Dr Michael Pilling
PhD
Senior Lecturer in Psychology
School of Psychology, Social Work and Public Health
Role
Dr. Michael Pilling has worked Oxford Brookes since September 2007. Prior to this he has worked at the University of Surrey, The Open University, and at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research. He holds a PhD from the University of Surrey.
He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cognitive Psychology.
More information can be found on his Google Scholar page.
Areas of expertise
- Visual perception.
- Visual cognition
Teaching and supervision
Supervision
Alfred Veldhuis. PhD Candidate. "The self-reference effect in perception and memory"
Research Students
Name | Thesis title | Completed |
---|---|---|
Sam Bond | A Detailed Exploration into the Constraints on Statistical Learning | Active |
Research
Michael Pilling is currently interested in a number of research topics associated with visual cogntiion.
These currently include:
- The effects of visual masking on object processing
- Factors determining the efficiency of comparison processes between VSTM object representations and concurrent vision
- Visual search for dynamic events.
Centres and institutes
Groups
Projects as Co-investigator
- Project [INTERLINKED] Game Component (led by TDE)(01/02/2024 - 30/09/2024), funded by: Counter Terrorism Policing, funding amount received by Brookes: £56,656, funded by: Counter Terrorism Policing
Publications
Journal articles
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Pilling M, 'Attentional guidance from unique faster/slower discrete and smooth feature changes in visual search '
Visual Cognition 31 (9) (2024) pp.671-677
ISSN: 1350-6285 eISSN: 1464-0716AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARTwo studies examine the circumstances in which a singleton object, defined by a unique feature-change rate within a display, guides attention in visual search. Participants searched for a static vertical/horizontal white target bar amidst tilted distractors. All bars were contained inside surround coloured shapes with periodically oscillating features. In Experiment 1, displays consisted of surrounds with abrupt (discrete) or continuous (smooth) changes between two values (red-blue, square-diamond). For discrete displays, target surrounds did not guide attention when uniquely faster-oscillating than distractor surrounds but did so in smooth displays. For a unique slower-oscillating target surround the opposite guidance pattern was found across discrete and smooth displays. In Experiment 2, displays had a combination of discrete and smooth change distractors. Here only unique slower oscillating discrete surrounds guided attention. No guidance was found for smooth surrounds. Findings suggest that faster oscillations are masked by higher-frequency harmonic signals from slower changing discrete items, and there is attentional prioritisation of discrete over smooth changes.
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Pilling M, Gellatly A, 'The influence of absolute and relative spatial cues on change detection performance'
Visual Cognition [in press] (2024)
ISSN: 1350-6285 eISSN: 1464-0716AbstractOpen Access on RADARTwo experiments investigate how absolute and relative spatial cues influence perceptual comparisons between visual short-term memory (VSTM) and current vision. The core question concerned the role of task demands in this process. Two tasks were given across two experiments, differing in the extent they required object-level comparisons. Experiment 1, a feature comparison task, required reporting if any new colour was present in the second of two interleaved displays of four colours inside a surround; Experiment 2, an object comparison task, required report of any changes in colour-shape pairings in the second of two interleaved displays of four coloured shapes in a surround. Absolute and relative spatial organization was manipulated in both experiments by presenting compared displays on the same or contralateral sides, and by having the second display items in the same locations within the surround, in new locations, or repositioned into previous locations of other items. In sensitivity, both tasks showed an advantage for absolute spatial cues, but only the object task showed an advantage for relative spatial cues. In bias, both tasks were similarly influenced by both absolute and relative cues. Results suggest relative spatial cues are always available but only used when making object-level comparisons.
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Barrett DJK, Souto D, Pilling M, Baguley DM, 'An Exploratory Investigation of Pupillometry As a Measure of Tinnitus Intrusiveness on a Test of Auditory Short-Term Memory'
Ear and Hearing 43 (5) (2022) pp.1540-1548
ISSN: 0196-0202 eISSN: 1538-4667AbstractObjectives:
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the potential of pupillometry to provide an objective measure of competition between tinnitus and external sounds during a test of auditory short-term memory.Design:
Twelve participants with chronic tinnitus and twelve control participants without tinnitus took part in the study. Pretest sessions used an adaptive method to estimate listeners’ frequency discrimination threshold on a test of delayed pitch discrimination for pure tones. Target and probe tones were presented at 72 dB SPL and centered on 750 Hz±2 semitones with an additional jitter of 5 to 20 Hz. Test sessions recorded baseline pupil diameter and task-related pupillary responses (TEPRs) during three blocks of delayed pitch discrimination trials. The difference between target and probe tones was set to the individual’s frequency detection threshold for 80% response-accuracy. Listeners with tinnitus also completed the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI). Linear mixed effects procedures were applied to examine changes in baseline pupil diameter and TEPRs associated with group (tinnitus versus control), block (1 to 3) and their interaction. The association between THI scores and maximum TEPRs was assessed using simple linear regression.Results:
Patterns of baseline pupil dilation across trials diverged in listeners with tinnitus and controls. For controls, baseline pupil dilation remained constant across blocks. For listeners with tinnitus, baseline pupil dilation increased on blocks 2 and 3 compared with block 1. TEPR amplitudes were also larger in listeners with tinnitus than controls. Linear mixed effects models yielded a significant group by block interaction for baseline pupil diameter and a significant main effect of group on maximum TEPR amplitudes. Regression analyses yielded a significant association between THI scores and TEPR amplitude in listeners with tinnitus.Conclusions:
Our data indicate measures of baseline pupil diameter, and TEPRs are sensitive to competition between tinnitus and external sounds during a test of auditory short-term memory. This result suggests pupillometry can provide an objective measure of intrusion in tinnitus. Future research will be required to establish whether our findings generalize to listeners across a full range of tinnitus severity. -
Pilling M, Barrett DJK, Gellatly A, 'The basis of report-difference superiority in delayed perceptual comparison tasks'
Memory & Cognition 48 (2020) pp.856-869
ISSN: 0090-502X eISSN: 1532-5946AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARA major role for visual short-term memory (VSTM) is to mediate perceptual comparisons of visual information across successive glances and brief temporal interruptions. Research that has focused on the comparison process has noted a marked tendency for performance to be better when participants are required to report a difference between the displays rather than report the absence-of-a-difference (i.e. a sameness). We refer to this performance asymmetry as report-difference superiority (RDS). It has been suggested that RDS reflects the operation of a reflexive mechanism that generates a mismatch signal during the comparison of visual input with information maintained in VSTM. This bottom-up mechanism therefore gives evidence for the presence of a feature change but not for the absence of such a change; consequently a sameness is harder to detect than a difference between two displays (Hyun et al. 2009). We test this explanation, and determine whether by itself it is a sufficient explanation of the RDS. In a delayed comparison task we find the RDS effect is most prevalent when items retain the same display locations, however the effect does persist even when compared item locations were scrambled across memory and test arrays. However, with a conjunction task this scrambling of locations was effective in wholly abolishing the RDS effect. We consider that the RDS effect is a consequence of local comparisons of features, as well as global statistical comparisons.
