Emotional faces convey important information on social chances as well as danger. Therefore, automatic attention allocation to emotional facial expressions is a frequently investigated phenomenon. Processing advantages of emotional over neutral stimuli have been shown using various experimental paradigms like Dot-Probe (Bocanegra, Huijding, & Zeelenberg, 2012), Eriksen-Flanker-Task (Fenske & Easwood, 2003) and Visual Search (Fox et al., 2000). Nevertheless, more and more evidence appears showing that these effects are not unconditional (i.e. Bar-Haim, Lamy, Pergamin, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007). Person characteristics, like anxiety, as well as task characteristics (Wirth & Wentura, 2017) modulate attentional effects. The talk includes own data from dot-probe studies (Puls & Rothermund, 2017), showing no attentional capture of emotional faces at all, as well as data from the Eriksen-Flanker-Task (Tannert & Rothermund, 2018) showing attentional effects of emotional faces being conditional on relevance of the affect dimension and necessity of flanker processing. One explanation for these and other results, reviewed in this talk, is a certain amount of top-down influences on attention even at this early stage of processing. Theories considering this possibility (e.g. contingent capture account¸ Folk & Remington, 1998) will be outlined and discussed in light of the present as well as previous findings.

Several theories of emotional attention claim that angry faces capture attention because they are highly relevant stimuli for the observer. However, in the dot-probe task – a paradigm commonly used to asses emotional attentional bias – usually only anxious participants show an attentional bias towards angry faces. We conducted three experiments to investigate social processing as a potential moderator for the occurrence of such a bias in non-anxious samples. In Experiment 1, participants performed a dot-probe task with two different target types. In the social target condition, participants had to categorise socially meaningful targets (schematic faces). In the non-social target condition, socially meaningless targets (scrambled schematic faces) were employed. Before the onset of the target display, two photographic face cues – one angry and one neutral – were presented for 100 ms. Participants only showed a significant bias towards angry face cues in the social target condition, but not in the non-social target condition. In Experiment 2, we increased the SOA between cue and target onset to 200 ms. Again, a significant bias towards angry face cues only occurred in the social target condition. In Experiment 3, we additionally observed the N2pc component of the ERP as a measure of shifts in spatial attention. N2pc components elicited by angry face cues were significantly larger in the social target condition than in the non-social target condition. These results suggest that social processing moderates the occurrence of attentional bias towards angry faces in non-anxious samples.

Many studies support the existence of a general bias for the detection of threat in humans. In particular, the threat-capture account claims that attentional resources are captured by threat-related stimuli, mainly based on behavioral evidence. However, these studies do not inform us about how the detection of such stimuli in the visual space influences the spatial orienting of attention. In fact, the capture of attention by a threatening item in the environment should automatically activate information about its spatial location to elicit a proper reaction, giving the localization of threat and an enhanced selection or suppression of a threatening item. Electrophysiological indexes, specifically the N2pc or the Pd component, are well suited for detecting this early attentional selection of threat signals. In this talk, I will show how these components provide interesting evidence of the threat-capture account. I will also discuss their limits, as well as the limits of the threat-capture account, specifically the impact of top-down processing on the capture of attention by threatening items.

Increasing evidence suggests that emotional information can be utilized in an “automatic” way in processes that are inherently related to the emotional meaning: For example, seeing an angry face can trigger subtle facial responses, prepare avoidance reactions, and influence deployment of attention, judgments and decisions in line with or as a reaction to the emotional meaning (e.g., Hess & Fischer, 2013; Stins et al., 2011). In order to provide contextual flexibility in various critical situations, we proposed that emotional information can be utilized fast, efficiently, and based on limited perceptual input also for novel, goal-directed processes. To test this assumption, we used emotional faces as central cues in a series of endogenous cueing experiments, the facial expression signaled the location of targets. Endogenous cuing emerged fast, based on valence and specific negative emotions (e.g., sadness versus fear), and even based on masked emotional information (Folyi, Rohr, & Wentura, 2019). In a further study, we tested whether this cueing effect emerges based on explicit knowledge of cue-target contingencies in line with the prevailing view of endogenous cueing; or, at least partly, based on implicit learning of these contingencies. Cue emotion was again informative to the target location, but participants did not receive any information about this relationship. Overall, there was no indication of cueing without contingency information, and majority of the participants could not report these contingencies. Our results suggest that attentional processes based on implicit probability learning do not explain the efficacy of cueing by emotional faces.

By operationalizing competing theories as statistical models for behavioral outcomes (e.g., choice probabilities or response times), model-selection techniques such as the Bayes factor allow researchers to test competing strategies on the individual level. For each participant, this method provides posterior model probabilities defined as the probabilities that each of the competing models generated the behavioral outcomes. Recently, the theoretical and statistical sophistication of model-selection methods and models has steadily increased. However, given model-selection results on the individual level, it is not clear how to draw inferences on the group level (e.g., "do all or does a majority of participants adhere to a specific theory?"). As a remedy, we extend a recent model-based test for probabilistic classification by Cavagnaro and Davis-Stober (2019) to estimate the relative group sizes of the different theories. This method accounts for classification uncertainty and allows to test informative hypotheses on the group level (e.g., "most participants are best described by theory X or Y"). The method requires only posterior model probabilities (or information-theoretic weights) per individual as input and can easily be applied using the R package "multinomineq" for multinomial models with inequality constraints. Besides a reanalysis of empirical data, we present Monte Carlo simulations to assess the effect of ignoring classification uncertainty when drawing inferences on the group level.

In psychology, decision making is often – and successfully – modelled with the diffusion model, which is based on the assumption that evidence accumulation follows a Wiener diffusion process, that is, evidence accumulates over time with a constant drift and normal noise. Here, I will present a model suggesting that noise in evidence accumulation is not Gaussian but is better described by heavy-tailed distributions. Thus, the evidence accumulation process is mapped no longer by a diffusion process but by a so-called Lévy-flight. An important characteristic of Lévy-flights is the incorporation of jumps in the process. In decision making, such jumps indicate sudden changes in the subjective believes about the current situation. In the present talk I will (a) discuss possibilities to estimate parameters of the Lévy-Flight model, (b) compare the fit of the standard diffusion model and the Lévy-Flight model to empirical data, and (c) present first evidence of both individual-related and task-related predictors of the “heavy-tailed-ness” of the noise distribution.

In several contexts, it is useful to know whether there is consensus among a group of people. Such consensus may concern eyewitnesses reporting about the details of a crime, voters expressing their political views, or experts suggesting best practices for their field. Specifically, if each member of a group answers a set of questions, consensus analysis offers estimates of whether there is a group consensus, what this consensus is, and to what degree each respondent answered in line with the consensus. In previous consensus-analysis models, each model focused on a specific response format such as dichotomous yes-no responses or numerical continuous responses. Consequently, researchers had to adapt all questions to a specific response format—with mixed results. Dissatisfied with the constraints this placed on our research, we developed an extension of consensus analysis that allows the flexible mixture of response formats within a question set. This enables researchers to choose which response format best fits the content of each question rather than forcing the content into the constraints of the model. We present the conceptual foundations of the model and the results of model-validation studies. We conclude with a brief discussion about the implementation of varying response formats in measurement models and substantive models in Psychology.

Response-time extended multinomial processing tree (RT-MPT; Klauer and Kellen, 2018) models constitute a relatively new model class to model response latencies alongside the response frequencies of traditional multinomial processing tree (MPT) models. It enables the estimation of process-completion times and encoding plus motor-execution times (a.k.a. non-decision time), next to the typical process probabilities of traditional MPT models. Process-completion time refers to the time a process needs to finish with one of two outcomes (e.g. how long does it take to detect a word successfully, where detection is the process and the success its outcome). We developed an R-package, called “rtmpt” (Hartmann, Johannsen, & Klauer, in press), to fit models of the RT-MPT model class and show that the Bayesian algorithm underlying “rtmpt” is valid.

In a typical recognition task, participants study word lists and categorize single-words in a subsequent recognition phase as previously studied or not. Pairing two words randomly in a recognition phase (paired-words), combined judgements to each pair differ from two separate responses to the same words. Previously, two models have been used to describe the performance of paired-words: two-high threshold model (2HTM) as an example for discrete-state models and general recognition theory (GRT), a multidimensional signal detection theory, as an example for continuous models. Previous studies showed consistently that the discrete-state model could explain the paired-word recognition task best. However, both models have not been validated so far. Within this talk, we present a first attempt to validate those models using selective influence studies. We tested whether both models capture a base-rate manipulation in a meaningful way. Theoretically, it is expected that base-rate manipulations only affect parameters describing decisional processes. Inspecting those hypotheses within models allowing both, mnemonic and decisional parameters to differ between different base-rate manipulations, exactly those results can be observed. However, comparing model versions locating the effect on either the mnemonic or the decisional processes, former models are preferred. Within this talk, we will discuss the theoretical implications for those two models.

Fear generalization - and its pathological form, fear overgeneralization - are considered crucial factors in the maintenance of anxiety disorders. Here, we investigated whether fear generalization in adult spider phobic patients might predict treatment response to an extinction-based treatment. 90 patients with spider phobia (SP) completed a One-Session Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET), a clinical and a MEG assessment before and a clinical assessment after therapy. Based on self-reported symptom reductions in the Spider Phobia Questionnaire, patients were categorized as either responders (>30% reduction) or non-responders. The MEG-assessment consisted of baseline, conditioning and subsequent generalization phases. In the conditioning phases aversive unconditioned stimuli (US) were either paired or never paired with differently tilted Gabor gratings (CS+, CS-). In the subsequent generalization phases fear ratings, US expectancy ratings and event-related fields to CS+, CS- and seven different generalization (GS) stimuli that ranged on a perceptual continuum from CS+ to CS- were measured. Non-responders compared to responders showed behavioral overgeneralization indicated by more linear generalization gradients in fear-ratings. Analyses of MEG source estimations revealed that linear generalization gradients in frontal clusters also dissociated (later) non-responders from responders. While stronger (inhibitory) frontal activations to safety-signaling CS- and GS compared to CS+ declined over time in non-responders, responders maintained these activations at early (< 300ms) and late processing stages. Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that behavioral overgeneralization and prefrontal inhibitory learning mechanisms during fear generalization may predict later responses to extinction-based treatments. The temporal dynamics of these mechanisms deserve further attention in future research.

Two EEG experiments are presented investigating processing of and subsequent memory for positive, negative and neutral trait adjectives presented under different task conditions. In experiment 1, participants were presented with adjectives as supposed personality feedback following a self-introduction (condition A) or as stimuli for explicit learning (condition B). One week later, they were asked back into the laboratory and received a surprise recognition memory test. In experiment 2, a new sample was presented with the same stimuli as in experiment 1, but for judgement of self-descriptiveness (condition A) or concreteness (condition B). Again, a surprise recognition memory test occurred one week later. Overall, discrimination accuracy was best when words were presented as supposed personality feedback following a socially relevant situation (experiment 1 - condition A). This held both in comparison to the explicit learning condition in experiment 1 and both conditions in experiment 2. Moreover, particularly in experiment 1, memory was biased towards positive words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded during the encoding session of experiment 1 revealed a larger late positive potential (LPP: 400-700 ms) for words presented as personality feedback (condition A), the effect being largest for positive feedback. In experiment 2, the LPP was larger during self-descriptiveness judgement (condition A) than in the concreteness judgement (condition B) with no difference between contents. Together, the data reveal how social relevance modulates perception of and memory for emotional stimuli at distinct processing stages attesting to the tight relationship of emotional and social processes in humans.

Since news spreads rapidly and reaches millions, the ability to distinguish between credible and less credible media sources may be more crucial than ever. Yet, recent behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggests that social judgments are primarily based on emotional contents of headlines independent of source credibility. Here we investigate influences of emotional headlines and source credibility on pupil size as a measure of exerted cognitive effort, and on behavioral measures of confidence related to social judgments. Thirty participants read headlines about the social behavior of depicted unfamiliar persons from websites of well-known German news media that are perceived as credible or less credible. Persons paired with emotional headlines were judged more negative or positive than persons associated with neutral headlines, and emotional judgments were faster and made with more confidence than neutral judgments. None of these effects was modulated by source credibility. Pupil dilation during social judgments was reduced for emotional relative to neutral judgments, and less credible sources were associated with larger pupil dilatation relative to credible sources only in response to neutral headlines. These findings complement recent electrophysiological evidence in demonstrating a dominant influence of emotional contents of headlines independent of source credibility. They also shed light on a potential mechanism. Cognitive resources to evaluate the credibility of news may primarily be allocated to neutral, but not to emotional contents.

Many theories describe how we learn limb movements. It is much less investigated if and how we learn to move facial muscles. We present here two new paradigms to investigate facial learning. In experiment 1, the mobility of the face was impaired by application of kinesio-tape to the corner of the mouth. In the treatment group, tape was applied with a downward pull, in the sham group without pull. Participants had to read aloud for 25 minutes to adapt to the reduced mobility. Resting-state fMRI recorded before and after reading demonstrated plastic changes in a network including striatal-, cerebellar- and somatosensory brain areas. However, in contrast to long-term learning, we did not find involvement of the cerebral motor cortex. In experiment 2, we used Botulinumtoxin A (BTX) to reduce the mobility of the face. Due to the paralytic effect of BTX, we assumed that faces of participants would be rated more negatively if presented dynamically (videos) compared to statically (photos). Our hypothesis was not confirmed. Participants were rated more positively especially in response to videos with neutral facial expression. The results suggest that participants were able to adapt to the reduced mobility. Taken together, our results stress the plastic abilities of the face and the underlying neural architecture. They seem to operate as fast as it was shown for limb movements.

The Attentional Blink (AB) refers to a deficit reporting a second target (T2) presented 200-500 ms after a preceding target (T1) imbedded in a stream of distractors. Several theories about the origin of the AB have been proposed. Some theories claim that the AB is the result of a temporarily closing of an attentional gate, others that it is caused by a reduction in the capacity to process visual information. A third group of theories argue that it is an impairment in the ability to filter out the surrounding distractors which leads to the T2 deficit. In this talk, I will present the results of three experiments in which we systematically vary the exposure duration and composition of the T2 display allowing us to decompose the T2 deficit in terms of well-established parameters based on a Theory of Visual Attention (TVA). As the different AB theories make specific predictions in regard to which parameters should be affected during the AB, we are able to test their plausibility. All three experiments consistently show a lower processing speed of T2 during the AB, supporting theories of reduced capacity. No evidence supporting gating or filtering theories are found.

Dual-task costs – the decrement in performance in one or both tasks under a dual-task condition – are commonly explained through the central bottleneck model, and are often studied with the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm. PRP proposes that whilst perception and motor response can operate in parallel, the response selection stage is subject to a central bottleneck. However, whilst the central bottleneck model can explain what occurs on a processing level, there is still the question as to how information is processed on a more basic perceptual level. We therefore integrated the “Theory of Visual Attention” (TVA; a mathematically formulated model which allows visual attentional parameters to be independently quantified) into the PRP paradigm. Specifically, we want to investigate whether response selection influences visual attention processing. The results showed that both the processing speed (parameter C) and the storage capacity of the visual short-term memory (parameter K) varied as a function of the stimulus onset asynchrony. This indicated that these attentional processes share a common capacity limitation with the response selection. However, the visual threshold (parameter t0) remained unaffected, suggesting that the earliest stages of visual processing are performed independently of the central bottleneck.

As a formal theory, Bundesen’s theory of visual attention (TVA) allows the precise estimation of several theoretically meaningful parameters involved in visual selection and recognition. As of yet, TVA has almost exclusively been used in restricted empirical scenarios such as whole and partial report and with strictly controlled stimulus material. We present a series of experiments in which we test whether the advantages of TVA can be exploited in more realistic scenarios with varying degree of stimulus control, for instance with photographs of different scenes, in a driving simulator with computer games, or with brief experimental sessions conducted on a mobile device . Besides answering the question whether TVA is helpful to study attention in the wild, our focus is on possible trade-offs between factors such as motivating tasks, length of experiment, and number of participants.

Theoretical accounts of attention that have been dominant over the last close-to 50 years have trouble explaining recent results from studies on visual foraging tasks, where observers have to select many targets of different types among distractors within a single trial. For example, the results suggest that theories with simple fixed capacity limits may be too restrictive. Participant’s strategies may reflect a more complex interaction between capacity and task demands. Secondly, typical response time patterns from visual search tasks, that have been used to inspire prominent theories of visual attention, are only seen for the last target within a foraging trial. These selections are also much slower than the majority of other selections within trials. Thirdly targets that are distinguishable from distractors by a single color should pop out in a feature map, according to standard theories, but clearly they do not. Fourth, selection times are often comparable for feature and conjunction foraging which contradicts standard theories of attention, while patterns of the order of target selection differs strongly between those conditions. I will discuss what sort of additions and modifications should to made to theoretical accounts of attention, and whether current theories should be modified or whether we should even „start from scratch“ by building a new theory of visual attention to account for the results. I will also speculate whether the flexibility of the theory of visual attention (TVA) may make it uniquely suited to account for performance patterns in foraging studies.

Visual foraging, the search for many targets of the same types in an area, requires observers to maintain multiple target templates in active states or to multiplex their activation. There is much debate concerning the underlying mechanisms, but so far, no formal, quantitative models have been put forward. In the present work, we extend Bundesen’s Theory of Visual Attention to visual foraging tasks and model template switching. Using the model, we simulate foraging data to compare simulations with experimental recordings. In addition to manual selections recorded with a stylus on large tablet PC, we also analyze gaze data gathered with a new setup that allows for manual foraging and concurrent eye tracking. Our results show that TVA, with a few plausible additions, can account for typical patterns in target choice. Moreover, the manual responses occur in close lockstep with the preceding eye movements.

We present recent theoretical advancements in TVA that provide an account for response time (RT) distributions in attention-based tasks. Although the scope of TVA is more general, TVA-based research so far has focused on accuracy-based tasks using highly discriminable stimuli to investigate effects of attention on selection of categories (pigeonholing) and selection of elements (filtering). The new RT model—we called it Poisson Random Walk—is a parallel processing model that can explain RT distributions in speeded RT tasks by describing response selection in mutually confusable stimuli. It is compatible with many other theories serving as a front-end to explain the processing rates underlying the decisions. Using TVA as a front-end, we have tested the new model with data from single stimulus recognition tasks with two or more perceptual categories. Here, we present new applications to speeded responses to targets presented among distractors. The first application is visual search. The Poisson Random Walk can account well for simple (feature) search distributions by incorporating the filtering mechanism of TVA. Conjunction search times, on the other hand, require an introduction of another set of weights that describe possible serial processing. With these new weights, we also include a central idea of Guided Search into the TVA-based model. The second application is a speeded target recognition task with multiple distractors. This task is a variant of the standard speeded 2-alternative forced choice task combined with partial report. We close our presentation with an outlook on future directions.

Although the joint Simon task (JST) has been investigated for more than a decade, its cause is still widely debated. According to ideomotor views of action control, action effects are a commonly cited explanation. However, action effects are usually confounded with the actions producing such effects. We combined a JST with eye tracking and asked participants to respond by performing specific saccades. Saccades were followed by visual feedback (central vs. lateral feedback), serving as the action effect. This arrangement allowed us to isolate actions from action effects and, also to prevent each actor from seeing the reciprocal actions of the other actor. In this saccadic JST, we found a significant compatibility effect in the individual setting. The typical enhanced compatibility effect in the joint setting of the JST was absent with central action feedback and even when lateralized visual action feedback was provided. Our findings suggest that the perception of action effects alone might not be sufficient to modulate compatibility effects for eye movements. The presence of a compatibility effect in the individual setting shows the specific requirements of a saccadic compatibility task – the requirement to perform prosaccades to compatible and antisaccades to incompatible target locations. The lack of a difference between compatibility effects in joint and individual settings and the lack of a modulation of the compatibility effect through lateralized visual action feedback shows that the finding of a joint Simon effect that has frequently been reported for manual responses is absent for saccadic responses.

When our actions contingently yield distal consequences, we bi-directionally associate action and effect. These action-effect associations allow us to select and plan our actions by anticipating their consequences. Crucially, effect anticipation also leads to anticipatory saccades towards the future location at which we expect an action´s effect to occur based on prior learning experiences. These anticipatory saccades are thought to reflect a proactive monitoring process that prepares a later comparison of expected and actual effect. Here, we examined how features of the anticipated future effect are proactively monitored based on the example of effect salience (luminance, colour contrast, and flicker frequency). Participants performed anticipatory saccades earlier for anticipated salient as compared to anticipated non-salient future effects of their actions. To draw inferences regarding the relation between the perception and anticipation of the same effect stimulus, we relate our findings regarding anticipatory saccades in anticipation of a future effect to exogenous and endogenous (antisaccade task) shifts of attention when presented with the same stimulus.

The processing of self-initiated stimuli has been associated with attenuated sensory intensity and neural activity. In the auditory domain, the ERP components N1 and P2 are reduced for self- compared to externally-generated sounds. One interpretation suggests that the attenuation of both components reflects a matching of action-based sensory predictions and sensory reafferences, which helps to identify stimuli as self-generated, thus contributing to the sense of agency. Agency has been found to vary as a function of the perceived contingency between actions and action outcomes. To explore the effect of perceived contingencies on the N1 and P2 for self-generated tones, participants first engaged in a paradigm where they tried to elicit a desired tone with button presses. The perceived contingency was manipulated by changing the outcome probability. Following high and low outcome probability versions of this paradigm, participants performed a task in which ERPs were recorded for self- and externally-generated sounds. A mixed linear effects analysis including individual control ratings as predictors revealed that N1 amplitudes were unaffected by the contingency manipulation, while the P2 amplitude for self-generated sounds was significantly lower in the high- compared to the low-probability condition, but only for participants with large differences in their control ratings. This study adds further evidence to reports on a dissociation of the N1 and P2 components, with the P2 reduction reflecting top down processes like the perceived control, and the N1 reduction reflecting bottom-up processes that depend on action-related information.

Spatial action-effect binding denotes the mutual attraction between the perceived position of an effector (e.g., one’s own hand) and a distal object that is controlled by this effector. Such spatial binding can be construed as an implicit measure of the inclusion of the controlled object into the agent’s body representation. In two experiments, we investigated how different transformations of hand movements into movements of a visual object affect spatial action-effect binding. In Experiment 1, we found a significantly lower drift of the proprioceptive position of the hand towards the visual object when hand movements were transformed into inverted cursor movements rather than cursor movements in the same direction while the actual physical distance between hand and object was held constant. Experiment 2 showed that this reduction reflected a complete elimination of spatial binding in the inverted condition. The results will be discussed against the idea that conflicting sensory inputs lead to the suppression of those input channels that are less relevant for the current task. Furthermore, they broaden our understanding of the prerequisites for an experience of ownership over artificial, non-corporeal objects by showing that direct control over how an object moves is not a sufficient condition for a sense of ownership because proprioceptive drift can be fully abolished even under conditions of full controllability.

Recent research using enfacement and the rubber-hand illusion suggests that what belongs to the self is quite malleable. The Theory of Event Coding predicts: the more features overlap between self and other, the more pronounced self-other integration. Such integration leads to increased ownership and agency, and feature-migration between self and other. TEC could thus explain the malleability of self-experience. A recent enfacement study from our lab shows that even moods can migrate from avatar to subject. This result holds great promise for therapeutic practice. To test TECs predictions regarding self-other integration and better understand feature-migration, we manipulated the degree of feature overlap between participants and avatars (same gender vs. different gender) and the degree of control that participants have over the avatar. With this setup we tested whether visual similarity between avatar and subject can enhance mood migration. We hypothesized that more feature overlap results in more mood migration.

