ABSTRACT
Past research has verified that observers assume that objects are reliably oriented with respect to a gravitationally centered coordinate system. Observers also appear to attend more to specific parts of objects, like faces, that typically are closer to the top. In the present work, we explored whether or not observers have a generic bias to view tops as being more salient than bottoms. In three experiments, observers indicated whether random shapes appeared to be more similar to comparison shapes that shared identical tops rather than bottoms. Observers exhibited a reliable tendency to match figures with similarly shaped tops. Matching choice was also a function of global shape attributes such as axis of elongation or size. The findings are consistent with the notion that, in nature, tops tend to be the most visible part and to provide the best information with respect to important aspects of objects such as animal intentionality and artifact functionality.
Subject(s)
Attention/physiology , Cues , Orientation/physiology , Pattern Recognition, Visual/physiology , Adult , HumansABSTRACT
It is reported on 137 patients with chronic intracapillary-proliferative glomerulonephritides. Of them 101 patients were treated with prednisolone, 36 patients remained untreated. The control biopsies and the observations of the course after on an average 1.8 years showed that the treated patients clinically and histologically had no better results than the untreated patients. A relatively high number of urinary tract infections and pyelonephritides was evident in patients treated with prednisolone. These diseases did not occur in patients who were not treated.
