A recent review of studies using Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) with children found that IVR contributed to positive learning outcomes [7], however a systematic understanding of how each feature of IVR contributes to its success as a learning experience is still limited. This paper outlines the design of a multisensory embodied IVR experience, with the aim to explore how the inclusion of multisensory and interactive features in IVR contribute to the pedagogical success of the experience.

In the context of Palaeolithic archaeology, identifying traits of individual creators of prehistoric art remains a formidable challenge. This study introduces innovative traceological methods employed to analyze engraved stone plaquettes from the 15,800-year-old Late Upper Palaeolithic site of Gonnersdorf, Germany. Utilizing advanced techniques such as confocal microscopy, alongside manual and robotic experimentation, we investigate the hand preferences of individual engravers. Preliminary results reveal discernible patterns in tool positioning and tool angle variations, providing insights into engravers' lateralities. By integrating experimental findings with archaeological data, this study enhances our understanding of prehistoric engraving practices and contributes to the growing research on lateralized cognitive and motor processes in prehistoric art creation.

The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in examples of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, where topographic features of cave walls were incorporated into images. As part of a wider investigation into the visual psychology of the earliest known art, we explored three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in cases of Late Upper Palaeolithic art in Las Monedas and La Pasiega Caves (Cantabria, Spain). Deploying current research methods from visual psychology, our results support the notion that topography of cave walls played a strong role in the placement of figurative images—indicative of pareidolia influencing art making—although played a lesser role in determining whether the resulting images were relatively simple or complex. Our results also suggested that lighting conditions played little or no role in determining the form or placement of images, contrary to what has been previously assumed. We hypothesize that three ways of artist–cave interaction (‘conversations’) were at work in our sample caves and suggest a developmental scheme for these. We propose that these ‘conversations’ with caves and their surfaces may have broader implications for how we conceive of the emergence and development of art in the Palaeolithic.

The present study explored the effects of visuomotor synchrony in virtual reality during the embodiment of a full human avatar in children (aged 5-6 years) and adults. Participants viewed their virtual bodies from a first-person perspective while they moved the body during self-generated and structured movement. Embodiment was measured via questions and psychophysiological responses (skin conductance) to a virtual body-threat and during both movement conditions. Both children and adults had increased feelings of ownership and agency over a virtual body during synchronous visuomotor feedback (compared to asynchronous visuomotor feedback). Children had greater ownership compared to adults during synchronous movement but did not differ from adults on agency. There were no differences in SCRs (frequency or magnitude) between children and adults, between conditions (i.e., baseline or movement conditions) or visuomotor feedback. Collectively, the study highlights the importance of visuomotor synchrony for children's ratings of embodiment for a virtual avatar from at least 5 years old, and suggests adults and children are comparable in terms of psychophysiological arousal when moving (or receiving a threat to) a virtual body. This has important implications for our understanding of the development of embodied cognition and highlights the considerable promise of exploring visuomotor VR experiences in children.

The ~15,800 year-old Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf, in Germany, has produced 406 engraved schist plaquettes which have been extensively studied in the past. The introduction of advanced imaging technologies, notably Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), has now precipitated a re-evaluation of these artifacts, uncovering nuanced depictions of fishing practices previously unrecorded for the Upper Palaeolithic. Our investigation harnesses RTI to elucidate fine engraving details on the plaquettes, revealing depictions of fish and accompanying grid motifs. The analytical process enabled by RTI has exposed an intricate link between the grid patterns and fish figures, showing that they were a deliberate combination portraying the use of fishing nets. This discovery posits a significant departure from earlier interpretations of the site’s iconography, which predominantly emphasized more naturalistic representations of fauna. Furthermore, these findings illuminate aspects of Magdalenian cultural praxis, suggesting that representations of aquatic life and fishing technologies were not merely utilitarian in nature but were embedded within a broader symbolic framework. This study enhances our comprehension of Magdalenian peoples’ interaction with the aqueous milieu, revealing a sophisticated symbiosis between ecological adaptation and artistic expression.

