Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action

Proffítt, Dennis R.

doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00008.x

Cited by 592 publications

(712 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The work in this genre was poorly done and soon discredited. But it seems to be making a comeback, led by Dennis Proffitt (2006), who with his associates has subjects judging the steepness of the hill they are standing in front of. The claim is that if you are wearing a heavy backpack, the hill looks steeper.…”

Section: Hills and Backpacksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical Approaches to Lightness and Perception

Gilchrist

2015

Perception

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Abstract. Theories of lightness, like theories of perception in general, can be categorized as highlevel, low-level, and mid-level. However, I will argue that in practice there are only two categories: one-stage mid-level theories, and two-stage low-high theories. Low-level theories usually include a high-level component and high-level theories include a low-level component, the distinction being mainly one of emphasis. Two-stage theories are the modern incarnation of the persistent sensation/ perception dichotomy according to which an early experience of raw sensations, faithful to the proximal stimulus, is followed by a process of cognitive interpretation, typically based on past experience. Like phlogiston or the ether, raw sensations seem like they must exist, but there is no clear evidence for them. Proximal stimulus matches are postperceptual, not read off an early sensory stage. Visual angle matches are achieved by a cognitive process of flattening the visual world. Likewise, brightness (luminance) matches depend on a cognitive process of flattening the illumination. Brightness is not the input to lightness; brightness is slower than lightness. Evidence for an early (< 200 ms) mosaic stage is shaky. As for cognitive influences on perception, the many claims tend to fall apart upon close inspection of the evidence. Much of the evidence for the current revival of the 'new look' is probably better explained by (1) a natural desire of (some) subjects to please the experimenter, and (2) the ease of intuiting an experimental hypothesis. High-level theories of lightness are overkill. The visual system does not need to know the amount of illumination, merely which surfaces share the same illumination. This leaves mid-level theories derived from the gestalt school. Here the debate seems to revolve around layer models and framework models. Layer models fit our visual experience of a pattern of illumination projected onto a pattern of reflectance, while framework models provide a better account of illusions and failures of constancy. Evidence for and against these approaches is reviewed.

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Section: Hills and Backpacksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical Approaches to Lightness and Perception

Gilchrist

2015

Perception

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“…We were inspired by the fast growing literature on embodiment that demonstrates surprising links between body and mind (Markman & Brendl, 2005;Proffitt, 2006) to investigate embodiment of political extremism. Participants from the political left, right, and center (N = 1,979) completed a perceptual judgment task in which words were presented in different shades of gray.…”

Section: A True Story Of What Could Have Beenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific Utopia

Nosek

Spies

Motyl

2012

Perspect Psychol Sci

1,054

421

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An academic scientist's professional success depends on publishing. Publishing norms emphasize novel, positive results. As such, disciplinary incentives encourage design, analysis, and reporting decisions that elicit positive results and ignore negative results. Prior reports demonstrate how these incentives inflate the rate of false effects in published science. When incentives favor novelty over replication, false results persist in the literature unchallenged, reducing efficiency in knowledge accumulation. Previous suggestions to address this problem are unlikely to be effective. For example, a journal of negative results publishes otherwise unpublishable reports. This enshrines the low status of the journal and its content. The persistence of false findings can be meliorated with strategies that make the fundamental but abstract accuracy motive-getting it right-competitive with the more tangible and concrete incentive-getting it published. This article develops strategies for improving scientific practices and knowledge accumulation that account for ordinary human motivations and biases.

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“…Intuition may suggest that we perceive and represent the world through objective, true-to-life, and behaviorally independent representations, but a growing body of research instead shows that perceptions are embodied, changing as a function of one's intentions and capabilities, and of the costs for action (Proffitt, 2006). For example, athletes who are playing well recall larger goals and slower ball dynamics (e.g., Witt & Dorsch, 2009;Witt & Sugovic, 2010), people in chronic pain perceive farther distances between objects , and people with stronger grip strength judge their hands to be larger (Linkenauger, Witt, Bakdash, Stefanucci, & Proffitt, 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

Interacting with objects compresses environmental representations in spatial memory

2012

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People perceive individual objects as being closer when they have the ability to interact with the objects than when they do not. We asked how interaction with multiple objects impacts representations of the environment. Participants studied multiple-object layouts, by manually exploring or simply observing each object, and then drew a scaled version of the environment (Exp. 1) or reconstructed a copy of the environment and its boundaries (Exp. 2) from memory. The participants who interacted with multiple objects remembered these objects as being closer together and reconstructed smaller environment boundaries than did the participants who looked without touching. These findings provide evidence that action-based perceptual distortions endure in memory over a moving observer's multiple interactions, compressing not only representations between touched objects, but also untouched environmental boundaries.

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Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action

Cited by 592 publications

References 37 publications

Theoretical Approaches to Lightness and Perception

Theoretical Approaches to Lightness and Perception

Scientific Utopia

Interacting with objects compresses environmental representations in spatial memory

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