Carlo Fantoni

University of Trieste | UNITS · Department of Life Sciences

Recent studies have shown that comfort can be influenced more by psychological processes than from the characteristics of environmental stimulation. This is relevant for different industrial sectors, where comfort is defined only as a function of the intensity of external stimuli. In the present study, we measured physiological and psychological co...

Both numerical and non-numerical magnitudes elicit similar Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effects, with small magnitudes associated with left hand responses and large magnitudes associated with right hand responses (Dehaene et al., J Exp Psychol Gen 122(3), 371, 1993). In the present study, we investigated whether the pheno...

Previous work on the direct speed–intensity association (SIA) on comparative judgement tasks involved spatially distributed responses over spatially distributed stimuli with high motivational significance like facial expressions of emotions. This raises the possibility that the inferred stimulus-driven regulation of lateralized motor reactivity des...

A common cognitive process in everyday life consists in the comparative judgements of emotions given a pair of facial expressions and the choice of the most positive/negative among them. Results from three experiments on complete-facial expressions (happy/angry) and mixed-facial expressions (neutral/happy-or-angry) pairs viewed with (Experiment 1 a...

Previous studies show that heart rate variability (HRV) mirrors the state of discomfort induced by different sources of environmental noise. It remains unclear whether HRV is affected by noise levels within the normal living range, and whether it reflects the mood state. We address this issue by evaluating the impact of acoustic noise levels experi...

We report two experiments on the role of mid-level processes in image segmentation and completion. In the primed matching task of Experiment 1, a cue→prime sequence was presented before the imperative stimulus consisting of target shapes with positive versus negative contour curvature polarity and one versus two axes of mirror symmetry. Priming sha...

The current research aims to study the link between the type of vision experienced in a collaborative immersive virtual environment (active vs. multiple passive), the type of error one looks for during a cooperative multi-user exploration of a design project (affordance vs. perceptual violations), and the type of setting in which multi-user perform...

Recent research has shown that a brief, casual touch administered by an outgroup member reduces prejudice towards the group to which the toucher belongs. In this study, we take the research on physical contact and prejudice a step further by addressing the relation between individuals’ amount of Experienced Intergroup Physical Contact (EIPC), acros...

Supplemental analysis of Study 1

A controversial hypothesis, named the Sexualized Body Inversion Hypothesis (SBIH), claims similar visual processing of sexually objectified women (i.e., with a focus on the sexual body parts) and inanimate objects as indicated by an absence of the inversion effect for both type of stimuli. The current study aims at shedding light into the mechanism...

Aim: To verify whether it is appropriate to use age correction for infants born preterm in all the developmental domains (cognitive, linguistic, and motor) considered by the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition (Bayley-III). Method: Seventy-three infants born preterm (26-35wks) without major neurological sequelae and 67...

We used a cross-modal priming paradigm to evoke a biphasic effect in visual short-term memory. Participants were required to match the memorandum (a visual shape, either spiky or curvy) to a delayed probe (a shape belonging to the same category). In two-thirds of trials the sequence of shapes was accompanied by a task-irrelevant sound (either tzk o...

In this study, we investigate whether hormonal shifts during the menstrual cycle contribute to the dehumanization of other women and men. Female participants with different levels of likelihood of conception (LoC) completed a semantic priming paradigm in a lexical decision task. When the word ‘woman’ was the prime, animal words were more accessible...

According to action-perception coupling, extraretinal signals can disambiguate optic information, as in the contribution of head movements to the visual interpolation of twisted surfaces (Fantoni, Gerbino, Milani, Domini, JoV 2014). Going beyond approaches that exploit only the geometry of optic fragments, we focus here on the integration of self-g...

Ample evidence attests that social intention, elicited through gestures explicitly signaling a request of communicative intention, affects the patterning of hand movement kinematics. The current study goes beyond the effect of social intention and addresses whether the same action of reaching to grasp an object for placing it in an end target posit...

Data from the experiment. Two worksheets are included in the file: (1) DATASET_reach_to_grasp, with the relevant kinematics of the reach-to-grasp phase of the movement, and (2) DATASET_lift_to_place, with the relevant kinematics of the lift-to-place phase of the movement. (XLS)

Pre-test for curriculum vitae selection. Short description of how the four curricula used in the Experiment have been selected experimentally. (DOC)

Why restricting the study to only male participants? Detailed overview of the reasons behind our choice to include only male participants in the study. (DOC)

On the problem of stimulus dimensionality we found that: 1) The perceived medium is intermediate between the geometric mean and the arithmetic mean of linear extents, irrespective of stimulus dimensionality and spatial proximity. 2) When the size ratio between reference objects is small (b=2a, for cubes), the perceived medium is closer to the arith...

