bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Image of Islam and Muslims in Swedish Radical Christian Press
Authors: Steiner Kristian 
Published: November 2012

This is a case study on the construction of Islam and Muslims in sixty editorials 2006 in a Swedish Evangelical newspaper, Världen idag (“The World Today”). The paper was founded in 2001 and is officially independent and non-denominational. In reality, it is financially and ideologically dependent on the radical faith movement. Its circulation is about 8,500.
The main theme in the selected editorials is “Muslim threat,” in some cases combined with “Western retreat” and “Islam’s incompatibility with democracy.” Islam and Muslims are consistently described as causing these problems. However, terms denoting Muslims are rarely derogatory, instead Muslims are depicted in terms of broad denotation, like “Muslims” or “the Muslim world.” These labels are often combined with a stark derogatory complement. Aggressive acts like “demanding” and “murdering” or “mass-murdering” are the most common ones associated with Muslims. Good Muslim behavior is constantly disregarded; bad behavior reflects true character. Muslims are depicted as one homogeneous stereotypical and static group.
Timothy Richard, World Religion, and Reading Christianity in Buddhist Garb
Authors: Scott Gregory Adam 
Published: November 2012

This article examines some of the published works of the missionary Timothy Richard (1845 - 1919), and analyzes how his mission experience played a foundational role in his study of religion. It argues that his work and his approach to Chinese religions challenged established views of the relationships between the world religions held by his contemporaries. The latter section focuses on his studies of Mahāyāna Buddhism and how they sought a familiar religious revelation clad in foreign clothing. Finally it suggests that his experience might complicate our picture of orientalist scholarship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Multisensory cueing and the attention network test in aging
Authors: Mahoney Jeannette R. , Verghese Joe , Dumas Kristina , Wang Cuiling , Holtzer Roee 
Published: November 2012

The Attention Network Test (ANT) assesses the effect of alerting and orienting cues on a visual flanker task measuring executive attention. Previous findings revealed that older adults demonstrate greater RT benefits when provided with visual orienting cues that offer both spatial and temporal information of an ensuing target. Given the overlap of neural correlates involved in multisensory processing and cueing (i.e., alerting and orienting), especially in the superior colliculus, thalamus, superior temporal and parietal regions, an investigation of multisensory cueing effects was warranted. The current study was designed to determine whether participants, both old and young, benefited from receiving multisensory alerting and orienting cues on a visual flanker task. Eighteen young (M = 19.17 yrs) and eighteen old (M = 76.44 yrs) individuals that were determined to be non-demented and without any medical or psychiatric conditions that would affect their performance were included. Results revealed main effects for the executive attention and orienting networks, but not for the alerting network. In terms of orienting, both old and young adults demonstrated significant orienting effects for auditory–somatosensory (AS), auditory–visual (AV), and visual–somatosensory (VS) cues. Benefits of multisensory compared to unisensory averaged orienting effects differed by cue type and age group; younger adults demonstrated significantly greater RT benefits for AS orienting cues whereas older adults demonstrated significantly greater RT benefits for AV orienting cues. Both groups, however, demonstrated significant RT benefits for VS orienting cues. These findings provide evidence for the facilitative effect of multisensory orienting cues, and not multisensory alerting cues, in old and young adults.
Determinants of the efficacy of single-trial multisensory learning
Authors: Thelen Antonia , Murray Micah M. 
Published: November 2012

Single-trial multisensory learning has been reliably shown to impact the later ability to discriminate images. The present study had the following three aims: (1) to determine if single-trial multisensory learning would elicit corresponding effects on auditory discrimination, (2) to determine if there were links between the impact of multisensory sensory learning on auditory discrimination and its impact on visual discrimination within individual participants, and (3) to determine the bases of inter-individual differences in the efficacy of single-trial multisensory learning. On two sessions separated by one week, participants discriminated initial from repeated presentations of either images or sounds during a continuous recognition task. Half of the initial presentations were auditory–visual multisensory parings (semantically congruent, semantically incongruent, or meaningless). The remaining half of initial presentations was unisensory. Half of the repeated stimuli were presented in an identical manner to their initial encounter, and the remaining half were presented in the complementary manner (i.e., those initially presented in a unisensory manner were now presented as multisensory pairs and vice versa). The results show that the efficacy of single-trial multisensory learning across the senses varies according to an individual’s propensity to exhibit repetition priming with sounds (i.e., faster RTs and higher accuracy for repeated vs. initial unisensory sound presentations). Individuals exhibiting such priming also showed facilitative effects of single-trial multisensory learning on both the auditory and visual discrimination tasks. Those who did not exhibit such priming did not benefit from single-trial multisensory learning. Single-trial multisensory learning is therefore an effective tool across the senses.
Now you see it, now you don’t: Design dependent sound symbolism effect in categorization studies
Authors: Kovic Vanja , Pejovic Jovana 
Published: November 2012