As we are constantly influenced by content, which is in any form related to our self, a clear definition of our ‚self‘ is of great importance. Clearly distinguishable from the explicit, social-psychological self-concept, a so-called ‘minimal self’ is conceptualized as a network of features, comparable to the representation of a simple object. Up to now, investigations of the minimal self revealed a flexible integration of content into the minimal self, which includes complex concepts, is specific for particular content, and is modality-independent – in sum indicating a high functionality of the integration of stimuli into the self. In order to understand the mechanisms of these self-integrations, we investigated the integration of another person into the minimal self by means of the so-called self-prioritization effect (SPE). Besides the typical SPE, indicating a prioritization of self-relevant associations in a simple matching task, we tested for the prioritization of a teammate (i.e., a second participant working on the same task). N = 50 participants showed a significant prioritization of the teammate indicating that the integration of stimuli into the minimal self is comparable to basic feature bindings. Additionally, this prioritization was modulated by the spatial distance to the teammate suggesting either high or low relevance of the teammate. The results reveal insights about how our minimal self is generated by demonstrating the comparability with simple feature bindings and that self-integration follows particular rules.

It is well-established that stimuli inheriting self-relevance yield beneficial information processing. For example, one’s own name captures attention and one’s own face –if presented among others' faces– is recognized more quickly than those of others. It has been demonstrated that when controlling for the familiarity of self-associated stimuli like one’s own name or face, self-prioritization can still be observed. That is, the association of geometric shapes to oneself, a familiar other, and a stranger leads to better performance in self-associated trials of a subsequent matching task. Specifically, the verification of the self-associated geometric shape and the self-related label as a “correct pair” is faster and more accurate than those of other-associated geometric shapes and other-related labels; this is known as the self-prioritization effect (SPE; Sui, He, & Humphreys, 2012). In the current experiment, we tested the dependence of the SPE on perceptual features by using a crossmodal variant of the matching task. That is, participants associated specific temporal patterns to themselves, a familiar other, and a stranger. In detail, the temporal patterns were represented by vibrations (tactile stimulation) in the association phase. In the subsequent matching task, the temporal patterns were represented by visual flashes. Remarkably, we observed a visual self-prioritization effect – even though the visual flashes had never been paired with the labels. This indicates that abstract representations of the stimuli at hand rather than perceptual features underpin the SPE.

Familiar self-associated stimuli such as one’s own name and face can enhance performance in cuing tasks when compared to other names or faces. However, it is unclear whether newly self-associated stimuli can capture attention as effectively as familiar self-associated stimuli. A sample of 30 participants associated geometric shapes to themselves and a stranger. They then performed a target-discrimination task (“Is the target a p or a q?”). Self- and stranger-associated stimuli were simultaneously presented preceding the target. The to-be-identified target either followed the self- or the stranger-related stimuli. Further, the type of representation varied: the self and the stranger were either represented by familiar labels, by the newly associated geometric shapes or by shape-label pairs. Significant effects were observed for target location (p < .001) as well as type of representation (p < .001), with faster reaction times towards targets following self-representations than stranger-representations. The interaction between target location and type of representation was also significant (p < .001). Specifically, a significant difference between responses cued by self- vs. stranger-representations was observed when the self and stranger were represented by a label (p < .001) or a shape-label pair (p < .001). The newly self-associated shape did not yield a significant difference in responses to targets cued by self vs. stranger (p = .325). Results are interpreted as an attentional prioritization effect yielded by familiar self- vs. stranger-representations in contrast to newly established representations.

In this talk, we present evidence from two experimental lines combining spatial compatibility tasks such as the Simon task with task-irrelevant self-related stimulus material. In Experiment 1, participants responded to the color of a dot superimposed on photos of different faces (one’s own, co-actor’s face, stranger’s face) presented on the left or right side of the screen’s center. In Experiment 2, whole-body photos of different humans (one’s own, stranger’s photo) holding a colored ball in either hand presented on either side of the screen’s center were utilized. In both experiments, the task-relevant feature required a classification based on the stimulus color whereas the stimulus location was task-irrelevant. Therefore, two kinds of compatibility effects could be considered, i.e. based on the spatial compatibility between the stimulus location and the response (i.e. the Simon Effect) and based on the compatibility between the identity of the actor on the photo and the responding agent (i.e. Photo-Agent Effect). In Experiment 1, the spatial compatibility effect was more salient than the identity-based compatibility effect. Experiment 2 found evidence for both, i.e. spatial and identity-based compatibility effects. Using both, i.e. task-irrelevant self-relatedness and task-irrelevant spatial location, shifted the cognitive weights associated with the spatial and identity-based compatibility.

Responses to visual stimuli are faster when the stimuli occur simultaneously with auditory accessory stimuli. This is despite the fact that accessory stimuli offer no information regarding the required response. Performance is also improved when auditory stimuli precede rather than accompany the visual targets. This effect is assumed to arise from phasic alertness, a short-lived increase in the brain‘s readiness for information processing. Here, we ask how phasic alertness and accessory stimulation work in concert. Specifically, we investigated how auditory alerting modulates the effects of subsequent accessory stimuli on a visual choice reaction task. Accessory stimuli supported performance in the absence of alerting cues, but impaired performance when alerting cues had been presented before (Experiment 1). This reversed accessory stimulus effect did not stem from expectations regarding stimulus combinations (Experiment 2). In sum, our findings reveal that phasic alerting changes the accessory stimulus effect from beneficial to detrimental for performance.

Phasic alerting cues temporarily increase the brain's arousal state. In younger and older participants, visual processing speed in a whole report task, estimated based on the theory of visual attention, is increased in cue compared to no-cue conditions. In younger participants, phasic alerting effects on visual processing speed have been linked to intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) within the cingulo-opercular network. Robertson (2014) suggested that the connectivity of the right fronto-parietal network is essential for maintaining alertness capabilities in aging. The present study assessed whether older participants' ability to profit from warning cues is related to iFC in the cingulo-opercular or right fronto-parietal network. We obtained resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 31 older participants. By combining an independent component analysis and dual regression, we investigated iFC in both networks. A voxel-wise multiple regression in older participants revealed that higher phasic alerting effects on visual processing speed were significantly associated with lower right fronto-parietal network iFC. We then compared healthy older participants to a previously reported sample of younger participants to assess whether behaviour-iFC relationships are age group specific. The comparison revealed that the association between phasic alerting and cingulo-opercular network iFC is significantly lower in older than in younger adults. Additionally, it yielded a stronger association between phasic alerting and right fronto-parietal network iFC in older versus younger participants. The results support a particular role of the right fronto-parietal network in maintaining phasic alerting capabilities in aging.

We investigated adult age differences in phasic alerting effects on visual attention. Parameters of visual attention capacity and selectivity, based on the Theory of Visual Attention, were measured together with electroencephalograpy (EEG) in a partial letter report task, in which half of the visual stimulus displays were preceded by an auditory warning cue. Younger adults showed an alertness-related increase in the parameter visual processing capacity. The behavioral alerting effect co-occured with reduced latencies of stimulus-related visual event-related lateralizations (ERLs), indicating faster stimulus processing in the visual stream. By contrast, older adults, on average, did not benefit from the alerting cue, neither on the behavioral nor electrophysiological level. Assuming that the age differences may result from ineffective processing of the warning signal, we analysed EEG power and phase-locking time-locked to the cue. We found a cue-related increase in both power and phase-locking with a maximum in the alpha band across age groups. Importantly, this cue-related response was stronger in older than younger adults. Furthermore, the cue-related increase in power and phase-locking was negatively correlated with the behavioral alerting effect in the older group. These findings indicate age-related changes in the brain network underlying alertness and attention. More specifically, older adults' may benefit less from alerting cues than younger adults, if their neural response is strongly driven by the cue and, thus, hinders the effective use of the warning signal to foster processing of the following stimulus.

To perform continuous tasks requiring sustained attention over extended periods of time, it is necessary to maintain an adequate level of arousal. Arousal – the energetic state of the cognitive system – influences the capacity to engage with task-relevant events. Although a strong connection between sustained attention and arousal is widely recognised, little is known about whether or how arousal levels are adjusted to support performance. Visual performance is known to benefit from the temporal anticipation of task-relevant events. However, it is not clear whether anticipation also alters the ongoing state of arousal. In the current study, we addressed this question by using a continuous task design to measure the ongoing state of arousal while attending occasional targets. Throughout the experiment, participants reported visual targets which appeared briefly at the centre of the screen. Crucially, the targets either appeared at fixed intervals, rendering them temporally predictable, or at random times. We estimated arousal using pupil dilation and used psychophysics and computational modelling (TVA) to measure how temporal predictability influences perceptual parameters. We demonstrate that temporal regularity embedded within a continuous-performance task improves performance and shifts the levels of arousal to anticipate predictable targets. Predictable targets led to phasic increases in arousal before their onsets in a background of otherwise low tonic arousal. In contrast, temporally unpredictable targets led to an increase in tonic arousal overall. Accordingly, we argue that arousal is sensitive to varying levels of temporal predictability, and dynamically adapts to task demands.

Temporal expectations can be induced experimentally by creating temporal-regularities, for instance by presenting cues which are associated with specific time-intervals preceding targets (cue-based expectations). Even without these, expectations for an upcoming event increase with time according to the hazard-rate function – the conditional probability of an event to occur, given it has not occurred yet. Previous studies showed that cue-based temporal expectations depend on spatial attention: to benefit from information regarding stimulus onset, observers need to attend to its location. Here we examined whether hazard-rate expectations effects also depend on spatial attention. In two experiments, we used two variations of a spatial-cueing task, with cue-target interval length varying in order to create an increasing hazard-rate. A spatial-cue appeared at the beginning of each trial in order to manipulate spatial attention (valid/invalid/neutral). After a random interval (500-2100ms) sampled from a uniform distribution, a target (asterisk) appeared briefly (33ms) and participants were instructed to indicate its location side as fast as possible (Exp. 1) or perform a single-button speeded-response (Exp. 2). Using mixed-effects modelling, we show in both experiments a validity effect on reaction-time (valid < invalid), along an overall effect of hazard-rate, such that reaction-time decreased with increasing intervals. These findings indicate that unlike cue-based temporal expectations, hazard-rate predictions affect performance both within and outside spatial locus of attention.

In our series of experiments, we try to delineate the adaptive value of evaluative and motivational inner speech for cognitive control. We recently found that individual differences in the habitual use of inner speech predict reduced interference effects in the Simon and the arrow flanker task, over and above working memory capacity as well as intelligence (Gade & Paelecke, 2019). The present study aims to probe the causal relation between instructed inner speech and performance benefits. Following trait questionnaires on motivational (i.e., repeatedly instructing oneself silently) and evaluative (monitoring speed and correctness of behaviour) inner speech use and IQ tests participants worked through a flanker, a Simon and a switching task. Task instructions were varied between participants: In the Simon and flanker task, participants were instructed to silently verbalise (a) the stimuli or (b) the required response or (c) to not verbalise (control condition). In the switching task, participants were instructed to verbalise the cued task or to not verbalise. For individual differences in spontaneously occurring inner speech we assume that motivational and evaluative aspects are relevant for performance benefits in both conflict tasks, but not in the switch task. For elicited inner speech, we expect an interaction with trait inner speech use in that participant with higher trait levels of inner speech use should profit more from task-related verbalisations compared to the control condition.

Language control refers to the ability to correctly understand or to correctly produce a word (in the correct language) in a given situation. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate modality-specific influences on language processing and language control – specifically in settings in which the sensory modality (i.e., auditory vs. visual input) and/or the motor modality (i.e., verbal vs. manual output) could repeat or switch from one trial to the next. We will summarize our findings on modality-specific influences in two different lines of research. First, we focus on the compatibility between sensory modality and motor modality in language processing. Here, our data show higher switch costs (i.e., worse performance in switch trials compared to repetition trials) when switching between incompatible sensory-motor modality mappings (auditory/manual and visual/vocal) than when switching between compatible sensory-motor modality mappings (auditory/vocal and visual manual). Second, we discuss differences in modality-specific influences on language production and language perception tasks in language switching. In these experiments, bimodal language switching (switching between two languages in two different modalities) was compared to unimodal language switching (switching between two languages in the same modality). While bimodal compared to unimodal switching can, under specific conditions, lead to a decrease of switch costs in language production, it increases switch costs in language perception tasks.

The picture-word interference (PWI) task is frequently used in cognitive psychology to study the processes underlying speech production. In this task a speaker names target pictures whilst processing aurally or visually presented distractor words. It is a robust finding that speakers take longer to name the target whilst processing a semantically related compared to an unrelated distractor. Yet, in day-to-day conversation, interlocutors routinely produce semantically related words. To investigate whether semantic interference is also observed in social interaction we embedded a PWI task in a communicative setting: Two participants played a card game during which one named the distractor and, after a stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) of either -150ms or -650ms, the other named a semantically related or unrelated target. In Exp.1 (N=32) target naming latencies did not differ between semantic conditions, at neither SOA. In Exp.2 (N=32) we embedded audio recordings of the distractor naming obtained from Exp.1 in a classic single-subject PWI setting. In this setting we observed, as expected, semantic interference at SOA -150ms. In Exp.3 (N=32) the card game encouraged a focus on the semantic relationship between distractor and target. As in Exp.1 we did not observe semantic interference at SOA -150ms. However, at SOA -650ms we observed semantic facilitation. We conclude that the processes leading to semantic interference in single-subject settings are attenuated in communication. Depending on communicative context and inter-turn interval semantic relatedness between the partner’s and the own utterances either proves irrelevant, or facilitates speech production.

The lexical representation of compounds is still under debate, and research on the topic is inconsistent. Some studies suggest that compounds have a single entry at the lemma level (e.g., Lorenz et al., 2018), while others argue for separate lemma representations for the compound’s constituents in addition to the compound lemma (Marelli et al., 2012). Our study exploits the cumulative semantic interference effect (CSIE) to investigate the lexical representation of compounds. We conducted a continuous picture naming experiment, in which participants were presented a seemingly random sequence of objects for spoken naming. Previous studies have shown that naming latencies increase with each additional member of the semantic category presented within this sequence. This CSIE is assumed to reflect semantic interference during lexical access (Howard et al., 2006). Category membership in our experiment was established through the compounds` first constituent (category animals: dog lead, zebra crossing, pony tail, mouse trap, cat litter), while the compounds themselves were not semantically related. Additionally, pictures depicting the compounds’ first constituent (dog, zebra, pony, mouse, cat) were presented as a control condition. The results reveal a CSIE in the control and the compound condition, showing that the semantic relationship between the compounds’ first constituents influenced compound production. This might be interpreted as evidence for separate lemma representations for the compounds’ constituents as suggested by the multiple-lemma representation account of compounds (Marelli et al., 2012). This and alternative explanations will be discussed in light of the complexity of the paradigm.

We investigated the production of nominal compounds (tablecloth, lipstick, sunflower) to test models of speech production and lexical representation. Young (18-35 years) and older (65 + years) speakers named pictures of objects with compound names in the presence of morphological, semantic, and unrelated distractor words in a picture-word interference paradigm. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were analysed in addition to picture-naming latencies. In both age groups, constituent distractors of compound targets (lip or stick for the target LIPSTICK) speeded compound naming, while naming was slowed by distractors from the same semantic category as the compound (powder - LIPSTICK). No effects were obtained for distractors from the same category as the compound’s first constituent (toe - LIPSTICK). Age-related effects were observed in morphological distractor conditions, but not in semantic conditions. This is in line with prolonged/ deficient morpho-phonological encoding with age. Naming latencies confirmed weaker effects of second- than first-constituent morphological distractors in the elderly, whereas young speakers showed no such difference. Furthermore, the transparency of the semantic relation between morphological distractors and targets affected ERP effects, again only for older speakers. For the elderly, stronger ERP effects were obtained with higher semantic transparency of second-constituent distractors, which is likely to reflect enhanced semantic processing. Interestingly, ERP effects of first and second-constituent distractors were present in overlapping time windows, suggesting parallel processing of morphemes in both age groups. Our data corroborate single-lemma, but multiple-morpheme representations for compounds in production, which are stable across adulthood.

Self-control choices often require solving a conflict between a hedonic goal (e.g., feeling tempted to order the pizza) and a long-term goal (e.g., wanting to lose weight). Surprisingly, not much is known about the consequences of experiencing conflict during self-control decision making on, for example, emotional reactions and future self-control behavior. In the present talk I will present exemplary studies of two lines of research which investigate those consequences in different ways. First, results from a field and online study suggest that conflict strength is related to more intense negative emotions (especially regret) and a higher likelihood of subsequent behavioral switching (N1 = 231 and N2 = 252). Those effects occurred for hedonic as well as long-term goal (food) choices. Interestingly, reminding people of their health goal after a healthy food choice reduced the negative effect of conflict on emotions. Second, I will argue that those effects are due to enhanced activation of the non-chosen option following highly conflicted choices. Accordingly, one study using a basic memory paradigm shows that people remember non-chosen options better when they were presented as part of a high (vs. low) conflict choice (N3 = 71). Finally, I will discuss how those results challenge a central assumption in the self-control literature, namely that long-term goal choices are always successes.

The aim of our research is to elucidate mechanisms underlying volitional self-control, i.e. the ability to resist temptation and inhibit impulsive responses in favor of long-term goals. We propose that attentional filtering and value modulation serve as two sub-mechanisms by which anticipated future outcomes may promote self-control. We conducted a series of mouse-tracking experiments to specifically examine the dynamics of attentional filtering. One key finding was the apparent lack of self-control in samples of healthy young adults, unless subjects were prompted to think of the long-term consequences. Although participants then displayed more “self-control”, their behavior reversed again when they were not asked to attend to long-term consequences. These results raise the questions whether (a) permanent reminders of long-term implications are essential for self-controlled behavior and (b) which processes seemingly impulsive choices are based on. To tackle the sub-mechanism of value modulation, we applied inhibitory 1 Hz rTMS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) before a decision task. The dlPFC is thought to modulate value representations in the ventromedian PFC through anticipation of long-term consequences. The task comprised everyday-life conflict situations, in which subjects either had to resist a temptation or endure an aversion. Results indicated that, regardless of conflict type, subjects are generally hesitant to agree to an action in our control stimulation condition. In contrast, participants were less likely to resist a temptation when dlPFC function was perturbed, i.e. they displayed less self-control.

We will discuss an analysis concerned with fatigue influence on behavioral restraint, presenting findings from a recent study (experiment) designed to test it. The analysis argues that fatigue should not impact behavioral restraint directly, but rather should do so indirectly by determining how intensively people resist urges to act. It argues further that fatigue influence on the intensity is multifaceted, depending on the level of fatigue, the magnitude of the unwanted urge, and the importance of resistance. In theory, fatigue should have potential (1) for prompting people to resist urges more intensively, (2) for prompting people to give in to urges to act, or (3) for confirming people’s pre-existing inclination to give in to urges to act. The analysis implies that fatigue should consistently impair control only under certain restraint conditions. It also addresses key concerns that have been raised in relation to the influential limited resource analysis of self-control developed by Baumeister and colleagues.

The interoceptive inference framework suggests that our brain continuously anticipates future states of our body and aims to avoid events that might counteract homeostasis by minimizing prediction errors through active inference; e.g. appropriate actions. If predicted interoceptive models are inaccurate, behavior inconsistent with our long-term homeostatic goals may result; e.g. in failures in self-control. Using a within-subject design including an inspiratory breathing-load task to examine the prediction of aversive interoceptive perturbation and a craving-regulation for palatable foods task, we examined the relationship between self-control and aversive interoceptive predictive models. Those individuals who were more accurate in predicting their interoceptive state with respect to anticipated versus experienced dyspnea were significantly more effective in the down-regulation of craving using negative future-thinking strategies. These individuals also scored higher on a measure of trait self-control. In a subsequent fMRI study, these behavioral findings were successfully replicated. On a neural level, the anterior insula (AI) and presupplementary motor area (preSMA), recruited in both tasks, partly accounted for these effects: levels of AI activation during the interoceptive anticipation were associated with self-controlled behavior in the craving-task, whereas levels of interoceptive prediction during the breathing task were conversely associated with activation in preSMA during the down-regulation of craving, whose anticipatory activity was correlated with self-control success. These findings highlight that AI and preSMA may create processing advantages in self-control situations referring to the prediction of future internal states.

Self-control is among the most researched concepts in psychology. The most popular theoretical account on self-control has been the strength model of self-control which postulates that the capacity for self-control relies on a limited global resource that can become temporarily depleted, resulting in a state called ego depletion. However, the validity of the ego depletion effect has recently been questioned. Here, we suggest that inconsistencies in ego depletion literature might be caused in part by a confound that has unknowingly but systematically been introduced into ego depletion research: Boredom. It has been proposed that boredom occurs due to a mismatch between task-imposed attentional demands and one’s mental resources. We suggest that the control conditions that are frequently used in ego depletion research induce this type of mismatch and hence elicit boredom. Surprisingly, the role of boredom in ego depletion research has been largely overlooked so far. We propose that boredom might have influenced results of ego depletion studies by 1) placing an unwanted self-control demand due to the need to keep working on a boring task, and by 2) signaling that one should explore behavioral alternatives. Building upon recent theoretical accounts that conceptualize self-controlled behavior as the outcome of an ongoing cost-benefit analysis, we suggest that boredom and the sensation of applying self-control (i.e., perceived exertion) contribute distinctively to the outcome of this cost-benefit analysis and thereby to the resultant behavior.

To enhance satisfaction and improve seating comfort, objective and accurate monitoring systems are necessary to evaluate and optimize seating solutions in various contexts such as aviation, automotive and office environments. Existing systems, like questionnaires, pressure maps or physiological measurements each lack in some of these requirements. We present a novel and objective measurement approach aiming for an easily accessible and contactless method to automatically detect and assess episodes of discomfort. To this end, we explored the feasibility of an automated video-based discomfort detection using state of the art computer vision methods. For acquiring learning-data, N = 30 participants attended for two 150-minutes session in a simulated flight cabin mockup (economy class seats) in one ‘high-‘ and one ‘low-discomfort’ condition. Data streams consisted of 4 synchronized camera streams, ECG sensor-data and acceleration-data from sensors placed on wrist and ankle. Additionally, discomfort was rated on Corlett and Bishop's body part discomfort scales (BPD) by the participants. For all datasets behavioral discomfort events (e.g. painful facial expression, head leaning, back rotation, hip and leg movements) were manually annotated by 10 raters. Convolutional neural networks were then trained on 2D–coordinates of estimated body keypoints to classify 20 distinct movement classes. Performance on the test-set revealed significant classification rates for identifying various discomfort related movements. For future applications, the development of 3D computer-vision models may help to further improve the usability in daily life conditions.

The limited research on follower preferences has shown that followers often prefer relationship-oriented (considerate) leaders to task-oriented (initiating structure) leaders. However, little is known about potential moderators of followers’ preferences. In this study, we investigated whether situational pressure moderates the preference of followers for a considerate over an initiating structure leadership style. In a laboratory experiment, we presented students (N = 319) with the situation of a fictive company, varying how high the pressure (high vs. low) in this situation was. Afterwards participants were shown the profiles of two department heads, including information about their leadership style. Based on these profiles, participants then chose in which of these (otherwise identical) departments they would rather want to work in the future. In addition, they also rated the qualification and their liking of the two department heads. Our results show that the department of the considerate leader was chosen significantly more often than the department of the initiating structure leader. More importantly, this effect was moderated by situational pressure, as only in the low pressure condition a significant preference for the considerate leader was found, while in the high-pressure situation the initiating structure leader was chosen as often as the consideration leader. In a currently running second study, we test bank employees instead of students, and the results, so far, confirm the findings from the student sample.

As digitalization increasingly generates challenges and opportunities for future leaders, organizations attempt to navigate these novel environments by leveraging promising technologies. One emerging technology is social robotics, in which robots with the capability of human-like interactions are used to augment day-to-day experiences. Prior studies have shown that humans i) enjoy being led by robots as long as it increases their efficiency and ii) are willing to be motivated by a robot if they perceive it as displaying authority. While first evidence suggests that robot leadership can be successful, specific leadership styles – fundament of leadership success in human leaders – have not yet been studied in robot leaders. To fill this empirical gap, we implemented three leadership styles in robot (Pepper by SoftBank Robotics) behavior (i.e., transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and minimal leadership as control) and tested how Executive MBA students (N = 67) reacted to those leaders in a between-subjects design. Preliminary results show that participants who engaged with the transformational robot perceive the robot to be significantly more competent (F(2,64) = 3.19, p < 0.05) and trustworthy (F(2,64) = 3.97, p < 0.05) than the other two groups. These results indicate that the perceptions evoked by transformational robots are similar to those of transformational human leaders. Upon completion of data collection, we will investigate how different leadership styles influence followers’ task engagement and performance. Our study is a first step in establishing whether evidence based on human leaders applies to robot leaders as well.