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Kenward B, Pilling M, 'The now-moment is believed privileged because now is when happening is experienced (Commentary on BBS target article Thinking in and about time, by Hoerl and McCormack)'
Behavioral and Brain Sciences: An International Journal of Current Research and Theory with Open Peer Commentary 42 (2019)
ISSN: 0140-525X eISSN: 1469-1825AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARHoerl and McCormack (H&M) risk misleading about the cognitive underpinnings of the belief in a privileged now-moment because they do not explicitly acknowledge that the sense of existing in the now-moment is an intrinsically temporally dynamic one. The sense of happening that is exclusive to the now-moment is a better candidate for the source of belief in a privileged now.
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Pilling M, Guest D, Andrews M, 'Perceptual errors support the notion of masking by object substitution'
Perception 48 (2) (2019) pp.138-161
ISSN: 0301-0066 eISSN: 1468-4233AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARTwo experiments examined the effect of Object Substitution Masking (OSM) on the perceptual errors in reporting the orientation of a target. In Experiment 1 a four-dot trailing mask was compared with a simultaneous-noise mask. In Experiment 2, the four-dot and noise masks were factorially-varied. Responses were modelled using a mixture regression-model and Bayesian-inference to deduce whether the relative impacts of OSM on guessing and precision were the same as those of a noise mask, and thus whether the mechanism underpinning OSM is based on increasing noise rather than a substitution process. Across both experiments, OSM was associated with an increased guessing-rate when the mask trailed target offset, and a reduction in the precision of the target representation (although the latter was less reliable across the two experiments). Importantly, the noise mask also influenced both guessing and precision, but in a different manner, suggesting that OSM is not simply caused by increasing noise. In Experiment 2 the effects of OSM and simultaneous-noise interacted, suggesting the two manipulations involve common mechanisms. Overall results suggest that OSM is often a consequence of a substitution process, but there is evidence that the mask increases noise levels on trials where substitution doesn’t occur.
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Pilling M, Georgieva M, 'Feature synchrony-asynchrony and rate of change in visual search.'
Visual Cognition 26 (10) (2019) pp.792-801
ISSN: 1350-6285 eISSN: 1464-0716AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARAttention is known to be sensitive to the temporal structure of scenes. We initially tested whether feature synchrony, an attribute with potential special status because of its association with objecthood, is something which draws attention. Search items were surrounded by colours which periodically changed either in synchrony or out-of synchrony with periodic changes in their shape. Search for a target was notably faster when the target location contained a unique synchronous feature change amongst asynchronous changes. However, the reverse situation produced no search advantage. A second experiment showed that this effect of unique synchrony was actually a consequence of the lower rate of perceived flicker in the synchronous compared to the asynchronous items, not the synchrony itself. In our displays it seems that attention is drawn towards a location which has a relatively low rate of change. Overall, the pattern of results suggested the attentional bias we find is for relative temporal stability. Results stand in contrast to other work which has found high and low flicker rates to both draw attention equally [Cass, J., Van der Burg, E., & Alais, D. (2011). Finding flicker: Critical differences in temporal frequency capture attention. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 320]. Further work needs to determine the exact conditions under which this bias is and is not found when searching in complex dynamically-changing displays.
