The First Appearance of Symmetry in the Human Lineage: Where Perception Meets Art

Multidimensional Perfectionism and Facial Symmetry, Attractiveness and Approachability: Comparing Those With High Versus Low Dysmorphic Concerns

Concerns pertaining to one's physical appearance or specific body parts is not uncommon in the community. Whether such dissatisfaction is related to superior (or inferior) face perception abilities, or interacts with related constructs, such as perfectionism, is unknown. The current study aimed to investigate whether multidimensional perfectionism (e.g. involving concern over mistakes or doubts over actions) and facial ratings differed in those with high versus low dysmorphic concerns (i.e. excessive preoccupation about perceived physical flaws). Respondents (N = 343) from the community took part in an online study, comprising questionnaires assessing dysmorphic concerns and perfectionism. They also completed a face perception task involving symmetry, attractiveness and approachability ratings for a series of faces, some of which had been digitally manipulated to yield differing degrees of symmetry. Respondents were divided into those with high (n = 147) versus low (n = 196) dysmorphic concerns. Group comparisons using analyses of variance were conducted. Those with high dysmorphic concerns exhibited significantly elevated overall perfectionism (as well as on facets involving concern over mistakes, personal standards, parental perceptions and doubts over actions). No significant group differences were uncovered for the face perception task, involving ratings of symmetry, attractiveness and approachability. Perfectionism differences existed in a non-clinical sample with high dysmorphic concerns, though further work is needed to elucidate consistent patterns regarding perfectionism facets. More research examining face perception deficits on the clinical end of the body image spectrum, such as in those with body dysmorphic disorder, as well as utilising alternate task versions involving self-referential stimuli, are recommended.

Evaluation of the Interventions to Built Heritage: Analysis of Selected Façades of Kaunas by Space Syntax and Sociological Methods

This paper is an attempt to analyse the correlation between the perception of people and their evaluation regarding contemporary interventions and changes on the façades of cultural heritage buildings, which might affect cultural sustainability. The paper uses two different experimental methods for the analysis of the building façades from various eras in the city centre of Kaunas, which experienced interventions that affected the appearance of the structures. The first experiment performed is a sociological survey, and the second one is a façade analysis conducted by the space syntax method. The paper follows the theory of Nikos Salingaros for measuring the properties of the size distribution on the façades and implements Bill Hillier’s methodology for symmetry index analysis. The research demonstrates some significant correlations between the results of Space Syntax modelling and the sociological survey answers, thus demonstrating the possibility of modelling and predicting changes in the perception of architectural transformations of the façades with potential usability in the monitoring of the transformation of cultural heritage objects, preservation of the cultural identity of a cityscape, etc.

Meaning of Gaze Behaviors in Individuals' Perception and Interpretation of Commercial Interior Environments: An Experimental Phenomenology Approach Involving Eye-Tracking

A critical question in interior design is how multisensory information is integrated into occupant perception and interpretation of the environmental contexts and meanings. Although there have been efforts to identify and theorize visual perception of interior factors or features (e.g., colors, fixtures, and signs), the hidden meanings behind visual attention and behaviors have been neglected in interior design research. This experimental phenomenological study investigates the impact of auditory stimuli on the gaze behaviors of individuals and the hidden meanings of their audio-visual perceptions of commercial interiors. Implementing eye-tracking and open-ended interviews, this study explored how the neurophysiological and phenomenological methods in complementary can serve for interior design research on the meaning of gaze behaviors. The study used a convenience sample of 26 participants, three coffee shop interior images, and two musical stimuli. Essential to this study is the interpretive analysis of corresponding eye-tracking and interview data. The results show that visual perception is affected by auditory stimuli and other interior elements and factors associated with personal experiences; however, no distinct gaze pattern is identified by the type of auditory stimuli. The fixation patterns showed mixed reflections of the participants' perceptions, e.g., a single fixation pattern reflecting participants' likes and dislikes. Findings included six essential meanings of participants' gaze behaviors. This study suggested that auditory and visual stimuli are reciprocal in individuals' perceptions. Rather than one affects the other, the interaction between sensory stimuli contributes to the complexity and intensity of multisensory stimuli people associate with their experiences and conceptualize with meanings they establish.

