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Villavicencio P, de la Malla C, López-Moliner J. Prediction of time to contact under perceptual and contextual uncertainties. J Vis 2024; 24:14. [PMID: 38904641 PMCID: PMC11204063 DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.6.14] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2024] [Accepted: 05/17/2024] [Indexed: 06/22/2024] Open
Abstract
Accurately estimating time to contact (TTC) is crucial for successful interactions with moving objects, yet it is challenging under conditions of sensory and contextual uncertainty, such as occlusion. In this study, participants engaged in a prediction motion task, monitoring a target that moved rightward and an occluder. The participants' task was to press a key when they predicted the target would be aligned with the occluder's right edge. We manipulated sensory uncertainty by varying the visible and occluded periods of the target, thereby modulating the time available to integrate sensory information and the duration over which motion must be extrapolated. Additionally, contextual uncertainty was manipulated by having a predictable and unpredictable condition, meaning the occluder either reliably indicated where the moving target would disappear or provided no such indication. Results showed differences in accuracy between the predictable and unpredictable occluder conditions, with different eye movement patterns in each case. Importantly, the ratio of the time the target was visible, which allows for the integration of sensory information, to the occlusion time, which determines perceptual uncertainty, was a key factor in determining performance. This ratio is central to our proposed model, which provides a robust framework for understanding and predicting human performance in dynamic environments with varying degrees of uncertainty.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pamela Villavicencio
- Vision and Control of Action Group, Department of Cognition, Development, and Psychology of Education, Institute of Neurosciences, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
| | - Cristina de la Malla
- Vision and Control of Action Group, Department of Cognition, Development, and Psychology of Education, Institute of Neurosciences, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
| | - Joan López-Moliner
- Vision and Control of Action Group, Department of Cognition, Development, and Psychology of Education, Institute of Neurosciences, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
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Vagnetti R, Vicovaro M, Spoto A, Battaglini L, Attanasio M, Valenti M, Mazza M. Atypical Time to Contact Estimation in Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 2024:10.1007/s10803-024-06352-z. [PMID: 38635130 DOI: 10.1007/s10803-024-06352-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 04/09/2024] [Indexed: 04/19/2024]
Abstract
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) present atypical sensory processing in the perception of moving stimuli and biological motion. The present study aims to explore the performance of young adults with ASD in a time to contact (TTC) estimation task involving social and non-social stimuli. TTC estimation involves extrapolating the trajectory of a moving target concealed by an occluder, based on the visible portion of its path, to predict the target's arrival time at a specific position. Sixteen participants with a diagnosis of level-1 ASD (M = 19.2 years, SE = 0.54 years; 3 F, 13 M) and sixteen participants with TD (M = 22.3 years, SE = 0.44 years; 3 F, 13 M) took part in the study and underwent a TTC estimation task. The task presented two object types (a car and a point-light walker), different object speeds, occluder lengths, motion directions and motion congruency. For the car object, a larger overestimation of TTC emerged for ASDs than for TDs, whereas no difference between ASDs and TDs emerged for the point-light walker. ASDs exhibited a larger TTC overestimation for the car object than for the point-light walker, whereas no difference between object types emerged for TDs. Our results indicated an atypical TTC estimation process in young adults with ASD. Given its importance in daily life, future studies should further explore this skill. Significant effects that emerged from the analysis are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Roberto Vagnetti
- Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
| | - Michele Vicovaro
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
| | - Andrea Spoto
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| | - Luca Battaglini
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| | - Margherita Attanasio
- Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
| | - Marco Valenti
- Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
- Regional Reference Centre for Autism (Centro di Riferimento Regionale per l'Autismo), Abruzzo Region Local Health Agency 1 (ASL 1), L'Aquila, Italy
| | - Monica Mazza
- Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
- Regional Reference Centre for Autism (Centro di Riferimento Regionale per l'Autismo), Abruzzo Region Local Health Agency 1 (ASL 1), L'Aquila, Italy
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Menceloglu M, Song JH. Motion duration is overestimated behind an occluder in action and perception tasks. J Vis 2023; 23:11. [PMID: 37171804 PMCID: PMC10184779 DOI: 10.1167/jov.23.5.11] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/13/2023] Open
Abstract
