Dennis M. Shaffer, Montse Juarez, Alexis Shaver, Carissa Brown, Brooke Hill, Ryanne E. Shaffer
{"title":"Things are looking (farther) up: Upward gaze orientation is overestimated","authors":"Dennis M. Shaffer, Montse Juarez, Alexis Shaver, Carissa Brown, Brooke Hill, Ryanne E. Shaffer","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03268-x","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03268-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the current work, we examine upward head orientation. Previous work has shown that downward gaze orientation is overestimated by a factor of ~1.5, while azimuth gaze orientation is overestimated by a factor of ~1.2. In Experiment 1, we compared head orientation in the upward, downward, and azimuth (leftward and rightward) directions. The factor by which observers overestimated upward head orientation was 1.56, similar to overestimates in downward head orientation in this and downward gaze orientation in previous work. Azimuth gaze orientation was overestimated by ~1.26, similar to previous work. In Experiment 2, we examined upward head orientation with a smaller range of angles and found that the factor increased slightly (1.7) but not statistically so from Experiment 1 or from previous work. We also examined the perceptual head orientation boundaries for upward and downward gaze orientation. These indicate a far more limited range than 90° up and down. In Experiment 3, participants gave head orientation estimates while blindfolded. Their estimates of upward, downward, and azimuth head orientation matched our current and others’ previous work. Independent of gaze, head orientation is overestimated by the same factor as is gaze orientation. The upward head orientation overestimates predict well observers’ estimates of heights of familiar suspended objects and fits with why some familiar suspended objects appear smaller than actual. The common scale expansion for upward and downward head and gaze orientation is a useful perceptual regularity that reliably predicts how we spatially map the environment and how we perceive the world.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13414-026-03268-x.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147790062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chang Lu, Linxin Zhang, Li Li, Hanbin Sang, Yulin Gao, Jie Huang, Aijun Wang
{"title":"How background music rhythm modulates time perception: Evidence from the estimation of collision time","authors":"Chang Lu, Linxin Zhang, Li Li, Hanbin Sang, Yulin Gao, Jie Huang, Aijun Wang","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03260-5","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03260-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Time-to-collision (TTC) estimation, the ability to predict when a moving object will reach a designated position, represents a critical skill for motor behavior regulation. However, although existing studies have demonstrated significant effects of object velocity and distance on TTC estimation, the role of auditory rhythm remains poorly understood. This study systematically investigated the influence of background musical rhythm on TTC estimation through two experiments (manipulating velocity and distance variables) combined with Bayesian modeling. The results demonstrated that fast-tempo music enhanced the accuracy of visual TTC estimation under very low velocity and very near distance conditions. Additionally, a central tendency effect emerged across conditions, with extreme velocities or distances biasing estimates toward the mean. Bayesian modeling further uncovered distinct integration strategies – velocity processing relied on stabilized temporal priors, whereas distance judgments depended on reduced perceptual variability under fast-tempo conditions. These findings suggest that auditory rhythms influence visual TTC estimation by regulating attentional allocation and recalibrating internal timing mechanisms. The study advances our understanding of multisensory temporal perception and provides theoretical insights for practical applications like traffic safety management.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147790076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"35+ years of the additional singleton task: Design features and guidelines","authors":"Jan Theeuwes","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03259-y","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03259-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The additional singleton paradigm, introduced in the early 1990s, has become a cornerstone in attention research and the study of attentional capture. In this task, observers search for a unique target singleton while an irrelevant, but salient distractor singleton is also present. Decades of research have demonstrated that such distractors reliably slow responses, supporting a stimulus-driven account of attentional selection. This paper reviews the origins of the paradigm, key findings, and ongoing debates, with particular focus on design features that shape results. Critical factors include the consistency of target–distractor assignments, distractor prevalence, display size, target–distractor similarity, and the use of compound versus simple search tasks. Guidelines are presented to maximize the paradigm’s utility and to avoid misinterpretation of attentional capture effects. The review concludes that the additional singleton task continues to provide unique leverage in distinguishing stimulus-driven selection from top-down control.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/s13414-026-03259-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147790119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Visual working memory-related corrective saccade biases are amplified by task demands, without updating working memory content","authors":"Patrik Polgári, Alexander C. Schütz","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03264-1","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03264-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Visual working memory (VWM) and oculomotor control exert bi-directional influences on each other: eye movements during memory delays can influence VWM performance, and VWM content can bias the execution of eye movements. Oculomotor capture has been shown to extend to automatic, corrective saccades that can be biased towards distractors whose feature matches VWM content. We address the question of bi-directional influences between VWM and the oculomotor system, here with a focus on corrective saccade