Virtual Reality (VR) has vast potential for developing systematic, interdisciplinary studies to understand ephemeral behaviours in the archaeological record, such as the emergence and development of visual culture. Upper Palaeolithic cave art forms the most robust record for investigating this and the methods of its production, themes, and temporal and spatial changes have been researched extensively, but without consensus over its functions or meanings. More compelling arguments draw from visual psychology and posit that the immersive, dark conditions of caves elicited particular psychological responses, resulting in the perception-and depiction-of animals on suggestive features of cave walls. Our research developed and piloted a novel VR experiment that allowed participants to perceive 3D models of cave walls, with the Palaeolithic art digitally removed, from El Castillo cave (Cantabria, Spain). Results indicate that modern participants' visual attention corresponded to the same topographic features of cave walls utilised by Palaeolithic artists, and that they perceived such features as resembling animals. Although preliminary, our results support the hypothesis that pareidolia-a product of our cognitive evolution-was a key mechanism in Palaeolithic art making, and demonstrates the potential of interdisciplinary VR research for understanding the evolution of art, and demonstrate the potential efficacy of the methodology.

In at least 400 European caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens groups drew, painted and engraved non-figurative signs from at least ~42,000 bp and figurative images (notably animals) from at least 37,000 bp . Since their discovery ~150 years ago, the purpose or meaning of European Upper Palaeolithic non-figurative signs has eluded researchers. Despite this, specialists assume that they were notational in some way. Using a database of images spanning the European Upper Palaeolithic, we suggest how three of the most frequently occurring signs—the line < | > , the dot <•>, and the —functioned as units of communication. We demonstrate that when found in close association with images of animals the line < | > and dot <•> constitute numbers denoting months, and form constituent parts of a local phenological/meteorological calendar beginning in spring and recording time from this point in lunar months. We also demonstrate that the sign, one of the most frequently occurring signs in Palaeolithic non-figurative art, has the meaning . The position of the within a sequence of marks denotes month of parturition, an ordinal representation of number in contrast to the cardinal representation used in tallies. Our data indicate that the purpose of this system of associating animals with calendar information was to record and convey seasonal behavioural information about specific prey taxa in the geographical regions of concern. We suggest a specific way in which the pairing of numbers with animal subjects constituted a complete unit of meaning—a notational system combined with its subject—that provides us with a specific insight into what one set of notational marks means. It gives us our first specific reading of European Upper Palaeolithic communication, the first known writing in the history of Homo sapiens .

DNA methylation is essential for development. Two DNA methyltransferases, Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b, contribute to the creation of DNA methylation patterns in embryos. We demonstrated that the Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b proteins are expressed at different stages of embryogenesis. Dnmt3b is specifically expressed in totipotent embryonic cells, such as inner cell mass, epiblast and embryonic ectoderm cells, whilst Dnmt3a is significantly and ubiquitously expressed after E10.5. The difference in the expression stages of the Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b proteins may contribute to their distinct functions during the embryogenesis.

When the illumination falling on a surface change, so does the reflected light. Despite this, adult observers are good at perceiving surfaces as relatively unchanging-an ability termed colour constancy. Very few studies have investigated colour constancy in infants, and even fewer in children. Here we asked whether there is a difference in colour constancy between children and adults; what the developmental trajectory is between six and 11 years; and whether the pattern of constancy across illuminations and reflectances differs between adults and children. To this end, we developed a novel, child-friendly computer-based object selection task. In this, observers saw a dragon's favourite sweet under a neutral illumination and picked the matching sweet from an array of eight seen under a different illumination (blue, yellow, red, or green). This set contained a reflectance match (colour constant; perfect performance) and a tristimulus match (colour inconstant). We ran two experiments, with two-dimensional scenes in one and three-dimensional renderings in the other. Twenty-six adults and 33 children took part in the first experiment; 26 adults and 40 children took part in the second. Children performed better than adults on this task, and their performance decreased with age in both experiments. We found differences across illuminations and sweets, but a similar pattern across both age groups. This unexpected finding might reflect a real decrease in colour constancy from childhood to adulthood, explained by developmental changes in the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underpinning colour constancy, or differences in task strategies between children and adults. HIGHLIGHTS: Six- to 11-year-old children demonstrated better performance than adults on a colour constancy object selection task. Performance decreased with age over childhood. These findings may indicate development of cognitive strategies used to overcome automatic colour constancy mechanisms.