A number of studies have demonstrated sound-symbolism effects in adults and in children. Moreover, recently, ERP studies have shown that the sensitivity to sound-symbolic label–object associations occurs within 200 ms of object presentation (Kovic et al., 2010). It was argued that this effect may reflect a more general process of auditory–visual feature integration where properties of auditory stimuli facilitate a mapping to specific visual features. Here we demonstrate that the sound-symbolism effect is design dependent, namely — it occurs only when mapping from auditory to visual stimuli and not vice verse. Two groups of participants were recruited for solving the categorization task. They were presented them with 12 visual stimuli, half of which were rounded and another half of angular shapes. One group was trained to classify the rounded objects as ‘takete’ and the rounded ones as ‘maluma’, whereas the other group mapped ‘takete’ to rounded and ‘maluma’ to angular shapes. Moreover, half of these two groups heard the label before seeing the objects, whereas the other half was given the label after perceiving the object. The results revealed the sound-symbolism effect only in the group which was trained on the auditory–visual objects mapping and not in the one trained on the visual–auditory mappings. Thus, despite the previous findings we demonstrate that the sound-symbolism effect is not significant per se, but design-dependent and we argue that the sound brings up a mental image that is more constrained than the sounds brought up by a picture.
Threat modulates perception of looming visual stimuli
Authors: Vagnoni Eleonora , Lourenco Stella , Longo Matthew 
Published: November 2012

Objects on a collision course with an observer produce a specific pattern of optical expansion on the retina known as looming, which in theory exactly specifies time-to-collision. Looming stimuli produce stereotyped defensive responses in monkeys and human infants, indicating that the primate visual system is intrinsically tuned to interpret this stimulus as threatening. We investigated how emotional reactions to the semantic content of a looming stimulus affects perceived time-to-collision. We presented either threatening (snakes, spiders) or non-threatening (butterflies and rabbits) stimuli which expanded in size at a rate indicating one of five different times to contact (3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5 or 5.0 s). After 1 s, the image disappeared and participants judged when it would have made contact with them continuing on the same trajectory. Consistent with previous findings, time-to-collision judgments systematically underestimated true arrival time. More importantly, our results showed that the magnitude of this underestimating significantly increased for threatening, compared to non-threatening, stimuli. Further, the magnitude of this increase was correlated with participants’ self-reported fear of snakes and spiders. Traditionally, looming has been interpreted as a purely optical cue to collision. Against that view, our results demonstrate that the semantic content of visual stimuli modulates perceived time-to-contact. Our results suggest that perceived threat led participants to use a larger margin of safety: underestimating time-to-collision errs on the side of allowing more time to prepare defensive responses (or flee). More generally, these results demonstrate that emotion has widespread effects on even very basic aspects of perception.
Is A always red? Multisensory integration of synesthetic stimuli in synesthetes and non-synesthetes
Authors: Arvaniti Miketa , Sagiv Noam , Lecoutre Lucille , Vatakis Argiro 
Published: November 2012

Our research project aimed at investigating multisensory temporal integration in synesthesia and explore whether or not there are commonalities in the sensory experiences of synesthetes and non-synesthetes. Specifically, we investigated whether or not synesthetes are better integrators than non-synesthetes by examining the strength of multisensory binding (i.e., the unity effect) using an unspeeded temporal order judgment task. We used audiovisual stimuli based on grapheme-colour synesthetic associations (Experiment 1) and on crossmodal correspondences (e.g., high-pitch — light colours; Experiment 2) presented at various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) with the method of constant stimuli. Presentation of these stimuli in congruent and incongruent format allowed us to examine whether congruent stimuli lead to a stronger unity effect than incongruent ones in synesthetes and non-synesthetes and, thus, whether synesthetes experience enhanced multisensory integration than non-synesthetes. Preliminary data support the hypothesis that congruent crossmodal correspondences lead to a stronger unity effect than incongruent ones in both groups, with this effect being stronger in synesthetes than non-synesthetes. We also found that synesthetes experience stronger unity effect when presented with idiosyncratically congruent grapheme-colour associations than in incongruent ones as compared to non-synesthetes trained in certain grapheme-colour associations. Currently, we are investigating (Experiment 3) whether trained non-synesthetes exhibit enhanced integration when presented with synesthetic associations that occur frequently among synesthetes. Utilizing this design we will provide psychophysical evidence of the multisensory integration in synesthesia and the possible common processing mechanisms in synesthetes and non-synesthetes.
Beat gestures modulate auditory integration in speech perception
Authors: Biau Emmanuel , Soto-Faraco Salvador 
Published: November 2012