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Pilling, M, Barrett, DJ, 'Change perception and change interference within and across feature dimensions'
Acta Psychologica 188 (2018) pp.84-96
ISSN: 0001-6918AbstractThe ability to perceive a change in a visual object is reduced when that change is presented in competition with other changes which are task-irrelevant. We performed two experiments which investigate the basis of this change interference effect. We tested whether change interference occurs as a consequence of some form of attentional capture, or whether the interference occurs at a stage prior to attentional selection of the task-relevant change. A modified probe-detection task was used to explore this issue. Observers were required to report the presence/absence of a specified change-type (colour, shape) in the probe, in a context in which -on certain trials- irrelevant changes occur in non-probe items. There were two key variables in these experiments: the attentional state of the observer, and the dimensional congruence of changes in the probe and non-probe items. Change interference was strongest when the irrelevant changes were the same as those on the report dimension. However the interference pattern persisted even when observers did not know the report dimension at the time the changes occurred. These results seem to rule out attention as a factor. Our results fit best with an interpretation in which change interference produces feature-specific sensory noise which degrades the signal quality of the target change.Published here Open Access on RADAR -
Kimberley M. Hill1, Michael Pilling2 and David R. Foxcroft2, 'Affordances for Drinking Alcohol: A Non-Participant Observation Study in Licensed Premises'
European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (6) (2018) pp.747-755
ISSN: 0046-2772 eISSN: 1099-0992AbstractAlcohol misuse is a pressing area of public health concern. This non‐participant observational study investigated the functional characteristics of on‐licensed premises where alcohol is consumed. Seven different licensed premises from South Central England were visited and observed for similar three hour periods on Saturday evenings. Observations within these ecological niches were grouped using a functional taxonomy of affordances and effectivities related to alcohol drinking. Affordances provide a theoretically grounded and useful concept for evaluating how individuals behave in drinking contexts, while identifying action opportunities for inhibiting and promoting consumption. Identified alcohol‐related affordances were related to: alcohol access, regulations, furnishing, alternative opportunities for action, décor and lighting, drink and accessory availability, and action opportunities provided by others. This research has implications for understanding alcohol consumption in real‐time, social environments, with direct implications for preventing excessive consumption within community alcohol outlets.Published here Open Access on RADAR -
Hill KM, Foxcroft DR, Pilling M, '“Everything is telling you to drink”: understanding the functional significance of alcogenic environments for young adult drinkers'
Addiction Research & Theory 26 (6) (2017) pp.457-464
ISSN: 1606-6359 eISSN: 1476-7392AbstractBackground: Dominant approaches to understanding alcohol consumption and preventing misuse focus on cognitive antecedents of drinking behaviour. However, these approaches are not only limited, but ignore wider contextual factors. Adopting an ecological approach, this paper considers the functional significance of alcogenic environments from the perspectives of individual drinkers, based on the availability of alcohol-related affordances.Published here Open Access on RADAR
Method: Twelve undergraduate students aged 18-30, with a range of self-reported drinking behaviours virtually navigated a range of drinking environments during photo-elicitation interviews. Participants individually described drinking contexts in terms of the form and function-based characteristics that they believed promoted and/or inhibited their alcohol consumption.
Results: Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed the meaning drinking environments had for drinkers, based on their experiences. For participants, alcohol consumption was related to accessibility, communicating with others, consuming food, grasping items, furniture availability, watching or listening to entertainment, advertisement placement, premise décor and alternative action opportunities.
Conclusions: Focusing on the functional significance of drinking contexts may be more conducive to understanding contextual factors which may promote or prohibit alcohol consumption. The extent that alcohol-related affordances are linked with excessive consumption and alcohol-related problems merits further study. -
Hill KM, Pilling M, Foxcroft DR, 'Alcohol-related affordances and group subjectivities: A Q-Methodology study'
Drugs: Education, Prevention, and Policy 25 (5) (2017) pp.376-385
ISSN: 0968-7637 eISSN: 1465-3370AbstractAims: An Ecological approach to alcohol behaviour focuses on understanding individual–environment transactions, rather than on cognitive antecedents of behaviour. Meaning exists in the interdependence of individuals and their environments, in terms of affordances. Through subjective experience, this study focussed on group viewpoints related to alcohol-related affordances, or opportunities to consume alcohol in shared drinking environments.Published here Open Access on RADAR
Methods: Forty students with a range of self-reported drinking behaviours participated in a Q-Methodology study, ranking 60 statements along a symmetrical grid. This varied concourse of alcohol-related affordances was obtained from a previous observation study within licenced premises and a photo-elicitation interview study with drinkers.
Findings: Factor analysis and post-sort interviews revealed four subjective perspectives held by groups about their drinking behaviour: 13 participants were aware of contextual influences, but autonomous in their drinking choices; 12 participants were conscious of influences and compliant to their effects; six participants were unaware of influences, but unanimous with their peers; two participants were concerned about acting appropriately in a context by taking up canonical affordances.
Conclusions: Grouping subjectivities from a varied concourse of affordances can reveal subjective experience in relation to drinking environments and alcohol behaviour. This conceptual approach for understanding drinking behaviour should be studied further. -
Camp SJ, Pilling M, Gellatly A, 'Object substitution masking and its relationship with visual crowding'
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 79 (5) (2017) pp.1466-1479
ISSN: 1943-3921AbstractObject substitution masking (OSM) occurs when the perceptibility of a brief target is reduced by a trailing surround mask typically composed of four dots. Camp et al. (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41, 940–957, 2015) found that crowding a target by adding adjacent flankers, in addition to OSM, had a more deleterious effect on performance than expected based on the combined individual effects of crowding and masking alone. The current experiments test why OSM and crowding interact in this way. In three experiments, target-flanker distance is manipulated whilst also varying mask duration in a digit identification task. The OSM effect—as indexed by the performance difference between unmasked and masked conditions—had a quadratic function with respect to target-flanker distance. Results suggest it is OSM affecting crowding rather than the converse: Masking seems to amplify crowding at intermediate target-distractor distances at the edge of the crowding interference zone. These results indicate that OSM and crowding share common mechanisms. The effect of OSM is possibly a consequence of changes to the types of feature detectors which are pooled together for target identification when that target must compete for processing with a trailing mask in addition to competition from adjacent flankers.Published here Open Access on RADAR -
Barret DJK, Pilling M, 'Evaluating the Precision of Auditory Sensory Memory as an Index of Intrusion in Tinnitus'
Ear and Hearing 38 (2) (2017) pp.262-265
ISSN: 0196-0202 eISSN: 1538-4667AbstractObjectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential of measures of auditory short-term memory (ASTM) to provide a clinical measure of intrusion in tinnitus.Published here Open Access on RADARDesign: Response functions for six normal listeners on a delayed pitch discrimination task were contrasted in three conditions designed to manipulate attention in the presence and absence of simulated tinnitus: (1) no-tinnitus, (2) ignore-tinnitus, and (3) attend-tinnitus.