In adults, illusory embodiment of a virtual avatar can be induced using synchronous visuomotor cues. Further, embodying different-sized avatars influences adults’ perception of their environment’s size. This study (N=92) investigated whether children are also susceptible to such embodiment and size illusions. Adults and 5-year-olds viewed a first-person perspective of different-sized avatars, moving either synchronously or asynchronously with themselves. Participants rated their feelings of embodiment over the avatar, as well as estimating the sizes of their environment and body. Unlike adults, children embodied the avatar regardless of visuomotor synchrony. Both adults and children embodied different-sized avatars, affecting their perception of the size of their environment. These findings have important implications for our understanding of children’s bodily awareness and size perception.

The specificity and effectiveness of eye-movement training to remedy impaired visual exploration and reading with particular consideration of age and co-morbidity was tested in a group of 97 patients with unilateral homonymous hemianopia using a single subject /n-of-1 design. Two groups received either scanning training followed by reading training, or vice versa. The third group acted as a control group and received non-specific detailed advice, followed by training of scanning and reading. Scanning and reading performance was assessed before and after the waiting period, before and after scanning and reading training, and at short-term (11 weeks on average) and long-term follow-up (5 years on average). Improvements after training were practice-dependent and task-specific. Scanning performance improved by ∼40%, reading by ∼45%, and was paralleled by a reduction of subjective complaints. The advice (=control) condition was without effect. All improvements occurred selectively in the training period, not in treatment-free intervals, and persisted in the short- and long-term follow-up over several years. Age had only a minor, although significant effect on improvement in reading after training; co-morbidity had no significant impact on the outcome of training. In conclusion, visual impairments associated with homonymous hemianopia can be successfully and durably reduced by systematic and specific training of compensatory eye-movement strategies. The improvements in compensation strategies were independent of subjects’ age and of co-morbidity.

Evidence from the Full Body Illusion (FBI) has shown that adults can embody full bodies which are not their own when they move synchronously with their own body or are viewed from a first-person perspective. However, there is currently no consensus regarding the time course of the illusion. Here, for the first time, we examined the effect of visuomotor synchrony (synchronous/asynchronous/no movement) on the FBI over time. Surprisingly, we found evidence of embodiment over a virtual body after five seconds in all conditions. Embodiment decreased with increased exposure to asynchronous movement, but remained high in synchronous and no movement conditions. We suggest that embodiment of a body seen from a first-person perspective is felt by default, and that embodiment can then be lost in the face of contradictory cues. These results have significant implications for our understanding of how multisensory cues contribute to embodiment.

One cannot overemphasize the centrality of the visual brain to human evolution, perception, behaviour, identity and culture. We are visually-centric beings: it is estimated that more than half of o...

ABSTRACT How have our visual brains evolved, and exactly how did this constrain the specific way that animals were depicted in Upper Palaeolithic art? Here, we test predictions derived from visual neuroscience in this field. Using the example of open-air Upper Palaeolithic rock art of Portugal’s Côa Valley, we point out the frequently recurring outline strategies that past artists utilized to depict the prey animals upon which they were dependent for survival. Their depictional tendency can be mirrored onto the most visually salient anatomical aspects of these species, a finding that results from our use of a visual psychological experimental programme, called Bubbles. We find a remarkable correspondence between the aspects of the anatomy of horses and bison that modern participants found most helpful in successfully discriminating between the two, and those same aspects that are elaborated most in Upper Palaeolithic art. This leads us to conclude that the visual system of Homo sapiens drove the way that important prey species were depicted, and hence, the form of their art.

