In the current work we investigate people's perception of their own body tilt in the pitch direction. In Experiment 1, we tilted people backward at 1 of 5 different randomly assigned angles using an inversion table. People significantly overestimated the angle at which they were tilted backward at angles from 8°to 45°. The slope of the plotted average overestimates had a gain of 1.46, fitting nicely with previously reported gains of verbal overestimates of visually perceived slant of natural outdoor geographically oriented slopes as well as man-made wooden slopes within and outside of reach in the laboratory. In Experiment 2, we showed participants a 45°line and asked them to indicate when they were positioned at that orientation. Participants again significantly overestimated the angle at which they were tilted backward. This extends work showing that a scale-expanded theory of visual space is multisensory, results in equivalent estimates for both verbal and nonverbal/nonnumeric methods, and can now be expanded to include the perceived orientation of one's own body. Keywords Slant perception . Spatial orientation . PitchFor the last two decades, a wealth of evidence shows that people overestimate the slant of both geographical and manmade slopes by between 5°and 25° (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999;Bridgeman & Hoover, 2008;Creem & Proffitt, 1998; CreemRegehr, Gooch, Sahm, & Thompson, 2004;Durgin & Li, 2011;Durgin, Li, & Hajnal, 2010;Hajnal, Abdul-Malak, & Durgin, 2011;Proffitt, Bhalla, Gossweiler, & Midgett, 1995;Proffitt, Creem & Zosh, 2001;Shaffer & Flint, 2011;Shaffer & McManama, 2015;Stefanucci, Proffitt, Clore, & Parekh, 2008;Witt & Proffitt, 2007). Much less work has been performed on people's perception of their own body orientation in the pitch dimension, and the results of some of this work are difficult to interpret. For instance, Cohen and Larson (1974) had participants adjust the pitch of their own body every 15°from a supine position to a prone position while restrained in a motorized hospital bed. They found systematic errors of underestimation of body tilt. For instance, when asked to place themselves at 15°backward from a vertical position, they placed themselves at 29°back-ward, and when asked to place themselves at 15°forward, they placed themselves at 23°forward. These errors were consistent but smaller as they moved in either direction in 15°increments from 15°to 60°, at which point there was almost no error. Of the studies to investigate pitch perception, this seems to be the only one where people underestimate pitch. We feel there are at least two reasons for this. First, participants were moved backward in 15°increments until they were prone, and then forward in 15°increments until they were in a supine position. They did this back and forth a total of eight times (four backward, four forward). Carryover effects from each previous estimate likely affected their subsequent estimate. Second, they were giving estimates of, say, 15°backward when they were either erect (straight up and down) o...
We investigate the relationship between verbal and hand proprioception of slant. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that verbally estimating free hand orientation produces overestimates by a factor of 1.67. These values are similar to those seen for verbal overestimates of slanted surfaces. In Experiment 2, participants positioned their hand to a ramp at 1 of 4 different orientations, and then verbally estimated the orientation of either their hand or the ramp. We show that verbal estimates of the ramp are a product of the orientation of their hand and the perception of the orientation of their hand. We discuss how this work is consistent with the proprioception calibration hypothesis that proposes that similar biases exist in both verbal estimates of visually perceived slant and proprioceptively perceived hand orientation and how this may explain free hand estimates to outdoor hills that are greater than actual hill orientation by a factor of ~2, but are still less than verbal (over)estimates.
People verbally overestimate the orientation of slanted surfaces, but accurately estimate or underestimate slanted surfaces using a palm board. We demonstrate a fundamental issue that explains why the two different values typically given for palm board and verbal/visual matching estimates express similar perceptual representations of slanted surfaces. The fundamental problem in studies measuring palm board and verbal estimates is that the Bmeasure^-either (1) reproducing a verbally given angle or the orientation of a slanted surface with an unseen hand or (2) verbally or visually estimating a visually perceived surface-has always been confounded with the Bsurface^-either using (1) a palm board or (2) a hill or ramp. Although reproduction has exclusively been used with palm boards in these studies, at the same time verbal estimation or visual matching has exclusively been used with hills/ramps. In three experiments, we showed that verbally estimating palm board orientations produces overestimates by a factor of 1.5, whereas reproducing the orientation of the surface of a ramp to verbally given angles produces gains of~0.6. These values are similar to those seen for verbal overestimates of slanted surfaces, and to palm board gains for near surfaces and the relative palm-board-to-verbal gains for outdoor hills, respectively. Eliminating this confound eliminated the difference previously seen across surfaces. We discuss how and why different measures should produce different results if we overestimate slant in general and perceptually represent slant in the same way, both haptically and visually.Keywords Slant perception . Spatial orientation . Pitch For the last two decades, people have verbally overestimated the slant of visually perceived geographical, virtual, and manmade hills by between 5°and
This project examines the impact of the clinical acoustic environment on both patients and staff within a large modern inner-city acute hospital (1677 beds). It aims to both summarize and improve the hospital soundscape. Three key parts of experimental work were carried out: noise level measurements were taken in the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital atrium in Glasgow, interviews were undertaken with medical personnel and listening experiments were conducted to assess if adding natural sounds into the environment could reduce the negative effects noise can have on the occupants of the hospital. The atrium area of the hospital was found to be far louder than needed for rest and relaxation, with all recorded equivalent noise levels over 55 dB(A). Relaxing sounds of nature were added to the hospital soundscape to harness the restorative power of nature. The effect of this was tested using the perceived restorativeness soundscape scale; there was mixed evidence that the introduction of natural sounds led to an increase in the environment’s restorative power, with four out of eight attention restoration theory components tested displaying a statistically significant difference. The medical personnel interviewed indicated that the idea of introducing natural sounds is promising and requires further research.
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