Testing Symmetrical Knot Tracing for Cognitive Priming Effects Rules out Analytic Analogy

Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the world. Their independent emergence is plausibly due to shared features of human cognition and experience that such patterns represent. Since empirical investigation of this possibility is lacking in the literature, our aim is to open up this research area. We do so by asking whether the cultural production and appreciation of ritual knots could be conditioned or motivated by alignments and affordances linked to creative human cognition—advanced analogical modeling processes that are themselves often discussed in terms of bidirectional blending and symmetrical mapping. If manual tracing of a traditional knot design had positive priming effects on such reasoning processes, as we hypothesize, this would suggest an explanatory link between the two. To begin testing this hypothesis, we selected a basic, traditional knot design from Tibet, along with three established measures of formal analogical reasoning and one original measure of syntactic preference involving reciprocal constructions. We then undertook a series of cognitive trials testing for potential cognitive benefits of manually tracing the design. We contrasted prime condition results with a control group and an anti-prime condition group. The data show observable effects of time across multiple measures but no significant effects of time or condition, controlling for reported mindfulness. While this rules out the short-term priming effects of enhanced analogical reasoning at the analytic level following brief manual tracing of this design, the research opens the way for further empirical experimentation on the nature and emergence of symmetrical knots and their potential relationships with patterns of human thought.

The Impacts of Symmetry in Architecture and Urbanism: Toward a New Research Agenda

Architecture has an ancient relationship to mathematics, and symmetry—in the broad sense of the term—is a core topic of both. Yet the contemporary application of theories of symmetry to architecture and built environments is a surprisingly immature area of research. At the same time, research is showing a divergence between the benefits of and preferences for natural environments on the one hand, and built environments on the other, demonstrating relatively deleterious effects of many contemporary built environments. Yet the research cannot yet pinpoint the actual geometric factors of architecture and urbanism that could produce such an important divergence. This paper explores this research gap, surveying the literature across a range of fields, and assessing current evidence for the impacts of symmetry in the built environment upon human perception and well-being. As an emerging case study, it considers the recent work by Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros, two trained mathematicians who have made notable contributions to architecture and urbanism. The conclusion proposes a new research agenda toward further development of this immature subject area.

The evolution of early symbolic behavior in Homo sapiens

How did human symbolic behavior evolve? Dating up to about 100,000 y ago, the engraved ochre and ostrich eggshell fragments from the South African Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter provide a unique window into presumed early symbolic traditions of Homo sapiens and how they evolved over a period of more than 30,000 y. Using the engravings as stimuli, we report five experiments which suggest that the engravings evolved adaptively, becoming better-suited for human perception and cognition. More specifically, they became more salient, memorable, reproducible, and expressive of style and human intent. However, they did not become more discriminable over time between or within the two archeological sites. Our observations provide support for an account of the Blombos and Diepkloof engravings as decorations and as socially transmitted cultural traditions. By contrast, there was no clear indication that they served as denotational symbolic signs. Our findings have broad implications for our understanding of early symbolic communication and cognition in H. sapiens.

High handaxe symmetry at the beginning of the European Acheulian: The data from la Noira (France) in context

In the last few decades, new discoveries have pushed the beginning of the biface-rich European Acheulian from 500 thousand years (ka) ago back to at least 700 ka, and possibly to 1 million years (Ma) ago. It remains, however, unclear to date if handaxes arrived in Europe as a fully developed technology or if they evolved locally from core-and-flake industries. This issue is also linked with another long-standing debate on the existence and behavioral, cognitive, and social meaning of a possibly chronological trend for increased handaxe symmetry throughout the Lower Paleolithic. The newly discovered sites can provide a link between the much older Acheulian in Africa and the Levant and the well-known assemblages from the later European Acheulian, enabling a rigorous testing of these hypotheses using modern morphometric methods. Here we use the Continuous Symmetry Measure (CSM) method to quantify handaxe symmetry at la Noira, a newly excavated site in central France, which features two archaeological levels, respectively ca. 700 ka and 500 ka old. In order to provide a context for the new data, we use a large aggregate from the well-known 500 ka old site of Boxgrove, England. We show that handaxes from the oldest layer at la Noira, although on average less symmetric than both those from the younger layers at the same site and than those from Boxgrove, are nevertheless much more symmetric than other early Acheulian specimens evaluated using the CSM method. We also correlate trends in symmetry to degree of reduction, demonstrating that raw material availability and discard patterns may affect observed symmetry values. We conclude that it is likely that, by the time the Acheulian arrived in Europe, its makers were, from a cognitive and motor-control point of view, already capable of producing the symmetric variant of this technology.