Abstract Previous studies suggest that to achieve color constancy, the human visual system makes use of multiple cues, including a priori assumptions about the illumination (“daylight priors”). Specular highlights have been proposed to aid constancy, but the evidence for their usefulness is mixed. Here, we used a novel cue-combination approach to test whether the presence of specular highlights or the validity of a daylight prior improves illumination chromaticity estimates, inferred from achromatic settings, to determine whether and under which conditions either cue contributes to color constancy. Observers made achromatic settings within three-dimensional rendered scenes containing matte or glossy shapes, illuminated by either daylight or nondaylight illuminations. We assessed both the variability of these settings and their accuracy, in terms of the standard color constancy index (CCI). When a spectrally uniform background was present, neither CCIs nor variability improved with specular highlights or daylight illuminants (Experiment 1). When a Mondrian background was introduced, CCIs decreased overall but were higher for scenes containing glossy, as opposed to matte, shapes (Experiments 2 and 3). There was no overall reduction in variability of settings and no benefit for scenes illuminated by daylights. Taken together, these results suggest that the human visual system indeed uses specular highlights to improve color constancy but only when other cues, such as from the local surround, are weakened.

Robert Kentridge is Professor of Psychology at the University of Durham, UK, and Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in their Azrieli Programme on Brain, Mind and Consciousness. He studied Chemical Engineering at University College London (only for a year), Psychology at the University of Leeds, and was supervised for his PhD by John Aggleton at the University of Durham, graduating in 1998. He has stayed at Durham ever since, but rather than moving physically he has changed his area of study, having worked on the neurochemical mechanisms of reinforcement in the rat, eye movements and visual attention, and finally neuropsychological as well as psychophysical approaches to the study of visual awareness. In addition to his work in the Department of Psychology, he is also centrally involved in the Durham Centre for Visual Arts and Culture and through this is developing an interest in the psychology of Palaeolithic art. What led you to study Psychology? I made a mistake with my initial choice of study. I realised that I wanted to study a subject in which there were such disagreements about the best way to test hypotheses and the appropriate ways of interpreting the data gleaned from these tests that, even as an undergraduate, one could genuinely have opinions about things. I did a little research by asking my friends about the courses that they were taking and realised that Psychology was the subject for me. I think I was right! Studying consciousness is still often thought to be a risky endeavour. How did you come to work on it? As is often the case, by chance. I had worked as a postdoc on projects looking at eye movements as well as visual attention and I’d written a lot of code that synchronised eye trackers with the visual displays. Larry Weiskrantz came to Durham and gave a talk in which he discussed work by Mike Gazzaniga’s lab suggesting that blindsight (visual abilities that persist after visual awareness is lost as a consequence of lesions in the visual cortex) might be explained in terms of ‘islands’ of undamaged cortex. Gazzaniga used stimuli whose location was yoked to an observer’s eye gaze to allow him to find a small region of spared vision surrounded by blindness in a patient with cortical damage. Weiskrantz noted in his talk that a similar approach could be taken in patients with blindsight covering much of a visual hemifield. If blindsight persisted even when eye movements could not fortuitously bring putative islands of spared cortex to pass over the location of a visual stimulus, then the ‘islands’ hypothesis was implausible as a general explanation of blindsight. Weiskrantz did not have the tools to test this, but I did, and so he, Charlie Heywood, and I began a long collaboration. It has to be said though that, for most of this time, we have studied processes that take place in the absence of visual awareness rather than studying consciousness per se. You mention ‘chance’. Do you feel that it plays a major role in the advancement of science? It certainly has for me, although the key is to recognise opportunities when they present themselves and make the best of them. When we were testing Weiskrantz’s patient ‘GY’ in the study that I have just described, GY made a chance remark between blocks of testing that I’m sure changed my career. He said that, as we were now testing locations in the upper visual field, he would try and focus his attention up there. This struck me as a quite extraordinary remark. I’d always thought of attention and consciousness as being intimately related — surely it was ridiculous to believe that attention could affect responses to stimuli that would not consciously be seen? Nevertheless, we arranged for GY to return for further sessions in which we tested this possibility. Directing attention to specific locations in his region of blindness did indeed affect the speed of his responses with no cost in accuracy. Attention and awareness did dissociate. We went on to demonstrate the same in neurotypical observers using a masking paradigm. Was this a controversial finding? Yes, but probably more so in philosophy than in psychology. A few philosophers published work suggesting flaws in either our methods or the interpretation of our results. I had some really enjoyable discussions, in particular with Chris Mole and Jesse Prinz, and I hope that they were fruitful for all of us — they certainly were for me. I went off and did further experiments on the relationship between visual awareness and specific components and types of attention that settled these issues. Negotiating common understanding and even common language across disciplines can be challenging, but for me discussions with philosophers have repeatedly generated ideas that I doubt would have struck me had I kept to a psychological silo. Do you have