Bennett I. Bertenthal - US grants

The proposed research is designed to investigate the onset and development of those perceptual competencies that must be implemented when the three-dimensional form of objects and the motion of the self are extracted from continuously changing visual information. These two accomplishments, perceiving form and self motion, are assumed to be fundamental requisites of an adaptively functional visual system. The principle objective is to use dynamic processing formalisms, that have recently been forwarded in the literatures on human perception and computer vision, as guides to assessing the infant's developing visual competencies. The research plan includes 21 experiments divided among three related issues. The first series of experiments is designed to examine the onset and early development of those basic processing assumptions needed to extract coherent, three-dimensional forms from the optical flow found in dynamic environments. The second group of experiments seeks to examine how the infant's general and specific world knowledge affects the perceived functional significance of the information extracted from optic flow. In particular, these experiments are concerned with the recognition of point-light displays depicting people walking and faces expressing discrete emotions. The last group of experiments are concerned with the perception of self motion from continuous perspective transformations of the optic array. These experiments will explore the functional significance of this dynamic information for infants' maintenance of postural stability. The studies are designed to investigate the formal properties in dynamic flowfields that are detected by the infant, and also the special role that may be played by peripherally presented information. These experiments will focus on perceptual development during the first year of life. A variety of methods and measures will be used - infant-control habituation paradigm, paired preferential looking techniques, instrumental conditioning, visual fixation, heart rate, postural stability - in order to make use of the most sensitive assessments possible. The results from these experiments will contribute to our understanding of how the infant is initially prepared to extract some of the most general regularities manifest in continuously changing visual information and how experience leads to the development of additional information extraction processes.

The proposed research is designed to investigate the onset and development of those perceptual competencies that must be implemented when the configural properties of objects and the notion of the self are extracted from continuously changing visual information. These two accomplishments, perceiving form and self motion, are assumed to be fundamental requisites of an adaptively functional visual system. The principle objective is to use dynamic processing formalisms, that have recently been forwarded in the literatures on human perception and computer vision, as guides to assessing the infant's developing visual competences. The research plan includes 21 experiments divided among three related issues. The first series of experiments is designed to examine the onset and early development of those basic processing assumptions needed to extract coherent, three-dimensional forms from the optical flow found in dynamic environments. The second group of experiments seeks to examine how the infant's general and specific world knowledge affects the perceived functional significance of the information extracted from optic flow. In particular, these experiments are concerned with the recognition of point-light displays depicting people walking and faces expressing discrete emotions. The last group of experiments are concerned with the perception of self motion from continuous perspective transformations of the optic array. These experiments will explore the functional significance of this dynamic information for infants' maintenance of postural stability. The studies are designed to investigate the formal properties in dynamic flowfields that are detected by the infant, and also the special role that may be played by peripherally presented information. These experiments will focus on perceptual development during the first year of life. A variety of methods and measures will be used - infant - control habituation paradigm, paired preferential looking techniques, instrumental conditioning, visual fixation, heart rate, postural stability - in order to make use of the most sensitive assessments possible. The results from these experiments will contribute to our understanding of how the infant is initially prepared to extract some of the most general regularities manifest in continuously changing visual information and how experience leads to the development of additional information extraction processes.