Results: Delayed pitch discrimination functions were more variable in the presence of simulated tinnitus when listeners were asked to divide attention between the primary task and the amplitude of the tinnitus tone.
Conclusions: Changes in the variability of auditory short-term memory may provide a novel means of quantifying the level of intrusion associated with the tinnitus percept during listening.
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Pilling M, Barrett DJ, 'Dimension-based attention in visual short-term memory'
Memory & Cognition 44 (5) (2016) pp.740-749
ISSN: 0090-502X eISSN: 1532-5946AbstractWe investigated how dimension-based attention influences visual short-term memory (VSTM). This was done through examining the effects of cueing a feature dimension in two perceptual comparison tasks (change detection and sameness detection). In both tasks, a memory array and a test array consisting of a number of colored shapes were presented successively, interleaved by a blank interstimulus interval (ISI). In Experiment 1 (change detection), the critical event was a feature change in one item across the memory and test arrays. In Experiment 2 (sameness detection), the critical event was the absence of a feature change in one item across the two arrays. Auditory cues indicated the feature dimension (color or shape) of the critical event with 80 % validity; the cues were presented either prior to the memory array, during the ISI, or simultaneously with the test array. In Experiment 1, the cue validity influenced sensitivity only when the cue was given at the earliest position; in Experiment 2, the cue validity influenced sensitivity at all three cue positions. We attributed the greater effectiveness of top-down guidance by cues in the sameness detection task to the more active nature of the comparison process required to detect sameness events (Hyun, Woodman, Vogel, Hollingworth, & Luck, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35; 1140–1160, 2009).Published here -
Kumar S, Pilling M, 'The cauldron of the ethical review process in human participant research'
Cortex: A Journal devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior 71 (2015) pp.413-414
ISSN: 0010-9452AbstractPublished hereBioethics; Human participants
Baron (2015) in this issue nicely identifies some of the issues the scientist faces in gaining ethical approval for their research, as well as offering a credible alternative to address these problems. We have made a number of observations – both from our own experiences and from those of our colleagues at various institutions – on the ethical approval process. Ethics is often a source of frustration for the research scientist; it can be time consuming, it operates as a bottleneck in the research process – by extension – it is arguably an impediment to scientific progress. The process of obtaining ethical acceptance is often a wearisome one for scientists and a frequent source of complaint. The impression is given that ethical panels tend to tolerate rather than support research on human participants. Some seem to operate from a starting principle of research on human participants' being an exploitative one, i.e., one in which, without the guardianship provided by the panels, scientists would frequently, knowingly or unknowingly, infringe upon the welfare of individual participants. Indeed, in the UK the National Research Ethics Service of the National Health Service seems to explicitly pledge such a role in affirming its service exists to protect the ‘rights, safety, dignity and well-being of research participants’ as its primary concern. We believe that the other ethical committees of different institutions may espouse similar views. This starting point of apparent antagonism between the scientist and ethics review panel is not a helpful one and is a source of many of the frustrations that scientists experience. Baron further argues that ethics review board members often fail to apply the parameters to judge ethical components in any constant manner; even where consistency is evident this is never done in terms of any objective analysis of expected utility-loss. This problem has been recognised before in critiques of the ethical review process. In particular Zimbardo (1973) – after his Stanford Prison Experiment – noted how ethics reviewers tend to make decisions using a relative (contingent) ethical principle, one which has potential to be used arbitrarily. It is notable that in Universities at least, the application of ethical principle seems to be something uniquely applied to research activities. No such ethical principle or process applies to other contexts, for example teaching. Thus the same stimulus set and experimental task can be conducted for educational or demonstration purposes in the teaching room. If the same experiment is done as part of a research activity then it suddenly falls into the domain of the ethics board and requires a whole set of protocols to follow and approvals to be obtained. It is not clear how same intervention (same stimuli/experiment) requires the application of two different set of rules, nor what is special about research per se which makes it a unique source of formal ethical concern.
We agree with Baron's point that the ethics board reviewer may make systematic errors in exaggerating low probability risks. In our personal view and experience of working at various institutions, we conservatively estimate to have each tested well over 2000 participants, either directly as a researcher or indirectly through supervising students' research, but either of us has yet had any encounter of a situation where a participant displayed an unanticipated or unpleasant reaction to an experimental manipulation or stimulus presentation. It is ironic that in most cases the research scientist themselves is the one best placed to assess the most likely risks of an experiment they are conducting; the ethical review panellists are often making judgements on things which are outside of their field of experience and expertise.
Baron goes on to propose that ethics board members be trained in decision making and statistics and be taught to bring such rules of logic to the ethical review process. However, such approach has the danger of becoming too formalised. It could ultimately lead to board members being replaced with an automated computer algorithm or expert system to make ethical decisions. Probably, as researchers we won't like to see this and most would like to retain some level of human element in the ethical decision process even despite the flaws and frustrations we have highlighted.