Fantoni & Gerbino (2014) showed that subtle postural shifts associated with reaching can have a strong hedonic impact and affect how actors experience facial expressions of emotion. Using a novel Motor Action Mood Induction Procedure (MAMIP), they found consistent congruency effects in participants who performed a facial emotion identification task...

Data from the four experiments. Three worksheets are included in the file: (1) RAW_DATASET, with the set of 64 yes/no responses characterizing each individual raw performance; (2) glm values, with individual d′ triplets associated to the three combinations of (N) and (S +N) trials (0–10, 0–20, 0–30% emotion in the morph), for congruent and incongru...

Respecting all constraints proposed by Firestone & Scholl (F&S), we have shown that perceived facial expressions of emotion depend on the congruency between bodily action (comfort/discomfort) and target emotion (happiness/anger) valence. Our studies challenge any bold claim against penetrability of perception and suggest that perceptual theory can...

User-generated content websites, such as review sites or travel communities, have become a major source of information for travelers with the advent of Web 2.0. A recent study [1] showed that more than 40% of travelers use the reviews and comments of other consumers as information sources when planning trips. While many studies have investigated th...

Recently we have shown that performing comfortable and uncomfortable reaching acts produces dramatic changes in the perception of facial expressions consistent with motor action induced mood congruency. More anger is needed to perceive neutrality in a happy-to-anger morph continuum (Fantoni & Gerbino, 2014), and a lower absolute threshold for the d...

In goal-directed web navigation, labels compete for selection: this process often involves knowledge integration and requires selective attention to manage the dizziness of web layouts. Here we ask whether the competition for selection depends on all web navigation options or only on those options that are more likely to be useful for information s...

Perception, cognition, and emotion do not operate along segregated pathways; rather, their adaptive interaction is supported by various sources of evidence. For instance, the aesthetic appraisal of powerful mood inducers like music can bias the facial expression of emotions towards mood congruency. In four experiments we showed similar mood-congrue...

It is conventionally assumed that the goal of the visual system is to derive a perceptual representation that is a veridical reconstruction of the external world: a reconstruction that leads to optimal accuracy and precision of metric estimates, given sensory information. For example, 3-D structure is thought to be veridically recovered from optic...

We present a framework for the study of active vision, i.e., the functioning of the visual system during actively self-generated body movements. In laboratory settings, human vision is usually studied with a static observer looking at static or, at best, dynamic stimuli. In the real world, however, humans constantly move within dynamic environments...

Perceptual judgments of relative depth from binocular disparity are systematically distorted in humans, despite in principle having access to reliable 3D information. Interestingly, these distortions vanish at a natural grasping distance, as if perceived stereo depth is contingent on a specific reference distance for depth-disparity scaling that co...

Background / Purpose: We test two predictions of a new computational model for the interpretation of the Optic Flow (OF) (1): (i) perceived orientation of a planar surface rotating about an axis coplanar to the surface undergoes a 90deg flip whenever a translational component orthogonal to the axis of rotation is added to the OF; (ii) the percept...

Background / Purpose: Perception is an active process: in order to rapidly adapt to a ever-changing environment the brain integrates different pieces of sensory information. In the context of three-dimensional (3D) vision, in order to define solid shapes of objects, the brain must combine complementary depth cues like motion and disparity. In hum...

Abstract Kogo and Wagemans provide an intriguing way of assigning a polarity value to closed edges in fragmented images (solving the border ownership problem), but their model lacks generality and disregards connectability as a relevant aspect of visual completion. The lack of generality depends on considering concave disk sectors (pacmen) as the m...

Background / Purpose: The interplay between our actions and the senses of vision, touch and proprioception is central in shaping our phenomenal world. Specific sensorimotor contingencies are achieved through constant interaction with the surrounding world. For instance, seeing the arm in a different position than the actual induces visuo-motor re...

Background / Purpose: An observer who approaches a planar surface that rotates about the vertical axis (e.g. a flag hinging on a pole) generates the same Optic Flow (OF) that is produced by a planar surface that rotates about an horizontal axis viewed by a static observer. In spite of this ambiguity, perceived surface orientation by the active ob...