The current proposal is guided by the premise that there are two principal functions of motion processing. One is to make perceptual information accessible to cognitive processing by specifying a unique 3D object that is perceived as meaningful, i.e., a representation that makes contact with stored knowledge. The other function is to extract information from the transforming optical array for specifying the layout of surfaces and guiding self-movements. In general, the perceptual information necessary for representation is object-centered, whereas the information necessary for specifying self-motion is viewer-centered. It is hypothesized that changes in sensitivity to each of these two sources of information are a function of different development factors. The specific objectives for this funding period are to further evaluate and refine the preceding proposal. Three related issues in the development of motion processing will be investigated by testing infants from 2 to 15 months of age. The first is concerned with the spatial and temporal limits on perceiving motion. A series of experiments are proposed to examine developmental changes in threshold sensitivity to spatial and temporal displacements in random dot kinematograms. Adult analogue experiments using spatially filtered displays will be used to provide convergent evidence. The second issue is concerned with the development of object-centered processes and involves experiments designed to examine infants' responses to moving displays. It is our contention that these processes undergo a developmental shift between 3 and 5 months of age. Whereas, 3-month-old infants respond to constituent properties (e.g. local rigidity), 5-month- old infants respond to the changes in the perception of self- motion. Experiments are proposed to evaluate how changes in the range of exploratory behaviors (e.g., looking locomotion) demand new sensitivities to optical flow for guiding responses. A wide range of paradigms and measures will be used in this research. The procedures includes habituation, forced-preferential looking, and a moving room analogue involving projection screens; the measures include looking time, heart rate, facial expression, foot switches, and postural sway. This diversity of methods and questions will provide new insights into those perceptual processes that are fundamental to perceptual competence as well as those that are dynamically driven by the specific developmental tasks encountered by infants.

With the rise of digital photography and social networking, people are capturing and sharing photos on social media at an unprecedented rate. Such sharing may lead to privacy concerns for the people captured in such photos, e.g., in the context of embarrassing photos that go "viral" and are shared widely. At worst, online photo sharing can result in cyber-bullying that can greatly affect the subjects of such photos. This research builds on the observation that viewers of a photo are mindful of the privacy of other people, and could be influenced to protect their privacy when sharing photos online. First, the research will study how people think and feel about sharing photos of themselves and others. This will involve measuring their behavioral and physiological responses as they make their decisions. Second, the research will identify to what degree these decisions can be altered through technical mechanisms that are designed to encourage responsible image sharing activity that respects the privacy of people captured in the photo. The investigators will involve graduate and undergraduates students in this research.

This project brings together expertise in the psychological and brain sciences and computer security and privacy to explore socio-technical solutions for privacy in the context of photo sharing. In particular, the research focuses on first developing an understanding of people's cognitive and affective dynamics while sharing photos on social media. The research seeks to 1) determine the effects of attention, depth of processing, and decisional uncertainty on image sharing decisions; and 2) identify the relationship between affective responses to images and decisions to share images on social media. Building on the knowledge gained from these experiments, the research seeks to develop and test a series of socio-technical intervention strategies such as face-highlighting and identity-priming, which are informed by a novel theoretical and methodological framework called objectification theory, or the idea that people are often motivated to see other people in terms of particular features or as objects of entertainment. These interventions will counteract objectification by encouraging viewers to consider the personal identity or privacy of the people depicted in each image before making image-sharing decisions. Thus, the mechanisms for addressing bystander privacy will be grounded in a psychological study that understands and manipulates the elements of decision making while sharing photos.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Photo sharing on social media is occurring at unprecedented rates; yet, the privacy of photo subjects and photo bystanders is frequently ignored during sharing. Viral internet ‘memes’ are often the result of embarrassing photos taken out of context, putting the photo subject at risk of cyber-bullying, shaming, and abuse. People from marginalized or vulnerable groups are especially at risk. The project’s novelties are to understand how social group memberships of people sharing photos and of photo targets influence online photo sharing. As such, the research team examines the contextual factors of the photo and the individual characteristics of photo perceivers that influence their willingness to share photo memes depicting strangers. The project’s broader significance and importance are to illuminate the role that bias plays in one of the most common modes of communication, as well as inform the creation of interventions that circumvent biased behavior on the part of social media users in the future. Moreover, this project paves the way for multiple new lines of research, as it pioneers a new stimulus set and methodology to understand how intergroup biases influence privacy decisions and includes participants of various racial and ethnic groups.

The project includes a set of studies that is among the first to examine the role of bias and social group membership in privacy and sharing decisions on social media. Across the studies, the researchers validate a new stimulus set with photo-based memes representing diverse photo subjects and situations and examine the extent to which decisions to share photo memes of other people vary based on the group membership of participants and photo targets, using multiple behavioral methods. Of primary interest is whether different groups of participants differentially protect the privacy of others across various social group memberships (e.g., gender, race, and age).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.