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Camp SJ, Pilling M, Argyropoulos I, Gellatly ARH, 'The role of distractors in Object Substitution Masking'
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 41 (4) (2015) pp.940-957
ISSN: 0096-1523AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARIn object substitution masking (OSM) a surrounding mask (typically comprising of 4 dots) onsets with a target but lingers after offset; under such conditions, the ability to perceive the target can be significantly reduced. OSM was originally claimed to occur only when a target was not the focus of attention, for instance, when embedded in an array of distractors (Di Lollo, Enns, & Rensink, 2000). It was argued that the distractors influenced the time taken for focal attention to reach the target. Some recent work, however, failed to find any such distractor influence; the effect of mask duration was found to be independent of set size when steps were taken to avoid ceiling effects in the smallest set size condition (Argyropoulos, Gellatly, Pilling, & Carter, 2013; Filmer, Mattingley, & Dux, 2014). In 3 experiments, we repeatedly found that set size manipulations can interact with mask duration (in which neither ceiling nor floor effects are evident), with the effect of the mask on target perceptibility being amplified according to the number of distractor items. However, a further experiment (Experiment 4) showed that crowding by nearby distractors was actually responsible for this "set size" effect. When decoupled from crowding, set size alone did not interact with masking, though it did influence overall accuracy. Thus, the presence of distractors does influence OSM, but not in the way originally assumed by Di Lollo and colleagues in their model. The Crowding × OSM interaction suggests that the 2 phenomena involve partly overlapping mechanisms.
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Pilling M, Gellatly A, Argyropoulos Y, Skarratt P, 'Exogenous spatial precuing reliably modulates object processing but not object substitution masking.'
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 76 (6) (2014) pp.1560-1576
ISSN: 1943-3921AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARObject substitution masking (OSM) is used in behavioral and imaging studies to investigate processes associated with the formation of a conscious percept. Reportedly, OSM occurs only when visual attention is diffusely spread over a search display or focused away from the target location. Indeed, the presumed role of spatial attention is central to theoretical accounts of OSM and of visual processing more generally (Di Lollo, Enns, & Rensink, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 129:481-507, 2000). We report a series of five experiments in which valid spatial precuing is shown to enhance the ability of participants to accurately report a target but, in most cases, without affecting OSM. In only one experiment (Experiment 5) was a significant effect of precuing observed on masking. This is in contrast to the reliable effect shown across all five experiments in which precuing improved overall performance. The results are convergent with recent findings from Argyropoulos, Gellatly, and Pilling (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 39:646-661, 2013), which show that OSM is independent of the number of distractor items in a display. Our results demonstrate that OSM can operate independently of focal attention. Previous claims of the strong interrelationship between OSM and spatial attention are likely to have arisen from ceiling or floor artifacts that restricted measurable performance.
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Skarratt P, Gellatly A, Cole G, Pilling M, Hulleman J, 'Looming motion primes the visuomotor system.'
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 40 (2) (2014) pp.566-579
ISSN: 0096-1523AbstractA wealth of evidence now shows that human and animal observers display greater sensitivity to objects that move toward them than to objects that remain static or move away. Increased sensitivity in humans is often evidenced by reaction times that increase in rank order from looming, to receding, to static targets. However, it is not clear whether the processing advantage enjoyed by looming motion is mediated by the attention system or the motor system. The present study investigated this by first examining whether sensitivity is to looming motion per se or to certain monocular or binocular cues that constitute stereoscopic motion in depth. None of the cues accounted for the looming advantage. A perceptual measure was then used to examine performance with minimal involvement of the motor system. Results showed that looming and receding motion were equivalent in attracting attention, suggesting that the looming advantage is indeed mediated by the motor system. These findings suggest that although motion itself is sufficient for attentional capture, motion direction can prime motor responses.Published here Open Access on RADAR -
Argyropoulos I, Gellatly A, Pilling M, Carter W, 'Set Size and Mask Duration Do Not Interact in Object-Substitution Masking'
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 39 (3) (2013) pp.646-661
ISSN: 0096-1523 eISSN: 1939-1277AbstractObject-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a mask, such as four dots that surround a brief target item, onsets simultaneously with the target and offsets a short time after the target, rather than simultaneously with it. OSM is a reduction in accuracy of reporting the target with the temporally trailing mask, compared with the simultaneously offsetting mask. It has been thought that. OSM occurs only if attention cannot be rapidly focused, or prefocused, on the target location. One line of evidence for this is a reported interaction between target display set size and the duration of the trailing mask. We analyze the evidence for this interaction and suggest it occurs only as an artifact of data being compressed by a ceiling effect. We report six experiments that support this interpretation by showing that the interaction is always absent unless a ceiling effect is induced. We go on to analyze other evidence to support the notion that attention modulates OSM, and argue that in each case, the data either reflect a ceiling effect or can be explained in another way. Our data and our analyses of the existing literature have strong implications for how OSM should be conceptualized.Published here -
Argyropoulos I, Gellatly A R H, Pilling M, Carter W, 'Set size and mask duration do not interact in object substitution masking'
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 39 (3) (2013) pp.646-661
ISSN: 0096-1523AbstractPublished hereObject-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a mask, such as four dots that surround a brief target item, onsets simultaneously with the target and offsets a short time after the target, rather than simultaneously with it. OSM is a reduction in accuracy of reporting the target with the temporally trailing mask, compared with the simultaneously offsetting mask. It has been thought that OSM occurs only if attention cannot be rapidly focused, or prefocused, on the target location. One line of evidence for this is a reported interaction between target display set size and the duration of the trailing mask. We analyze the evidence for this interaction and suggest it occurs only as an artifact of data being compressed by a ceiling effect. We report six experiments that support this interpretation by showing that the interaction is always absent unless a ceiling effect is induced. We go on to analyze other evidence to support the notion that attention modulates OSM, and argue that in each case, the data either reflect a ceiling effect or can be explained in another way. Our data and our analyses of the existing literature have strong implications for how OSM should be conceptualized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
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Pilling M, Gellatly A, 'Task probability and report of feature information: What you know
about what you ‘see’ depends on what you expect to need'
Acta Psychologica 143 (3) (2013) pp.261-268
ISSN: 0001-6918AbstractWe investigated the influence of dimensional set on report of object feature information using an immediate memory probe task. Participants viewed displays containing up to 36 coloured geometric shapes which were presented for several hundred milliseconds before one item was abruptly occluded by a probe. A cue presented simultaneously with the probe instructed participants to report either about the colour or shape of the probe item. A dimensional set towards the colour or shape of the presented items was induced by manipulating task probability — the relative probability with which the two feature dimensions required report. This was done across two participant groups: One group was given trials where there was a higher report probability of colour, the other a higher report probability of shape. Two experiments showed that features were reported most accurately when they were of high task probability, though in both cases the effect was largely driven by the colour dimension. Importantly the task probability effect did not interact with display set size. This is interpreted as tentative evidence that this manipulation influences feature processing in a global manner and at a stage prior to visual short term memory.Published here -
Guest D, Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'Reduced OSM for long duration targets: individuation or items loaded into VSTM?'