a favourite paper? I’ll mention two. One is about consciousness, but the other is related to the theoretical understanding of the way in which biological neural networks might give rise to thought — a problem that fascinates me but which I probably do not have the tools to tackle. The theoretical paper is Bressloff et al.’s ‘What geometric visual hallucinations tell us about the visual cortex’ (Neural Comput. (2002) 14, 473–491). In the 1980s there was a resurgence of interest in artificial neural networks (ANNs) within both psychology and computer science. These networks were avowedly artificial — they were not meant to mimic anatomy or physiology — but there seemed to be a simultaneous temptation to draw parallels between ANNs and real nervous systems. I was struck by the way in which none of the then dominant ANN models had captured the way in which thought and other cognitive processes extend over time. I wondered what properties a network needed in order for it to step between quasi-stable states in response to changing stimulation rather than simply pass a stimulus up a feedforward hierarchy or settle into a fixed attractor state. I became interested in the broad theory of computation and studies of the relationship between dynamics and computational complexity. I created some models of spiking networks in which ‘neurons’ had spatially constrained connectivity and in which there were distinct populations of excitatory and inhibitory ‘neurons’. These would indeed behave in a way that suggested organisation combined with time dependence. I was lucky enough to be a student at the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School just around this time. Jack Cowan (then Professor of Maths at the University of Chicago), one of the authors of the ‘hallucinations’ paper, gave a week-long course explaining the work behind the article. The paper is exquisite and demonstrates the role that inhibition plays in allowing the visual cortex to remain sensitive to external inputs rather than exhibiting behaviours dominated by the intrinsic dynamics arising from its structure. I rapidly came to understand that testing hypotheses based on the sort of model that I was pursuing would require data that I or probably anyone else were unlikely to be able to obtain. In addition, although my maths was OK, I saw that I really needed abilities that were well beyond me. So it was a paper, and a wonderful educational experience, that convinced me that the other opportunity that was being given to me at the time, studying vision in neuropsychological patients, was the way forward for me. The consciousness paper is Thouless’s ‘Phenomenal regression to the real object’, parts I (Brit. J. Psychol. (1931) 21, 339–359) and II (Brit. J. Psychol. (1931) 22, 1–30). In it, Thouless used a variety of methods to examine the relationship between our knowledge of objects in the world and the experiences they elicit. For example, we might know that the rim of a glass is circular, but our view of the rim is foreshortened when we see the glass from an angle. Thouless asked whether our experience of the shape of the rim was a veridical match to the foreshortened projection that it made on the retina. He found that people’s experiences never had enough foreshortening. He conducted similar experiments on people’s experiences of the sizes of small or large objects at different distances and of the apparent colour of materials under different illuminations, amongst many other examples. In every case, Thouless argued that people’s experiences were biased by their knowledge of the objects’ intrinsic properties — phenomenal regression to the real. Sometimes, to paraphrase Father Ted, “these are small and those are far away” doesn’t tell the whole story. This paper raises interesting questions about the nature of conscious experience, the way it arises, and even possibly what its function might be. It suggests that our experience does not simply mimic what is going on at our sensory surfaces. The relationship between our estimates of the properties of objects in the world (what one might call ‘percepts’) and our experiences (what one might call ‘sensations’) could be quite different from the classical view that we start with sensations and infer (perhaps unconsciously) from these our perceptual estimates of objects’ properties. Instead, it is possible that sensations arise from perceptual processes rather than vice versa or even that perception and sensation are quite independent. Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that the visual system doesn’t have to take activity at sensory surfaces as one of its starting points, but activity at sensory surfaces does not correspond to sensation, that is, to phenomenal experience. A few years ago, again with valuable insight from a philosopher (Kathleen Akins), my colleagues and I tried to address the question of whether the estimation of objects’ properties depends upon experience by testing whether the visual system creates a representation of the colour of a surface independent of illumination even when the surface is not consciously seen. Even when we had ruled out simple retinal mechanisms of colour constancy that might have explained our results, we still found that a representation of object colour must have been created — only this could explain the priming effects of our unseen target. What advice would you give a young scientist hoping to start a career in psychological research? First, technical skills are as or more important than knowledge and understanding of theories and the literature that surrounds them. A thorough understanding of practical experimental methods (often in psychology this means computer programming) and analysis (statistics) allows you to recognise what is and is not possible. Often such skills will allow you to produce novel experiments that test hypotheses in ways no one else has considered. They also open doors into new ventures and disciplines. My second line of advice was passed on to me by my great friend and colleague Charlie Heywood, who in turn was given it by his (and my) mentor, Alan Cowey. Science is a social enterprise. Hone your social skills for interacting with your colleagues and collaborators. Treat people fairly, as you would your friends. With luck, they will become your friends as well.