Unter dem Begriff "Tochtereffekt" veröffentlichte Forschungsarbeiten legen nahe, dass Väter nach der Geburt einer Tochter egalitärere geschlechterbezogene Einstellungen entwickeln (z.B. Warner, 1991). Mit Hilfe zweier empirischer Studien sollte ein möglicher Tochtereffekt speziell in einem beruflichen Kontext geprüft (Studie 1) und ein besseres Verständnis der zu Grunde liegenden Wirkmechanismen entwickelt werden (Studie 2). Der erwartete Zusammenhang zwischen der Vaterschaft einer erstgeborenen Tochter und egalitäreren geschlechterbezogenen Einstellungen am Arbeitsplatz ließ sich in einer Studie mit 184 berufstätigen Vätern nur für Väter mit einer engen Vater-Kind Beziehung nachweisen. Demnach scheinen Einstellungen von Vätern primär dann durch eine erstgeborene Tochter beeinflusst zu werden, wenn eine enge soziale Beziehung zu dieser besteht. Die Vorhersagen von vier möglichen theoretischen Erklärungsansätzen vergleichend, kann ein Perspektivenübernahmeansatz die Ergebnisse am besten erklären. Im Zentrum der zweiten Studie stand daher eine empirische Prüfung dessen im Rahmen eines kontrollierten experimentellen Designs. Um zu prüfen, ob eine experimentelle Herstellung des Tochtereffekts durch eine mentale Perspektivenübernahmemanipulation möglich ist, wurden 232 männliche und weibliche Teilnehmende randomisiert einer von drei Bedingungen (Perspektivenübernahme: Tochter vs. Sohn vs. Kontrollgruppe) zugeteilt. Konsistent zu den Annahmen zeigten Teilnehmende, die sich in die Perspektive einer vorgestellten Tochter versetzt hatten (im Vergleich zu Teilnehmenden der beiden anderen Bedingungen), egalitärere geschlechterbezogene Einstellungen. Geschlechtsunterschiede zeigten sich ferner in egalitäreren Einstellungen von Frauen (im Vergleich zu Männern) sowie in einer differentiellen Wirkung der Perspektivenübernahmemanipulation in Abhängigkeit des Geschlechts der teilnehmenden Person. Theoretische Implikationen bezüglich des zu Grunde liegenden Wirkmechanismus sowie praktische Implikationen für die Entwicklung von Diversity-Trainings im Unternehmenskontext werden diskutiert.

Research using electroencephalography (EEG) in humans approaches a 100-year anniversary with the first publications by Berger in 1929. Since then, remarkable progress has been made identifying neural features underlying human cognition and behavior. Most of the recordings over the last 100 years, however, required participants to remain seated and to avoid movement to prohibit movement-related artifacts from distorting the signal of interest. The drive to better understand human brain function in more ecological valid scenarios has driven EEG research outside the lab and recent years have shown a remarkable shift towards recording brain dynamics in actively behaving participants in complex technical setups or in the real world. This introduction to the symposium “Mobile EEG and Mobile Brain/Body Imaging – New methods, new results?” will give an overview of new technological developments and a definition of mobile EEG and Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI). This will be followed by theoretical considerations of why MoBI is important to better understand human brain function. The requirements and pros and cons of different approaches will be discussed and examples for recent interactive VR experiments are shown to open the podium for five talks on mobile EEG and MoBI providing new insights into the question whether the results from MoBI experiments replicate what we know from 100 years of laboratory research.

The inherent difficulty of a task, the so-called task load, is hard to estimate when the measurement scenario becomes more natural than the typical abstract laboratory paradigm. In particular changes in task requirements during an ongoing task are hard to be determined by an observer from a third person perspective. Nevertheless, there is evidence that properties of the EEG might help to overcome this problem. In a large-scale study we intended to determine continuous task load in a driving test situation. More than 300 participants drove along a realistic driving scenario in a fixed-base simulator. EEG was recorded by means of round-the-ear electrodes (cEEGrids) which were developed for mobile use. In a first step, the task load of semantically different segments was estimated by an expert. Followingly, EEG parameters of mental load (theta) and attentional allocation (alpha) were extracted and averaged across these different segments. As expected, theta activity increased and alpha power decreased with increasing task load. In a subsequent analysis, time frequency data morphed to match the position on the track revealed a finer resolution of task load estimates for any waypoint of the driving situation. The low-resolution EEG recording equipment and the realistic driving scenario were chosen in order to transfer this approach to real life situations. The results showed that it appears to be feasible considering data quality. Thus, the measurement of ongoing task load in more natural settings based on objective data might become possible in the future.

Parallel processing of diverse incoming information while executing concurrent tasks is an essential aspect of human behavior. Crossing the street, for example, requires cognitive integration of different kinds of visual information, such as traffic lights or approaching cars, while executing motor programs supporting stable and secure gait. With advancing years and associated declines in motor, sensory, and cognitive functions, each of these parallel processes demands increased cognitive control. Potential consequences are resource conflicts and a decline in performance, as demonstrated in cognitive-motor dual-task studies (for a review and meta-analysis see Al-Yahya et al., 2011) . The aim of our recent investigation was to identify specific perceptual and cognitive processing stages that account for age-related performance declines. To achieve this, we used Mobile Brain/Body-Imaging (MoBI, Makeig, Gramann, Jung, Sejnowski & Poizner, 2009; Gramann et al., 2011) which allowed us to record neurophysiological data including natural gait in realistic experimental scenarios and thus to study brain dynamics underlying cognitive-motor interference. More specifically, we were interested in the interdependence of motor performance measures (sitting, standing and walking) and visual information processing. In this talk, I will provide an overview of our work in the field of MoBI with older adults. I will present behavioral, electroencephalography (EEG), and motor performance data, and discuss selected results on age-related differences in cognitive, sensory, and motor coupling.

On a daily basis people perform concurrent motor and cognitive tasks such as going through their internal shopping list while walking to the station. Oftentimes we find the performance in the cognitive task to be impaired with increasing complexity of movements, though the underpinnings of this decrement are still under debate. To get a deeper insight into the underlying cognitive processes we used a mobile EEG approach to quantify interference from motor tasks on cognitive performance. In this study, we examined the effects of different levels of movement complexity (standing, walking, obstacle course) on the participants’ cognitive resources during an auditory task switching paradigm in an ecologically valid outdoors setting. Besides subjective workload ratings and response times we used neurophysiological measures to quantify the effects of movement on cognition. In a sample of 20 participants first results showed that increasing movement complexity was subjectively rated more demanding. Also, response times were higher in the cognitive task under increased motor load. Neurophysiological measures showed decreased resource allocation to the cognitive task for higher motor complexity settings in Theta- and Alpha-band activity as well as a higher need for control in parietal ERP components. This study demonstrates a distinct detrimental effect of higher motor load on cognitive performance that is highlighted by neurophysiological measures of the mobile EEG. Also, this study delivers further arguments for the feasibility of applying mobile EEG in real-world settings to get a deeper insight on cognition outside the lab.

Investigating the use of navigation assistance systems and its neuronal correlates in a lab environment with restricted movement allows only conclusions with respect to this artificial setting. This study, however, focused on cognitive processes in the real world allowing natural movement in a complex and dynamic environment. We thus analyzed the neural dynamics during pedestrian navigation to investigate incidental spatial learning during the use of landmark-based navigation instructions. The performance results replicated a suppression of incidental learning of the environment especially at navigation relevant route segments when using standard navigation instructions as compared to navigation instructions including landmark information (Gramann, Hoepner, Karrer-Gauss, 2017, Wunderlich & Gramann, 2018, 2019). To further investigate this incidental spatial learning during navigation, we used eye blink-related potentials of the EEG as indicators for changes in visual information processing while naturally moving in an uncontrolled environment. Blinks provide meaningful events as they serve as a partitioning tool of the visual information stream. The results revealed that meaningful blink-related potentials and spectral measures can be extracted from EEG data of moving participants in uncontrolled real-world protocols and that blink-related brain activity measures allow for investigating cognitive processes during ongoing tasks. Gramann, K., Hoepner, P., & Karrer-Gauss, K. (2017). Frontiers in psychology, 8, 193. Wunderlich, A., & Gramann, K. (2018). In German Conference on Spatial Cognition (pp. 261-278). Springer, Cham. Wunderlich, A., & Gramann, K. (2019). bioRxiv, 789529.

We meet most of our perceptual challenges while moving, however, our knowledge about human perception, largely derives from laboratory research where participants are required to sit still, keep fixation and avoid blinking. We assessed two open question: i) does walking influence human perceptual performance and can we find corresponding changes in brain activity ii) what role plays the interactions between walking and concurrently executed eye movements. We investigated the effect of free walking on visual perception by analysing mobile electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioural responses (step rate, reaction time, detection rate, eye movement) in humans during different movement states. With converging evidence from neurophysiological and behavioral measurements, we find that walking influences brain activity from visual areas independent of visual input and enhances input processing from the peripheral compared to the central visual field. The concurrent modulation of alpha oscillatory activity indicates the involvement of inhibitory processes. Importantly, eye movements do not explain the effects. Nevertheless, we find that walking and eye related movements are linked. Blink rate, saccade rate and pupil size are modulated by walking speed, however, the different eye movements are affected differently in light or darkness. Additionally, blinks and saccades preferentially occur during the stance phase of walking. Our work indicates that low-level processing of sensory information is influenced by the current movement state of the body. This influence affects eye movement pattern, perception and neuronal activity in sensory areas and might form part of an implicit strategy to optimally extract sensory information during locomotion.

Visual perspective taking (VPT) provides people with direct insights into how the environment looks from another’s point of view. Here, I will review evidence for a recent series of studies that VPT can be understood as a (quasi-)perceptual phenomenon, in which another’s perspective “stands in” for own sensory input and drive perceptual decision making. Using a variant of the mental rotation task, these studies show that participants can recognize items oriented away from themselves more rapidly when these items appear in a more canonical orientation to an incidentally presented another person (and slower when oriented even further away from them). These effects are of large effect size and observed even when the other person is completely passive and task-irrelevant. They therefore show that people spontaneously derive the content of another’s perspective in a form that can drive perceptual processing like one’s sensory input. They are affected by several social and non-social factors, such as whether participants explicitly take the other’s perspective or do so spontaneously, whether the other person attends to the same object as oneself , or whether one is in the presence of another human or an object to which various levels of mental states can be ascribed (e.g. robots, inanimate objects). Together, these findings argue for a framework in which perceptual anticipations of another’s perspective underlie social cognition, helping us to understand not only how other’s view the world, but also letting us vicariously explore how they would respond to it.

Over the last ten years, a significant amount of research attention has been given to the question of whether perspective-taking occurs automatically and/ or spontaneously. In our work, we've been particularly interested in level-2 perspective-taking - the ability to understand how other people see something. We have presented evidence against this process occurring automatically. Conversely, in a cooperative context, we have shown that people do take others' level-2 perspectives spontaneously. In this series of studies, we try to identify the factors that are necessary for this to occur. I will present studies looking at how spontaneous perspective-taking is impacted by: (I) Cooperative vs. competitive contexts, (ii) Individual differences in social communication and (iii) Completing dual tasks taxing executive function. We suggest that arguments over the automaticity/ spontaneity of perspective-taking have neglected the context in which perspective-taking judgements are made and the nature of the individuals who make them.

The present research aims at establishing a differentiated picture with regard to processes elicited in the empathizing individual when feeling with targets in need and with regard to empathy-induced prosocial behavior. To that effect, the role of empathized emotions is scrutinized in this context. Regarding processes elicited in the empathizing individual, one study focused on parasympathetic activity in the context of empathizing with others and yielded that inducing empathy with target persons in need results - irrespective of their emotional reaction - in increases of vagally mediated heart rate variability, which represents parasympathetic activity associated with social bonding and engagement. However, when scrutinizing sympathetic activity, findings from another experiment suggest that empathizing with a sad (versus an angry) target results in sympathetic activity consistent with relative challenge - an energy-mobilizing state associated with relatively high resources. Hence, although empathy in general prepares for social bonding and engagement as to parasympathetic activity, the emotional reaction of a target in need actually determines sympathetic activity in the empathizing individual. Beyond that, two further studies tested whether empathy-induced prosocial behavior is also impacted by the emotional reaction of the target in need. Results of two experiments suggest that empathizing with a sad (but not an angry or disgusted) target in need increases helping behavior, because only then empathic concern, based on perceptions of target neediness, is increased. Overall, the present research contributes to an ongoing debate regarding the underlying processes and the affective-motivational outcomes of empathy.

Perspective-taking, including social attention, plays a crucial role in everyday life, allowing successful interactions to occur. In this talk, we will present data examining how capacities such as social attention may change across adulthood, in a large sample of participants aged 20-90 years old. Two groups of participants were recruited; one group completed a lab-based referential-communication task (the ‘Director Task’), with behavioural and eye-tracking measures. Results revealed a quadratic fit of age in egocentric errors; performance on the task improved between 20 and 40 years old, but showed substantial decline from 40 years onwards. A similar pattern was seen in eye-tracking outcomes, which demonstrated that advancing age led to a decrease in target-bias; i.e., older adults were more distracted by a hidden competitor object, and were therefore delayed in orienting attention to the correct (mutually available) target object. A second group of participants completed two tasks – an interview-style conversation with an experimenter, and a navigation task (following a map during a short walk outside the lab) – whilst wearing mobile eye-tracking glasses, to provide a more ‘real-world’ measure of social attention. Using these real-world methodologies, results showed that across both tasks, advancing age significantly reduced the amount of time spent fixating on people, with more time spent looking at background features. The results of these studies indicate that advancing age can lead to less efficient social attention engagement, demonstrated in both lab-based and real-world task contexts.

It has been hypothesized that visual perspective-taking, a basic "Theory of Mind" mechanism, might operate quite automatically particularly in terms of "what" someone else sees. As such we were interested in whether the social category ethnicity can influence this mental state ascription mechanism. We tested this assumption by investigating the Samson level-1 visual perspective-taking paradigm using agents with different ethnic appearances (i.e., German, Turkish, Asian and African) in a German context. Participants were asked to make visual perspective judgments from their own perspective (self-judgment) as well as from the perspective of a prototypical ethnic agent (other-judgment). The respective related interference effects – altercentric and egocentric interferences - were measured. In Study 1 – where we altered Turkish and German ethnicities – we found expected in-group preferences and out-group aversions for egocentric interferences. However, this was only the case for German, but not Turkish participants. For altercentric interferences no group effects were found. In Study 2 - where we altered Asian and German agent ethnicities we found no group effects – neither for egocentric nor for altercentric interferences. In Study 3 – we altered African and German agent ethnicities. All data will be discussed in terms of a perceptual versus social judgement bias and the automaticity claims for the Samson level-1 visual perspective-taking paradigm.

In order to understand how a scene appears from an alternative point of view (Level 2 perspective-taking) adults usually engage an embodied process by which we integrate our motor representations with the imagined perspective, essentially imagining our physical selves in a new location relative to the scene. An interesting question that follows concerns the consequences of this process for our sense of where we actually are. How can we be in two places at once? In this talk, I will present the results of research showing that when we take another visual perspective we sometimes erroneously perform manual actions consistent with that perspective rather than our own. If we are instructed to act according to an imagined perspective instead, we make more accurate responses from that perspective than our own, effectively 'reversing' egocentricity. Additionally, we find no evidence that embodied perspective-taking is disrupted by real physical barriers between the participant and the desired perspective location, suggesting participants represent themselves and the scene in imaginary rather than real space. The ramifications for our understanding of embodied perspective-taking and egocentricity more broadly are discussed.

In order to mathematically quantify a contingency between two binary variables, their joint frequencies need to be considered. For a long time, research has presupposed that individuals infer contingencies in a similar way, by taking the frequency of the variables’ joint occurrences into account. Yet, a wide range of studies demonstrated that individuals’ contingency inferences are biased and deviate from mathematical quantifications like the Δp measure or φ coefficient of contingency. Instead, contingency judgments are based on more aggregate information in terms of skewed marginal frequencies: According to the Pseudocontingency account, individuals heuristically associate frequent categories with each other as well as infrequent categories. Illusory Correlations occur when individuals infer a contingency when there is no association at all (e.g., Hamilton & Gifford, 1976), while research on Pseudocontingencies showed that such inferences can even override existing true contingencies (e.g., Fiedler, Freytag, & Meiser, 2009). Hence, illusory correlations and pseudocontingencies are often discussed as being irrational or illogical. Recently, however, a normative account of illusory correlations has been proposed by Costello and Watts (2019) who argue that illusory correlations follow probability theory and are the “rational” consequence of applying Laplace’s Rule of Succession. Even though we discuss several limitations of the Rule of Succession, we propose an alternative normative account which succeeds not only in producing illusory correlations, too, but also in producing pseudocontingencies and in accounting for qualitative patterns found in published data which the Rule of Succession fails to do.

People can rely on two qualitatively different types of processes to make judgments and decisions: Rule-based processes and exemplar-based processes. Methods to measure the dominant process are often based on the assumption that individuals would only use one process at a time. As a consequence, data is aggregated across participants or they are classified as using either exemplar-based or rule-based processing according to the best fitting model. However, more recent research suggests that both kinds of processes might operate together or in parallel. Hence, Bröder and Colleagues (2017) proposed the measurement model RuleEx-J which combines both processing modes by quantifying their relative contributions in a numerical judgment task via an α parameter. Improving on the RuleEx-J model, we used a Bayesian approach which offers a principled foundation for statistical inference while simultaneously affording creative freedom and modelling flexibility. In a simulation study we tested different parameterizations of the RuleEx-J model, different priors and simulation conditions. First simulation results suggest that the Bayesian RuleEx-J model shows a good parameter recovery and provides less biased parameter estimates than the original version. The reanalysis of existing data as well as new data provided first evidence for parameter validity of the Bayesian model.

Multinomial processing tree (MPT) models are measurement models to estimate the probabilities of latent cognitive processes. Using MPT models, we analyze data from two experiments to test theoretical assumptions regarding the underlying cognitive mechanisms of the sleep benefit in episodic memory. First, we tested different explanations of the sleep benefit by applying the Encoding-Maintenance-Retrieval model (Küpper-Tetzel & Erdfelder, 2012). This model is tailored to a free then cued recall paradigm. It allows us to disentangle encoding, storage, and retrieval contributions by providing separate measures for successful encoding of word-pair associations (e), maintaining encoded associations across the retention interval (m), and retrieving stored associations (r) in free recall. Second, we tested whether there is a sleep benefit also in source memory. For a fine-graded analysis of the underlying cognitive processes, we applied a variant of the Multidimensional Source Recognition MPT model (Boywitt & Meiser, 2012; Meiser, 2014). This model makes use of the remember-know recognition task in combination with a source monitoring test. It provides parameters for both dependent and independent retrieval of multiple source features. Based on our findings we show that MPT models are powerful tools to disentangle the cognitive processes that produce the sleep benefit in episodic memory. Implications for theories of the sleep benefit in episodic memory will be discussed.

The diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978) is a mathematical model for the analysis of response time distributions and accuracy rates in simple binary decision tasks. The three main parameters estimated when applying the diffusion model are the speed of information uptake (drift rate), conservatism of the decision criterion (boundary separation), and non-decision time, which encompasses all non-decisional processes contributing to response times. Stemming from the roots of the model in cognitive research, the sample sizes in most studies utilizing the diffusion model have been relatively low when to compared to the usual Ns found in individual differences research. We present findings on the nomological network of the main diffusion model parameters based on large sample (N>4,000,000) of Implicit Association Test data. In order to fit the model to these data, we had to adjust the model to provide two different forms of non-decision time for correct and error responses. To handle the great number of participants, we also used a new parameter estimation procedure based on machine learning, that yields valid results in a very short amount of time. We report findings on the relationships of the model parameters to demographic and personality measures.

Investigations on attitudes and behaviour of humans with respect to acceptance of novel technologies have yielded various competing models, each with different determinants. We want to extend already established psychological models of action control and technology acceptance, such as the Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT; Venkatesh et al., 2003) by affective factors. To this end, we adapt the method of Cognitive Affective Mapping (CAM, Thagard, 2010), with which complex concepts and their affective connotations can be represented. Subjects design their own cognitive-affective representation on a given topic in a kind of mind-map, which visualizes not only cognitive but also affective structures. This representation of coherent concepts reflects how the human brain functions and helps to better conceptualize mental processes, which are crucial to understand the determinants of acceptance and decision-making processes. Currently, the CAM method is used for data collection and analysed on an individual level. Extending this aim, we will discuss methods to aggregate the data to be able to make predictions for acceptance and decision-making processes.

Current research does not provide a clear explanation for why some patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) develop psychotic symptoms. In schizophrenia research, the ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’ of psychosis has been influential in explaining the development of psychotic symptoms, proposing that dopaminergic dysregulation leads to inappropriate attribution of salience/attention to otherwise irrelevant stimuli, facilitating the formation of hallucinations and delusions. However, this theory has received limited attention in the context of PD-psychosis. We investigated salience processing in 14 PD-patients with psychotic symptoms, 23 PD-patients without psychotic symptoms and 19 healthy controls. All patients received dopaminergic medication. We examined emotional salience using a visual-oddball fMRI-paradigm that has been used to investigate early stages of psychosis. Furthermore, a subgroup of all participants completed a behavioural ‘jumping to conclusions’ task. We found significant differences in brain responses to emotional salience between the patient groups. PD-patients with psychotic symptoms revealed enhanced brain responses in the striatum, the hippocampus and the amygdala compared to patients without psychotic symptoms. PD-patients with psychotic symptoms showed significant correlations between the levels of dopaminergic drugs and BOLD signalling, as well as psychotic symptom scores. Furthermore, our data provide first indications for dysfunctional top-down processes, measured in a ‘jumping to conclusions’ bias. Our study suggests that enhanced signalling in the striatum, hippocampus and amygdala together with deficient top-down regulations is associated with the development of psychotic symptoms in PD, similarly to that proposed in the ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’ of psychosis in schizophrenia.

We receive information about our environment through multiple sensory modalities. For example, we evaluate the threat of approaching thunder and lightning, by integrating auditory and visual information. How cognitive and emotional processes affect this integration is under debate. In five experiments, we assessed multisensory integration using the sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI), in which two auditory beeps presented simultaneously with one visual flash can induce the illusion of two flashes. We used orthogonal tasks to modulate cognitive and emotional processes to examine their influence therein. In the first experiment, we found that increased cognitive load induced by an n-back task enhances the susceptibility to the SIFI. In the second experiment we replicated this effect while recording EEG. The analysis of neural oscillations indicated that the interaction between cognitive load and perception is reflected in frontal theta and beta band power. In the third experiment, we used a visual cueing paradigm and show that visual cues prior to the presentation of SIFI stimuli can enhance the illusion rate, possibly due to increased perceptual load. In the fourth and fifth experiment, we used emotional pictures and sounds to examine the influence of emotional processes on the SIFI. In both experiments, we show that emotional stimuli presented prior to the onset of the SIFI can reduce the illusion rate, possibly due to increased arousal. Taken together, our experiments highlight the role of cognitive and emotional processes in perception and advance our understanding of the state-dependency of multisensory integration.

In the present study, we are going to apply a traditional antisaccade paradigm, in which participants have to inhibit a saccade to a salient white circle stimulus, as well as an emotional antisaccade paradigm, in which a saccade to an emotional facial stimulus has to be avoided by the participants. A novelty of the present study is that – in contrast studies using emotional antisaccades to measure inhibition performance – this is the first time the paradigm is tested in healthy subjects only. Data from both paradigms is subsequently subjected to linear approach to threshold with ergodic rate modelling (LATER). Based on the LATER model by Noorani & Carpenter (2013), we aim to predict antisaccade performance from subjects’ performance in prosaccade trials. Moreover, performance in the emotional antisaccade paradigm will be predicted by the performance in the standard antisaccade paradigm. In contrast to Noorani & Carpenter's approach, pro- and antisaccades are not going to be presented in a blocked, but in an interleaved design. The LATER model has, so far, only been fitted to the blocked design, which adds even more exploratory value to our new approach. We hypothesize that, as antisaccade performance can be predicted by prosaccade performance when subjects are presented with the blocked version of the task, the prediction should also work in an interleaved design as well as across paradigms using different kind of stimuli.