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 38 (6) (2012) pp.1541-1553
ISSN: 0096-1523AbstractTypical studies of object substitution masking (OSM) employ a briefly presented search array. The target item is indicated by a cue/mask that surrounds but does not overlap the target and, compared to a common offset control condition, report of the target is reduced when the mask remains present after target offset. Given how little observers are able to report of item arrays that have been presented for several hundred milliseconds (Wolfe, Reinecke, & Brawn, 2006), it might be expected that OSM would also be found if the search array is presented for an extended period before the target is cued by onset of a mask surrounding it. However, Gellatly, Pilling, Carter, and Guest (2010) reported that under these conditions OSM is greatly reduced. This target duration effect could be due to identity information about the search array having been loaded into VSTM during the precue period. Alternatively, it can be understood in terms of target/mask individuation and the object updating account of OSM (Lleras & Moore, 2003). The present article reports three experiments investigating which of these possibilities provides the better explanation of the effect of target duration on OSM. The results support the individuation hypothesis and, thereby, the object updating account of OSM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)Published here -
Pilling M, 'Audiovisual Cues and Perceptual Learning of Spectrally Distorted Speech'
Language and Speech 54 (4) (2011) pp.487-497
ISSN: 0023-8309AbstractTwo experiments investigate the effectiveness of audiovisual (AV) speech cues (cues derived from both seeing and hearing a talker speak) in facilitating perceptual learning of spectrally distorted speech. Speech was distorted through an eight channel noise- vocoder which shifted the spectral envelope of the speech signal to simulate the properties of a cochlear implant with a 6 mm place mismatch. Experiment 1 found that participants showed significantly greater improvement in perceiving noise-vocoded speech when training gave AV cues than when it gave auditory cues alone. Experiment 2 compared training with AV cues with training which gave written feedback. These two methods did not significantly differ in the pattern of training they produced. Suggestions are made about the types of circumstances in which the two training methods might be found to differ in facilitating auditory perceptual learning of speech.Published here -
Guest D, Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'The effect of spatial competition between object-level representations of target and mask on object substitution masking'
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 73 (8) (2011) pp.2528-2541
ISSN: 1943-3921AbstractPublished hereOne of the processes determining object substitution masking (OSM) is thought to be the spatial competition between independent object file representations of the target and mask (e.g., Kahan & Lichtman, 2006). In a series of experiments, we further examined how OSM is influenced by this spatial competition by manipulating the overlap between the surfaces created by the modal completion of the target (an outline square with a gap in one of its sides) and the mask (a four-dot mask). The results of these experiments demonstrate that increasing the spatial overlap between the surfaces of the target and mask increases OSM. Importantly, this effect is not caused by the mask interfering with the processing of the target features it overlaps. Overall, the data indicate, consistent with Kahan and Lichtman, that OSM can arise through competition between independent target and mask representations.
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Pilling M, Gellatly A, 'Visual awareness of objects and their colour'
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 73 (7) (2011) pp.2026-2043
ISSN: 1943-3921AbstractPublished hereAt any given moment, our awareness of what we 'see' before us seems to be rather limited. If, for instance, a display containing multiple objects is shown (red or green disks), when one object is suddenly covered at random, observers are often little better than chance in reporting about its colour (Wolfe, Reinecke, & Brawn, Visual Cognition, 14, 749-780, 2006). We tested whether, when object attributes (such as colour) are unknown, observers still retain any knowledge of the presence of that object at a display location. Experiments 1-3 involved a task requiring two-alternative (yes/no) responses about the presence or absence of a colour- defined object at a probed location. On this task, if participants knew about the presence of an object at a location, responses indicated that they also knew about its colour. A fourth experiment presented the same displays but required a three-alternative response. This task did result in a data pattern consistent with participants' knowing more about the locations of objects within a display than about their individual colours. However, this location advantage, while highly significant, was rather small in magnitude. Results are compared with those of Huang (Journal of Vision, 10(10, Art. 24), 1-17, 2010), who also reported an advantage for object locations, but under quite different task conditions.
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Gellatly A, Pilling M, Carter W, Guest D, 'How does target duration affect object substitution masking?'
