Similarity has been proposed as a fundamental principle underlying mental object representations and capable of supporting cognitive-level tasks such as categorization. However, much of the research has considered connections between similarity and categorization for tasks performed using a single perceptual modality. Considering similarity and categorization within a multimodal context opens u...

The embodied view of language processing proposes that comprehension involves multimodal simulations, a process that retrieves a comprehender's perceptual, motor, and affective knowledge through reactivation of the neural systems responsible for perception, action, and emotion. Although evidence in support of this idea is growing, the contemporary neuroanatomical model of language suggests that...

Considerable evidence converges on the plasticity of attention and possibility that it can be modulated through regular training. Music training, for instance, has been correlated with modulations early perceptual attentional processes. However, extent to which music training modulate mechanisms involved in processing information (i.e., perception attention) is still widely unknown, particularl...

Nervous systems adapt to the prevailing sensory environment, and the consequences of this adaptation can be observed in the responses of single neurons and in perception. Given the variety of timescales underlying events in the natural world, determining the temporal characteristics of adaptation is important to understanding how perception adjusts to its sensory environment. Previous work has ...

People learn modality-independent, conceptual representations from modality-specific sensory signals. Here, we hypothesize that any system that accomplishes this feat will include three components: a representational language for characterizing modality-independent representations, a set of sensory-specific forward models for mapping from modality-independent representations to sensory signals,...

According to perceptual symbol systems (Barsalou, 1999), sensory-motor simulations underlie the representation of concepts. It follows that sensory-motor phenomena should arise in conceptual processing. Previous studies have shown that switching from one modality to another during perceptual processing incurs a processing cost. If perceptual simulation underlies conceptual processing, then veri...

In many collocated human-robot interaction scenarios, robots are required to accurately and unambiguously indicate an object or point of interest in the environment. Realistic, cluttered environments containing many visually salient targets can present a challenge. In this paper, we describe an experiment and results detailing the effects of visual saliency and pointing modality on human percep...

This paper presents a perceptual and acoustic analysis of a set of 12 different prosodic attitudes of Brazilian Portuguese, separated between 6 social, 5 propositional plus a neutral expressions. Audio-visual performances of these attitudes by two native speakers are described as well as their recognition by Brazilian listeners. The results show better performances for the propositional attitud...

Previous studies of dynamic crossmodal integration have revealed that the direction of apparent motion in a target modality can be influenced by a spatially incongruent motion stream in another, distractor modality. Yet, it remains to be examined whether non-motion intra- and crossmodal perceptual grouping can affect apparent motion in a given target modality. To address this question, we emplo...

The ability to accurately localize both tactile and painful sensations on the body is one of the most important functions of the somatosensory system. Most accounts of localization refer to the systematic spatial relation between skin receptors and cortical neurons. The topographic organization of somatosensory neurons in the brain provides a map of the sensory surface. However, systematic dist...