Audio associations can help us recognize objects more quickly, suggesting that sounds can help us make fine-grained discriminations between objects, new research suggests.
Audio cues can not only help us to recognize objects more quickly but can even alter our visual perception. That is, pair birdsong with a bird and we see a bird—but replace that birdsong with a squirrel’s chatter, and we’re not quite so sure what we’re looking at.
Amy Belfi, an assistant professor at Missouri S&T, discusses her research into the impact that audio and music have on the brain—and looking forward to learning more, getting tenure, and playing the upcoming Nintendo Zelda game.
New research explores the brain’s “prediction machine” capabilities by examining how we experience music.
Years of performing as a pianist sparked psychologist Chia-Jung Tsay’s curiosity about perceptions of “natural talent” and other factors that can influence how we evaluate achievements.
A new field of research called cognitive hearing science holds particular significance for people with hearing impairments, whose inner ears don’t capture complete auditory information for the brain to process.
The sight of a blind person snapping her fingers, making clicking sounds with her tongue, or stomping her feet might draw stares on a street or in a subway station, but it’s this type of behavior that is opening up a vibrant new area of research in psychology.
Neuroimaging involving people born deaf shows the pliability in the brain area that processes auditory information.
Echolocation may not just help visually-impaired individuals navigate their environment, but may actually have the potential to be a complete sensory replacement for vision.
When faced with many different sounds, such as notes in a violin melody, the brain quickly summarizes individual pitches to get an overall gist of what is being heard.
Eyewitness identification is an important part of criminal investigations, especially in circumstances where physical evidence is lacking.
Researchers find that people anticipate movement in visual stimuli, among other new findings of our visuospatial abilities.
We tend to pay greater attention to incongruent objects, making us less likely to remember details about and changes to congruent objects.
Our minds can automatically create well-defined representations of objects that are merely implied rather than seen.
Does loss of sight enhance a person’s sense of hearing? New research supports this commonly held belief in one intriguing way: by testing blind people’s ability to navigate their surroundings. [September 15, 2020]
Data from individuals with different types of severe visual impairment suggest that the associations we make between sounds and shapes -- a “smooth” b or a “spiky” k -- may form during a sensitive period of visual development in early childhood.
Research suggests that certain stimuli – specifically, your own face – can influence how you respond without you being aware of it.
It’s possible for your native language to influence not only how you perceive certain colors, but whether or not you see can see something at all.
Visuospatial perspective (VSP) taking facilitates interactions not only by allowing us to account for whether someone can see an object but also how that object appears from their point of view.
Images with appealing content seem to fade more smoothly relative to other images, even when they faded at the same rate.
One way players might be able to improve their chances at making key shots is by tricking themselves into thinking the goal, the basket, or the target is bigger than it really is.
A surprisingly high proportion of people may have a form of motion blindness in which sensory information about moving objects is not properly interpreted by the brain.
Using your hands to perform tasks in specific ways can change the way you see things near your hands, findings from two experiments show.
What we see in the periphery, just outside the direct focus of the eye, may sometimes be a visual illusion, research shows.
Visual acuity is thought to be dictated by the shape and condition of the eye but new findings suggest it may also be influenced by perceptual processes in the brain.
The scent of a romantic partner can improve your quality of sleep. This is true regardless of whether or not you are consciously aware that the scent is even present. [NEWS Feb. 13, 2020]
Humans may communicate positive emotions like happiness through the smell of our sweat.
Research is uncovering just how much our noses know about our social environments.
APS Past Board Member Gün R. Semin is exploring what he calls the "invisible orchestra" of bodily scents related to happiness, fear, and other emotional experiences.
Inattentional blindness plays out when, absent any vision problems, individuals are so focused on a visual aspect of a scene that they fail to notice some other, highly visible feature.
Wearable augmented-reality technology may help reduce interocular imbalance as people go about everyday activities.
Humans are able to smell sickness in someone whose immune system is highly active, a study shows.
