Insight into sight, touch, taste and smell by multiple discriminations from norm

The paper presents an innovative theory of perception of multiple features across and within modalities. Each step is illustrated by an aspect of data from diverse experiments. The theory is that a template or norm of previously configurated features is used to perceive an object in a situation, such as consuming an item of food or drink. A mouthful usually stimulates sight first and then touch, taste and smell, with thermal, irritative, kinaesthetic and auditory patterns often also involved. The visual information also typically includes meanings of words, numbers and pictures. Attended sensory and symbolic features of the situation are integrated by the individual into a multidimensional distance from the norm. Dimensions are calibrated in units of the response's discrimination between levels of each stimulus feature. This approach to perceptual performance is expounded for sensed and/or conceived visual features of drinks and foods, and their tasted or smelt constituents, or felt and heard cracking during a bite. In addition, the conceptual process that informs an analytical judgment can influence another judgment. Applying the concept to a stimulus forms a descriptive process. A concept may also be applied to another concept or to a description, giving greater depth of meaning to an integrative judgment. Furthermore, a description can be applied to an environmental source of stimulation, creating a percept that presumably is conscious, whereas unconceptualised stimulation may be subconscious.

The History and Organization of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA)

In 1981, the European Federation of Professional Psychologists’ Associations (EFPPA) was formed with 13 member associations (one per country) and no centralized administrative support. Thirty years later, EFPPA has become EFPA with 35 member associations representing about 300,000 psychologists across Europe. EFPA is now based in offices in the center of Brussels, the administrative heart of Europe, with a Director and staff who support the work of the EFPA Executive Council and the various Standing Committees, Task Forces, and Working Groups. In this article, the development of EFPA and the challenges faced, and mostly overcome, are outlined.

Perception as Interacting Psychophysical Functions. Could the Configuring of Features Replace a Specialised Receptor?

This paper illustrates how perception is achieved through interactions among the psychophysical functions of judged features of an object. The theory is that the perceiver places processed features in a multidimensional space of discriminal processes. Each dimension is scaled in units of discrimination performance. The zero coordinate of each feature is its level in an internal standard (norm) established by previous experience of that category of object in context. Experiments are reported which show that one, two, or three concurrent single-featured objects matched the multiple features of another object in two ways. Either stimulation from the two objects had discrimination distances from norm that added, or the stimulation by one object was processed through a concept describing stimulation by the other object. It follows that, in this case, perception via a receptor for the multi-featured object can be replaced by a point of balance among receptors for each single feature. The object with its own receptor is the gustatory stimulant L-glutamic acid as its monosodium salt. The features that stimulate diverse gustatory receptors of their own are sodium chloride, citric acid, sucrose, and caffeine. A more complex approach to dimensional coding was developed earlier for photoreceptors in colour judgments. The present approach is modality independent, mathematically simple, and economical in experimental data.

Changes in the capacity of visual working memory in 5- to 10-year-olds

Using the Luck and Vogel change detection paradigm, we sought to investigate the capacity of visual working memory in 5-, 7-, and 10-year-olds. We found that performance on the task improved significantly with age and also obtained evidence that the capacity of visual working memory approximately doubles between 5 and 10 years of age, where it reaches adult levels of approximately three to four items.