https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/37000 2026-04-14T12:37:06Z 2026-04-14T12:37:06Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/37539 2020-05-25T06:39:07Z 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The role of visual and semantic similarity in the allocation of visual attention Abstract: Contemporary models of attentional deployment can be categorised as representing either a more top down/endogenous or bottom-up/exogenous approach. Recently, within the scope of visual attention, the role of semantic information in attentional guidance has garnered some significance (Wu et al., 2014; Henderson and Hayes, 2017) as opposed to traditional saliency based modelling. This project conducted three research tasks investigating the roles of visual similarity and semantic similarity in the allocation of exogenous and endogenous attention. Visual similarity was defined by the SSMIM Matlab function which calculates a score of similarity in terms of three low level features, i.e. contrast, luminance and structure. Semantic similarity was defined by the word2Vec framework (Mikolov et al., 2013) which quantifies context vectors. While the first two tasks on exogenous attention did not yield significant results, the third task on endogenous attention found significant effects of visual and semantic similarity in the allocation of attention, hinting at possible underlying mechanism in visual processing. Description: M.SC.COGNITIVE SCIENCE

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/37529 2020-05-25T06:41:09Z 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Measuring the cognitive and emotional components of empathy : a multimodal experimental study using thermography and self-report assessments Abstract: Although empathy has been of great interest to numerous philosophers and psychologists, empirical scientific research about this fundamental phenomenon is still rather limited. In this current research, a multimodal approach was adopted in studying the possibility of priming empathy as a human characteristic. The complex nature of both the cognitive and affective aspects of empathy has been explored through an emerging technique in cognitive science: infrared thermography. By looking at the physiological characteristic of change in facial skin temperature, this research aimed to compare the more traditional results acquired through self-report assessments with nasal temperature changes in participants who viewed pre-validated empathy-eliciting video stimuli. An average decrease of 0.21 degrees Celsius was observed in the nasal temperature of participants while viewing empathy-eliciting videos whereas an average increase of 0.22 degrees Celsius was observed while viewing emotionally-neutral videos; this result only approached statistical significance. Priming by the use of an informative video about empathy was not found to make a difference in the levels of empathy experienced when viewing empathy-eliciting video clips. This research has led to further questions about priming empathy and encouraged new possibilities for the use of infrared thermography as a tool in the research of emotion in cognitive science. Description: M.SC.COGNITIVE SCIENCE

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/37499 2020-05-25T06:43:32Z 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: An ERP study for exploring illusory motion Abstract: The aim of this study was to explore whether illusory motion stimulates the same pathways in the brain as real motion. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were used to obtain Visual Evoked Potentials (VEPs) from the occipital region in the visual cortex. Two types of stimuli were used: 1) illusory motion displays, based on the work of Akiyoshi Kitaoka (Thornton & Zdravkovic, 2018), 2) random dot patterns, based on the stimuli used in a previous VEP study (Mercier et al. 2009). The VEPs for both types of stimuli were averaged across participants. Previous studies have identified three main components in VEPs to motion, labelled P1, N2 and P2, with the N2 peak expected to show the most divergence between real motion and static stimuli. We further tested whether motion or static differences in VEP components were modulated by attention. Results showed that for random dot stimuli, the three main components, P1, N2 and P2 were clearly visible, and were modulated by motion. However, for illusory motion, none of the components seemed to be present. There also appears to be no strong attention manipulation on either random dot or illusion stimuli. Description: M.SC.COGNITIVE SCIENCE

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/37488 2020-05-25T06:37:11Z 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Effects of linguistic experience on the perception of musical rhythm : Finnish late learners of English Abstract: Previous research has found that mastering multiple languages with different rhythmic properties enhances the perception of musical rhythm. This study investigates whether learning a second language that shares a word-level stress preference with the first language but diverges on the speech unit level rhythm could lead to an enhancement in the perception of musical rhythm. In the study, 15 Finnish late learners of English and 16 English monolingual speakers were tested on their perception of musical rhythm using the rhythm subset of the Musical Ear Test (MET). Additionally, the study investigates whether the different use of pitch between two non-tone languages affects the perception of musical melody and the ability to discriminate lexical tones. These were tested using the melody subset of the MET and a Chinese Tone Discrimination Task. Participants’ phonological and working memory capacities, musical perceptual abilities, and musical training were assessed to control for individual differences. The findings suggest that mastering languages that only differ on the unit level rhythm may not be enough to enhance the perception of musical rhythm. The results also suggest that using pitch for grammatical functions enhances the perception of musical melody, but not that of lexical tones, in first language speakers and that acquiring the ability to detect small changes in pitch is challenging even for highly proficient second language learners. Contrary to earlier studies, the findings suggest that pitch in language and music are processed independently even in speakers of non-tone languages, and also that processing pitch in grammatical intonation is independent from the processing of musical pitch. The study raises questions about the influence of first language on rhythm and pitch perception both in speech and music. Description: M.SC.COGNITIVE SCIENCE

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z