Direct gaze and emotional expression both constitute powerful social signals that capture attention. Previous theories postulate attention capture for direct gaze in approach-oriented emotions (e.g., angry, happy) and averted gaze benefits in avoidance-oriented emotions (e.g., fearful, disgusted). However, it remains unclear how humans integrate these social signals, especially, if a temporal benefit of one cue leads to an attention-capture advantage pertaining to the social signal. Our studies therefore investigated the temporal modulation of gaze and emotional expression. Participants identified a target letter on one of four faces. We manipulated gaze direction (direct and averted gaze) and emotional expression (neutral, angry, fearful, happy, and disgusted) with a) between-subject constant emotional expressions (temporal antecedence of emotion condition; Study I) as well as b) within-subject shifting of expressions from neutral to emotional (concurrent gaze and emotion conditions; Study II). When emotions had temporal benefit, direct gaze captured attention; an effect that was further modulated by emotion (Study I). When emotional expressions shifted (Study II), direct gaze seemed to capture attention in approach-oriented expressions while averted gaze facilitates target identification in avoidance-oriented expressions. Overall, gaze and emotion information in faces can be integrated both sequentially and simultaneously. The integration of gaze and emotion in holistic faces seems to underlie adaptive social interaction in humans.

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder involving the basal ganglia and connecting fronto-striatal pathways. TS is characterised by motor and vocal tics, as well as a high comorbidity with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). In some studies, TS has been associated with cognitive impairments, but the degree to which this is driven by comorbid disorders is unclear. Here we present a parametric investigation of visual attention in TS based on a Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) while correcting for comorbidity. We tested 187 TS patients aged 11-25 years (M = 18.25) and 47 healthy controls aged 14-24 years (M = 18.39) with a TVA-based whole report paradigm to derive individual estimates of visual short-term memory span, visual processing speed, and the temporal threshold of perception. The TS patients were further divided into four subgroups based on comorbidity status: TS-only, TS+ADHD, TS+OCD, and TS+ADHD+OCD. We found no differences between the full patient group and the healthy controls, nor between TS-only and the healthy controls. However, comorbid ADHD appears to be associated with lower processing speed, while comorbid OCD may positively affect the capacity of short-term memory. Thus, a diagnosis of TS alone does not seem to influence visual attention negatively. These findings are discussed in relation to previous studies of cognition in TS and to TVA-based investigations in children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is characterized by both visual and cognitive deficits. White and grey matter pathologies caused by the disease can affect the visual system at any point from peripheral to central processing stages. In recent TVA-based studies assessing MS patients, a marked decrease of visual processing capacity was found. In particular, the parameter reflecting visual threshold was increased at later disease stages and related to cognitive ability. However, possible relationships to markers of sensory visual dysfunction were not considered in these studies. In the present study, therefore, we assessed visual processing capacity in a whole report paradigm based on TVA in a sample of 60 MS patients. Data on visual contrast sensitivity and visual evoked potentials were collected as measures reflecting the degree of visual impairment. Significant correlations were found between these measures and TVA parameters visual threshold and processing rate, but not visual short-term memory storage capacity. The implications of these results for TVA-based assessment of visual processing capacity as a tool for identifying cognitive impairment in MS will be discussed.

Little is known about plasticity in the human adult visual cortex. Aim of this study was to better understand the nature of neuroplastic changes in the visual cortex. Studies with up to 150 minutes of monocular deprivation have shown to alter visual perception in adult humans. In this study we used long term monocular deprivation about 7 days with intervals of 1, 3, 5 and 14 days to test for short- and long-term structural and functional changes in brain visual networks by structural and functional MRI. TVA (theory of visual attention)-based assessment was used for sensitive investigation of functional changes in short-term memory and visual attention.

Visual processing speed, as assessed with whole report paradigms based on the theory of visual attention, decreases in healthy older compared to younger adults and more so in patients with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) at high risk for developing Alzheimer dementia. In a series of studies we showed that auditory cues increase visual processing speed for a limited period of time, in healthy younger and older participants. Such phasic adaptation is relevant in order to optimize performance in conditions where fast reactions to visual stimuli are required. It is not known, however, whether patients with aMCI also show such active perception effects. We will demonstrate that also aMCI patients can, to some degree, counteract their overall reduction in processing speed, when presented with auditory alerting cues.

Aging impacts both visual short-term memory (vSTM) capacity and thalamo-cortical connectivity. According to the Neural Theory of Visual Attention, vSTM depends on the structural connectivity between posterior thalamus and visual occipital cortices (PT-OC). We tested whether aging modifies the association between vSTM capacity and PT-OC structural connectivity. To do so, 66 individuals aged 20 to 77 years were assessed by diffusion-weighted imaging used for probabilistic tractography and performed a psychophysical whole-report task of briefly presented letter arrays, from which vSTM capacity estimates were derived. We found reduced vSTM capacity, and aberrant PT-OC connection probability in aging. Critically, age modified the relationship between vSTM capacity and PT-OC connection probability: in younger adults, vSTM capacity was negatively correlated with PT-OC connection probability while in older adults, this association was positive. Furthermore, age modified the microstructure of PT-OC tracts suggesting that the inversion of the association between PT-OC connection probability and vSTM capacity with aging might reflect age-related changes in white-matter properties. Accordingly, our results demonstrate that age-related differences in vSTM capacity links with the microstructure and connectivity of PT-OC tracts.

When attention is unguided, perceptual performance is generally better for stimuli appearing in the central as compared to the peripheral region. To what extent the eccentricity effect depends on task demands and individual factors, is still a matter of debate. In the current study, we investigated the effect of top-down allocation of attention and working memory span on the eccentricity bias in two experiments. In the first experiment, participants (N=24) performed a probed change detection task in which we simultaneously presented two target letters in central vision (at 5° eccentricity) and two target letters in peripheral vision (at 10° eccentricity). In line with previous findings, we observed a significant eccentricity effect when participants were asked to distribute their attention across the visual field. This effect diminished when cued to one level of eccentricity in the left and/or right visual field, both when the probe letter appeared at the validly and when it appeared at the invalidly cued location. In the second experiment, participants (N=56) performed an unguided whole/partial report task where 4 or 8 target letters appeared at three different eccentricity levels (4°, 7°, 10° of visual angle). Working memory span was measured by a digital Corsi Block Tapping Task and ranged between 3.40 and 7.60. We observed a significant effect of eccentricity, which was not modulated by working memory span. In summary, our findings demonstrated that the ability to process information in the peripheral visual field can be flexibly modulated by top-down allocation of attention.

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is a gold standard for the neuropsychological assessment of cognitive flexibility. Perseveration errors (repeating a sorting category following negative feedback), are typically treated as indicating reduced cognitive flexibility. Findings from recent research suggested that perseveration propensity is reduced when perseverative responding implies repeating responses. This finding led to the hypothesis that associative learning between cards and responses contribute to behavioral WCST performance. In our first study, we tested the associative learning hypothesis against non-associative accounts such as the avoidance of cards or responses due to negative feedback on the previous trial. We examined 40 participants on a computerized WCST, and we trial-wise manipulated the spatial arrangement of cards (they occurred at fixed or at variable spatial positions). Perseveration propensity was unaffected by pure card repetitions (when punished cards were associated with altered responses) and by pure response repetitions (when punished responses were associated with altered cards). Perseveration propensity was exclusively reduced when the punished cards and their previously associated responses co-occurred, revealing that reduced perseveration propensity does only occur when cards and responses remain bound together. A second study investigated to what degree these card-response associations are effector-specific by manipulating effector sequence (effector switching vs. repetition). Overall, we show that associative learning contributes to behavioral WCST performance, and that the formed associations should be described as stimulus-response bindings. The interpretation of behavioral performance on the WCST as indicating cognitive flexibility should be expanded toward instrumental learning.

In typical dual-task paradigms, the stimulus-response (S/R) pairings typically chosen are visual/manual and auditory/vocal pairings. In the visual/manual pairings, manual responses are exclusively implemented by pushing a button with the dominant hand. These specific S/R pairings are chosen in order to allow for optimal reaction times with minimal dual task costs. But are these S/R-pairings generalizable to other sources of response-input as well? In our study, the participants performed three 2-AFC tasks at the same time. Crucially, the visual/manual S/R pairings were switched in a block-wise fashion. Participants had to respond to a color discrimination task with their foot (condition A) or their hand (condition B), to a cued direction task with their hand (condition A) or their foot (condition B) and to a tone pitch task with their voice. Half of the participants started with condition A, the other half started with condition B. We found that there was a significant difference in re-learning after all switches: the group starting with condition A had significantly bigger problems in recombining the new S/R pairings after the switch compared to the group starting with condition B. This implies that when responding to a visual direction cue with the hand, a stronger S/R bond is formed, compared to responding to a color with the hand. This means that careful consideration is needed in order to select the ideal stimulus-response mappings in basic psychophysical experiments because the strength of the S/R bond directly affects performance.

The present work is based on a theoretical framework explicating the mechanism of how verbal thoughts translate into behavior. The investigated question is whether verbally encountered stimulus-response contingencies result in a response-priming effect upon encountering the stimulus – even if it is irrelevant for the task. In four studies (N = 206), participants memorized a verbal if-then action plan that linked a stimulus ("If I see an *apple*") either to a response that implicated an elbow extension (push) movement ("then I will point at it!") or an elbow flexion (pull) movement ("then I will point at [touch] my chest!"). In a subsequent letter categorization task, images of fruits – including the critical stimulus – were presented for 150 ms before the target letter. Categorization responses were performed by pushing (elbow extension) or pulling (elbow flexion) a joystick. Following the "push" plan, I predicted facilitated joystick push responses when primed with the critical stimulus as compared to the control stimuli (vice versa for the "pull" plan). Whereas descriptive statistics are mostly in the predicted direction, statistical analyses of each study individually fail to reach conventional significance levels. However, analyses of the combined studies – comparing the push versus pull plans – provide evidence that the results are in line with the predictions. The results are discussed in light of the hypothesis that encountering stimulus-response contingencies in a verbal format and by the actual perception of the stimulus and execution of the responses results in similar behavioral consequences.

According to action control theories, responding to a stimulus leads to the integration of stimulus features and the accompanying response. When stimulus features and the response fully repeat in a subsequent trial, the previous information gets retrieved, leading to faster reaction times and lower error rates. However, partial repetitions cause interference, resulting in increased reaction times and error rates. Even distractors irrelevant for task execution can be bound to a response. Although assumed to occur in most intentional actions, it is unclear how eye movements are affected by such distractor-response bindings. In an eye-tracking study, participants had to discriminate appearing target letters by looking at one of two locations on the right side of the screen. Crucially, a shape irrelevant for task execution, that is, a distractor, framed the letter. Whereas reaction times were unaffected, we observed a distractor-response binding effect in saccadic landing positions: Initiated saccades landed closer to the correct location, if response and distractor fully repeated. Partial repetitions caused saccades to land further away, that is, in the direction towards the incorrect location. This is the first study to observe distractor-response binding in eye-movements, showing that eye movements underlie the same action control processes as manual movements do.

Source monitoring is an attribution process of memory records to their original sources. Source monitoring tasks are extensively used to examine both item recognition and source discrimination. However, there are no standard agreed-upon methods for presenting and testing sources in an experiment yet. This could potentially lead to the confounds during source attributions. The main objective of the current study was to investigate the measurement of source monitoring processes by focusing on test formats and source presentation within the same experimental design. We hypothesized more false alarms for new items and fewer source misattributions for the simultaneous source monitoring test format relative to the sequential source monitoring test format. Moreover, we expected fewer source misattributions and better item recognition in the blocked source presentation condition compared to the mixed source presentation condition. Although our planned analyses were not in support of the hypothesized differences, when we analyzed the data in blocks, we observed more false alarms for new items in the simultaneous source monitoring test format compared to the sequential source monitoring test format in the second block. We further investigated data with multinomial source monitoring modeling and discussed our findings in relation to encoding strategies and criterion shifts.

In source monitoring, schematic expectations affect both memory and metamemory. In metamemory judgments, people predict better source memory for items that originated from an expected source (e.g., oven in the kitchen) than for items that originated from an unexpected source (e.g., hairdryer in the kitchen; expectancy effect; Schaper, Kuhlmann, & Bayen, 2019). By contrast, actual source memory is either unaffected by expectations or better for unexpected sources (inconsistency effect; Kuhlmann & Bayen, 2016). Thus, the metamemory expectancy effect is illusory. This research tests the hypotheses that such metamemory monitoring of source memory affects metamemory control (i.e., measures taken to achieve a desired level of memory; Nelson & Narens, 1990) and memory. Due to their expectancy illusion, people should choose to re-study unexpected source–item pairs more often. Three participant groups (n = 36 each) studied expected and unexpected source–item pairs. One group rendered metamemory judgments and chose pairs for re-study. A second group made re-study choices only. These two groups then re-studied the chosen pairs. A third group did not make re-study choices and re-studied a random half of the pairs. All participants completed a source-monitoring test. As predicted, participants chose unexpected pairs more often for re-study based on their illusory conviction that they would remember unexpected sources more poorly. These re-study choices resulted in an inconsistency effect on source memory not shown in the group without re-study choices. Thus, the metamemory illusion affected control and memory in source monitoring.

Emotion-enhanced memory (EEM) describes the robust memory advantage of emotional over non-emotional stimuli. While extensively investigated with emotional items (e.g., pictures or words), EEM has been largely ignored with regard to emotional source information. Filling this gap, we tested if there is a source memory advantage for emotional over neutral source information by systematically manipulating source valance (positive vs. negative) between participants and source arousal (high vs. low) within participants. Specifically, we presented neutral scenery and object pictures as items together with high-arousing or low-arousing sounds of either positive or negative valence (dependent on the experimental group) as sources. We used a neutral low-arousing sound as baseline in both experimental groups (Group Negative: n = 40; Group Positive: n = 40). Multinomial model-based analysis indicated that—contrary to the EEM typically observed in item memory—source memory was substantially reduced for the negative high-arousing source compared to all other sources. There were no other effects of source emotionality on source memory. That is, positive valence did not influence source memory, not even under high arousal. Source emotionality further did not influence memory for the (neutral) items. We propose reduced binding of negative high-arousing sources as a potential explanatory account for the found source memory deficit and discuss possibilities to test this account in future studies.

Facial identification is important because it informs us regarding how to react to an approaching person, who might be friend or foe. In social situations, the emotional expressions of faces are important and very salient aspects of nonverbal communication. Previous work has shown that the facial expression (happy or angry) influences the memory of this face in a later recognition test. It is possible that positive expressions facilitate facial processing, therefore, more cognitive re-sources are available to process facial identity. Research on mood dependent memory shows that the likelihood of recalling something is higher when encoding and retrieval moods match than when they mismatch. We wanted to examine whether memory for positive and negative faces is influenced by the emotional state of the participant. Results indicate that old-new discrimination but not source memory is affected by whether a face was presented with a positive or a negative expression, independently of the emotional state the person was in.

In modern digital environments, people are exposed to information from a wide variety of sources, some of which are trustworthy while others are not. Having to deal with a large proportion of information from untrustworthy sources poses challenges to human information processing. Specifically, discriminating between information from trustworthy and untrustworthy sources places high demands on source monitoring processes. Advertising can be viewed as an untrustworthy source because advertisers have an economic self-interest in presenting the advertised products in a biased way. In two experiments, the proportion of messages from trustworthy and untrustworthy sources was manipulated so that participants encountered a high or low proportion of information from untrustworthy sources. In a third experiment, one group of participants saw only information from trustworthy sources while another group encountered information from a trustworthy as well as from an untrustworthy source. The exposure to a large amount of information from an untrustworthy source stimulated increased source monitoring at the cost of decreased processing of the content of the messages. When a source was not remembered, participants showed a guessing bias towards attributing the message to the untrustworthy source. These findings suggest that having to deal with a large amount of information from untrustworthy sources changes how information is encoded and remembered in a potentially costly way.

In social interactions, it is central to remember to which interaction partner one has said or given something. This process is referred to as destination memory and distortions of the latter can provoke (potentially embarrassing) redundancy in communication (e.g., tell a person the same joke twice). Albeit closely related to source memory, there has been only little research on destination memory in the past. To foster the understanding of this process, we examined to what extent it is affected by familiarity of the interaction partner and by reciprocity of one’s act. In two computerized experiments, individuals assigned everyday objects (e.g., bike, computer) to either of two persons (destinations). In Experiment 1, we manipulated familiarity of destinations between subjects such that individuals gave objects to either of two close relatives/friends or unknown persons. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the reciprocal nature of the interchange within subjects such that individuals lent or gave away objects to either of two close relatives/friends. In a subsequent (destination-) memory test, individuals decided whether, and if so to which destination, they gave the object (and additionally whether they had lent or gave away the object; only in Experiment 2). Individuals remembered better to whom they had assigned objects when they interacted with familiar than with unfamiliar persons. Individuals, however, remembered equally well to whom they had lent/given away the objects. We discuss substantive and methodological commonalities and differences when assessing the cognitive processes of both source and destination memory.

Why is it so easy for humans to interact with each other? In social interactions, humans coordinate their actions with each other nonverbally. For example, dance partners need to relate their actions to each other to coordinate their movements. The underlying neurocognitive mechanisms supporting this ability are surprisingly poorly understood. Here we use a behavioral adaptation paradigm to examine the functional properties of neural processes encoding social interactions. We show that neural processes exist that are sensitive to pairs of matching actions that make up a social interaction. Specifically, we demonstrate that social interaction encoding processes exhibit sensitivity to a primary action (e.g. "throwing") and importantly to a matching contingent action (e.g., “catching”). Control experiments demonstrate that the sensitivity of action recognition processes to contingent actions cannot be explained by lower-level visual features or amodal semantic adaptation. Moreover, we show that action recognition processes are sensitive only to contingent actions, but not to noncontingent actions, demonstrating their selective sensitivity to contingent actions. The findings show the selective coding mechanism for action contingencies by action-sensitive processes and demonstrate how the representations of individual actions in social interactions can be linked in a unified representation. These findings provide insights into the perceptual architecture that helps humans to relate actions to each other and are in contrast to the common view that action-sensitive units are sensitive to one action only.

Understanding other people’s actions is essential for our survival – we need to be able to process others’ goals and to behave accordingly. Although for most of us this ability comes with effortless ease, the underlying processes are far from being understood. In the current study, we aimed to examine (a) the representational space of actions in terms of features and categories, (b) the dimensions that underlie this structure, and (c) what makes some actions more similar to others. To address these questions, we used three rating studies as well as inverse multidimensional scaling in combination with hierarchical clustering. We found that the structure of actions can be divided into twelve general categories, for instance sport, daily routines or food-related actions. Moreover, we found that the feature-based structure underlying action representations can be mapped on eleven dimensions, such as involved body parts, change of location and contact with others. Additionally, we observed that the categorical structure of actions could be best explained by four out of the eleven dimensions: object-directedness, posture, pace and use of force. Results from these studies unveil the possible categorical and feature-based structures underlying action representation and additionally show what information is important to distinguish between different actions and to assign meaning to them.

Actions can be described at different hierarchical levels, ranging from very broad (e.g., doing sports) to very specific ones (e.g., breaststroke). Here we aimed to determine the characteristics of actions at different levels of abstraction. Following up the literature on object classification (e.g. Rosch et al., 1976), we carried out several behavioral studies in which we presented action words at the superordinate (e.g., locomotion), basic (e.g., swimming) and subordinate level (e.g., breaststroke). We instructed participants to list features of actions (e.g., ‘arm’, ‘rotating’, ‘water’, ‘diving’ for the action ‘swimming’) and measured the number of features that were provided by at least six out of twenty participants (‘common features’), separately for the three different levels. Specifically, we determined the number of shared (i.e. provided for more than one category) and the number of unique (i.e. provided for one category only) features. We found that participants produced the highest number of common features for actions at the basic level. Participants described actions at the superordinate level with more unique features compared to those provided at the basic level. At the same time, actions at the subordinate level shared most features with actions from different categories from the same (subordinate) level. Our results suggest that the basic level, for which the information of action categories is maximized, plays a central role in categorization, in line with the corresponding literature on object categorization.

In everyday life, we frequently observe other people acting and easily infer their goals. A large body of research has focused on the question of how we capture, simply by observation, what others aim to do. Barely surprising, action recognition strongly relies on the analysis of the actor’s body movements and the recognition of manipulated objects. However, an increasing number of studies show that action observers also exploit contextual information, such as the environment in which the action takes place, actor-related cues, and unused objects nearby the action, i.e., contextual objects (CO). With regard to the latter, we tested the assumption that the brain's engagement in processing COs is not just driven by the COs’ semantic congruency to the observed action, but rather to the CO's potential to inform expectations towards upcoming action steps. Based on previous findings, our neuroanatomical hypotheses particularly focused on the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Our results revealed the IFG to reflect the informational impact of COs on an observed action at several circumstances: either when the CO depicted a strong match so that the currently operating predictive model of the observed action could be updated and specified towards a particular outcome; or when the CO revealed a strong conflict with the observed manipulation, in which case the currently operating predictive model had to be reconsidered and possibly extended towards a new overarching action goal. Our findings support the view that when observing an action, the brain is particularly tuned to highly informative context.

How is knowledge about actions like opening, giving, or greeting represented in the brain? A key aspect of this question focuses on the neural distinction between the representation of specific perceptual details (e.g. the movement of a body part) and more general, conceptual aspects (e.g. that a movement is meant to give something to someone). Critically, the former representation is tied to a specific modality, whereas the latter is generally accessible via different modalities, e.g. via observation or language. A popular view is that perceptual action details are encoded in occipital and temporal cortex, whereas conceptual aspects are encoded in frontoparietal cortex, potentially overlapping with the motor system. Using fMRI-based crossmodal MVPA, we provide evidence that favors an alternative view: Action representations in left lateral posterior temporal cortex (LPTC) generalize across action videos and sentences, indicating that they can be accessed both via observation and language. Moreover, multiple regression RSA demonstrated that these modality-general representations are organized following semantic principles, which further corroborates the interpretation that LPTC represents actions at a conceptual level. By contrast, frontoparietal areas revealed functionally distinct representations for the different modalities, suggesting that they represent modality-specific details, and, more generally, challenging the widely-held assumption that overlap in brain activity indicates the recruitment of a common representation or function.

Pictures are often used as decorative elements in textual learning materials. They may be interesting and attention capturing, yet not necessarily needed for the understanding of the core learning content and thus are thought to function as so-called pictorial seductive details. Whether and why the use of decorative pictures in learning materials results in beneficial or detrimental effects on learning outcomes is still a matter of debate. The current study addressed the potential effect of decorative pictures on working memory load. Subjects (N=32) performed text reading tasks followed by n-back working memory tasks. In both task series the presence of decorative pictures (present/absent) as well as the working memory load (low/high) was manipulated. EEG and eye-tracking data was recorded during task performance. It was hypothesized that if the presence of decorative pictures would increase working memory load, this would be indicated by a decreased parietal alpha frequency band power and an increased pupil dilation. Furthermore, the effect might be modulated by the general working memory load induced by the tasks. The EEG alpha frequency band power and the pupil dilation showed a highly consistent pattern of results. Only for the n-back task the presence of decorative pictures led to a decrease in alpha frequency band power and an increase in pupil dilation. This effect did not interact with the general working memory load of the task. Behavioral performance measures showed no effects of added decorative pictures. I will discuss these results and planned follow-up studies.