Humans make systematic errors in the 3D interpretation of the optic flow in both passive and active vision. These systematic distortions can be predicted by a biologically-inspired model which disregards self-motion information resulting from head movements (Caudek, Fantoni, & Domini 2011). Here, we tested two predictions of this model: (1) A plane...

Co-variation between def and lateral head position. In our experiments, observers performed a sinusoidal lateral head translation while fixating a tilted planar surface. Panel (a) shows the variation of the head angular velocity during the oscillatory head translation. Panel (b) shows the variation of the relative slant of the surface. The relative...

Instantaneous def and its relationship with lateral head translation. (PDF)

Relative depth from retinal disparities is overestimated at distances within the peripersonal space (where objects can be reached) and underestimated beyond the peripersonal space. This finding suggests that the extent of the peripersonal space may constrain the interpretation of retinal disparity. If this is the case then modifying the peripersona...

Background / Purpose: The relative rotation between a static planar surface, slanted around the vertical axis, and a laterally translating observer produces a continuous variation of the instantaneous gradient of the optic-flow (def). According to Wexler et al 2001, non-visual information about head movements is used together with the stationarit...

We measured perceived depth from the optic flow (a) when showing a stationary physical or virtual object to observers who moved their head at a normal or slower speed, and (b) when simulating the same optic flow on a computer and presenting it to stationary observers. Our results show that perceived surface slant is systematically distorted, for bo...

Do reach-to-grasp (prehension) movements require a metric representation of three-dimensional (3D) layouts and objects? We propose a model relying only on direct sensory information to account for the planning and execution of prehension movements in the absence of haptic feedback and when the hand is not visible. In the present investigation, we i...

Amodal completion of occluded angles is explained by a field model of visual interpolation (Gerbino & Fantoni 2000) based on the vectorial combination of good continuation (GC) and minimal path (MP). Here we consider symmetrical and asymmetrical occlusions of 90 deg angles and compare psychophysical data with predictions derived from different 2D-i...

Our field model (Gerbino & Fantoni, 2000; Fantoni & Gerbino, 2001) predicts that the interpolated trajectory between two T-junctions is affected by the size of the retinal gap. Kinetic occlusion displays indicate that interpolation is spatially as well as temporally local. When a diamond with partially occluded vertices undergoes a rigid size trans...

Helmholtz (1866) reported that the redness of a gray target on a red background was enhanced by covering it with a Semi Transparent Layer (S-TL). We observed a similar effect in the achromatic domain: when a S-TL is superposed on the classic simultaneous lightness contrast display in order to cover both the targets, the lightness difference between...

Motivation. Recent evidence suggests that extra-retinal signals play an important role in the perception of 3D structure from motion (SfM). According to the stationarity assumption (SA, Wexler, Lamouret, & Droulez, 2001), a correct solution to the SfM problem can be found for a moving observer viewing a stationary object, by assuming a veridical es...

One frequently reported result is that, for perceptual tasks, the amount of perceived depth is larger when motion and disparity cues are presented together than when only one of these depth cues is shown at a time. It is not known whether this increase of perceived depth in the combined condition is also found when depth estimation is aided by acti...

We studied a novel phenomenon indicating that the integration of extra-retinal information and the optic flow is a necessary but not sufficient condition for slant constancy during active head motion; congruency between monocular and binocular cues to depth is also required. In two experiments, we measured observers' performance in a rotation-detec...

Two disparate views of a planar surface patch are consistent with an infinite number of (V, H, d) triplets; where V and H are inclinations around vertical and horizontal axes, and d the convergence angle. Such indeterminacy is conveniently described by two functions [V= f(K1, d); H= f(K1, K2, d)], with K1 and K2 derivable from the relation between...

The 3D orientation of planar surfaces can be perceived in the absence of edge information. Here, we provide a theoretical and empirical demonstration that 3D orientation is specified by the orientation disparity of surface contours (i.e., intrinsic lines belonging to the same plane). The Local Orientation Disparity of correspondent lines [LOD] was...

Although the role of web page layout has been found to affect the Information Seeking Behaviour ISB, cognitive models of web navigation emphasize semantic aspects: the higher the similarity between user's goal and label meaning the easier the selection. We report research demonstrating that ISB is driven by the implicit knowledge of the item to whi...

Although the role of surface-level processes has been demonstrated, models of visual interpolation emphasize contour relationships. We report research on geometric constraints governing 3D interpolation between surface patches having no visible contours. In a previous study, we demonstrated that 3D relatability acts as a cue for spatial unification...

