Matching Visual and Acoustic Mirror Forms

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the ability to recognize three mirror forms in visual and acoustic tasks: inversion (reflection on a horizontal axis), retrograde (reflection on a vertical axis) and retrograde inversion (reflection on both horizontal and vertical axes). Dynamic patterns consisting of five tones in succession in the acoustic condition and five square dots in succession in the visual condition were presented to 180 non-musically expert participants. In a yes/no task, they were asked to ascertain whether a comparison stimulus represented the "target" transformation (i.e., inversion, retrograde or retrograde inversion). Three main results emerged. Firstly, the fact that symmetry pertaining to a vertical axis is the most easily perceived does not only apply to static visual configurations (as found in previous literature) but also applies to dynamic visual configurations and acoustic stimuli where it is in fact even more marked. Secondly, however, differences emerged between the facility with which the three mirror forms were recognized in the acoustic and visual tasks. Thirdly, when the five elements in the stimulus were not of the same duration and therefore a rhythmic structure emerged, performance improved not only in the acoustic but also (even more significantly) in the visual task.

Training People to Think in Opposites Facilitates the Falsification Process in Wason’s Rule Discovery Task

“…Furthermore (as discussed in Sections 1.2 and 3), the theoretical premise that the facilitation in this study is based on, in part connects to, but in part differs from, the theoretical ideas presupposed by the works cited above. In this sense, we trust that this study reveals the connections between the research into opposites (Bianchi et al 2011a(Bianchi et al , 2011b(Bianchi et al , 2013(Bianchi et al , 2017a(Bianchi et al , 2017b(Bianchi et al , 2017c and that into contrast sets and the iterative counterfactual strategy (Oaksford and Stenning 1992;Oaksford andChater 1994a, 1994b;Oaksford 2002).…”

The MUST Set and Toolbox: A Set of 200 Musical Stimuli Varying in Balance, Contour, Symmetry, and Complexity: Behavioral and Computational Assessments

“…Our stimuli and computational measures contribute to the investigation of perceived musical balance, contour, and symmetry in music, and further explore perceived musical complexity. Whereas the existing literature on musical complexity is comparable to that in the visual domain, a small number of studies address musical symmetry (e.g., Balch, 1981;Bianchi et al, 2017;Krumhansl et al, 1987;Mongoven & Carbon, 2017), while others investigate musical contour (e.g., Gerardi & Gerken, 1995;Schmuckler, 2015;Thorpe, 1986;Trehub et al, Running head: THE MUST SET AND TOOLBOX 1984). To the best of our knowledge, our research pioneers the study of musical balance as conceived here, and our modality-general characterization of these four attributes within a coherent set and toolbox is a unique contribution.…”

Opposition and Identicalness: Two Basic Components of Adults’ Perception and Mental Representation of Symmetry

“…Various studies have consistently demonstrated higher sensitivity (from the age of about four months) for bilateral symmetry around a vertical axis even at very short exposure times [12][13][14][15] and in various sense modalities [16,17]. Some studies have shown that the ability to detect mirror symmetry around a particular axis depends on the frequencies of various different orientations within a block of trials (e.g., [14,18]).…”