How do we process visual information during natural reading? In a computational framework (evaluated based on single-word behavioral and brain data), we could previously show that redundant visual information of a script is "explained away" to optimize the amount of visual information to be processed. As a result, this model proposes that visual word recognition relies on an orthographic prediction error (oPE), which in turn depends on our orthographical knowledge. Here we investigate to which degree oPE representations are also involved in natural reading. In addition, we explore if high-level semantic prediction (sentence context), interacts with the 'lower-level' oPE. We measured eye movements during sentence reading from N=82 German native speakers and found that first fixation durations showed a significant oPE by predictability interaction. This interaction resulted from the presence of an oPE effect for non-predictable words while there was no identifiable effect of oPE for predictable words. This pattern indicates that the proposed oPE representations are only relevant when sentence-level semantic information cannot predict the upcoming word. In contrast, when words can be predicted at the sentence level, these higher-level and more specific predictions override the lower-level, context-free, and thus less specific predictions during visual-orthographic processing. We conclude that informationally optimized predictive processing based on orthographic knowledge is operative also in natural reading contexts, but only in the absence of more specific, higher-level (e.g., context-dependent) predictions.

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) is defined as the ability to name stimuli as fast as possible and they are used internationally for the early diagnosis of risk children with reading deficits. However, the relationship between RAN and reading is still a topic of critical debate and studies use RAN very differently regarding the condition (serial vs. discrete) and the stimuli (digits, letters, colours, objects). In this research, we implement both RAN conditions with stimuli controlled for (psycho)linguistic variables to explore the lexical-semantic processes in RAN. We tested 66 university students aged between 19 and 38 with both the serial and discrete RAN condition and controlled the stimuli for semantic category, word frequency, word length and name agreement. In addition, participants were tested on reading, executive functions (inhibition and shifting) and working memory. Results showed no frequency effect but a word length effect in both RAN conditions. No relationship between working memory performance and RAN was discovered, but we found a strong relationship between RAN and processing speed in the shifting task. Performance in word reading was correlated differently depending on lexical status and RAN condition. We discuss our findings in light of common and different lexical-semantic processes in RAN and reading, using the logogen model.

The hypothesis of reading time regularity states that the degree of regularity in measures of the reading process is informative about reading fluency and comprehension. The current study aims at testing this assumption, namely that eye movement fluctuations contingent on linguistic information differ in their temporal structure from endogenous fluctuations of eye movements that are not contingent on external information. To that end, three language-unrelated conditions were chosen which serve as ‘baselines’ for eye movements in the absence of external information (looking at blank screens, fixation crosses or random patterns of circles on a screen). Another three conditions were selected reflecting different degrees of available linguistic information (encoding x-sequences, reading scrambled texts, actual reading of newspaper articles). Eye movements of 25 native speakers of German were recorded with a sampling rate of 1000 Hz. Gaze steps were computed by differencing the raw 2D position data, and subsequently subjected to recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) quantifying various dynamic properties of the time series related to the degree of randomness and structure of their temporal evolution. The results show that eye movement fluctuations during text reading differ systematically in the strength and degree of temporal structure compared to ‘baseline’ conditions that putatively capture endogenous fluctuations of eye movements in the absence of (linguistic) information. These findings provide a new and important perspective for further studies investigating natural reading as complex, dynamical process using measures of temporal structure.

Unhealthy food choices are implicated in two worldwide issues, the burden of global disease and climate change. Important factors involved in unhealthy food choices are the preference for high- over low-calorie food contents and difficulties in inhibiting the desire for high-calorie food. Here we explored posthypnotic suggestions (PHS) as a possible new tool to increase the preference for low-calorie food and inhibit the desire for high-calorie items. In a counterbalanced design, a food-face classification task, measuring implicit food preferences, and a Go-NoGo task, measuring inhibition, were administrated with PHS being activated or deactivated, while ERPs were recorded. In the food-face classification task without PHS the early visual P1 amplitude, was larger in response to high than low-calorie food pictures, possibly reflecting differential reward-associations; these differences were eliminated by PHS. The obtained positive bias toward low-calorie food enhanced the effective processing of these stimuli and increased motivated attention toward them, as was inferable from faster reaction times and increased late positivity amplitudes in response to low- versus high-calorie items in PHS-active condition, respectively. In the NoGo condition of the Go-NoGo task, PHS diminished the N2 component to low-calorie items, and in the Go condition, PHS strongly increased the P3 amplitude in high-calorie items, indicating the facilitation of both response inhibition and calorie-based classification. Together, PHS effectively altered both food preferences and inhibition; therefore, PHS may serve as a promising tool to counteract unhealthy food choices.

In humans, voluntary task switching is susceptible to bottom-up influences like a switch of the relevant stimulus identity (Mayr & Bell, 2006). A recent study with ants (Czaczkes, Koch, Fröber & Dreisbach, 2018) has shown that even irrelevant cue changes increase switching behavior, but only if they were presented within a high-reward context. To investigate whether a reward context would also increase switching behavior in response to meaningless cue changes in humans, we conducted two voluntary task switching studies. On each trial, participants chose between two tasks preceded by one of two different color cues. Reward was manipulated between blocks (Experiment 1: no vs. high reward; Experiment 2: low vs. high reward). In both experiments, the cue change did not modulate the voluntary switch rate. However, the voluntary switch rate was significantly lower in high-reward blocks as compared to no-reward or low-reward blocks. This suggests that bottom-up influences on deliberate task switching in humans are indeed limited to task-relevant information. Moreover, the finding of a decreased voluntary switch rate within a high reward context further supports the claim that unchanged high reward promotes cognitive stability.

In dual-task (DT) situations of the psychological refractory period (PRP) type participants perform two temporally overlapping tasks with varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Dual-task-costs arise which can be explained by the bottleneck assumption. The reaction times for Task 2 (RT2) are usually prolonged at short SOA compared to long SOA. The so-called PRP Effect is explained by the assumption of a bottleneck requiring serial processing of response selection stages. In recent years, motivation has been shown to enhance cognitive processing. Hence, our aim was to investigate the effect of motivation, operationalized as monetary reward (MR), on bottleneck processing. We rewarded Task 2 in two experiments and asked which processing stage in DT will be affected by MR and whether the bottleneck can be changed by MR application. In Experiment 1, MR led to a decreased PRP-Effect. Indicated by greater differences between reward-condition and no-reward-condition at short SOA compared to long SOA. This pattern suggests, that MR effected pre-bottleneck stages of Task 1 and this effect is propagated onto Task 2. In Experiment 2, we added a response compatibility manipulation in Task 2. To test whether MR can change serial processing of response selection stages. The results showed an additive effect of compatibility and of MR on RT2, indicating that response selection processes were scheduled serially independently of MR. The results provide evidence for modulatory influence of MR on pre-bottleneck stages in DT processing.

Cosmopolitan cities are cities that provide opportunities for personal success and value diversity, creativity, and equality (e.g., Berlin, Boston). These cities attract people who are motivated toward personal goal pursuit (those with an independent self-concept), people open to experience, and extraverted people (Sevincer, Varnum, & Kitayama, 2017). Because cosmopolitan cities offer favorable conditions for high-risk/high-return enterprises, they may also attract people who are willing to take risks. Indeed, high risk-takers were more inclined to choose cosmopolitan cities as the destination of a potential residential move (Sevincer, Kwon, Varnum, & Kitayama, 2019). I present an experiment that investigated whether risk-taking is causally linked to a preference for cosmopolitan cities. To manipulate risk aversion (vs. seeking), participants were induced with a prevention-focus, known to be associated with lower risk-taking (vs. promotion-focus and control). To measure preference for cosmopolitan cities, they were asked to name the three cities they would most prefer to move to if they had out of their current city. Two independent raters coded the cosmopolitanism of participants’ preferred cities. Participants who were induced with a prevention-focus named cities that were less cosmopolitan on average than those with a promotion-focus and those in the control condition, indicating that situationally induced risk aversion led participant to prefer less cosmopolitan cities. Because economic development relies on a willingness to take risks, the ability of cosmopolitan cities to attract people willing to take risks may be one factor that fuels their economic development.

Research in the implicit motive tradition is built on the notion that motivation depends on the interaction of individuals’ motives with specific incentives. Corresponding research in the domain of motor performance has mostly focused on the achievement motive because a standard of excellence is characteristic of many performance contexts. However, these contexts also offer opportunity for cooperation and competition, i.e. incentives for the affiliation and power motive. We tested whether congruence between a) individuals’ affiliation or power motive and b) competition and cooperation incentives benefits motor performance. After assessing participants' baseline performance in darts they took part in either a group performance scenario (affiliation incentive) or a one-on-one competition scenario (power incentive). In contrast to previous findings, affiliation did not predict performance in the team condition. In contrast - and in line with previous findings - the power motive was positively associated with performance in the one-on-one competition scenario. Results extend findings on the power motive and highlight the need for research on affiliation.

Science deniers and scientific-consensus advocates’ positions repeatedly are presented in a balanced fashion in mass media. This false balance increases the spread of misinformation under the guise of objectivity. Weight-of-evidence strategies are an alternative to this, in which journalists lend weight to each position equivalent to the amount of evidence that supports it. In public discussions, journalists can do this by inviting more advocates of scientific consensuses than science deniers (i.e., outnumbering) or they can use warnings about the false-balance effect prior to the discussion (i.e., forewarning). In three preregistered laboratory experiments, we tested the efficacy of outnumbering and forewarning as weight-of-evidence strategies to mitigate science deniers’ influence. We further explored whether advocates’ responses to science deniers (rebuttal) and the audience’s issue involvement moderate these strategies’ efficacy. A total of N = 887 individuals indicated their attitudes towards vaccination and their intention to vaccinate before and after watching a TV discussion. The presence and absence of forewarning, outnumbering and rebuttal were manipulated between subjects; participants also indicated their individual issue involvement. We found no evidence that outnumbering mitigated damage from denialism, not even when advocates served as multiple sources. However, forewarning about the false-balance effect mitigated deniers’ negative effect. Moreover, the protective effect was independent of rebuttal and issue involvement. Thus, forewarnings can serve as an effective, economic and theory-driven strategy to counter science denialism.

Social media have become important for minorities to share tolerance-promoting messages via the internet. Videos aiming to improve intergroup attitudes are widespread. But despite their popularity and advantage of being highly scalable as anti-prejudice interventions, there is a lack of research examining if and how such media-based interventions are effective. Therefore, this preregistered study evaluated the effectiveness of a YouTube-campaign video (Estatal LGTB, 2015) that used vicarious contact to improve attitudes towards gay men. Participants (N = 274 heterosexual adults, Mage = 42, SDage = 16, 53% employees, 55% women) were randomly allocated to a control-group design (campaign vs. control video). Whereas the campaign video (n = 125) presents a gay couple asking by-passers to translate an email that confronted them with anti-gay discrimination, in the control condition (n = 149) the same video was presented muted with alternative subtitles about two brothers facing corruption. As pre-registered the campaign video improved heterosexuals’ explicit and implicit attitudes (IAT) towards gay men. Further, the video improved explicit attitudes via (a) inducing outgroup empathy with the gay protagonists and (b) via evoking perspective taking with the ingroup protagonists. However, neither perspective taking nor empathy with ingroup or outgroup protagonists explained the improved implicit attitudes, suggesting other working mechanisms that should be examined in future research.

The effect of touchscreen usage on the perception of contents we consume has rarely been addressed in research. Within a series of three experiments (total sample size of 247 participants) we tested how touchscreen usage compared to other input devices, e.g. mouse or keyboard, influences attitude change, as well as basic stimulus evaluation. Study 1 tested the effect of touchscreen usage on attitude change. Participants were asked to rank-order a set of arguments either using a touchscreen or a mouse. We expected touchscreen usage to increase the impact of the arguments leading to a higher attitude change. However, our results did not find any differences between the devices. Study 2 and 3 both focused on the effect of touchscreen usage on general stimulus evaluation, concerning perceived psychological ownership as well as valence ratings. Study 2 used a set of adjectives as material, whereas study 3 used pictures. We expected to find higher levels of psychological ownership as well as a more positive evaluation of the stimuli when a touchscreen was used compared to the other input devices (mouse and keyboard). The results of both studies indicated that the device used to carry out the task was not of importance. In conclusion, the usage of touch-interfaces does not seem to significantly affect the overall perception of stimuli compared to other input devices like a mouse or keyboard. All three experiments were pre-registered.

We presented pen-and-paper questionnaires containing fake news items on crimes to a sample of young (M = 21.3 years, N = 281) and older adults (M = 70.7 years, N = 508) living in Norway. The origin of the perpetrator (Scandinavian vs immigrant) was varied in a between-Ss design. Participants evaluated on scales perceived credibility of each of the news items, their willingness to share them (face-to-face, online) and their emotions associated with the content of the articles (fear, anger, sadness, worry). They were asked about their political orientation, media use and trust in different types of media (newspapers, TV, radio, Internet). Participants’ propensity to engage in analytic reasoning was measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) and their emotional reactivity by the Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale – Short Form (PERS-S). Participants with a more negative attitude to refugees tended to feel emotional about, trust and share articles with an immigrant perpetrator and distrust articles with a Scandinavian perpetrator. In turn, participants with a more positive attitude to refugees showed the opposite pattern of results. Older adults trusted fake news items more than young adults did. Trust in fake news was positively associated with scores in the PERS-S and with trust in media in general.

Different determinants of truth judgments have been identified by previous research such as the reliability of the information’s source, repeated exposure of the information, or the information’s presentation format. Although these variables typically concur in real-world settings, most studies examined them in isolation. To address this issue, we conducted two experiments that explored joint effects in a simulated social media news context. Experiment 1 investigated effects of news source (reliable source vs. unreliable source vs. no source information), repeated statement exposure (yes vs. no), and news presentation format (with vs. without a non-probative picture) on truth judgments. We found strong and independent effects of news source and statement repetition on perceived truth, but no significant effect of presentation format. Experiment 2 aimed at exploring the role of news source (reliable source vs. unreliable source) and statement exposure (verbatim repetition vs. incoherent repetition vs. no repetition) in further detail. Again, we found strong and additive effects of news source and statement exposure. That is, verbatim repetition increased perceived truth whereas incoherent repetition decreased perceived truth, irrespectively of whether the information was presented by reliable or unreliable sources. Our findings demonstrate that people do not rely on a single judgment cue but integrate source information and meta-cognitive feelings to evaluate a statement’s truth.

In principle, selective attention results from target enhancement and distractor suppression. However, it is unclear whether the human neurocognitive system implements a mechanism to suppress distraction that is independent of target enhancement. Neural oscillatory power in the alpha frequency band (~10 Hz) has been implicated in the selection of targets, but there is lack of empirical evidence for its involvement in the suppression of distractors. I will present evidence from electroencephalography (EEG) in support of the hypothesis that alpha power directly relates to distractor suppression and thus operates independently from target selection. In an auditory spatial pitch discrimination task, we modulated the location (left vs right) of either a target or a distractor tone sequence, while fixing the other in the front. When the distractor was fixed in the front, alpha power relatively decreased in the hemisphere contralateral to the target and increased ipsilaterally. Most importantly, when the target was fixed in the front, alpha lateralization reversed in direction for the suppression of distractors on the left versus right. These data show that target-selection–independent alpha power modulation is involved in distractor suppression. While both lateralized alpha responses for selection and for suppression proved reliable, they were uncorrelated and distractor-related alpha power emerged from more anterior, frontal cortical regions. Lending functional significance to suppression-related alpha oscillations, alpha lateralization at the single-trial level was predictive of behavioral accuracy. I will argue that these results fuel a renewed look at neurobiological accounts of selection-independent suppressive filtering in attention.

Natural listening often comes with the challenge of attending one auditory foreground source in the presence of distracting background sources that need to be suppressed. Such scenarios can be experimentally simulated by presenting different sound sources and asking listeners to perform a task that requires selective attention on one of these sources. For a balanced investigation, the attended sound source is changed throughout the experiment. It turns out that some sources are easier to attend than others. For instance, when using sequences of three repeatedly presented tones (e.g. low, middle and high frequency tone: ‘ABC’ pattern), the middle tones (‘B’) are rarely reported as foreground source, and it is particularly difficult to perform a task on them. Here we report a combined behavioral-EEG study that was designed to reveal underlying mechanisms of this so-called middle-stream deficit. We replicated an impairment in behavioral performance for a selective-attention task on the middle tones compared to the outer tones. We then examined how the middle-stream deficit could be overcome. In line with our hypotheses, the performance deficit decreased with either a larger frequency separation between the tones or a higher intensity of the middle tones. Corresponding EEG data during passive listening shed light on bi-directional inhibition from the outer tones as a candidate mechanism for the middle-stream deficit and for its reduction by the applied manipulations. Findings will be discussed in light of current theories of auditory foreground-background formation and selective attention.

Listening to speech in adverse, noisy environments can be a difficult task for listeners with normal-hearing (NH), but significantly more so for hearing-impaired (HI) individuals. Here we investigate selective attention to speech and how different factors may influence it in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired individuals. In our investigation we use electroencephalography (EEG) and auditory attention decoding approach which relies on the fact that neural signals synchronize to continuous, running auditory stimulus, more so to attended than to ignored one. Our NH and aided HI participants listened to an audiobook presented in noise. We manipulated noise level (easy vs. hard listening), but also participants’ motivation by providing a monetary reward. Both participant groups performed better in easier listening condition, which was reflected in faster EEG impulse responses to speech. NH participants behaviorally performed better than HI, but increase in motivation indeed improved performance of HI group. In a separate study we also showed on neural level that selective attention abilities of HI participants improve with help of visual cues, such as speaker's lip movements. On behavioral level we showed that this increase is related to the amount of hearing loss. We suggest that auditory selective attention should be investigated in context of cues and scenarios that are common in every-day life as we do observe their influence on cortical speech tracking. In HI individuals these effects are even stronger than in NH and ecological approaches are needed to fully explain stream segregation and selective attention mechanisms.

Retroactive cuing of information after encoding improves working memory performance. However, there is an ongoing debate on the contribution of target enhancement vs. distractor inhibition attentional sub-processes to this behavioral benefit. We investigated the electrophysiological correlates of retroactive attentional orienting by means of oscillatory EEG parameters. In order to disentangle excitatory and inhibitory attentional processes, the to-be-memorized information was presented in a way that posterior hemispheric asymmetries in oscillatory power could be unambiguously linked to lateral target vs. distractor processing. We found an increase of posterior alpha power (8-14 Hz) contralateral to the position of non-cued working memory content and a decrease of alpha power contralateral to cued positions. These effects were insensitive to the number of cued or non-cued items, supporting their relation to the spatial orienting of attention. Importantly, only the alpha power increase contralateral to non-cued positions differed reliably from the asymmetry in a neutral control condition, highlighting the importance of an inhibitory mechanism for the retroactive focusing of attention. Furthermore, the alpha power asymmetries relative to the positions of cued and non-cued items predicted the individual susceptibility to interference by irrelevant information during working memory retrieval. These findings suggest that spatially specific modulations of posterior alpha power are related to enhancing vs. inhibiting the spatial context of information stored in working memory, thereby guaranteeing a target-oriented retrieval process.

Salient yet irrelevant objects often interfere with daily tasks by capturing attention against our best interests and intentions. Recent research showed that through implicit learning, distraction by a salient object can be reduced by suppressing the location where this distractor is likely to appear. Here, we investigated whether suppression of such high probability distractor locations is an all-or-none phenomenon or specifically tuned to the degree of interference caused by the distractor. In two experiments, we varied the salience of two task-irrelevant singleton distractors each of which was more likely to appear in one specific location in the visual field. We show that the magnitude of interference by a distractor determines the magnitude of suppression for its high probability location: the more salient a distractor, the more it becomes suppressed when appearing in its high probability location. We conclude that distractor suppression emerges as a consequence of the spatial regularities regarding the location of a distractor as well as its potency to interfere with attentional selection.

Planning an action can be construed as the temporal binding of features of perceptual action effects. Previous research demonstrated such binding for task-relevant, body-related effect features. However, there is also evidence that binding does not encompass features of a task-irrelevant, body-external effect. In three experiments, we investigated whether it is task-relevance or body-relatedness that determines whether feature binding occurs. Participants prepared a certain action A, but before executing it, initiated an intermediate action B. Each action relied on a feature of a body-related effect (index vs. middle finger movement) and a feature of a body-external effect (cursor movement towards vs. away from a reference object). In Experiment 1 (n=34), both effects were equally task-relevant. Performance in action B suffered from partial feature overlap with action A, compared to full feature repetition/alternation, which indicates binding of both types of features in planning action A. Importantly, this partial overlap cost disappeared when both effects were available but only the body-related effect was task-relevant (Experiment 2, n=34). Moreover, when only the body-external effect of action A was known in advance (Experiment 3, n=36), performance in action B was better if it aimed at the same, rather than a different, distal effect. Consequently, task-relevance determines whether binding of body-related and body-external effect features takes place, while a lack of binding does not hinder the pre-activation of features of relevant body-external effects prior to action execution.

Binding theories postulate an automatic integration of stimulus and response features into temporary episodic traces (or event files). A repetition of any of the features from the previous episodic trace results in the retrieval of the entire trace. Along with relevant stimuli, even irrelevant stimuli or features are integrated into these episodic traces, and repeating irrelevant stimuli can also retrieve the previous episodic trace including the previous response – distractor-response binding. This binding is generally thought to be largely automatic in nature, occurring without any great requirement of attentional resources. However, some studies have shown that specific types of attention, e.g. spatial attention or feature-based attention can influence binding effects. In the present study, the role of central attention on distractor-response bindings was examined. To this end, participants carried out a primary letter identification task and a secondary updating task in parallel. Binding effects were tested under conditions of high cognitive load, low cognitive load and a control condition with no cognitive load. The results indicate smaller binding effects under conditions of high working memory load compared to a control condition, thus suggesting that although such bindings are automatic, they are not completely independent of central attentional resources.

During visual imagery, mental images are driven by internal signals in the absence of external inputs. Here we asked how categorical information is modulated by task demands. To this aim, we measured participants’ fMRI signal while they imagined static and dynamic animals and tools. We found that imagery and perception of tools in both tasks activate similar brain regions, involving superior parietal lobule (SPL) and lateral occipital cortex (LOC), but only ~23% of voxels overlapped between the two processes. Representational similarity analysis (RSA) furthermore demonstrated that the LOC captures information about object categories, irrespective of the task (static, dynamic). Additionally, RSA showed that information about imagined static objects is carried in the middle temporal gyrus, whereas information about imagined dynamic objects is spread across several brain regions. To examine the underlying functional connectivity, we used psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis. We found that the functional connectivity between animal-selective seeds and regions in the right ventral pathway was modulated by the difference between perception of animals and tools. Moreover, we found a decreased functional coupling between LOC and category-selective regions during visual imagery, and an increased coupling between SPL and the frontal cortex during static visual imagery. Our results highlight the differences between perception and visual imagery. Moreover, our results enhance our understanding of the neural basis of visual imagery, showing that imagined stimulus categories can be distinguished in the LOC based on patterns of activation, and that imagining dynamic objects engages a wider network than imagery of static objects.

Capacity limited cognitive functions seem to be particularly sensitive to the detrimental effects of mental fatigue induced by increasing Time-on-Task (ToT). Previous studies have also suggested that movement behavior, especially the preparatory phase, is costly in term of cognitive capacity. Yet effects of ToT specific to the different phases of movements have received little attention. Therefore, in two experiments, we assessed the effect of ToT on a visually guided pointing task. In both experiments, participants (n = 23 and 23) were instructed to point to targets by moving the cursor from the center to the peripheral target. In experiment 1, targets appeared at one of the four positions. In experiment 2, there were 16 target positions enhancing the uncertainty about movement direction. The first three blocks of trials lasted 15 minutes without rest. Participants then had a 2-min break followed by an additional block. Data of movement preparation time, movement execution, and subjective fatigue were recorded. Movement execution was measured as movement time, movement error, peak velocity, path length-task axis length ratio etc. Gaze position recording was also used to control fixation. In both experiments, the most robust finding was that movement preparation became slower with increasing ToT. In contrast, movement execution was associated with decreasing speed-accuracy trade-off: fatigued participants made faster but more erroneous movements. To conclude, the results suggest that enhanced level of mental fatigue is manifested in a slow preparatory phase followed by a faster but often more erroneous movement execution.

