i-Perception

12th International Multisensory Research Forum Abstracts.

Pion

The International Multisensory Research Forum (IMRF) is an annual meeting. The 2011 meeting was held 17‒20 October in Fukuoka, Japan. The conference provides a platform for scientists who are interested in how different senses interact with each other and are integrated. Researchers from many different disciplines, including neuroscience, psychophysics, cognitive psychology, computational modeling, developmental research, and engineering, participate. This year, Yôiti Suzuki was the general chair of the organizing committee, which included members from universities and research institutes in Japan. The following are the abstracts of keynote speakers, symposia, talks, and posters from the conference.

Scottish Vision Group meeting abstracts.

Pion

The Scottish Vision Group (SVG) Meeting is an annual event. The meeting was held 23‒25 March 2012 in Tarland, Scotland. Previous meetings took place

2001 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2002 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2003 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2004 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2005 The Log Cabin Hotel, Kirkmichael, Perthshire
2006 The University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen
2007 Kinloch Hotel, Blackwaterfoot, Isle of Arran
2008 Dundarach Hotel, Pilochry, Perthshire
2009 Western Isles Hotel, Tobermory, Isle of Mull
2010 The Royal Dunkeld Hotel, Dunkeld, Perthshire
2011 Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Sleat, Isle of Skye

The meeting organisers were Amelia Hunt and Jasna Martinovic, and the committee included Ben Jennings, Joe Macinnes, and Arash Sahraie. The meeting was supported by Hannah Krueger, Kay Ritchie, and Silke Jensen. The organisers would like to thank SR Research and Principal’s Fund of the University of Aberdeen for kindly sponsoring the meeting. The following are selected abstracts of that meeting.

Scottish Vision Group Meeting.

Pion

The Scottish Vision Group (SVG) Meeting is an annual event. The meeting was held 25-27 March 2011 on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Previous meetings took place in:

2001 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2002 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2003 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2004 The Burn, Glenesk, Brechin, Angus
2005 The Log Cabin Hotel, Kirkmichael, Perthshire
2006 The University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen
2007 Kinloch Hotel, Blackwaterfoot, Isle of Arran
2008 Dundarach Hotel, Pilochry, Perthshire
2009 Western Isles Hotel, Tobermory, Isle of Mull
2010 The Royal Dunkeld Hotel, Dunkeld, Perthshire

The meeting organiser was Martin Lages, and the committee included Paul Hibbard, Martin Lages, Phil MacAleer, David Simmons, and Roger Watt. The meeting was supported by Suzanne Heron and Katarzyna Jaworska. The following are the abstracts of that meeting.

AVA Christmas Meeting 2011.

Pion

The AVA Christmas Meeting was held 19 December at the University of York and celebrated 16 years of AVA Christmas Meetings. It was a one-day meeting held in the Department of Psychology at the University of York. The meeting welcomed presentations concerning any aspects of vision and visual perception and their applications. Invited talks included: Matteo Carandini (Institute of Ophthalmogy, UCL), Karl Gegenfurtner CRS Guest lecture (Giessen University), and Hannah Smithson 2011 Marr Medal winner (University of Durham). The following are the abstracts of meeting presentations.

Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision.

Pion

The Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision (APCV) is an annual meeting for vision scientists from all parts of the world on various topics, including neural, psychophysical, computational, clinical and applied aspects of vision. The APCV 2012 was its 8th meeting and held during July 13-15, 2012, in Inchon, Korea, led by the chair, Choongkil Lee at Seoul National University. More details can be found at http://apcv2012.com. Below are the abstracts of presentations made during APCV2012.

Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision.

Pion

The Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision (APCV) is an annual meeting devoted to vision research. The 2011 meeting was held 15–18 July in the exciting city of Hong Kong. The conference aims to facilitate vision research throughout the Asia-Pacific by bringing together scientists from the broad range of disciplines contributing to modern vision science, including visual psychophysics, neuroscience, computational vision, and cognitive psychology. William Hayward was the chair of the organizing committee, which included members from the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Hong Kong Shue Yan University. The following are the abstracts of keynote speakers, talks, and posters from the conference.

Loss of color by afterimage masking. Kohske Takahashi, Shun’ya Yamada, Fuminori Ono, Katsumi Watanabe

Pion

When two images, one depicting colored disks and the other depicting colored windmill patterns, are displayed in succession, the color of the windmills is perceptually replaced by black. The illusion is striking. Experiments confirmed (1) that the luminance contrast between the target patterns and the background must be large and (2) that the disks and windmills must be static on the retina and in register. The illusion is weakened when the windmills and disks have different colors.

Sugar and space? Not the case: Effects of low blood glucose on slant estimation are mediated by beliefs. Dennis M. Shaffer, Eric McManama, Charles Swank, Frank H. Durgin

Pion

There is a current debate concerning whether people’s physiological or behavioral potential alters their perception of slanted surfaces. One way to directly test this is to physiologically change people’s potential by lowering their blood sugar and comparing their estimates of slant to those with normal blood sugar. In the first investigation of this (Schnall, Zadra, & Proffitt, 2010), it was shown that people with low blood sugar gave higher estimates of slanted surfaces than people with normal blood sugar. The question that arises is whether these higher estimates are due to lower blood sugar, per se, or experimental demand created by other aspects of the experiment. Here evidence was collected from 120 observers showing that directly manipulating physiological potential, while controlling for experimental demand effects, does not alter the perception of slant. Indeed, when experimental demand went against behavioral potential, it produced judgmental biases opposite to those predicted by behavioral potential in the low blood sugar condition. It is suggested that low blood sugar only affects slant judgments by making participants more susceptible to judgmental biases.

Visual discomfort and depth-of-field. Louise O’Hare, Tingting Zhang, Harold T. Nefs, Paul B. Hibbard

Pion

Visual discomfort has been reported for certain visual stimuli and under particular viewing conditions, such as stereoscopic viewing. In stereoscopic viewing, visual discomfort can be caused by a conflict between accommodation and convergence cues that may specify different distances in depth. Earlier research has shown that depth-of-field, which is the distance range in depth in the scene that is perceived to be sharp, influences both the perception of egocentric distance to the focal plane, and the distance range in depth between objects in the scene. Because depth-of-field may also be in conflict with convergence and the accommodative state of the eyes, we raised the question of whether depth-of-field affects discomfort when viewing stereoscopic photographs. The first experiment assessed whether discomfort increases when depth-of-field is in conflict with coherent accommodation–convergence cues to distance in depth. The second experiment assessed whether depth-of-field influences discomfort from a pre-existing accommodation–convergence conflict. Results showed no effect of depth-of-field on visual discomfort. These results suggest therefore that depth-of-field can be used as a cue to depth without inducing discomfort in the viewer, even when cue conflicts are large.