Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one’s cognitive system, for example, one’s thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen (at least in certain ways that are identified in the paper) then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrab...

Perceptual learning refers to how experience can change the way we perceive sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. Examples abound: music training improves our ability to discern tones; experience with food and wines can refine our pallet (and unfortunately more quickly empty our wallet), and with years of training radiologists learn to save lives by discerning subtle details of images that...

Perceptual simulations are unconscious and automatic, whereas perceptual imagery is conscious and deliberate, but it is unclear how easily one can transfer perceptual information from unconscious to conscious awareness. We investigated whether it is possible to be aware of what one is mentally representing; that is, whether it is possible to consciously examine the contents of a perceptual simu...

Perceptual simulations are unconscious and automatic, whereas perceptual imagery is conscious and deliberate, but it is unclear how easily one can transfer perceptual information from unconscious to conscious awareness. We investigated whether it is possible to be aware of what one is mentally representing; that is, whether it is possible to consciously examine the contents of a perceptual simu...

Perceptual experience usually comes with “phenomenal force”, a strong sense that it reflects reality as is. Some philosophers have argued is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force perceptual experiences are able to non-inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role force. Drawing Bayesian modeling cognitive science, argue ...

Verbal overshadowing is a phenomenon where verbalizing a nonverbal experience produces an inaccurate memory of the experience. Drawing from perceptual symbol systems, we postulate that verbal overshadowing belongs to the larger phenomenon of perceptual interference. Verbalizing or mentally imaging nonverbal experiences produces inaccurate memories of those experiences. This is because people in...

Experience is conceptualized in both academic and policy circles as a more-or-less direct effect of the design of the built environment. Drawing on an investigation of people’s everyday experiences of designed urban environments in two UK towns, this paper suggests two reasons why urban sensory encounters cannot be understood entirely as a consequence of the design features of those environment...

Although the majority of research on human memory has concentrated on a person's ability to recall or recognize items as having been presented in a particular situation, the effects of memory are also revealed in a person's performance of a perceptual task. Prior experience with material can make that material more easily identified or comprehended in perceptually difficult situations. Unlike w...

Previous studies have shown that the adult speakers experience difficulty in discriminating nonnative phonetic contrasts that are not phonemic in their native language. The present study examined the internal structure of phonetic category representations in adults to seek an explanation for the impact of language experience on phonetic perception. Experiment 1 shows that language experience af...

Understanding the developmental origins of face recognition has been the goal of many studies of various approaches. Contributions of experience-expectant mechanisms (early component), like perceptual narrowing, and lifetime experience (late component) to face processing remain elusive. By investigating captive chimpanzees of varying age, a rare case of a species with lifelong exposure to non-c...