Research on memory for intentions and goals suggests that not only cognitive representations of intended actions but also semantic concepts that are associated with them exhibit heightened memory activation prior to completing an intention or reaching a goal. This has been observed, for instance, in faster lexical decisions for intention-related compared to unrelated memory contents. After intention completion, however, this so-called intention-superiority effect is presumed to dissipate or even reverse into lower activation of intention-related compared to unrelated memory contents (i.e., intention inhibition). Aiming to replicate these effects, in the present study, we tested the activation status of verbal intention representations across five experiments that were designed to detect both high intention activation before completion (i.e., intention superiority effects) and strong intention inhibition after completion. To our surprise, the present experiments showed that activation levels of intention-related and unrelated memory contents did not differ reliably prior to or after intention completion. This was also mirrored by Bayesian analyses and a meta-analytic integration of our findings, suggesting that these effects might be rather fragile and require further research to identify variables that modulate their occurrence.

Actions and their effects are perceived temporally shifted toward each other compared to the same events in isolation. While this phenomenon of temporal binding was initially discussed as a perceptual bias that is unique for intentional actions, similar observations have now also been made in other event chains. What brings about this effect, however, cannot yet be clearly pinpointed. In this study, we consider the temporal binding paradigm with respect to multisensory cue integration by manipulating temporal certainty of actions and their effects. We discuss the results in light of the “principle of inverse effectiveness” in multisensory cue integration which suggests that the perceived timing of less certain events is pulled strongly towards related and temporally certain events while temporally certain events are relatively unaffected by uncertain events.

The constant-foreperiod effect refers to an increase of reaction time (RT) with increasing foreperiod (FP) length. Proceeding from a pioneering study (Holender & Bertelson, 1975), we examined whether or not sequential action biases in choice-RT tasks remain stable over time (during the FP interval). In three experiments, we examined performance as a function of constant-FP length (1000 vs. 5000 ms) and the sequential effects of event repetitions versus alternations. As a result, sequential action biases occurred predominantly in short-FP trials and decreased in long-FP trials. Crucially, this interactive effect of FP length and action bias on performance was completely abolished when the intertrial interval was further increased. These results challenge the popular belief that event-specific contributions to performance are a stable part of the mental representation that guides temporal expectations in FP situations. Rather, they indicate that transient activation merely superimpose on performance effects.

The visual search involves identifying specific objects, called targets, among numerous other objects, called distractors. This task is an essential skill in many lifesaving professions (e.g. radiologists, airport security screeners). It has been found that even experts make mistakes when there are two targets to be found (Berbaum et al., 2010). Once a target has been found, it happens that even experts do not find the second target. This fact can have serious consequences if, for example “a water bottle and a small gun are in hand baggage” (Cain & Mitroff, 2013). One reason why people miss the subsequent object once they had found another one may be, that the position and shape of the first found target exhaust the resources of working memory (WM; resource depletion account). We used real x-rayed hand baggages to investigate this effect. People had to remember a position and the identity of an object before searching a forbidden item in a hand baggage (experimental condition). In the control condition there was no memory item before the visual search task. We found no difference in the reaction time or in the accuracy between both conditions. The analysis from the eye movements shows that participants rarely look at the position in the baggage where the memory object was presented before. Interestingly, people look back in the area close to the object but avoid the exact position from the object.

Die Denktrainings von K. J. Klauer zur Schulung induktiven Denkens gelten als die empirisch am besten geprüften kognitiven Trainings im deutschsprachigen Raum (Hasselhorn, XXXX). Das Trainingsprogramm „Keiner ist so schlau wie ich“ (KISSWI; Klauer, 2007/2009/2011) stellt eine zeitgemäße und ökonomische Version für Kinder im Vorschul- und Schuleintrittsalter dar. Allerdings wurde das KISSWI ursprünglich als Einzeltraining konzipiert. Ein Dissertationsprojekt an der TU Chemnitz untersucht nun, inwieweit dieses Trainingsprogramm auch bei einer Durchführung in Gruppen von ca. zehn Kindern wirksam ist. Die vorliegende Teilstudie überprüft drei Hypothesen: (H1) Das Gruppentraining erzielt im Vergleich zum Einzeltraining ähnlich hohe Effekte auf die kognitiven Fähigkeiten der trainierten Kinder. (H2) Das Gruppentraining erzielt, wenn es von (geschulten) Psychologiestudierenden durchgeführt wird, im Vergleich zu einer Leitung durch Erzieherinnen, ähnlich hohe Effekte. (H3) Das Gruppentraining erzielt vergleichbare Ergebnisse bei Kindern im Vorschul- und Schuleintrittsalter. Die Effekte des Gruppentrainings wurden mit einer Wartekontrollgruppen-Studie im Prä-Post-Design bei Vorschul- und Grundschulkindern der ersten Klasse getestet. Die Vorschul-Stichprobe umfasste 127 Kinder (M=6;3 Jahre). 60 der Kinder wurden von Ihren BezugserzieherInnen aus der Kita trainiert (31 Kinder in der Experimentalgruppe [EG]; 29 Kinder in der Wartekontrollgruppe [WKG]). Die verbleibenden 67 Vorschulkinder (EG=33; WKG=34) wurden von geschulten Master-Studierenden der Psychologie trainiert. In der Grundschul-Stichprobe waren 128 Kinder (M=7;1 Jahre). 59 der Grundschulkinder (EG=29; WKG=30) wurden von ihren betreuenden HorterzieherInnen trainiert und 69 Kinder (EG=36; WKG=33) erhielten das Training von geschulten Master-Studierenden der Psychologie. Die gewonnenen Daten werden aktuell noch analysiert, die Ergebnisse liegen im Januar 2020 vor.

The development of cyber-physical production systems and industry 4.0 is a central goal of the German research initiative (High-Tech Strategy 2025). Complementary to this aim, we propose a cognition-based human–machine interaction approach including (1) a holistic analysis of complex human–machine systems and interaction processes and (2) modeling of cognitive processes. This approach is applied in the context of manufacturing, specifically, coating technology (i.e., atmospheric plasma spraying). Thermal spraying is widely used, for instance, for wear and corrosion resistance and thermal barrier coatings. To analyze technical and cognitive processing, operators’ glance behavior was tracked during thermal spraying. Operators’ expert knowledge was collected using a retrospective think-aloud technique. Afterwards, eye-tracking data were matched to relevant expert knowledge. This combined data- and expert-driven method reveals insights into the operator’s attention and information search processes. These processes are central to an understanding of human monitoring and control of the thermal spraying process and are the basis for the development of technical assistant systems. Further, we discuss possibilities for data modelling (e.g., fuzzy pattern classification) and show how the presented cognition-based human–machine interaction approach contributes to the development of advanced interaction displays as well as self-optimizing automation systems, with applications in production and other areas of human factors.

The usefulness of feedback plays an important role for effective learning. It is a challenge in academic contexts to find a balance between time constraints, feedback quality and immediacy of feedback. Because of the parsimony of score sheets, we want to explicitly test whether its effect on self-efficacy and learning gain is equivalent to textual feedback. We investigate the effects of the feedback type in a quasi-experimental pre-post design with 80 freshmen (M = 20.56 years SD = 2.79, 14 men), who attend one of four parallel introductory university seminars. Students work on home assignments on four occasions during the seminar. For the assignments, half of the participants receive a score sheet feedback, the other half receive textual feedback with standardized text modules. We test for differential effects on learning gain (pre-post knowledge gain; 20 items on topics covered in the four assignments) and self-efficacy (adaptation of the self-efficacy scale by Schwarzer and Jerusalem, 1999). Openness to feedback (AILI subscore on receptiveness to external feedback; translated by Meijer, 2004) and achievement motivation (German version of the AGI by Sudmann et al., 2014) are considered as potential moderators. Both variables were measured in a pretest at the beginning of the semester. This study is currently ongoing. Data will be analysed using repeated measurement ANOVAS. Openness to feedback and achievement motivation will be included as moderator variables, if there are substantial correlations with an outcome. Results will yield implications for the design of blended learning environments.

Revision is an important step within the Knowledge Integration Framework which proposes that successful inquiry learning involves adding, sorting, integrating and revising ideas. Evidence suggests that learners’ aptitudes influence how well they revise thereby resulting in improved learning outcomes. Since revision requires greater engagement from learners, those with high academic self-concept and mastery-oriented goals may revise better. However, learners do not tend to spontaneously revise; scaffolds - tailored to individuals' prior knowledge - are needed to guide this process. This study investigates firstly, the role of individual aptitudes of learners on revision. Secondly, it examines the effectiveness of constructive vs. example-based scaffolds to foster learner’s revision and learning outcomes. Adult participants complete an online learning unit on climate change and engage with one of two scaffolds that support the revision of an explanation item. We hypothesize that learners with high academic self-concept and mastery-oriented goals will score higher in the revision task. It is expected that guidance, in the form of scaffolding, will be more likely to predict revision than individual aptitudes and that more successful revision will result in improved learning outcomes. High prior knowledge learners are predicted to revise better and have better learning outcomes following a constructive scaffold, while low prior knowledge learners will benefit more from an example-based scaffold. Moderation regression analysis will be run to test these hypotheses. Implications of this study will be important for designing robust instruction which promotes knowledge revision and improved learning outcomes for all learners.

Patients with surgically treated anterior cruciate ligament rupture often suffer from a phenomenon called “giving way”, a perceived loss of stability in the knee, for a long time after an accident and the subsequent surgery. Long-term effects of an insufficient rehabilitation are frequent acute and chronic secondary injuries, such as the renewed rupture of the operated cruciate ligament in 5-10% of cases or the contralateral knee in approximately 15 - 30% of cases (Failla et al., 2015). Between 12 and 24 months after surgery, the sports-related injury rate increases dramatically by about 30% (Grindem et al. 2016). The present study aims at significantly reducing the recurrence and complication rate in this group of patients. Textile-integrated sensors, worn by the patient in the form of a smart knee bandage, are used to detect harmful events which are signalled by a suitable actuator to avoid misalignments. To implement this innovative approach, various technologies from the fields of textile technology, sensor technology and embedded IT are combined with corresponding analytical methods and actuators. Considering aspects of user acceptance and usability, this study examines and compares different approaches to feedback actuators such as heat and vibration in a preliminary sample of N = 11 healthy participants. Further, feedback modalities like pressure, frequency, rhythmicity and intensity of feedback expositions are examined and discussed. In the future, this feedback could enable patients to recognize and correct maladaptive movement behavior during their everyday activities and therapeutic exercises.

Identity data are a common target of cyber-attacks aiming at selling the data or using it for criminal purposes. New services, so-called leak-checkers, offer users the possibility to inform themselves about whether their identities have been leaked. However, we know few about the users’ perception and acceptance of such services and whether the provided information motivates the user to perform protective actions. The current laboratory study (N=88) used a cover-story to investigate the use and perception of leak-checkers as well as reactions on information about leaked identity data by using a simulated leak-checking service. The leak-checker report told all participants that their identity data had been leaked. The results show that this information caused less than 30% of the participants to directly change their passwords even if they previously reported to be highly concerned about their identity data being leaked. This tendency was independent of whether identity data of social networks or online banking services were leaked. Overall, the findings indicate that leak-checkers are perceived as very useful, however, the given information does not necessarily lead users to take effective action.

Individual differences in attentional abilities provide an interesting approach in studying visual attention as well as the relation of attention to other psychometric measures. However, recent research has demonstrated that many tasks from experimental research are not suitable for individual differences research as they fail to capture these differences reliably. Here, we provide a test for individual differences in visual attention which relies on the multiple object tracking task (MOT). This test captures individual differences reliably in 6-15 minutes. Within the task, the participants have to maintain a set of targets (among identical distractors) across an interval of object motion. It captures the efficiency of attentional deployment. Importantly, this test was explicitly designed and tested for reliability under conditions that match those of most laboratory research (restricted sample of students, approximately n = 50). The test is free to use and runs fully under open source software. In order to facilitate the application of the test, we have translated it into 16 common languages (Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish). We hope that this MOT test supports researchers whose field of study requires capturing individual difference in visual attention reliably.

Previous studies have shown that temporal preparation facilitates the target selection in visual search. In two experiments, we investigated whether this selection benefit might be due to a change in the salience of stimuli. We required participants to search for a colour pop-out (the target) amongst homogenously coloured distractors. To manipulate temporal preparation, we employed a blocked foreperiod paradigm in which a warning signal precedes the search display by either a short or a long interval (high versus low temporal preparation, respectively). To manipulate the salience of the target, we varied the set-size within the search display (low versus high salience). In the first, behavioural experiment (N = 24), we observed a RT advantage in case of high temporal preparation and high target salience, but no interaction between the two factors. In the second, ERP experiment (N = 24), the target-evoked N2pc as an index of spatial selection revealed an interaction between temporal preparation and target salience. Specifically, we observed that the N2pc was enhanced by high temporal preparation, and this effect was stronger in the low salience condition than in the high salience condition. Based on the ERP results, we conclude that temporal preparation increases bottom-up salience of stimuli so that spatial selection of targets benefits especially from temporal preparation if the local feature contrast between the target and the surrounding stimuli is low.

Comprehending speech in a “cocktail-party” situation can be challenging especially for elderly adults. They experience stronger distraction by task-irrelevant stimuli compared to younger adults, for example when target speaker positions change. This is particularly important in attention reorientation and refocusing after distractions. We investigated the benefit of additional visual speech information in a dynamic “cocktail-party” paradigm. Older and younger participants were presented a forced-choice two-alternative discrimination task, in which they responded to target words spoken by one of three talkers in a horizontal array. Stimuli were displayed in three audio-visual conditions (still face, unspecific and congruent mouth movement). In the constant condition, targets were always displayed centrally. In the dynamic condition, targets were displayed centrally in standard (80%), but laterally shifted in deviant trials (20%). We analyzed behavioral performance and event-related brain potentials such as mismatch and reorienting negativity. We expected congruent audio-visual speech to offer the biggest benefits compared to the other conditions. Also, post-deviant reorientation should be easiest within this condition. Older participants should profit in particular. First results show the expected age-specific differences in audio-visual speech. They indicate a facilitated speech processing when congruent multimodal speech is presented. This benefit seems especially evident with a fixed talker position, although performance declines are most pronounced when the position switches. Hence, post-deviance distraction is stronger, however participants are able to restore their benefit. Summarizing, audio-visual speech indeed has a positive impact when attending a talker’s speech.

While some studies on mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) present beneficial effects on cognitive functions (e.g. Chiesa et al., 2011) others found no consistent effects (e.g. Anderson et al. 2007; Lao et al., 2016). One reason for the inconsistency of findings may be the great variation in procedures, research designs and absence of active or passive control conditions. Furthermore, processes which underly effects of even very short interventions (10 to 20 minutes; Brown et al., 2016; Ostafin & Kassman, 2009) are not clear, may not be specific to mindfulness training and may be attainable otherwise, such as through relaxation (Fell et al., 2010). Therefore, the current study compared the effects of a short-term mindfulness breathing meditation with progressive muscle relaxation (active control condition) and listening to podcasts (passive control condition). 78 participants were randomly assigned to one experimental condition and received interventions for 20 minutes, twice within 5 days. Measurements took place pre and post interventions. The research followed a 3 (experimental condition) x 2 (time of measurement) experimental design. We assessed components of executive functions and attentional networks with the Attention Network Task, Continuous Performance Task, n-Back and Number-Letter Task. Results were analyzed using Generalized Linear Mixed Modelling, which allowed for the inclusion of single-trial reaction-time data and for the investigation of differences in response patterns within and between individuals. Our results do not show systematic benefits of the mindfulness intervention beyond those of the relaxation training. Theoretical implications for models of mindfulness are discussed.

Empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM) are two core components of social understanding. The EmpaToM (Kanske et al., 2015) is a validated social video task that allows for independent manipulation and assessment of the two capacities in adults. First applications revealed that empathy and ToM are clearly dissociable constructs on a neuronal as well as on a behavioral level. As the EmpaToM has been designed for the assessment of social understanding in adults, it has a high degree of complexity and comprises issues that are inadequate for minors. Here, we present a new version of the EmpaToM that is especially suited to measure empathy and ToM in youths. In a first step, the EmpaToM-Y has been successfully validated on the original EmpaToM in an adult sample (N = 62). In a second step, it is assessed whether the EmpaToM-Y is an appropriate instrument to investigate social understanding in adolescent samples. In a group of 40 teenagers (14-18 years), the feasibility and validity of the new instrument is tested by adding standardized measures of ToM and empathy. Additionally, gaze behavior (Eye-Tracking) and electro-dermal activity (EDA) are recorded to collect physiological indicators of attention and arousal.

Recent publications argue that the assessment of attentional biases for threat is now in crisis as concerns had been raised about the reliability of the measures used. Here, we present our paradigm that provides an opportunity to measure both short term (e.g. orientation, attentional draw) and longer-term (e.g. executive attention, vigilance-avoidance) processes. Participants (N=40) saw a number matrix (numbers from 1 to 10) in the centre of the screen and an image either directly beside the matrix or on the periphery. Images could be neutral, moderately or highly threatening. The task was to find nr1 and then find the rest of the numbers in ascending order. We analysed reaction time (RT) and eye-movement measures relating to finding nr1 and the elapsed time between finding nr1 and nr10. Finding nr1 was faster as the threat level increased when the image was close to the matrix. When the image was on the periphery, RT was faster for moderately threatening stimuli compared to the other conditions. Regarding the overall search performance, participants were faster when images were presented on the periphery and there was an increase in search times as the threat level increased. Eye-movements showed that first fixation was relatively late for the images, which also increased with threat level. And the total amount of fixation decreased for the more threatening images. Overall, the paradigm could serve as an alternative for the classical ones. Further research should take covert and overt attention into account when discussing attentional biases.

Temporal expectations are predictions regarding events' timing, based on previously-experienced temporal regularities. In the absence of regularities, we can form predictions based on recent encounters with similar circumstances. Such predictions create the "sequential effect" – the effect of previous trial's timing on prediction regarding current target’s timing. Studies shown that reaction-time (RT), a marker that is modulated by response preparation, is enhanced when timing matched previous trial's, compared to a mismatch. However, it is not clear whether this effect stems from response preparation, or from perceptual enhancement due to temporal expectations. In this experiment we examined this question using pre-target oculomotor inhibition (OI) – a novel temporal expectation marker that is task independent and therefore is unaffected by response preparation. Twenty participants underwent a spatial-cueing task. In each trial, a cue (left/right) indicated in which hemifield target was more likely to appear. Following a varying interval (500-2100ms), target appeared briefly (33ms) at the cued (75% of trials) or opposite location. Upon stimulus detection, participants were instructed to quickly report the stimulus hemifield. RT and OI were analyzed using mixed-effect modeling to account for the n-1 trial's interval. Results indicated that both RT and OI showed a sequential effect: shorter n-1 trial interval lead to slower RT and more saccades compared to matched n-1 trial interval. This pattern indicates that sequential effect is not solely the result of response preparation but is also a consequence of perceptual preparation for the future target.

Human gaze behavior gives us insights into our personality. While previous studies showed a positive association of social attention and extraversion and a negative association with neuroticism our study aims to investigate differences in social gaze regarding varying amounts of displayed social information and personality. Using eye tracking technology (Tobii TX300), a total of 102 participants, Mage = 21,39 (Sd = 2,47), were observed while looking at a three-minute video of a walk through a well-attended shopping center in first person view. We defined dynamic socially relevant areas of interest, namely front view face, front view body and rear-view body of the people seen in the video and measured social attention as gaze duration on these areas. Moreover, we assessed BIG-5-personality using the NEO-FFI questionnaire. Results revealed a positive correlation between extraversion and the duration of looking at faces and front bodies, while neuroticism was adversely associated with both measures. Notably, this tendency was not the case for rear-view bodies. Consistent with previous studies we replicated findings concerning personality and social gaze and showed that the amount of social information, that a social stimulus poses seems to be a relevant factor. Further, the results are discussed regarding the theory of the dual function of social.

The Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) is a formalised mathematical theory which enables the estimation of performance parameters reflecting individual attentional abilities. Clinical TVA-based studies, hitherto, have mainly focused on selective groups of patients suffering from specific diseases. Here, we aimed to evaluate the usability of TVA-based whole (WR) and partial report (PR) paradigms as a diagnostic tool within a clinical-neurological routine context. Within a 3-month period, we tested 20 unselected patients and 20 healthy control subjects matched for age, sex, and education. They were recruited from the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital, Jena, Germany. Whole and partial report of brief letter arrays were used to assess TVA-based parameter estimates of attentional capacity and attentional weighting. Patients also received comprehensive neuropsychological testing in the domains of executive function, attention, working and episodic memory, language, and visuospatial functions. Patients and healthy control subjects differed significantly with respect to visual short term memory storage capacity and the visual threshold. Relationships between TVA-based parameter estimates and results obtained in the different neuropsychological domains were analysed. Also, specific patterns of TVA-based parameter estimates were identified in different diagnostic entities (e.g. Parkinson’s disease) which provide starting points for future research.

Sustaining attention for prolonged periods of time can lead to a decay in performance and an increase in subjective fatigue, labeled in the literature as Time-on-Task effect (ToT). However, previous studies showed that the ToT effect is reversible by increasing task rewards. In this study, we explored the link between reward-induced changes in task performance after prolonged performance of the psychomotor vigilance task and resting state functional connectivity (FC) obtained by fMRI. At the behavioral level, participants (n = 39) showed robust ToT effects indicated by slower reaction times and higher subjective fatigue but after reward manipulation, their performance significantly increased. At the neural level, we found that the magnitude of the ToT effect was negatively related to FC of the bilateral putamen and the cerebellum. In addition, graph theoretical analyses showed that the ToT effect was negatively correlated with global efficiency but positively correlated with clustering coefficient, both indicating that higher functional integrity predicts lower sensitivity to the detrimental effects of ToT. Critically, reward-induced improvements in performance were positively associated with the FC of the right lateral sensorimotor region with the right anterior insula, left anterior supramarginal gyrus, left intraparietal sulcus and left insular cortex. Our results suggest that the positive effects of reward manipulation on restoring one’s performance are associated with increased FC between brain areas involved in visual attention, perceptual-motor coordination and the processing of costs and punishments.

Sensory input can drive the modulation of blinking, but also cognitive factors were suggested to have an effect. We aimed to dissociate bottom-up from top-down influences on blinking behavior in the visual and auditory domain. Participants performed an oddball task (without immediate response) including frequent standards, and infrequent distractors and targets in different modalities. Our data (n = 28) revealed that visual input leads to stronger blink modulation than auditory input. Nevertheless, if the input is associated with a task, the modulation is significantly increased, similarly in the two domains. When assessing the time before stimulus onset, we found a significant pre-stimulus decrease in blink probability, but only before the visual input. Interestingly, blink latency was significantly higher for target compared to standard and distractor. A follow-up experiment (n = 18) further revealed that when the distractor consisted of a stimulus omission, latencies were shifted and comparable to those after a target stimulus. Our data suggests that two independent processes have an effect on our blinking. A detector mechanism suppresses blinks before expected sensory input but only in the visual domain. A second mechanism increases blink probability after sensory input in the visual and the auditory domain. While the amplitude of this modulation is dependent on the amount of attention focused on the sensory input, the latency of this effect might be a possible marker to disentangle secondary top-down influences.

The contingent-capture hypothesis claims that stimuli sharing a feature with a searched-for target involuntarily capture visual attention, while non-matching stimuli do not. Per each target display, we presented four lines of different colors and orientations, each surrounded by a circle with a gap either at the top, bottom, left, or right. Participants reported the gap position via pressing the corresponding arrow key on a keyboard. The target was always the same color and orientation, and could be searched for by its color, its orientation, or both. We let participants learn to search for the target via trial and error. Therefore they received feedback (wrong or correct) after each response. We tested the used search criterion by pre-target cues. Pre-target cues appeared either at the same position as the target (valid) or at a different position (invalid), and either 1) matched the target color and orientation, 2) matched the target color only, 3) matched the target orientation only, or 4) did neither match target color nor orientation. All participants learned and used only the color to search for the target. In line with the contingent-capture hypothesis, both cues matching the target color elicited significant cueing effects (i.e., faster search times in valid than invalid trials) of similar magnitude (no significant difference). However, the cue matching the target orientation only did not elicit a cueing effect, just like the non-matching cue. Results indicate that not all target features were learned during search for targets.

