Statistical summary representation in human observers

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K04501
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Mejiro University
• Principal Investigator: TOKITA Midori 目白大学, 保健医療学部, 教授 (40571112)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 要約統計量 / 感覚モダリティ / 平均量 / 分散 / 数量認知

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Many studies have shown that people may have the ability to extract summary statistics over objects/events in a set. However, it has also been shown that different processes may be involved depending on the stimulus types. This study tested whether there might be a common mechanism for summary statistics between visual, auditory, and tactile modalities using stimuli characterized by prothetic continua. The visual stimuli consisted of a series of circles of different sizes; the auditory stimuli consisted of pure tones with different sound intensities; the tactile stimuli consisted of vibrotactile stimulation with different intensities. We tested precision and bias in extracting the average value of the sequence in each modality and performed correlation analysis among them. The results showed significant correlations between precisions in auditory and tactile conditions but negligible correlations between those in auditory and visual and tactile and visual conditions.

Free Research Field

認知心理学　実験心理学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

要約統計量抽出の認知過程について，視覚・聴覚に関して個別に検討されており、感覚モダリティ間の共通点・相違点が包括的に検討された例はない．本研究では，新たに触覚条件を加え，一貫した手続きと観察者内要因での行動実験を行なって、要約統計量表象モデルの検証を試みた。結果から，モダリティ固有の表象メカニズムの存在する可能性を示す一方，複数提示された事象の平均値を過大評価する傾向を示した．日常生活の中で、大量の情報の処理を要求される現代社会において，様々な事象の要約統計量推定は、重要な能力であるといえる．このメカニズムの解明は，人に特有の情報処理過程とその生態学的妥当性の理解に貢献するものと思われる．