Two psychologies of perception and the prospect of their synthesis

Bridging the gap between theories of sensory cue integration and the physiology of multisensory neurons

The richness of perceptual experience, as well as its usefulness for guiding behaviour, depends on the synthesis of information across multiple senses. Recent decades have witnessed a surge in our understanding of how the brain combines sensory cues. Much of this research has been guided by one of two distinct approaches: one is driven primarily by neurophysiological observations, and the other is guided by principles of mathematical psychology and psychophysics. Conflicting results and interpretations have contributed to a conceptual gap between psychophysical and physiological accounts of cue integration, but recent studies of visual-vestibular cue integration have narrowed this gap considerably.

Perceptual ratings of opposite spatial properties: do they lie on the same dimension?

The issue of unidimensionality is dealt with in various research areas in the field of Psychology (e.g. conceptual spaces, semantic modeling, psychometrics) and always involves spatial modeling. An investigation of the dimensionality of opposite spatial scales (even basic) has however not yet been carried out. In this paper we look at whether opposite judgments of height, size, width and length (high/low, large/small, wide/narrow, and long/short) imply underlying unidimensional continua. In three experiments, independent ratings for the 8 above mentioned properties were elicited with participants looking at photographic representations of various objects (Study 1), real life objects (Study 2) and spatial extensions in object-independent conditions (Study 3). Explorative and confirmative factor analysis and Andrich Extended Rating Scale Models were applied in order to determine whether the ratings referred to opposite scales on the same linear continuum. Results from the three studies consistently revealed that this is not the case. A joint analysis of the data showed interesting interactions between the spatial properties analyzed suggesting a possible explanation for the lack of unidimensionality.