This study tested whether selected visual display conditions can aid observers in prioritizing information from display elements that differ in reliability. The observer's task was to decide whether the information conveyed by an array of nine graphical elements represented a signal or noise input. The value displayed by each element was an independent sample from the signal or noise distribution. The reliability of a display element was manipulated by controlling the variance of these distributions (high reliability = low variance). Observers tended to weight high-reliability sources slightly more than low-reliability sources. The observers-detection performance and weighting efficiency were highest when the reliability of the source was cued by the luminance of the display element. Thus observers can prioritize visual information sources based on statistical properties such as variability if luminance cues are available during the presentation of the information.

Two studies investigated preschoolers’ ability to infer an actor's intended goal based upon the perceptual properties of the actor's movement. Scenes were presented showing a computer‐generated display in which a circle persistently jumped and rebounded off wall. One of three outcomes occurred: the acting circle reached its target, it reached an outcome opposite the target of its persistent movement (non‐goal condition), or it reached neither target. Children accurately inferred the acting circle's goal in Expt 1 except for the 3‐year‐olds in the non‐goal condition. Experiment 2 modified the non‐goal condition so that the passive movements were not increasingly closer to the non‐goal, resulting in above‐chance performance for both age groups (p < .01). Taken together, these findings suggest that by age 3 children will account for how an actor is moving when identifying its intended goal and will then distinguish the inferred goal from the eventual outcome of the act. Implications of these findings for the relation between outward features of motion and the development of mental concepts are discussed.

Twenty-one subjects rated a random sequence of 144 color pairs on a categorical scale ranging from 1 (harmonizing) to 7 (clashing). Another group of 35 subjects rated each individual color on a set of semantic differential scales. The colors were also scaled objectively in terms of Munsell measures for hue, chroma, and value. The color harmony ratings were analyzed by using multidimensional scaling and invoking a weighted individual-differences Euclidean distance model. A two-dimensional solution accounted for 83.1 % ofthe variability in the transformed data matrices. On the basis of supplementary regression analyses, it was found that hue, value (brightness), and the psychological attribute "pleasantness," were the factors that influenced the color harmony judgments. In general, harmonious color combinations involved colors that were similar with regard to these attributes.Color harmony , the "suitability" of juxtaposed colors, is a complex phenomenon that is influenced by the individual colors' characteristics (i. e., hue, brightness, saturation) and their relative areas _ The most extensive study of this phenomenon was conducted by Helson and Lansford (1970), whose subjects rated the pleasantness of 125 colors on 25 colored backgrounds in five sources of illumination_ The principle factor determining the pleasantness of color combinations was brightness contrast -the most pleasant combinations involved large brightness differences between color and background, whereas the least pleasant combinations involved little or no difference.Hue and saturation contrast were less decisive factors . In the case of saturation, large differences between color and background tended to be judged as being more pleasant than were small differences; however, small differences in saturation could be judged as being pleasant or unpleasant, depending on whether or not there was a high degree of brightness contrast. The findings regarding hue differences were even more equivocal. Earlier studies had shown that the more pleasant combinations involved either zero, small, or large hue differences between color and background, but not intermediate. Helson and Lansford (1970) found that this generalization held for some hue families, but not for others.Helson and Lansford 's (1970) overall conclusion was that color harmony is not easily predicted and depends on the interaction of the spectral characteristics of illumination source, background color, and the hue, brightness, and saturation of the object color.

This experiment tested how well human listeners can discriminate between temporal patterns that are compressed or expanded in time. The listener's task was to determine whether two arrhythmic, tonal sequences had the same or different temporal patterns. According to the pattern correlation model [R. D. Sorkin, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 87, 1695-1701 (1990)], listeners perform this task by computing the correlation between the pattern of time intervals marked by the tones in each sequence. Listener performance dropped when one of the sequences was compressed or expanded in time. In order for the model to describe the observed performance, it was necessary to postulate an internal noise component that was proportional to the magnitude of the difference between the sequence transformations.

Three studies investigated the ability of observers to extract and use reliability information from graphical elements presented on a visual display. The first experiment assessed observers' accuracy in detecting differences in source reliability based on differences in the temporal variability of the sources. Observers' accuracy improved as the sample size and the difference in the underlying source variability increased. The second study investigated observers' efficiency in using the information about source variability to weight individual sources in forming a decision. Observers were able to differentially weight sources based on the underlying source variability. However, observers' adjustments of the weights tended to be less than ideal, particularly when reliable sources were not spatially contiguous and additional aids (e.g., observation periods and highlights) were unavailable to help observers identify differences in source variability. Finally, evidence in the third study indicated that information about differences in source variability reduced uncertainty about the locations of reliable sources but did not help observers to correctly adjust weights to match the ideal. In application, display enhancements (e.g., highlights) aid decision making when only general differences in reliability need to be recognized, but more advanced decision support is recommended when reliability information has to be incorporated into a decision statistic.