In everyday life, people interact with each others through verbal communication but also by spontaneous beat gestures which are a very important part of the paralinguistic context during face-to-face conversations. Nonetheless, their role and neural correlates have been seldom addressed. Here we investigate the time course of beat-speech integration in natural speech perception conditions. We measured event-related potentials to words pronounced with or without an accompanying beat gesture while participants attended to a political speech. When the speaker was on sight, words pronounced with a beat gesture elicited appositive shift in ERPs at early sensory (before 100 ms) and at a later time window coinciding with the auditory component P2. This result remained partially true even when the auditory signal was removed from audiovisual signal. Interestingly, there was no difference with words pronounced without gesture when participants listened to the same speech passage without viewing of the speaker. We conclude that in a naturalistic speech context, beat gestures are integrated with speech early on in time and modulate the sensory/phonological levels of processing. We propose that these results suggest a possible role of beats as a highlighter, helping direct the focus of attention of the listener on important information, rather than adding information per se. Beat gestures would modulate how verbal information is treated.
Multisensory objects and the orienting of spatial attention
Authors: Mastroberardino Serena , Santangelo Valerio , Macaluso Emiliano 
Published: November 2012

The presentation of an auditory stimulus semantically-congruent with a visual element of a multi-objects display can enhance processing of that element. Here we used multisensory objects (MO) as non-informative cues in a spatial cueing paradigm, aiming to directly assess the interplay between MO integration and spatial attention. We presented two pictures (e.g., left — dog, right — cat) plus a central sound (e.g., a dog’s bark) that defined the location of the MO (left, in this example). This was followed by a target (a Gabor patch) either at the MO location or in the opposite hemifield. Subjects discriminated the orientation of the Gabor, while ignoring all task-irrelevant pictures and sounds. Further, we manipulated the task requirements including ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ discrimination (Gabor tilt = ±5° or ±10°), and by presenting either a single unilateral Gabor (Exp. 1, ‘low’ competition) or two Gabors bilaterally (red and blue, with the target now defined by colour; Exp. 2, ‘high’ competition). Functional imaging data revealed activation of frontal regions when the target was presented on the opposite side of the MO (invalid trials). The frontal eye-fields activated irrespective of task requirements, while the inferior frontal gyrus activated only when the MO-cue was invalid and competition was low (Exp. 1 only). These findings show that MOs automatically affect the distribution of spatial attention, and that re-orienting operations on invalid trials activate dorsal and ventral frontal areas depending on top-down task constraints. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis linking the integration of multisensory objects with biases of spatial attention.
Scrutinizing integrative effects in a multi-stimuli detection task
Authors: Pannunzi Mario , Pérez-Bellido Alexis , Pereda Baños Alexandre , López-Moliner Joan , Deco Gustavo , Soto-Faraco Salvador 
Published: November 2012

The level of processing at which different modalities interact to either facilitate or interfere with detection has been a matter of debate for more than half a century. This question has been mainly addressed by means of statistical models (Green, 1958), or by biologically plausible models (Schnupp et al., 2005). One of the most widely accepted statistical frameworks is the signal detection theory (SDT; Green and Swets, 1966) because it provides a straightforward way to assess whether two sensory stimuli are judged independently of one another, that is when the detectability (d′) of the compound stimulus exceeds the Pythagorean sum of the d′ of the components. Here, we question this logic, and propose a different baseline to evaluate integrative effects in multi-stimuli detection tasks based on the probabilistic summation. To this aim, we show how a simple theoretical hypothesis based on probabilistic summation can explain putative multisensory enhancement in an audio-tactile detection task. In addition, we illustrate how to measure integrative effects from multiple stimuli in two experiments, one using a multisensory audio-tactile detection task (Experiment 1) and another with a unimodal double-stimulus auditory detection task (Experiment 2). Results from Experiment 1 replicate extant multisensory detection data, and also refuse the hypothesis that auditory and tactile stimuli integrated into a single percept, leading to any enhancement. In Experiment 2, we further support the probabilistic summation model using a unimodal integration detection task.
Auditory gating during visually-guided action?
Authors: Tremblay Luc , Wong Joanne , Manson Gerome 
Published: November 2012

