Predictions in social perception

Research has shown that perception is an active process. The brain is constantly making predictions about the outcome of sensory events and revising predictions in response to feedback. Discrepancies naturally occur between expected and actual events resulting in ‘prediction errors’ that the brain actively works to resolve. Although prediction errors are transient in nature, they can be observed and measured during tests of sense-function. The longer they persist, the more disruptive they are to tasks involving high-speed sense-discrimination such as speech and reading comprehension. The principles of “predictive brain” are well established in the field of neuro-cognition. This study suggests they apply to the field of social-cognition as well ..and error analysis could be a useful measure of disruptions in social perception that characterize delusions of mental-illness [link].

Neural basis of stuttering

The neural basis of stuttering has to do with the integration of auditory information with speech-production commands. Previous studies show that stutterers’ produce a weaker-than-normal compensatory response while processing auditory feedback during speech. In this study they manipulated auditory feedback in order to see if weak compensatory responses are due to problems hearing feedback or using feedback. What they found is that stutterers’ have no difficulty hearing feedback, which narrows it down to functional areas responsible for using feedback ..or those areas responsible for translating performance-to-target feedback into corrective speech-action commands [link]

Take a Leap

A new interface to information ..using point and grasp gestures