Where does cue collide?

A source of visual information that the eye and brain use to judge how far away something is, so that a flat pair of retinal images can be read as a scene with real depth. Wheatstone's 1838 Contributions to the physiology of vision showed that the small difference between the two eyes' views is by itself enough to produce a vivid impression of solid depth, which established binocular disparity as a depth cue; Landy, Maloney, Johnston, and Young's 1995 Measurement and modeling of depth cue combination later modelled how the separate cues of disparity, shading, motion, and perspective are weighted and fused into one estimate of distance. Here the cue is a geometric or optical regularity in the light reaching the eye, and it is not a prompt that recovers a stored memory, a product feature a shopper reads for quality, or an incidental trace an animal exploits.[1][2]

Unit

One informative regularity in the retinal image, such as binocular disparity or motion parallax, that specifies distance

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed in psychophysics by cue-conflict and cue-isolation displays that reveal each cue's weight in perceived depth

A stimulus, present at the moment of remembering, that gives access to information already held in memory and so lets it be recalled. Tulving and Pearlstone's 1966 Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words showed that words a person could not produce on their own came readily once a category name was supplied, separating what is stored from what can be reached; Tulving and Thomson's 1973 Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory then argued that a cue helps only to the degree that it was encoded together with the target at the time of learning. Here the cue acts inside the rememberer on a stored trace, and it is not a geometric feature of the visual scene, a mark of product quality, or a feature of the environment used by an animal.[3][4]

Unit

One reminder stimulus paired with a to-be-remembered item, scaled by how much recall it supports

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Compared across free recall, cued recall, and recognition, with the recall gain under a cue indexing its effectiveness

An observable feature of a product or its surroundings that a shopper reads as evidence of quality that cannot be seen directly before buying. Olson and Jacoby's 1972 Cue utilization in the quality perception process set out the standard division into intrinsic cues, which belong to the product itself such as ingredients or texture, and extrinsic cues such as price, brand name, and packaging; Steenkamp's 1990 Conceptual model of the quality perception process then formalised how buyers select and weight these cues to reach a quality judgement. Here the cue is an observable marker in the marketplace interpreted by a consumer, and it is not a depth-specifying feature of the retinal image, a memory prompt, or an evolutionary by-product read by an animal.[5][6]

Unit

One observable product attribute (for example price, brand, or ingredient) used to infer quality

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Studied by varying cues experimentally and recording their effect on quality ratings and purchase choice

Any feature of the world that an animal uses to guide what it does next but that did not evolve in order to inform, which is what sets it apart from a signal. Maynard Smith and Harper's 1995 Animal signals: Models and terminology drew the line precisely: a signal is a trait shaped by selection because it changes a receiver's behaviour, while a cue is incidental information the receiver merely exploits, such as the ripple a predator reads to locate hidden prey. Here the cue is an ecological regularity used by a receiver in nature and defined by its lack of a communicative function, and it is not a source of visual depth, a prompt for stored memory, or a marker of product quality.[7]

Unit

One exploited environmental feature that informs an animal's action without having evolved to do so

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Inferred by testing whether a feature guides receiver behaviour and whether selection favoured it for signalling