biases. Twenty participants had to memorize a color hue and later discriminate it from another hue from a different (Easy condition) or the same (Difficult condition) color category. Between encoding and test, they performed a gaze-contingent saccade task where, mid-saccade, the position of items shifted, introducing an artificial saccade error, and the color of a distractor neighboring the target changed to a color (mis)matching the memorized one. VWM performance was higher in the Easy compared to the Difficult experimental block, reflecting the successful manipulation of task demands. Corrective saccade biases towards the distractor occurred more frequently when it matched memory content compared to when it did not, replicating previous findings. Importantly, they also occurred more in the Difficult experimental block, which required more precise VWM representations than the Easy condition. VWM performance, however, was not affected by saccade corrections to memory (mis)matching distractors. Our results provided no evidence of saccade biases having a role in the updating of VWM content; however, they indicate an influence of task demands and VWM engagement on automatic oculomotor biases.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13121585/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147790138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Didem Şahin, Busemnaz Avşar Aksu, Gökçe Gültekin, Yeter Saçlı, Büşra Aksu, Gülsüm Küçük, Buse Nur Oruç
{"title":"Hot–cold water sound perception and auditory-thermal discrimination","authors":"Didem Şahin, Busemnaz Avşar Aksu, Gökçe Gültekin, Yeter Saçlı, Büşra Aksu, Gülsüm Küçük, Buse Nur Oruç","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03262-3","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03262-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study aimed to determine whether individuals can discriminate the temperature state of water using auditory cues alone and to identify the acoustic, perceptual, and neurocognitive factors associated with this ability. Sixty-three volunteers aged 18–25 years with normal hearing participated. Participants were presented with prerecorded sounds of hot and cold water being poured into four types of cups (glass, plastic, paper, porcelain) and completed discrimination and matching tasks while auditory processing and event-related potential measures were obtained. Results from Spectral-Temporally Modulated Ripple Test (SMRT), Frequency Pattern Test (FPT), and P300 recordings were collected. Significant SMRT differences (<i>p</i> < 0.05) were observed among participants who correctly identified temperature differences in porcelain cup stimuli. For paper cup stimuli, P300 amplitudes (<i>p</i> < 0.05) and FPT scores (<i>p</i> < 0.05) differed significantly between correct and incorrect responders. Gender significantly influenced performance with glass cup stimuli and in participants who described acoustic features (frequency, intensity, duration) for porcelain stimuli (<i>p</i> < 0.05). Despite normal audiological findings, individuals exhibited notable variability in perceiving the same acoustic stimuli. Auditory-thermal discrimination appears to rely on higher-order auditory processing and neurocognitive mechanisms rather than basic auditory sensitivity. This is the first study to link auditory‑thermal discrimination with SMRT/FPT and P300 measures in normal‑hearing young adults.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147738451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contextual cueing and attention control: Self-face vs. stranger-face search","authors":"Shasha Zhu, Hong-Jin Sun, Kevin Guo, Cheng Xiu, Hongyu Yang, Xuelian Zang","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03258-z","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03258-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The contextual cueing effect demonstrates that visual search is faster when targets appear in repeated, rather than nonrepeated, spatial configurations—a phenomenon attributed to learned attentional guidance. This study investigated how attention, modulated by social salience of face stimuli, influences such implicit spatial learning. Using self-face and stranger-face images as search items, participants located a unique-identity target among distractors of another identity. The face identity condition was implemented using a between-subjects design in Experiment 1 and a within-subjects design in Experiment 2. Results revealed a critical dissociation: Reliable contextual cueing emerged when participants searched for a self-face target among stranger-face distractors. Conversely, this learning effect was consistently attenuated or absent when self-faces served as distractors during searches for a stranger target. We propose that self-face distractors function as an “attentional magnet.” They not only capture attention effectively but also disrupt the global processing required to encode the spatial layout of a scene. This impairs the formation of stable context-target associations, without necessarily slowing overall search speed. Our findings underscore an asymmetric influence of self-relevance and highlight how social salience can selectively disrupt implicit spatial learning when salient stimuli are task irrelevant.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147738453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Isa Tuncay Batuk, Irem Karakuluk, Merve Ozbal Batuk
{"title":"The influence of postural load and early aging on dynamic sound localization: Evidence for reduced cognitive-motor reserve","authors":"Isa Tuncay Batuk, Irem Karakuluk, Merve Ozbal Batuk","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03253-4","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03253-4","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigated the effects of head movements and postural stability on sound localization performance in normal-hearing adults and explored age-related differences between individuals aged 20–30 and 30–40 years. A total of 102 participants were divided into two groups: Group 1 (<i>n</i> = 56, 20–30 years) and Group 2 (<i>n</i> = 46, 30–40 years). Using a virtual reality system, localization performance was assessed under three different postural conditions and two listening conditions (head-immobile and head-mobile). Localization errors were measured at a 55-cm distance across four azimuth angles (right-front, left-front, right-back, left-back). Primary outcome measures included Azimuth Error, Front–Back Confusions, and Overall 3D Error. Incorporating head