Recent studies suggest that the active observer combines optic flow information with extra-retinal signals resulting from head motion. Such a combination allows, in principle, a correct discrimination of the presence or absence of surface rotation. In Experiments 1 and 2, observers were asked to perform such discrimination task while performing a l...

Visual search within a web page depends of different strategies, based on semantic and spatial factors. Semantic aspects refer to the similarity between user's goal and label meaning; spatial aspects to label positions expected on the basis of scanning habits. We ran three visual search experiments to show that another strategy is involved; namely,...

Despite extensive research on stereoscopic cues, whether stereoscopic slant is based on point vs. orientation disparity is still a matter of debate. We measured slant sensitivity for stereoscopic planar patches covered by: back-projected straight lines with random orientation (Experiment 1) and random dots (Experiment 2). Surfaces were inclined aro...

When moving the glance vertically along a diamond, jagged with different edge discontinuities, a local shift of jags in the opposite direction of the eye movement and a global shape distortion (expansion/contraction) of the diamond opposite to what expected by the aperture effect are perceived. Observers followed a dot moving downward and upward al...

The orientation disparity field from two orthographic views of an inclined planar surface patch (covered by straight lines) is analyzed, and a new tool to extract the patch orientation is provided: the function coupling the average orientation of each pair of corresponding surface contours with their orientation disparity. This function allows iden...

Consider a stereoscopic display simulating two rectangular patches, the lower frontoparallel and the upper slanted around the vertical axis. When the two patches are amodally completed and appear as the unoccluded parts of a smooth surface partially hidden by a foreground frontoparallel surface, either real or illusory, their relative slant is unde...

When the eyes move vertically across a jagged diamond, a local shift (LS) of edge discontinuities and a global shape distortion (GD) (ie expansion/contraction opposite to that expected by the aperture effect) are perceived. These phenomena cannot be accounted for by a local motion signals integration rule based either on the intersection of constra...

Although the role of surface-level processes has been demonstrated, visual interpolation models often emphasize contour relationships. We report two experiments on geometric constraints governing 3D interpolation between surface patches without visible edges. Observers were asked to classify pairs of planar patches specified by random dot dispariti...

According to the scale-dependence hypothesis, the visual interpolation of contour fragments depends on the retinal separation of endpoints: as the retinal size of a partially occluded angle increases, the interpolated contour gradually deviates from the shortest connecting path and approaches the shape of the unoccluded angle. In the field model, a...

Consider two vertically adjacent random dot surfaces twisted 20° around the vertical axis and undergoing a 10° oscillation around the same axis during a period of 1/2 second. The rotation of the surfaces is perceived as rigid when they amodally unified behind a horizontal occlusion. Conversely, when the surfaces are interpreted as separated objects...

On the problem of the bisection of visual size and related configural factors, we found that: 1) when configural effects are minimized (isolated target condition) the perceived medium always differs from the arithmetic mean in the direction of the geometric mean (p< 0.01). The bias towards the geometric mean is stronger when relative size is larger...

On the problem of the bisection of visual size and related configural factors, we found that: 1) when configural effects are minimized (isolated target condition) the perceived medium always differs from the arithmetic mean in the direction of the geometric mean (p< 0.01). The bias towards the geometric mean is stronger when relative size is larger...

On the problem of the bisection of visual size and related configural factors, we found that: 1) when configural effects are minimized (isolated target condition) the perceived medium always differs from the arithmetic mean in the direction of the geometric mean (p< 0.01). The bias towards the geometric mean is stronger when relative size is larger...

Contour curvature polarity (i.e., concavity/convexity) is recognized as an important factor in shape perception. However, current interpolation models do not consider it among the factors that modulate the trajectory of amodally-completed contours. Two hypotheses generate opposite predictions about the effect of contour polarity on surface interpol...

Here is a new geometrical illusion. Draw three disks of increasing size, all tangent to a pair of non-parallel straight lines. Ask observers (or yourself) to visually extrapolate the tangents to the two smaller disks and to evaluate whether the largest disk is also tangent or, if not, whether it is too large or too small. Surprisingly, perception o...

We model the visual interpolation of missing contours by extending contour fragments under a smoothness constraint. Interpolated trajectories result from an algorithm that computes the vector sum of two fields corresponding to different unification factors: the good continuation (GC) field and the minimal path (MP) field. As the distance from termi...