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 36 (5) (2010) pp.1267-1279
ISSN: 0096-1523AbstractObject substitution masking (OSM) is typically studied using a brief search display. The target item may be indicated by a cue/mask surrounding but not overlapping it. Report of the target is reduced when mask offset trails target offset rather than being simultaneous with it. We report 5 experiments investigating whether OSM can be obtained if the search display is on view for a period of up to 830 ms but cueing of the target location is delayed. The question of interest is whether OSM must reflect the initial response of the visual system to target onset or whether it can arise in other ways, possibly during the transition from a pre-attentive representation of the target item to an attentional representation of it. Our results show that OSM decreases in strength as target duration increases. An explanation is suggested in terms of the object individuation hypothesis (Lleras & Moore, 2003).Published here -
Pilling M, 'Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in audiovisual speech perception'
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52 (4) (2009) pp.1073-1081
ISSN: 1092-4388AbstractPurpose: It has recently been reported (e.g., V. van Wassenhove, K. W. Grant, & D. Poeppel, 2005) that audiovisual (AV) presented speech is associated with an N1/P2 auditory event-related potential (ERP) response that is lower in peak amplitude compared with the responses associated with auditory only (AO) speech. This effect was replicated. Further comparisons were made between ERP responses to AV speech in which the visual and auditory components were in or out of synchrony, to test whether the effect is associated with the operation of integration mechanisms, as has been claimed, or occurs because of other factors such as attention. Method: ERPs were recorded from participants presented with recordings of unimodal or AV speech syllables in a detection task. Results: Comparisons were made between AO and AV speech and between synchronous and asynchronous AV speech. Synchronous AV speech produced an N1/P2 with lower peak amplitudes than with AO speech, unaccounted for by linear superposition of visually evoked responses onto auditory-evoked responses. Asynchronous AV speech produced no amplitude reduction. Conclusion: The dependence of N1/P2 amplitude reduction on AV synchrony validates it as an electrophysiological marker of AV integration. -
Pilling M, 'Auditory Event-related Potentials (ERPs) in Audiovisual Speech Perception'
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52 (4) (2009) pp.1073-1081
ISSN: 1092-4388 eISSN: 1558-9102AbstractIt has recently been reported (e.g., V. van Wassenhove, K. W. Grant, & D. Poeppel, 2005) that audiovisual (AV) presented speech is associated with an N1/P2 auditory event-related potential (ERP) response that is lower in peak amplitude compared with the responses associated with auditory only (AO) speech. This effect was replicated. Further comparisons were made between ERP responses to AV speech in which the visual and auditory components were in or out of synchrony, to test whether the effect is associated with the operation of integration mechanisms, as has been claimed, or occurs because of other factors such as attention. ERPs were recorded from participants presented with recordings of unimodal or AV speech syllables in a detection task. Comparisons were made between AO and AV speech and between synchronous and asynchronous AV speech. Synchronous AV speech produced an N1/P2 with lower peak amplitudes than with AO speech, unaccounted for by linear superposition of visually evoked responses onto auditory-evoked responses. Asynchronous AV speech produced no amplitude reduction. The dependence of N1/P2 amplitude reduction on AV synchrony validates it as an electrophysiological marker of AV integration.Published here -
Pilling M, Gellatly A, 'Target visibility in the standing wave illusion: Is mask-target shape similarity important?'
Perception 38 (1) (2009) pp.5-16
ISSN: 0301-0066AbstractPublished hereThe perceptibility of a flickering central bar can be dramatically reduced by the presence of two flanking bars presented in counterphase. This phenomenon, known as the 'standing wave illusion', has been suggested to involve local edge interactions (Macknik et al, 2000 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 97 7556 - 7560). High-level re-entrant mechanisms have also been implicated. Enns (2002, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 9 489-496) reports an association between the reported viability of the centre bar and its similarity in shape with the flanking bars. We find that this relationship between shape similarity and reported visibility seems to be contingent on the degree of experienced apparent motion. When target duration is shortened, so reducing apparent motion, reports of visibility reflect the amount of abutting contour. In a further experiment we find that luminance discriminations of the centre bar are related to the amount of abutting contour not to shape similarity. This is despite experiment 3 being conducted at stimulus durations for which experiment 2 visibility ratings indicated that shape similarity is important and contour is not. We suggest that this perceived motion may be the factor mediating shape 'effects' in the reported visibility task. We propose that the absence of such shape effects in the discrimination task may be because the task provides an objective measure of visibility that is immune to bias from perceived motion. We also speculate that while target luminance information may be immune to masking resulting from perceived motion, it may be subject to masking due to lateral inhibition.
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Pilling M, Robertson C, 'Categorical Perception of Facial Expressions: Evidence for a Category Adjustment Model'
Memory & Cognition 35 (2007) pp.1814-1829
ISSN: 0090-502X eISSN: 1532-5946AbstractFour experiments probed the nature of categorical perception (CP) for facial expressions. A model based on naming alone failed to accurately predict performance onthese tasks. The data are instead consistentwith an extension of the category adjustment model (Huttenlocher et al., 2000), in which the generation of a verbal code (e.g., "happy") activated knowledge ofthe expression category's range andcentral tendency (prototype) in memory, which was retained as veridical perceptual memory faded.Further support for amemory bias toward the category center came from a consistently asymmetric pattern of within-category errors. Verbal interference in the retention interval selectively removed CP for facial expressions, under blocked, but not under randomized presentation conditions. However, verbal interference at encoding removed CPeven under randomized conditions and these effects were shown to extend even to caricatured expressions, which lie outside the normal range of expression categories.
