ABSTRACT
38 male and 55 female college students rated digitized color facsimiles of 40 paintings that varied in artistic period (Renaissance, Rococo, Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, 20th Century) and subject matter (portrait, landscape, still life, behavior depiction) on 12 7-point semantic differential scales, e.g., simple-complex. Women judged the content of Rococo and Impressionist paintings as more pleasing than did men and Impressionist paintings evoked greater feelings of pleasure and relaxation among women than among men. In addition, paintings that depicted behaviors evoked more pleasure and alertness among women than among men. The results were interpreted in terms of underlying differences between men and women in perceptual style and emotional sensitivity.
Subject(s)
Esthetics/psychology , Paintings/psychology , Students/psychology , Visual Perception , Adult , Female , Humans , Judgment , Male , Sex Factors , Students/statistics & numerical data , UniversitiesABSTRACT
135 university undergraduates heard 12 preludes from J. S. Bach's Well-tempered Clavier (Vol. 1) while viewing alternating red, yellow, green, and blue colored lights. Their task was to rank-order the lights according to how well they "matched" the music. Preferences for combinations of color and music differed depending on whether the music was in a major or a minor key. The present findings along with those of some earlier studies suggest that aesthetic experience may be heightened when colors are seen that match the mental images music evokes.
Subject(s)
Auditory Perception , Color Perception , Esthetics , Imagination , Music , Color , Humans , Judgment , PsychoacousticsABSTRACT
Although it has long been known that the perception of flavor depends on olfactory sensations originating within the mouth (i.e., retronasal perception), little is known about how olfactory input is integrated in the flavor complex. In the present study, the qualitative contribution of odor to flavor was explored. Participants judged the smell and taste of pairs of substances (liqueurs). Each set of judgments was analyzed by means of multidimensional scaling, and the scalings were then statistically compared. The results revealed specific perceptual dimensions, namely, sweet-sour, harsh-mellow, which underlie both sensory modalities. In contrast to previous findings, the results show that the characteristics of flavor reflect olfactory attributes that can be apprehended outside the mouth.
Subject(s)
Smell , Taste , Adult , Female , Humans , Male , Middle AgedABSTRACT
This paper describes the decomposition of air combat maneuvering by means of multidimensional scaling (MDS). MDS analyses were applied to performance data obtained from expert and novice pilots during simulated air-to-air combat. The results of these analyses revealed that the performance of expert pilots is characterized by advantageous maneuverability and intelligent energy management. It is argued that MDS, unlike simpler metrics, permits the investigator to achieve greater insights into the underlying structure associated with performance of a complex task.
Subject(s)
Aerospace Medicine , Aircraft , Task Performance and Analysis , Humans , Male , United StatesABSTRACT
In contrast to a previous study (Deaton, Tobias, & Wilkinson, 1971), data are presented which demonstrate significant decreases in response bias (beta) as well as sensitivity (d') following one night of sleep deprivation. It is argued that previous failures to observe significant decreases in beta may be related to the disparity in the number of noise and signal-plus-noise trials in these experiments. The use of parametric analysis to test the effect of sleep deprivation on d' and beta is recommended.
Subject(s)
Psychophysics , Sleep Deprivation , HumansABSTRACT
A probe-recognition short-term memory paradigm was used to inquire into the precise effects of sleep deprivation on human memory. It was found that recognition performance, as measured by d', was generally impaired for each subjects after 24 hr of sleep deprivation. While d' was shown to decrease exponentially as the number of items intervening between the target and the probe increased, this decay rate was not affected by sleep loss. In addition there was confirmation of a previously observed increase in the positive skewness of reaction times after wakefulness. The data were consistent with the hypothesis that sleep deprivation increases the occurrence of lapses, periods of lowered reactive capacity, which prevent the encoding of items in short-term memory.