Task interruptions are common in everyday life and have been shown to have a harmful effect on performance. In the present study, we examined the effects of interruption duration and position on post-interruption performance. Subjects carried out a predefined sequence of six sub-tasks, comprising two n-2 task switch trials (e.g., ABC ACB) or two n-2 task repetition trials (e.g., CBC ABA; n-2 backward inhibition paradigm). This primary task was interrupted by a categorization task before the second, third, or forth sub-task for 2 or 8 seconds; or there was no interruption. In line with the memory of goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002), we expected a higher resumption lag (i.e., time to resume the primary task) and more errors with long than with short interruption duration. Moreover, in accordance with previous studies indicating that a decline in post-interruption performance would be especially pronounced when mental workload was high, we predicted that resumption lag and error rates were highest when the primary task was interrupted before the third task (i.e., switch between trial n-1 and n) in n-2 task repetition trials. This is because it is assumed that when switching to a new task, the previous task set is inhibited. When switching from trial n-1 to trial n, this inhibition has to be overcome, and thus the mental workload is higher in this case in relation to the other interruption positions.

During the past years, writing by hand increasingly replaced by the use of digital devices. Current evidence regarding the influence of the writing instrument on reading and writing acquisition is mixed. The present training study therefore tested the influence of the writing tool on the acquisition of literacy skills at the letter and word level with various tests in a large sample of kindergarten children (n=145). We developed a training program consisting of 28 training sessions across seven weeks. Sixteen letters and 12 words were trained either by handwriting with paper and pencil, by writing with a stylus on a tablet PC or by typing on a virtual keyboard of a tablet with closely matched letter games. Before training, immediately after training and in a follow-up four to five weeks after training, we assessed reading and writing performance using standardized tests. We also assessed visuo-spatial skills before and after training. Children of the pencil group showed superior performance in letter recognition and had improved visuo-spatial skills compared with keyboard training. These beneficial effects of handwriting were not observed in the stylus group. Keyboard training, however, resulted in superior performance in word writing and reading compared with handwriting training with a stylus on the tablet. Our results show that handwriting with pencil fosters acquisition of letter knowledge and improves visuo-spatial skills compared with keyboarding. Writing with a stylus on a touchscreen seems to be the least favorable writing tool, possibly because of increased demands on motor control.

Developmental research suggests adolescents to deviate in value-based feedback learning as they show a stronger reward-sensitivity than both children and adults. However, there is mixed evidence for non-linear developmental trends of reward-related processes across adolescence. To investigate the development of feedback-based learning we adapted a reversal-learning paradigm. During the task, participants chose one picture out of picture pairs that were either assigned to positive or negative feedback. Positive feedback led to winning, or not losing points and negative feedback to not winning, or losing points, dependent on the incentive condition. After 5-6 trials, the rule changed and participants needed to adapt to reversed picture-feedback-associations. Here, we focused on the effect of incentive condition on performance in learning over time and in adaption to reversing stimulus-response associations and report findings from 54 early- (10-12 years), 56 mid- (13-15 years) and 48 late-adolescents (16-18 years). Results revealed that adolescents learned with repetitions as indicated by decreased error responses over time and age, and responded faster with increasing age. Moreover, they responded faster in reaction to potential gains than losses. In response to reversed learning rules, adolescents became more accurate with age, while the incentive condition had no effect. In sum, adolescents showed adaptive learning performance and age-related effects were rather reflected in linear trends. As such, despite evidence for an adolescent-specific approach to rewards, we could show no reward-related peak in feedback-based learning performance.

Humans are very sensitive to another person's eye gaze. We investigated the role of eye gaze during a question-answer interaction and its effect on cognitive performance (cf. Falck-Ytter et al., 2015). Using a video-mediated approach, participants were presented with videos of a speaker either looking at the camera (direct gaze) or not (averted) while phrasing the task. They then had to solve and respond to the respective problems verbally. In our first experiment, we used three different cognitive tasks: a digit span task, adapted for each individual participant, an arithmetic task and a verbal task (because a greater effect of eye gaze on cognitive performance in verbal communication compared to numeric domains seemed feasible). The analysis of the accuracy and response time data of 36 participants did not reveal significant effects of speaker eye gaze in any of the three tasks. One reason for this lack of effects could be that we deliberately piloted the tasks to be relatively difficult for our student participants. Arguably, the resulting high level of cognitive load might mean that participants devoted all available resources to solving the tasks, and effectively ignored the speaker’s eye gaze behaviour. In a follow-up experiment (N = 35 to date), we are therefore using the digit span (DS) task only and manipulating difficulty within participants by presenting a mixed set of easy (DS = 5), moderate (DS = 6), and difficult (DS = 7) problems via videos of a speaker with direct and averted gaze.

Economic inequality is a challenging feature of modern societies and a prominent topic in political debates all over the world. However, when asked about distributions of income and wealth people’s perceptions are far from accurate. This poses a serious problem since correct perceptions about economic inequality are a necessary requirement for any objective debate or informed decision about the topic. Our research therefore targets the cognitive process underlying the perceptions of income inequality. More specific we focus on a heuristic called Anchoring and Linear Interpolation (ALI). According to ALI, people’s perceptions of income distributions follow a linear trend between the lowest and the highest income remembered. Based on earlier studies, we presented subjects with a fictitious income distribution and then asked them to estimate the mean income of the four quartiles (the poorest, second-poorest, second-richest and richest quarter). We manipulated the skew and the range of the presented distributions. For both positively as well as negatively skewed distributions, participants mean quartile judgments were much more linear than appropriate and resulted in distinct patterns of estimation errors that are consistent with ALI. When the distribution’s range is increased (without actually changing the correct quartile means) subjects’ estimation errors increase significantly, underlining the influence of the distribution’s endpoints for the underlying cognitive process. These findings support the assumptions of the ALI Heuristic and emphasize its influence on the perception of income distributions.

Spatial components in the representation of ordinal information were initially revealed by Dehaene, Bossini and Giraux (1993). The authors found faster left- than right-hand responses to small numbers and a reverse effect with large numbers. This SNARC effect (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Code) was also found with overlearned and newly learned non-numerical information (Gevers, Reynvoet & Fias, 2003). The current study examined whether physical dimensions are also mentally represented with a spatial component. Response times to mentally visualized clothing of different weight and brightness were analyzed. Subjects were asked to either categorize the items as lighter vs. heavier or brighter vs. darker than a reference. The characteristic interaction of position (before or after the reference) and side of response (left or right) was found with the dimension of weight: left (right) hand responses were faster for lighter (heavier) clothing. Findings suggest that the representation of physical dimensions may also include spatial components.

Keele et al. (2003) had supposed that implicit learning is based on encapsulated modules processing information within single dimensions. However, it is not clear whether these dimensions refer to modalities (visual, auditory perception) or to distinct features (color, location etc.). The findings of Eberhardt et al. (2017) suggest the latter by showing that a visual-color sequence can be learned concurrently with a visual-spatial sequence. Since location might be a special feature, the aim of the current study was to test whether this also holds for other non-spatial features within the visual modality. Conway and Christiansen (2006) had already shown that this might be true for shapes and colors. In experiment 1 (n=30), we replicated the statistical learning experiment of Conway and Christiansen (2006). Participants saw short sequences of colors or of shapes. Both were derived from different grammars. Results showed learning effects for both, color and shape grammars. In experiment 2 (n=58), we used a sequence learning paradigm. In the learning phase, participants saw a color patch and a shape, and had to judge whether one of the stimuli was dotted. Unbeknown to the participants, colors and shapes followed separate, uncorrelated sequences. Results of a wagering task showed that participants learned both sequences. Thus, both experiments suggest that the term “dimension” of Keele et al. (2003) refers to abstract features (color, shape, location) rather than to modalities.

Finger counting gestures are assumed to play a supportive role in numerical development. It is argued that their non-arbitrary and self-experienceable sensory-motor representations are easier to learn for children than other numerical representations, and that they contribute to number word comprehension. However, Nicoladis et al. (2010) report better performance of children in a give-N task with number words than with manual number gestures. In our study we compare the comprehensibility of different number formats in more detail. We are specifically interested in whether finger counting gestures allow better processing efficacy than other numerical representations and whether they facilitate the understanding of number words in simultaneous presentation. Pre-school and school children absolve a computerized version of a give-N task on a tablet PC, allowing analyses of reaction time data in addition to conventional accuracy data. Participants are presented with finger counting gestures, auditory number words, dice patterns, or bimodal conditions, namely number words paired with gestures or dice patterns. Dice patterns serve as control conditions, containing transparent but not self-experienceable numerical representations. After the target stimulus, ten dots are visually presented; children respond by touching the corresponding number of dots and subsequently touching a depicted basket. Overall, preliminary results replicate the previous finding of higher performance with auditory than gesture stimuli and question the expected advantage of bi-modal conditions. We discuss the role of transparent and self-experienceable number symbols and the predominance of the number word sequence in number comprehension.

We affect our environment through our actions. In doing so, we generally feel in control of our actions and their consequences, a phenomenon which has been termed sense of agency. Agency is well documented for actions that aim at causing perceivable effects in the environment, but not all actions aim at causing an effect – rather, actions may also aim at preventing an event which would occur otherwise. Such prevention behaviour poses a critical challenge to the cognitive system, because successful prevention inherently revolves around the absence of a perceivable change. I will present a series of experiments showing that this state of affairs leads to a profound dissociation of explicit and implicit measurements of agency: Whereas participants reported high levels of agency in explicit judgements, there was no sign of agency in implicit measures of temporal binding. These results attest to an altered action representation for prevention behaviour, in line with current theories of clinical avoidance learning, and they might help to better understand avoidance behaviour.

In spite of the common use of green and red as signals for truth and falsity in everyday life (e.g., in quizzes or exam marking), the possible link between these colours and concepts lacks systematic investigation. For this reason, we used a stroop-task to test the hypothesized associations between green and truth as well as red and falsity. Words semantically related to truth and falsity appeared in red, green or grey on the computer screen. The participants’ task was to categorize each word based on its semantic meaning (i.e., true or false) and to do so as fast and accurately as possible. The results yielded strong evidence for the predicted associations: Reaction times primarily revealed facilitation effects in the form of faster categorization of truth-related words presented in green than in the other colours while falsity-related words were categorized faster when presented in red. In contrast, error rates mainly showed interference by incongruent colours (e.g., truth-related words presented in red). To our knowledge, this is the first time that automatic associations between green and truth as well as red and falsity have been demonstrated by means of an implicit measure.

In a previous study, we found that a sequence of task-irrelevant effect-tones can be learned implicitly when the effects are not consistently mapped to the responses. Furthermore, this effect-sequence can trigger the development of explicit knowledge about a later induced contingent response-sequence. However, with visual effects, we were not able to replicate these findings (Lustig & Haider, 2019). One possible explanation is that visual effects are generally less salient than auditory effects (Ziessler & Nattkemper, 2002). Alternatively, the visual effects might have interfered with the visual presented targets as both are presented in the visual modality (e.g. Mayr, 1996; Ruess et al., 2018). To investigate this issue, participants performed a serial reaction time task by responding verbally to randomly presented auditory stimuli. The experimental condition received visual presented response effects, whereas in the control condition tones were presented as response effects. In both conditions, the respective effects were contingently mapped to the verbal responses and both followed a correlated sequence. First results indicate that the participants in the experimental condition had more explicit knowledge about the response sequence than the participants in the control condition. We conclude that the modality of the response effects and the to-be-performed task mediates the influence of response-effects on the development of explicit knowledge about a response sequence.

When we are to judge how well we will perform in an upcoming task, we might use knowledge about comparable past performances. Yet, objective and reliable performance measures are not always available and thus it might be helpful to base a performance prediction on past metacognitive judgments which can be independent of actual performance. In our study, we used a metacontrast priming task in which the time between the prime and the mask was varied (SOA). This manipulation has been shown to lead to situations where the objective performance is equal while the subjective feeling of correctness can vary (Lau & Passingham, 2006). Additionally, we paired the different SOAs with a preceding 100% predictive cue. In a subsequent test task, we found that the presentation of these cues led to a prediction of performance based on previous metacognitive judgments which can be independent of objective past performance.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz, 1998) has been used in almost every field of psychology. Despite its wide spread application as an implicit measure of attitude, the IAT was criticized for different methodical reasons (e.g. confounding with block order, possible recoding of the task, voluntary controllability). Various studies found effects of block order, stimulus material or training in the classical IAT, questioning the interpretation of the IAT effects as solely measure of implicit attitudes. However, no study has yet investigated at the same time different effects of the IAT setup per se. Here, we used the typical insect-flower-IAT in a well-powered study (N = 90) to systematically test for the effects of block order (insect vs. flower combined with positive first) and valence category assignment (positive in the left corner vs. negative in the left corner) as between subject variables. Stimulus type (pictures or letters), stimulus category (positive, negative, insects or flowers) and block type (crossed [e.g. insect + positive] or recrossed [e.g. insect + negative]) were within-subject variables. It was shown that the IAT effect varied based on stimulus type, stimulus category and block order. Further, reaction times for the four stimulus categories differed based on the stimulus type. Another significant interaction was found between stimulus type and block order. Taken together, our research shows that various factors in the IAT setup influenced the underlying IAT effect limiting its validity as an implicit measure for associative preferences.

Evidence suggests that the ability of the implicit association test (IAT) to predict behavior is rather low although numerous moderators have been identified. In order to tackle this issue we want to introduce a so far overlooked moderator to the IAT, that is the test difficulty from classical test theory. It is long known that the relationship between two tests depends on their test difficulty (congruency between test difficulty leads to higher correlations than incongruency). Thus, the aim of our first study was to develop IATs with different difficulties and to test the proposed correlational pattern. In total 97 participants took part in our study which consisted of a 2x3 within design with the factors measurement (IAT and behavior) and difficulty (easy, moderate and difficult). We were able to manipulate the difficulty of the IATs, however the expected correlational pattern failed to appear. One possible reason for this unexpected finding is the fact that the moderating effect of test difficulty has been argued to result from the distribution of the data. And indeed the distribution of the individual IAT-effects was close to normality regardless of the difficulty of the IAT whereas the distribution of the behavior measures showed expected ceiling and floor effects. In a second study we thus want to test whether we can induce such ceiling and floor effects into the IAT experimentally by manipulating the attitude towards a priori neutral objects and developing IATs with extreme difficulties. Results and implications for IAT-research will be discussed.

Semantic context effects in naming tasks have been most influential in devising and evaluating models of word production. In the present study we investigated semantic context effects in one prominent task, blocked-cyclic naming, in which stimuli are named repeatedly either sorted by semantic category (homogeneous context) or intermixed (heterogeneous context). Previous blocked-cyclic naming studies have consistently shown that picture naming responses are slowed down in the homogeneous context from the second cycle (i.e., presentation) onwards. We compared semantic context effects in two task versions, picture naming and sound naming. Target words were identical across task versions (e.g., participants responded with “dog” to either the picture of a dog or to the sound produced by a dog [barking]). We found that (a) semantic interference in the homogeneous context was also obtained with sounds and (b) that the effect was substantially larger with sounds than with pictures. This was true regardless of whether stimulus type was constant (tested between participants, Experiments 1 and 2) or mixed (tested within participants, Experiment 3). Our findings demonstrate that (a) semantic context effects in blocked-cyclic naming generalize to stimulus types other than pictures and (b) are modulated by pre-lexical processes that depend on the nature of the stimuli used for eliciting the naming responses.

Studies have demonstrated that listeners can retain detailed voice-specific acoustic information about spoken words in memory. A central question is when such information influences linguistic processing. According to episodic models of the mental lexicon, voice-specific details influence word recognition immediately during online speech perception. Another view, the time-course hypothesis, proposes that voice-specific details influences linguistic processing only when processing is slow and effortful. The present study investigates the time-course hypothesis by employing RT-distributional analyses. We conducted a long-term repetition priming experiment using an auditory lexical-decision task. In two blocks, participants made speeded responses to existing and non-existing spoken words. In the second block, items were either repeated in the same voice, repeated in a different voice, or had not been presented in the first block. Ex-Gaussian analyses of the RT distributions in the second block revealed that voice-specific priming is reflected in distributional shifting rather than in distributional skewing. This indicates that voice-specific priming is not limited to very slow responses but that it affects fast and slow responses equally. This finding is inconsistent with a strict version of the time-course hypothesis which claims that voice-specific priming occurs only during off-line processing. Instead, voice-specific information can influence linguistic processing early on.

Prior research showed a grammatical spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect when participants were asked to respond to singular and plural nouns. A different strand of research showed that participants in sentence completion tasks sometimes prefer to use plural verbs in conjunction with collective nouns, which are grammatically singular but denote a collection of multiple entities (e.g. cutlery). Building on these findings, we used the SNARC paradigm to investigate whether collective nouns are interpreted as conceptually singular or plural during on-line word reading. In two experiments, participants were asked to give left- and right-side responses to simple singulars, plurals and collectives in a quantity related semantic task (one vs. multiple entities?) or a verb agreement syntactic task (“is” vs. “are”?). Surprisingly, we only found grammatical SNARC effects for the more superficial syntactic task in Experiment 2, not for the deeper processing task in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 showed an interaction pattern for singulars and plurals as well as singulars and collectives with a relative left-side advantage for singulars and right-side advantage for plurals and collectives, thus indicating that reception of collective nouns automatically evokes plural quantity information, similar to grammatically plural nouns. The absence of relevant effects in Experiment 1 could be due to task ambiguity. In an effort to increase trust in the results of Experiment 2 and our interpretation thereof, we will run a replication of this study.

The question how words of multiple languages are stored in our mind has been of central research interest in the past. One prominent model addressing late bilingualism is the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) which postulates bidirectional but asymmetrical connections between separate lexical stores for L1 (native language) and L2 (second/foreign language). Additionally, these lexicons share a language-independent conceptual store, which is assumed to be involved when translating into the foreign language, but not (or at least less) when translating into the native language. This asymmetry can be, for example, observed in different translation times in dependence of translation direction (translation asymmetry) or semantic order of words (category effect). Using a sample of German native speakers with advanced English proficiency, the study strongly confirmed the model predictions regarding different processing times and preferred mental routes. In a second experiment, the same experimental paradigm was applied to a set of non-native speakers. Surprisingly, these non-native language speakers also showed the same translation asymmetry and category effect as the German native speakers, even though no native language was involved in the experiment.These findings suggest that the model not only holds true for L1 and L2, but that the mental architecture of two or more foreign languages might be similar when one of the foreign languages is currently highlighted by the experimental and general language context.

Efficient neuronal processing is essential. Thus, the Lexical Categorization Model (LCM) assumes, for the reading brain, it is beneficial to prevent semantic processing for non-words. The successful evaluations of the LCM with typical readers motivated us to implement a training study consisting of multiple sessions. The core of the LCM training is an explicit lexical decision task, i.e., is the string presented a word or not, that includes feedback on whether the response was correct. Executing lexical decisions is assumed to train the categorization process that was described by the LCM. We conducted three experiments with a three-session training for adult German language learners suffering from slow reading (N=81). Experiment 1 was the first LCM training pilot. Experiment 2 compared the training with phonics training in a randomized controlled fashion. In Experiment 3, we implemented a comparison with a variant of the LCM training (i.e., with changing fonts). We found, in general, after the LCM training, an improvement in the overall reading speed in all experiments. Also, we found an effect of word-likeness, and categorization difficulty derived from the LCM implementation. Interestingly, both effects interacted with training, e.g., the categorization effect increased with training. Finally, we found that the individual estimates of the categorization difficulty by training interaction correlated with the increase in general reading speed. This strongly suggests that we found causal evidence for the implementation of an LCM based categorization process in reading. Thus, one of the underlying processes of efficient reading is lexical categorizations.

In tests of working memory with verbal or spatial materials repeating the same memory sets across trials leads to improved memory performances. This well-established “Hebb repetition effect” could not be shown for visual materials. This absence of the Hebb effect can be explained in two ways: either, persons fail to acquire a long-term memory representation of the repeated memory sets over the course of repetitions, or they acquire such long-term memory representations, but fail to use them during the to be processed working memory task. With the present study (N = 30), we aimed to decide between these two possibilities by manipulating the long-term memory knowledge of some of the memory sets used in a change-detection task. Before the change-detection test, the participants had to complete an explicit learning phase where they had to memorize three arrays of colors until a satisfying memory performance was reached. Subsequently, the participants were tested with the change-detection paradigm, which contained both previously learned and new color arrays. The previously learned arrays were continuously repeated across trials, whereas the new arrays were randomly generated. Change detection performance was better on previously learned compared to new arrays, showing that long-term memory is used in change detection. Memory for the previously learned arrays did not improve further during change detection, showing no evidence for further learning through repetition.

Forgetting of outdated information can be examined by means of list-method directed forgetting. In this task, people study a list of words and then receive a forget or a remember cue for this first list before studying a second list. Typical results show list-1 forgetting in response to forget cues. At least for short retention intervals, forgetting of list 1 only appears when new material is encoded after the forget cue. This finding is consistent with the involvement of an inhibitory control process that regulates between-list interference by reducing access to list 1. Recent work indicates that list-1 forgetting can be long-lasting, but it is unclear if such persistent forgetting depends on list-2 learning, too. We examined this question by manipulating not only the cue after list-1 study (remember vs. forget) but also the presence of list 2 (with vs. without) and the delay between studying and a free recall test (30 sec vs. 20 minutes). Results showed list-1 forgetting after short and longer delay in the presence of list-2 encoding, but no such forgetting in the absence of list 2. These findings demonstrate a critical role of post-cue encoding for persistent list-1 forgetting. They are consistent with predictions derived on the basis of the inhibition account of list-method directed forgetting, suggesting that between-list interference may be a necessary component for long-lasting forgetting to arise.

Our memories are broken up into discrete events, even though we experience the world in a continuous manner. The Event Horizon Model (EHM; Radvansky, 2012) explains the discreteness of events in memory based on online segmentation or event shifts. One prediction of the EHM is that recently encountered information is more difficult to access in memory following an event shift. Previous experiments have shown larger rates of forgetting following spatial shifts, even when retention time was held constant; this is referred to as the Location Updating Effect (LUE). In two experiments we aimed to discover whether more basic changes in the environment would lead to similar effects as the LUE. In Experiment 1 subjects incidentally learned a list of words (with a task requiring a response to font style) and each list was followed by a memory probe for one of the words. On half of the trials the background color changed during the presentation of the list. Based on the EHM, we expected worse memory for words in trials with the color change. We found a nonsignificant trend supporting our prediction. In Experiment 2, which is still ongoing, we aimed to make the shift more salient by requiring a change in response keys to font style following a color change. As in Experiment 1, we predict larger rates of forgetting on trials with a background color shift. Furthermore, given the extra change (the response) we predict that the effects will be larger than those found in Experiment 1.

Previous studies have shown detrimental effects of interruptions on the execution of interrupted (primary) tasks in laboratory settings and work environments. Aim of this study was to examine effects of different cognitive demands of interruptions on the post-interruption performance in a primary task. The primary task was a verbal procedural task with sequential constraints, simulating a typical procedural task like performing a checklist from memory. While performing this primary task, 44 participants were interrupted for 30s at different steps by an interruption task varying in memory demand (2-back vs. 1-back task) and processing code (verbal vs. spatial). Resumption times (how fast the primary task is resumed) and sequence errors (resuming the primary task at the wrong step) were analyzed. Assuming that interruptions demanding more memory resources and the same processing code as the primary task are more disruptive, worse post-interruption performance was expected for the 2-back interruption tasks compared to the 1-back tasks, and for verbal compared to spatial interruptions. As expected, high memory demand of interruption task lead to longer resumption times and more sequence errors at post-interruption step, compared to the interruptions posing low memory demand. Verbal interruptions lead to longer resumption times at post-interruption step than spatial ones, while no effect was found on sequence errors. The results reveal additive effects of the two factors in resumption times, and suggest that both memory and processing code demands are relevant properties of interruptions which can influence the post-interruption performance.