Book chapters
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Beton L, Hughes P, Barker S, Pilling M, Fuente L, Crook NT, 'Leader-Follower Strategies for Robot-Human Collaboration' in Aldinhas Ferreira MA, Silva Sequeira J, Osman Tokhi M, Kadar EE, Singh Virk G (ed.), A World with Robots, Springer (2017)
ISBN: 9783319466651 eISBN: 9783319466675AbstractThis paper considers the impact that robot collaboration strategies have on their human collaborators. In particular, we are interested in how robot leader/follower strategies affect perceived safety and perceived intelligence, which, we argue, are essential for establishing trust and enabling true collaboration between human and robot. We propose an experiment which will enable us to evaluate the impact of leader/follower collaboration strategies on perceived safety and intelligence.Published here
Conference papers
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Fuente LA, Ierardi H, Pilling M, Crook NT, 'Influence of Upper Body Pose Mirroring in Human-Robot Interaction'
9388 (2015) pp.214-223
eISBN: 978-3-319-25554-5AbstractThis paper explores the effect of upper body pose mirroring in human-robot interaction. A group of participants is used to evaluate how imitation by a robot affects people’s perception of their conversation with it. A set of twelve questions about the participants’ university experience serves as a backbone for the dialogue structure. In our experimental evaluation, the robot reacts in one of three ways to the human upper body pose: ignoring it, displaying its own upper body pose, and mirroring it. The manner in which the robot behaviour influences human appraisal is analysed using the standard Godspeed questionnaire. Our results show that robot body mirroring/non-mirroring influences the perceived humanness of the robot. The results also indicate that body pose mirroring is an important factor in facilitating rapport and empathy in human social interactions with robots.Published here
Other publications
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Kumar S, Pilling M, 'The cauldron of the ethical review process in human participant research.', (2015)
AbstractDiscussion forumPublished here -
Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'Object Substitution Masking of Long Duration Targets-now You Don't See It, Now You Do', (2011)
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Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'Visual Awareness of Objects, Their Colour and Orientation', (2011)
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Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'How Does the Duration of Target Presentation Affect Object Substitution Masking?', (2009)
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Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'Object Substitution Masking With a Single Peripheral Dot: Evidence of Object Updating Or Attentional Capture?', (2009)
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Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'Target-mask Spatial Separation Influences the Extent of Object Substitution Masking', (2009)
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Gellatly A, Pilling M, 'When and Why Does Masking Affect Long Duration Targets?', (2009)
Professional information
Conferences
Conference Abstracts
- Özgen, Pilling, M. & Davies. (1999). Colour naming and cognition: two tests of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- Pilling, M. & Davies, (2001). Identifying the locus of linguistic influence on colour judgments. Perception ECVP abstract 30.
- Rose, D., Pilling, M. & DeBruyn. (2002). Interocular transfer of second-order tilt aftereffects. Perception ECVP abstract 31.
- Wiggett, A., Pilling, M. & Davies, I.R.L. (2004). The effect of Stroop interference on the categorical perception of colour. Perception ECVP abstract 31.
- Pilling, M. & Gellatly, A. (2003). Contour effects in object substitution masking. Perception ECVP abstract 32,
- Davies, I.R.L., Özgen, E., Pilling, M. & Wiggett, A. (2004). Categorical perception, perceptual magnet and prototype-bias: same or different phenomena? Journal of Vision 3 (9), 250-250
- Davies, I.R.L., Özgen, E., Pilling, M. & Riddett, A. (2004). The relationship between categorical perception and memory bias towards the prototype. Perception ECVP abstract 33.
- Pilling, M, & Gellatly A. (2009). Object substitution masking with a single peripheral dot: evidence of object updating or attentional capture? Perception, 38, ECVP abstract Supplement, page 16
- Pilling, M. & Gellatly, A. (2009). Immediate memory for objects and object colour. Proceedings of the 16th Meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, page 32.
- Gellatly, A., Guest, D. & Pilling, M. (2009). When and why does masking affect long duration targets? Perception, 38, ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 135
- Guest, D., Gellatly A., & Pilling, M. (2009). Target-mask spatial separation influences the extent of object substitution masking. Perception, 38, ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 15
- Pilling, M. & Gellatly, A, 2010, Visual awareness of objects, their colour and orientation. Perception, 39, ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 78
- Gellatly, A., Guest, D., & Pilling, M. (2010), Object substitution masking of long duration targets - Now you don`t see it, now you do. Perception, 39, ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 118
- Pilling, M. & Gellatly, A. (2010). Visual awareness of objects and object features as revealed by an abrupt cueing task. Proceedings of the 1st Joint conference of the EPS and SEPEX. Page 182
- Pilling, M. & Gellatly, A. (2011). The relationship between visual attention and visual short term memory for objects Proceedings of the 17th Meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, p 137
- Pilling, M. & Gellatly, A. (2011). Visual attention and knowing about what you ‘see’. British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Annual conference, Keele University, UK.
- Pilling M. Gellatly A. & Argyropoulos I, (2012). Spatial attention does not influence Object Substitution Masking. Perception, 41, ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 134
- Pilling M. (2013) Target and mask preview effects in object substitution masking. Perception, 42, ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 26
- Camp. S. & Pilling, M. Does set-size contribute to masking in Object Substitution Masking? ECVP Abstract Supplement, page84
- Pilling M. (2014). The influence of dimensional attention on perceptual comparisons of features. Perception, 43, ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 99
- Skarratt, P.A., Oltean, B., Hulleman, J. Gellatly, R.H., Pilling, M. & Cole. G.G., (2015). A looming puzzle: What do slope and intercept functions say about attentional prioritisation? Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) winter meeting, Jan., London.
- Pilling, M. (2015). Attentional-set and competition from irrelevant changes in change perception. Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) summer meeting July 2015, University of Lincoln.
- Camp, S. & Pilling, M. (2015). The role of crowding in Object Substitution Masking. ECVP 2015, Liverpool
- Pilling, M. & Guest, D. (2015). Object substitution masking, stimulus noise, and perceptual fidelity. ECVP 2015, Liverpool.
- Pilling, M. (2016). VSTM and comparisons of colour sameness and difference across the same and different spatial locations. The second Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) and Spanish Experimental Psychology Society (SEPEX) joint meeting. July 2016, Oxford University.
- Pilling M. & Barrett, D. (2017). Memory load and feature comparison processes in visual short-term memory. Sept. 2017. BPS Cognitive Section Annual conference, Newcastle University.
- Barrett, D. & Pilling, M. (2017). Temporal and spatial characteristics of dynamic visual search in periodically masked displays. Proceedings of the 19th meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Potsdam, Germany
- Pilling M. & Barrett, D. (2017). Visual search for action-controlled and uncontrolled events. Proceedings of the 19th meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Potsdam, Germany.