We recently used an audiovisual illusion (Shams et al., 2000) during fast and accurate reaching movements and showed that susceptibility to the fusion illusion is reduced at high limb velocities (Tremblay and Nguyen, 2010). This study aimed to determine if auditory information processing is suppressed during voluntary action (Chapman and Beauchamp, 2006), which could explain reduced fusion during reaching movements. Instead of asking our participants () to report the number of flashes, we asked them to report the number of beeps (Andersen et al., 2004). Before each trial, participants were asked to fixate on a target LED presented on a horizontal reaching surface. The secondary stimuli combined 3 flash (0, 1, 2) by 2 beep (1, 2). During control tests, the secondary stimuli were presented at rest. In the experimental phase, stimuli were presented 0, 100 or 200 ms relative to the onset of a fast and accurate movement. Participants reported the number of beeps after each trial. A 3 flash × 2 beep × 4 presentation condition (0, 100, 200 ms + Control) ANOVA revealed that participants were less accurate at perceiving the actual number of beeps during the movement as compared to the control condition. More importantly, the number of flashes influenced the number of perceived beeps during the movement but not in the control condition. Lastly, no relationship was found between limb velocity and the number of perceived beeps. These results indicate that auditory information is significantly suppressed during goal-directed action but this mechanism alone fails to explain the link between limb velocity and the fusion illusion.
Aesthetic preferences for tridimensional shapes: A comparison between vision and touch
Authors: Etzi Roberta , Spence Charles , Gallace Alberto 
Published: November 2012

Aesthetic preferences for different shapes have been investigated in vision but not in touch. Here the visual and tactile pleasantness of 3-dimensional shapes has been studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, the participants evaluated the tactile pleasantness of two shapes (a sphere and a cube), manipulated with right, left or both hands. The results revealed that the sphere was preferred over the cube in all the exploration conditions. Moreover, the cube was preferred more when explored bimanually than when explored unimanually. In Experiment 2, the participants evaluated pleasantness and angularity of 11 shapes, presented under visual and haptic exploration conditions. Curved shapes (e.g., cylinder) evoked more pleasant ratings compared to angular shapes in both sensorial conditions. Interestingly, certain shapes (e.g., triangle, rhombus) were preferred significantly more when visually presented than when haptically explored. These results provide some preliminary insights into the cognitive and neural differences in the processing of the aesthetic qualities of visual and tactile stimuli.
An ERP study of audiovisual simultaneity perception
Authors: Binder Marek 
Published: November 2012

The aim of this study was to examine relation between conscious perception of temporal relation between the elements of an audiovisual pair and the dynamics of accompanying neural activity. This was done by using a simultaneity judgment task and EEG event-related potentials (ERP). During Experiment 1 the pairs of 10 ms white-noise bursts and flashes were used. On presenting each pair subjects pressed one of two buttons to indicate their synchrony. Values of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were based on individual estimates of simultaneity thresholds (50∕50 probability of either response). They were estimated prior to EEG measurement using interleaved staircase involving both sound-first and flash-first stimulus pairs. Experiment 2 had the identical setup, except subjects indicated if audio–visual pair began simultaneously (termination was synchronous). ERP waveforms were time-locked to the second stimulus in the pair. Effects of synchrony perception were studied by comparing ERPs in trials that were judged as simultaneous and non-simultaneous. Subjects were divided into two subgroups with similar SOA values. In both experiments at about 200 ms after the second stimulus onset a stronger ERP wave positivity for trials judged as non-simultaneous was observed in parieto-central sites. This effect was observed for both sound-first and video-first pairs and for both SOA subgroups. The results demonstrate that the perception of temporal relations between multimodal stimuli with identical physical parameters is reflected in localized ERP differences. Given their localization in the posterior parietal regions, these differences may be viewed as correlates of conscious perception of temporal integration vs. separation of audiovisual stimuli.
Greater sensitivity in detecting cross-modal asynchrony for body parts that are seen most often
Authors: Hoover Adria E. N. , Harris Laurence R. 
Published: November 2012

We have previously shown that people are more sensitive at detecting asynchrony between a self-generated movement and delayed visual feedback when the perspective of the movement matches the ‘natural view’ suggesting an internal, visual, canonical body representation (Hoover and Harris, 2011). Is there a similar variation in sensitivity for parts of the body that cannot be seen in a first-person perspective? To test this, participants made movements with their hands and head (viewing their face or the back of their head) under four viewing conditions: (1) the natural (or direct) view, (2) mirror-reversed, (3) inverted, and (4) inverted and mirror-reversed. Participants indicated which of two periods (one with a minimum delay, the other with an added delay of 33–264 ms) was delayed and their sensitivity to delay was calculated. A significant linear trend was found when comparing sensitivity to detect cross-modal asynchrony in the ‘natural’ or ‘direct’ view condition across body parts; where sensitivity was greatest when viewing body parts seen most often (hands), intermediary for viewing body parts that are seen only indirectly (moving head while viewing face), and least for viewing body parts that are never seen at all (moving head while viewing back of the head). Further, dependency on viewpoint was most evident for body parts that are seen most often or indirectly, but not for body parts that are never seen. Results are discussed in terms of a visual representation of the body.