behavior. As face inversion is thought to disrupt typical holistic processing of information in faces, we mapped population receptive fields (pRFs) with upright and inverted faces in the human visual system. Here we show that in face-selective regions, but not primary visual cortex, pRFs and overall visual field coverage are smaller and shifted downward in response to face inversion. From these measurements, we successfully predict the relative behavioral detriment of face inversion at different positions in the visual field. This correspondence between neural measurements and behavior demonstrates how spatial processing in face-selective regions may enable holistic perception. These results not only show that spatial processing in high-level visual regions is dynamically used towards recognition, but also suggest a powerful approach for bridging neural computations by receptive fields to behavior. 

   more » « less
3. Noisy-Channel Processing in Standard Arabic Relative Clauses

   Dodd, N; Boush, F; Leung, T; Ferreira, F; Morgan, E (July 2024, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society)

   This study investigates sentence processing in Standard Arabic (SA) by examining subject- and object-extracted relative clauses (SRCs and ORCs) through eye tracking. We test memory- and expectation-based theories of processing difficulty, and whether good-enough or noisy-channel processing leads to misinterpretations in ORCs. Our results find increased processing difficulty in ORCs, supporting expectation-based theories; however, this processing difficulty is not localized to the disambiguating region (relative clause verb) as predicted, but rather at the integration of the second noun phrase (relative clause NP). The findings support goodenough/noisy-channel processing theories, suggesting that readers may accept a noisy SRC interpretation of an ORC, and thus bypass integration costs at the RC NP. 

   more » « less
4. Noisy-Channel Processing in Standard Arabic Relative Clauses

   Dodd, N; Boush, F; Leung, T; Ferreira, F; Morgan, E (July 2024, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society)

   This study investigates sentence processing in Standard Arabic (SA) by examining subject- and object-extracted relative clauses (SRCs and ORCs) through eye tracking. We test memory- and expectation-based theories of processing difficulty, and whether good-enough or noisy-channel processing leads to misinterpretations in ORCs. Our results find increased processing difficulty in ORCs, supporting expectation-based theories; however, this processing difficulty is not localized to the disambiguating region (relative clause verb) as predicted, but rather at the integration of the second noun phrase (relative clause NP). The findings support goodenough/noisy-channel processing theories, suggesting that readers may accept a noisy SRC interpretation of an ORC, and thus bypass integration costs at the RC NP. 

   more » « less
5. Explaining patterns of fusion in morphological paradigms using the memory-surprisal tradeoff

   Rathi, N. (January 2022, Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society)

   J. Culbertson, A. Perfors (Ed.)

   Languages often express grammatical information through inflectional morphology, in which grammatical features are grouped into strings of morphemes. In this work, we propose that cross-linguistic generalizations about morphological fusion, in which multiple features are expressed through one morpheme, can be explained in part by optimization of processing efficiency, as formalized using the memory--surprisal tradeoff of Hahn et al. (2021). We show in a toy setting that fusion of highly informative neighboring morphemes can lead to greater processing efficiency under our processing model. Next, based on paradigm and frequency data from four languages, we consider both total fusion and gradable fusion using empirical measures developed by Rathi et al. (2021), and find that the degree of fusion is predicted by closeness of optimal morpheme ordering as determined by optimization of processing efficiency. Finally, we show that optimization of processing efficiency can successfully predict typological patterns involving suppletion. 

   more » « less