Translucence is an important property of natural materials, and human observers are adept at perceiving changes in translucence. Perceptions of different material properties appear to arise from different cortical regions, and it is therefore plausible that the perception of translucence is dependent on specialised regions, separate from those important for colour and texture processing. To test for anatomical independence between areas necessary for colour, texture and translucence perception we assessed translucency perception in a cortically colour blind observer, who performs at chance on tasks of colour and texture discrimination. Firstly, in order to establish that MS has shown no significant recovery, we assessed his colour perception performance on the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue Test. Secondly, we tested him with two translucence ranking tasks. In one task, stimuli were images of glasses of tea varying in tea strength. In the other, stimuli were glasses of tea varying only in milkiness. MS was able to systematically rank both strength and milkiness, although less consistently than controls, and for tea strength his rankings were in the opposite order. An additional group of controls tested with greyscale versions of the images succeeded at the tasks, albeit slightly less consistently on the milkiness task, showing that the performance of normal observers cannot be transformed into the performance of MS simply by removing colour information from the stimuli. The systematic performance of MS suggests that some aspects of translucence perception do not depend on regions critical for colour and texture processing.

What is the long‐term trajectory of semantic memory deficits in patients who have suffered structural brain damage? Memory is, per definition, a changing faculty. The traditional view is that after an initial recovery period, the mature human brain has little capacity to repair or reorganize. More recently, it has been suggested that the central nervous system may be more plastic with the ability to change in neural structure, connectivity, and function. The latter observations are, however, largely based on normal learning in healthy subjects. Here, we report a patient who suffered bilateral ventro‐medial damage after presumed herpes encephalitis in 1971. He was seen regularly in the eighties, and we recently had the opportunity to re‐assess his semantic memory deficits. On semantic category fluency, he showed a very clear category‐specific deficit performing better that control data on non‐living categories and significantly worse on living items. Recent testing showed that his impairments have remained unchanged for more than 40 years. We suggest cautiousness when extrapolating the concept of brain plasticity, as observed during normal learning, to plasticity in the context of structural brain damage.

The impact of visual field deficits such as hemianopia can be mitigated by eye movements that position the visual image within the intact visual field. Effective eye movement strategies are not observed in all patients, however, and it is not known whether persistent deficits are due to injury or to pre-existing individual differences. Here we examined whether repeated exposure to a search task with rewards for good performance would lead to better eye movement strategies in healthy individuals. Participants were exposed to simulated hemianopia during a search task in five testing sessions over five consecutive days and received monetary payment for improvements in search times. With practice, most participants made saccades that went further into the blind field earlier in search, specifically under conditions where little information about the target location would be gained by inspecting the sighted field. These changes in search strategy were correlated with reduced search times. This strategy improvement also generalised to a novel task, with better performance in naming objects in a photograph under conditions of simulated hemianopia after practice with visual search compared to a control group. However, even after five days, eye movements in most participants remained far from optimal. The results demonstrate the benefits, and limitations, of practice and reward in the development of effective coping strategies for visual field deficits.