movements resulted in a statistically significant improvement in localization performance across all surface conditions (<i>p</i> < .001). In the head-mobile condition, the sitting posture yielded significantly lower Front 3D Error compared to both firm (<i>p</i> = .005) and foam surfaces (<i>p</i> = .007). Age-related differences were found to influence localization performance across varying levels of postural stability. Group 2 demonstrated significantly higher localization errors than Group 1 in the sitting condition (e.g., Head-Immobile Overall 3D Error: <i>p</i> = .021) and on the foam surface (e.g., Head-Immobile Overall 3D Error: <i>p</i> = .046). Conversely, no significant differences were found between the groups for any parameter on the firm surface. These findings indicate that head movements substantially enhance spatial hearing accuracy. However, localization performance is modulated by postural stability and age. Increased postural challenge appears to impose a dual-task cost, revealing subtle early age-related changes in the cognitive-motor mechanisms underlying auditory-spatial integration.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Expertise provides resilience to sound source variability in music perception","authors":"Anya E. Shorey, Christian E. Stilp","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03252-5","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03252-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Listeners’ perception of words and tones is better for acoustically consistent sounds than for variable ones. This is seen in speech adaptation tasks, where listeners are faster to categorize target words when spoken by a single talker than multiple, changing talkers. Recently, this benefit for consistency has been extended to music adaptation tasks, where listeners are faster to categorize tones as low or high when produced by a single instrument than multiple, changing instruments. Here, two experiments sought to clarify the relationship between perceptual expertise and performance in these tasks. Experiment 1 tested listeners of heterogeneous musical backgrounds to identify a suitable musical interval for categorizing tones as low or high for the adaptation task. Experiment 2 tested nonmusicians, intermediate musicians, and experienced musicians on both speech and music adaptation tasks. Across speech and music together, results replicated that all groups of listeners were faster and more accurate in categorizing words/tones from a consistent source than a changing one. Importantly, this consistency benefit was more similar across speech and music tasks for experienced musicians than for nonmusicians. Results are discussed in terms of domain-general accounts of perceptual adaptation and expertise more generally.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147738452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imagery: Interference, facilitation, and theory","authors":"Adam Reeves","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03251-6","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03251-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Visual images in the vicinity of visual targets interfere with target discrimination (<i>d′</i>) at high levels of performance but facilitate discrimination at low levels. Here, I review the background literature that supports this conclusion and theorize that an image showing features matching those of the target boost sensitivity at every level of performance, but images of all types (including matching ones) also add multiplicative noise. This noise increases in proportion to the signal level, eventually overcoming the boosting effect and causing interference (i.e., the Perky effect). Experiment 1 demonstrates that image type (vivid or weak, static or dynamic) has no effect on the changeover from facilitation to interference; the critical factor is signal level. Equations for both the mean and standard deviation of <i>d′</i> are derived and shown to fit data from Experiment 1, two previous large-scale studies from my lab, and a recent study from another lab.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13090272/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147719083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cross-modal and intra-modal commutativity of magnitude productions","authors":"Wolfgang Ellermeier, Florian Kattner","doi":"10.3758/s13414-026-03243-6","DOIUrl":"10.3758/s13414-026-03243-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Luce, Steingrimsson, and Narens (<i>Psychological Review, 117,</i> 1247–1258, 2010) postulated that if ratio magnitude productions involving two perceptual dimensions exhibit “cross-dimensional commutativity,” they may be represented on a single internal scale of subjective intensity. Commutativity here refers to the order independence of successive magnitude productions (e.g., adjusting the subjective intensity of a stimulus successively by factors of 2 and 3 should produce the same result regardless of which factor comes first [×2×3 = ×3×2]). In the present experiment, these operations were performed (1) within the same modality (here: loudness or brightness), and (2) across modalities—that is, making productions from light to sound (e.g., “make the sound twice as loud as the light is bright”) and back, or vice versa. In individual, within-subjects experiments involving repeated loudness and brightness productions, 13 participants made adjustments to evaluate both kinds of commutativity. In line with previous findings (Ellermeier, Kattner, & Raum, <i>Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 83</i>[7], 2955–2967, 2021), both intra-modal and cross-modal commutativity held for most participants, but the final results of corresponding sequences of cross-modal and intra-modal adjustments (e.g., of the type ×2×3) typically did not coincide. That inconsistency is interpreted as participants choosing different internal reference points when making cross-modal versus intra-modal magnitude productions, but it does not preclude their using a common internal yardstick. The aggregated and raw data of all participants are available in an OSF repository (https://osf.io/5avbw/?view_only=687aef266f174648863f86b4982e35b9). The study has not been preregistered.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55433,"journal":{"name":"Attention Perception & Psychophysics","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13090263/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147719041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}