Motion estimation behind an occluder is a common task in situations like crossing the street or passing another car. People tend to overestimate the duration of an object's motion when it gets occluded for subsecond motion durations. Here, we explored (a) whether this bias depended on the type of interceptive action: discrete keypress versus continuous reach and (b) whether it was present in a perception task without an interceptive action. We used a prediction-motion task and presented a bar moving across the screen with a constant velocity that later became occluded. In the action task, participants stopped the occluded bar when they thought the bar reached the goal position via keypress or reach. They were more likely to stop the bar after it passed the goal position regardless of the action type, suggesting that the duration of occluded motion was overestimated (or its speed was underestimated). In the perception task, where participants judged whether a tone was presented before or after the bar reached the goal position, a similar bias was observed. In both tasks, the bias was near constant across motion durations and directions and grew over trials. We speculate that this robust bias may be due to a temporal illusion, Bayesian slow-motion prior, or the processing of the visible-occluded boundary crossing. Understanding its exact mechanism, the conditions on which it depends, and the relative roles of speed and time perception requires further research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Melisa Menceloglu
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Joo-Hyun Song
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
- Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
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Battaglini L, Ghiani A. Motion behind occluder: Amodal perception and visual motion extrapolation. VISUAL COGNITION 2021. [DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2021.1943094] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Luca Battaglini
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
- Department of Physics and Astronomy “Galileo Galilei”, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
| | - Andrea Ghiani
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
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Battaglini L, Mioni G, Casco C, Contemori G, Konishi M. Probing the effect of the expected-speed violation illusion. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2020; 85:2782-2791. [PMID: 33025210 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-020-01426-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/22/2020] [Accepted: 09/19/2020] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
Motion perception is complex for the brain to process, involving interacting computations of distance, time, and speed. These computations can be biased by the context and the features of the perceived moving object, giving rise to several types of motion illusions. Recent research has shown that, in addition to object features and context, lifelong priors can bias attributes of perception. In the present work, we investigated if such long acquired expectations can bias speed perception. Using a two-interval forced-choice (2-IFC) task, we asked 160 participants in different experiments to judge which of two vehicles, one archetypically fast (e.g. a motorbike), and one comparatively slower (e.g. a bike), was faster. By varying the objective speeds of the two-vehicle types, and measuring the participants' point of subjective equality, we observed a consistent bias in participants' speed perception. Counterintuitively, in the first three experiments the speed of an archetypically slow vehicle had to be decreased relative to that of an archetypically fast vehicle, for the two to be judged as the same. Similarly, in the next three experiments, an archetypically fast vehicle's speed had to be increased relative to an archetypically slow vehicle's speed, for the two to be perceived as equal. Four additional control experiments replicated our results. We define this newly found bias as the expected-speed violation illusion (ESVI). We believe the ESVI as conceptually very similar to the size-weight illusion, and discuss it within the Bayesian framework of human perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luca Battaglini
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
| | - Giovanna Mioni
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
| | - Clara Casco
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
| | - Giulio Contemori
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy.,Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Université de Toulouse-UPS, Toulouse, France
| | - Mahiko Konishi
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et de Psycholinguistique, Departement d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Superieure, PSL University, EHESS, CNRS, Paris, France.
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Vicovaro M, Battaglini L, Parovel G. The larger the cause, the larger the effect: evidence of speed judgment biases in causal scenarios. VISUAL COGNITION 2020. [DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2020.1783041] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Michele Vicovaro
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
| | - Luca Battaglini
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
| | - Giulia Parovel
- Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy
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