Studies showed that a brief period of wakeful resting after learning boosts the retention of new memories, whereas task-related cognition after learning weakens memory retention. In extension to existing wakeful resting studies, we explored the impact of social media usage after learning on memory retention. We tested healthy young adults who were required to learn and immediately recall two vocabulary lists. After recalling the first list, participants were asked to wakefully rest (eyes closed, relaxed) for several minutes and after recalling the second list, they were asked to use Instagram or Facebook for several minutes. Memories for both vocabulary lists were tested again at the end of the experimental session. Our results showed that social media usage after learning had detrimental effects on memory retention compared to wakeful resting. Findings are discussed in the light of existing wakeful resting and social media studies.

In old age (>60 years), episodic long-term memory (LTM) formation becomes increasingly impaired due to age-related healthy and sometimes pathological atrophy of the medial temporal lobe, especially the hippocampus. On the other hand, recent evidence from neuroimaging and lesion studies suggests that learning novel information coherent with prior knowledge can tremendously reduce or even circumvent the role of the hippocampus in LTM formation via means of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) inhibiting the hippocampus’ novelty response. We could show repeatedly that a special kind of learning, that is, when a semantic association is very suddenly comprehended (via insight or Aha!), learning is hippocampus-independent and instead relies more on midline structures such as the mPFC and precuneus. Here, we present a behavioral study on learning from insight that compared memory performance for learning from insight, using a German version of the Compound Remote Associate Task. We compared performance on insight problem solving and later memory performance for young adults between the age of 18 and 30 years (n = 30) with adults age 60 to 80 (n = 30). Based on this work, we aim to develop learning strategies that employ learning from insight to help compensate age-related decline of episodic LTM formation.

To examine influences of context changes between encoding and retrieval of motor sequences, we varied a number of encoding and retrieval features. Participants learned two sets of three-finger movements at two different PCs, all enacted with fingers of the right hand. We varied keyboard and display orientation, stimuli, background color, response keys, position of the hand, and the used PC between the two set. A final free recall test comprised either the same context features as present during study of the first item set or the ones present during study of the second item set or novel test context features. Results showed significant differences in overall recall performance between test conditions, indicating that context features of study episodes guided retrieval of motor sequences. In addition, the number of recalled items varied as a function of output position. Context features of the set-1 study episode were associated with initially lower but subsequently increasing recall performance, whereas features of the set-2 study episode were associated with initially higher and subsequently decreasing recall performance. This implies that a context reinstatement for list-1 items during the test phase does not immediately enhance accessibility of those items. However, access is subsequently facilitated over the course of retrieval attempts.

Most accounts explain motion sickness (MS) as a symptom of conflict between sensory input and the mental model of body movement. The visual oddball P3 and the habituation of auditory event-related potentials provide a measure of the ability of the brain to predict sensory input, and preliminary findings point to an association with MS, specifically drowsiness symptoms and heightened arousal. In the present study, participants were confronted with an MS-inducing condition (roller coaster) or a control condition (straight drive) in a virtual reality environment. Before and after the virtual reality exposure, the participants completed an MS questionnaire and were presented with an auditory paired click paradigm and a visual oddball paradigm. In the condition with high MS, susceptible participants showed reduced habituation to the repetitive auditory stimulation, as measured by auditory evoked potentials in the paired click paradigm. MS was furthermore associated with changes in pupil diameter. Auditory evoked potentials and oddball P3 also predicted MS susceptibility. Our results demonstrate that MS is linked to arousal and altered processing of predictable sensory inputs.

Accumulating evidence suggests that activity in the anterior cingulate cortex after observed actions reflects an action prediction error rather than, as previously thought, the coding of response accuracy. This process seems to be modulated by trait empathy, but the underlying mechanisms remain to be explored. In this study we aimed to examine these mechanisms further by applying a paradigm in which observer participants’ expectations concerning the outcome of the actions of an observed person were modulated by two experimental manipulations. These were true vs. false-belief of the observed person, which we expected to be especially dependent on empathy (as was shown by previous studies on false-belief tasks) as well as task difficulty (easy vs. hard), which we expected to be less dependent on empathy. Empathy and expectation affected event-related-potential amplitudes between 100 and 250 ms after the observed response: less expected events, that is, correct answers in the false-belief condition and incorrect answers in the true-belief condition, led to higher amplitudes compared to more expected events in easy trials, but this effect emerged only for highly empathic individuals. Interestingly, behavioral measures of expectation were similarly affected by empathy, suggesting that empathy helps expectation formation and that these expectations then affect electrophysiological responses.

The premotor cortex (PMC) is known to be part of a brain network subserving motor control, raising the question for its significance in motor learning. While the primary motor cortex (M1) plays a crucial role in the acquisition of a newly learned motor sequence, the precise impact of the PMC on subsequent consolidation remains less clear. The present study aims at investigating the role of the left PMC for early consolidation of a motor sequence after training on serial reaction time task (SRTT). Anodal, cathodal tDCS and sham-stimulation were applied to the left PMC in 18 healthy non-musicians 30 minutes after SRTT training with the right hand. Reaction times were measured prior to SRTT training (t1), at the end of training (t2), directly after tDCS (t3) and after overnight sleep (t4). The analysis revealed a significant facilitation of reaction times in sequential trials after anodal tDCS at t3, whereas no further significant improvement was evident at t4 (after overnight sleep). In contrast to this, cathodal stimulation yielded a significant reduction of reaction times after overnight sleep (t4). Reaction times at t4 did not differ between cathodal and anodal stimulation. No significant effects were found following sham-stimulation. The results support the hypothesis of a causal involvement of the PMC in early consolidation. In particular, the data imply that anodal tDCS can facilitate early motor sequence consolidation. Noteworthy, the impact of a single tDCS application is of short duration and remediated by progression of time and / or sleep.

We examined how the valence of augmented feedback influences motor learning, more specifically immediate adaptive behavior after feedback. For that purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) in the EEG were scrutinized in learning a complex arm-movement sequence and the predictive value of different ERPs was analyzed for trial-to-trial behavioral adjustments during practice. Twenty-four healthy subjects (13 female; 22.1 years; SD ±3.4) practiced one session with 192 feedback trials according to an adaptive bandwidth feedback approach with a high informational level of feedback information (i.e., direction and magnitude of errors). The bandwidth for successful performance (increase of a score for a monetary competition) was adaptively manipulated in terms of the current performance level to obtain a balanced feedback rate regarding positive and negative valence. This allowed a variation of feedback-valence without a confounding by success rate (and hence outcome expectations). Consistent with our hypotheses, the EEG data showed a valence effect for the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and a later fronto-central component (Late-Fronto-Central-Positivity; LFCP) at the FCz electrode as well as for the P300 at the Pz electrode. Behavioral adjustments were larger after feedback with negative valence and they were predicted by the LFCP, but not by the FRN or the P300. The data supports the assumption that learning in contexts with availability of high level of feedback information relies more on processes associated to supervised learning (reflected by the LFCP) than on reinforcement learning (reflected by the FRN).

Size congruity, Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC), and numerical distance effects are distinct instances of how spatial constituents enter the symbolic number representation. Behavioral studies have suggested that these effects involve distinct processing stages but in electroencephalogram (EEG) evoked potentials are selective to all. To settle the question of their interdependence, we applied a factorial design encompassing all three effects, combined with EEG measurement, comparing across identical visual stimuli for the numerical distance and SNARC condition. The results show that all effects arise early, around 100 ms, with a hemispheric specificity. Whereas no dependency between size congruity and SNARC effects was found, the numerical distance effect was influenced by the lateralized response conditions of the SNARC effect. These results suggest independence of size congruity and SNARC effect, but dependency between numerical distance and SNARC effect. The lateralized character of the effects may therefore be the key to their (in)dependency.

Neural oscillations play an important role in sensory and cognitive processing. Occipital oscillations in the alpha band (8 - 13 Hz) are closely related to perceptional and attentional mechanisms. In multiple studies, increased alpha power has been shown to reduce detection of hard-to-detect visual stimuli. Moreover, the phase of alpha oscillations prior to stimulus onset is critical to the detection of visual stimuli. This is explained by a shift in cortical excitability over the course of each alpha cycle. However, prior studies often used short presentation times of visual stimuli at perceptual threshold. Differing from previous studies, we now use longer presentation times (up to 1.5 s) to elucidate the question whether the same mechanisms hold for the perception of salient stimuli. To this end, we present participants with hard to distinguish but salient upright or tilted Gaussian gratings in a two-alternative forced choice task, while measuring occipital alpha activity. In accordance with previous research, we expect alpha power and phase prior to stimulus onset to differentiate between correctly and incorrectly identified stimuli. Additionally, since the potential perceptual inhibition subsides as the alpha oscillation progresses, we expect to find a correlation between alpha phase prior to stimulus onset and reaction times in correctly identified stimuli.

The reduced neuronal signal to expected stimuli, termed expectation suppression, is a widely examined phenomenon. It is often explained under the predictive coding theory, in which expected sensory input can be predicted through inferential processes (feedback and feedforward loops) in the visual cortex whereas surprising events lead to a signal increase. This phenomenon has been observed with different methods and for a wide range of stimuli. In this fMRI study, we aimed to investigate the role of prediction error signals in identity processing using ambient exemplar images of famous identities. Within one trial we showed either eight images of different identities (alternation), eight images of one identity (adaptation) or violated the adaptation sequence by changing the identity in the last image (expectation violation). Preliminary results suggest that alternation trials elicit the highest response in visual face processing areas whereas we find a significantly reduced mean BOLD signal for adaptation trials. Crucially for trials with an unexpected change of identity in the last step the neural response is higher than in the adaptation condition. This suggests that higher order expectations about person identity are violated which leads to a release of adaptation.

Patients with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) are at risk for further cognitive decline and development of Alzheimer’s dementia. Recent evidence suggests that, in addition to episodic memory deficits, aMCI patients show impairments in visual attention. In particular, studies using psychophysical paradigms of whole and partial report based on the theory of visual attention (TVA; Bundesen, 1990) demonstrated significant impairments in top-down control of attentional selection. The present study aims to evaluate whether and how such top-down control impairment is related to impairments in cognitive functions, as assessed with established neuropsychological test batteries (e.g. ACE-III, CERAD+) and daily life impairments, as assessed in structured interviews and questionnaires (CDR, BAYER-ADL, BADS-DEX). Patients with aMCI are recruited at the Jena University Hospital Memory Center. Following diagnosis of aMCI, based on comprehensive neuropsychological and neurological examination, they undergo a TVA-based task in order to derive parameter top-down control, i.e. the efficiency in task-related attentional prioritization of targets over distractors.

After an object disappears, the spatial location of the vanishing point of this stimulus is shifted in the direction of motion, a phenomenon known as representational momentum. The present study focusses on the relationship between motion information and spatial location in a cross-modal setting. In two visuotactile experiments, we study how motion information in one modality affects the perceived final location of a motion signal (congruent vs. incongruent left-right motion direction) in the other modality. The results revealed a unidirectional crossmodal influence of motion information on spatial localization performance. Whereas visual motion information influences the perceived final location of the tactile stimulus, the tactile motion information leaves visual localization unaffected. These results therefore extend the existing literature on crossmodal influences on spatial location and are discussed in relation to current theories of crossmodal perceptual integration.

Introduction: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by deficits in social interaction and communication as well as stereotyped and restricted patterns of behavior. Asperger’s syndrome (AS) is a highly functional type of ASD that does not comprise any delay in language development. Research indicates that children with AS show difficulties in speech perception. These difficulties became particularly evident in acoustically deprived conditions. To this day, it is uncertain whether those deficits persist into adulthood. Associated neural mechanisms are also unacquainted. However, those underlying mechanisms are highly significant since social interaction is mainly affected by speech perception. Methods: 17 adult AS and 18 healthy controls (HC) were examined. We used a paradigm in which audiovisual speech stimuli were presented in acoustically deprived conditions. Subject’s performance was quantified by measuring stimulus comprehension. During this task, EEG was recorded from 32 electrodes according to the international 10-20-system. Analysis of EEG-data was performed by BESA research. Results/Discussion: In the present sample, differences in speech comprehension were found between AS and HC. Adult AS continuously showed deficits in speech perception in acoustically deprived conditions. EEG-analysis revealed increased P2 at parietocentral electrodes. This finding was independent of acoustical deprivation. The results indicate enhanced attentional processes in adult AS. These may be used as a compensatory mechanism towards deficits in speech perception. However, a fully normative performance level cannot be achieved. Speech perception remains impaired in acoustically deprived environments.

In previous studies on the distractor-induced blindness paradigm, an inhibitory process of selective attention was found. This effect always occurred when distractors had the same visual characteristics as the following target, leading to a reduced detection rate. Niedeggen, Michael & Hesselmann (2012) showed that with increasing number of distractors a frontal negativity in the ERP increases. In the present study, a similar experimental setup is used with auditory stimuli as distractors and targets, with a visual cue indicating the target. Behavioral data show a comparable reduction of target detection in trials with distractors presented prior to the cue. ERP data show corresponding frontal negativity at 200 ms when the target was not detected and a P3 related to further target and cue processing. Auditory distractors seem to trigger an inhibitory process and lead to a deterioration of the detection rate of auditory targets, which is strikingly similar to the mechanisms assumed for visual stimuli in the distractor-induced blindness paradigm.

Our visual system enables us to perceive and recognize objects with apparent ease and at arresting speed. Recent research shows that the size of an object in the real world is automatically encoded and acts as an organizational principle in the neural representation of objects. Information about the real-world size helps us to navigate and informs the way we interact with objects. Real-world size of objects has been shown to interfere with performance a) when making visual size judgements in a Size-Stroop task and b) when searching for objects, such that objects that are depicted 3-4 times their size (‘giant targets’) are missed more often than the same objects in their actual size. Here, we wanted to replicate these two effects and hypothesized that participants with larger Stroop-effects would also show greater difficulties when searching for mis-scaled giant targets. Forty young adults (mean age: 23.1 yrs) completed both paradigms and showed the hypothesized Size-Stroop effect in two versions (original stimulus (Konkle, & Olivia, 2012) and new stimulus set). This adds to the evidence that real-world size is assessed automatically. To our surprise, we did not find that giant targets are missed more often compared to targets in their actual size, despite using the original stimulus set (Eckstein, Koehler, Welbourne, & Akbas, 2017). We also could not demonstrate a relationship between performances in both tasks, which might be related to the relatively low performance in the search tasks for normally sized objects.

When a target stimulus is briefly presented its visibility can be reduced by a following spatially adjacent mask. This metacontrast masking phenomenon can be related to the operation of three processes, which contribute to target visibility at different stimulus onset-asynchronies (SOA) between the target and the mask. Previous findings suggest that individuals differ regarding the involvement of each of these processes and that each process might be associated to a specific phenomenological experience, which occurs with the corresponding SOAs. With short SOAs, phenomenological reports comprise an integration of target and masking stimuli, indicating the involvement of an integration process. To examine this hypothesis, we compared metacontrast masking to another masking phenomenon, which has been related to an integration process, object substitution masking. Interestingly, however, integration is assumed to impair target visibility in the object substitution paradigm while it is assumed to improve target visibility in metacontrast masking. The temporal dynamic of target visibility was measured in healthy subjects who participated in both paradigms. Factor analyses replicated previous evidence for three processes contributing to target visibility in the case of metacontrast masking. In the case of object substitution masking, evidence suggests two distinct processes. Correlations of individuals’ factor scores reveal the relation between the processes that are involved in the two masking paradigms.

Odor perception is closely linked to emotion processing, influencing the physiological state of the receiver. Certain odors such as mint have additionally been shown to affect cognitive performance (CP). The current study investigates whether this modulation of CP is attributable to reduced sleepiness and increased vigilance and whether it also occurs for lemon odor. We tested 48 participants (37 women, M = 22.3, SD = 3.2 years) in a between subjects design (mint: n = 17, lemon: n = 17, control: n = 14). Participants typed a given text on a computer. Error rate and typing speed were analyzed to assess CP. As a measure of vigilance, the Mackworth Clock Test was applied. Participants’ sleepiness was assessed via the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale. Heart rate variability (HRV) and facial emotional responses were recorded. In the context of mint odor, participants showed increased CP and fewer negative facial emotional responses compared to the control group. No significant effects of mint odor were found on sleepiness, vigilance, and HRV. In contrast, HRV was increased in the context of lemon odor compared to the control group. Results also indicate an activating effect of lemon odor regarding sleepiness and vigilance. Lemon induced more positive facial emotional responses compared to the mint but not the control group. No significant effects of lemon odor on CP was found. Results are in line with prior research, showing mint odor to increase CP. This effect does not rest on reduced sleepiness or increased vigilance. Lemon leads to reverse effects.

Valentine’s norm-based multidimensional facespace (nMDFS) model has been highly influential on face perception research for years. In a recent study, brain correlates (event-related potentials, ERPs) of distance-to-norm ('DTN', P200) and familiarity (N250) processing were found and dissociated, supporting the hypothesis that faces are represented in MDFS corresponding to their DTN (Wuttke & Schweinberger, 2019). As yet, it is unclear whether individual differences in face recognition skills are related to these electrophysiological components of face perception. In the present study, we aimed to replicate P200 DTN and N250 familiarity effects in a sample of high vs. low performers in face recognition and, in addition, we hypothesized that the size of these two effects would be associated with face recognition skills. We further investigated differences in visual processes between these two groups with respect to face processing, object recognition, visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and autism scores (AQ). Results replicated the P200 DTN and the N250 familiarity effect. Crucially, the P200 DTN effect was significantly reduced in low (vs. high) performers in face recognition, and there was a statistically not significant reduction of the N250 familiarity effect in low performers. At the behavioral level, low performers differed from high performers not only in their face processing skills: They also scored lower in object recognition and contrast sensitivity. Overall, the results suggest that norm-based face coding contributes to individual differences in face recognition skills. Moreover, future research should refine possible contributions of other visual processes to facial processing impairments.

While other-“race” (OR) faces and caricatures of same-“race” (SR) faces evoke similar ERP patterns, behavioural effects differ (advantage for SR caricatures, disadvantage for OR faces). These paradoxical findings might be explained by qualitatively similar processes at learning, which have different consequences for recognition: Norm deviations are used for forming basic face representations. In caricatures, distinctive information is idiosyncratic and helpful, but for OR faces, salient deviations are misleading, as they are unidirectional relative to the norm. In three experiments, we simulated an OR effect with highly distinctive same-“race“ faces: In each experiment, one characteristic in SR faces was manipulated, always in a uniform direction (E1: big noses, E2: freckled skin, E3: distinctive blue eyes), resulting in deceptive distinctiveness. In a learning/recognition task, we compared performance and ERPs for these faces to veridical SR and OR faces. We found strikingly similar ERPs for OR and manipulated SR faces, accompanied by comparable costs in performance, in contrast to veridical same-“race” faces, supporting a perceptual account of the OR effect. This suggests qualitatively similar processes mediating the learning of unfamiliar SR and OR faces, but with different consequences due to differences in the usefulness of respective distinctive information. Deceptive distinctiveness can explain the phenomenon that is it harder to learn faces of people who look systematically different from what we are used to. This phenomenon is not specific to (the questionable concept of) other “races”, and is related to deviations from an observer´s mental norm in physical appearance instead.

This talk will outline our recent findings regarding differences between familiar and unfamiliar face processing. By using a Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) paradigm and measuring steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEP), different cortical responses were detected in the past for objects and faces as well as for identical or different faces. In the current study we tested if a differential ssVEP response is also present for familiar when compared to unfamiliar faces in two populations (German and Belgian) of participants (n = 30). We presented faces of celebrities either familiar (e.g. German celebrities to Germans) or unfamiliar (e.g. French celebrities to Germans; presentation frequency 0.85 Hz) among similar, but unknown faces (presentation rate 6 Hz) in two experiments. During the first experiment, multiple familiar faces were presented to evaluate familiarity while in the second experiment faces of one single familiar person were shown to test the differential ssVEP response to the individual identity. We could observe an enhanced ssVEP amplitude over the occipital-temporal (OT) regions to familiar when compared to unfamiliar faces in both participant groups. Importantly, we could demonstrate different ssVEP responses to the exact same face within the two cultural participant groups, signaling that familiarity determined the observed differential ssVEP responses. Moreover, a positive correlation between subjective familiarity rating and the magnitude of ssVEP response was found. Our results confirm further the theory that familiar and unfamiliar faces are processed differentially in the ventral stream.

The human face informs about the identity and emotion of other people. Responding to such social signals depends on what we have previously learned about these persons. Combining instructed threat and reversal learning paradigms, three studies examined the capability of facial information (person identity and emotional expression) as signals for threat-of-shock or safety. To this end, threat/safety contingencies were verbally instructed (e.g., Person A and B indicate threat, C and D safety), and partially reversed across the experiment (e.g., now Person B cues safety and D threat). Study 1 examined whether facial expressions are equally effective in cueing threat or safety. Study 2 focused on electrocortical processing while viewing face identities that were explicitly instructed as threat or safety cues, and Study 3 followed up on psychophysiological responding to attachment figures (i.e., pictures of loved people) serving as threat or safety-cues. Taken together, main effects of threat instructions and facial emotion were confirmed (e.g., threat-potentiated startle reflex; emotion-enhanced EPN and LPP components). Moreover, happy and angry facial expressions served equally well as instructed threat cues (Study 1). Regarding perceptual processing (Study 2), facilitated face encoding of instructed and reversed threat-cues was observed (e.g., indicated by N170 and EPN). Finally, threat instructions do not spare beloved ones (Study 3), who may serve as threat cues similar as pictures of unknown people. In conclusion, perceptual processing and responding to facial information varies according to the mere verbal communication about whether a person is dangerous or safe.

The aim of this talk is to demonstrate how parameter-specific morphing techniques can enhance our understanding of the role of sensory information for the processing of social and affective signals from faces and voices. Following the inventions of visual (image) morphing technology by Benson and Perrett around 1990, and of auditory morphing 〜ten years later by Kawahara, these techniques can be used beyond classical morphing, averaging, or caricaturing. Specifically, we use them to selectively manipulate independent parameters (e.g., 3D-shape and texture/colouration of faces, or fundamental frequency, timbre, and temporal aspects of voices). This allows us to determine the relative importance of these image (or sound) characteristics for social perceptions of age, gender, identity or affect in neurotypical participants, but also in individuals with sensory or central impairments. For example, experiments with faces consistently reveal a dominant role of texture information over shape in most individuals, whereas individuals with poor face recognition skills appear to rely disproportionately on shape -at variance with traditional claims that spatial configural information is crucial to familiar face recognition. For voices, we present current results that provide relevant information about how hearing-impaired cochlear implant users, compared to normal hearing listeners, use acoustic information for perceiving emotions and other social signals in voices. Overall, we demonstrate how parameter-specific morphing is a promising novel approach to objectively assess profiles of face and voice perception abilities.

Although previous research has demonstrated perceptual aftereffects in emotional voice adaptation, the contribution of different vocal cues to this effect is unclear. We used parameter-specific morphing of adaptor voices to investigate the relative roles of fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre in vocal emotion adaptation, using angry and fearful utterances. Thirty young adults (15 females, 18-26 years [M = 21.6; SD = 2.3]) adapted to morphed voices containing 100% emotion-specific information in either F0 or timbre, with all other parameters kept at an intermediate 50% morph level. As reference conditions, full adaptors (with all parameters at an emotion-specific level of 100%) and ambiguous adaptors (with all parameters non-informative at 50%) were used. Stimuli were created using TandemSTRAIGHT software. Consistent aftereffects were found in all three conditions (dFull = 1.83 , dTimbre = 1.31, dF0 = 0.51). Crucially, aftereffects following timbre adaptation were much larger than in the F0 condition (t(29) = -3.36, p = .002, d = 0.56) and only nonsignificantly smaller than those elicited by full adaptors (t(29) = -1.95, p = .060, d = 0.35). These results suggest a prominent role of timbre information, and a smaller role of F0, in vocal emotion adaptation. Although these findings are limited to angry and fearful voices, they add to the growing body of evidence suggesting a major role of timbre in auditory adaptation.

Decision makers have at their disposal both compensatory strategies, which integrate across all available attributes of an option, and noncompensatory strategies, which consider only part of the attributes. Compensatory and noncompensatory strategies make different prediction both for the resulting decisions and patterns in response time. I present a Bayesian latent mixture approach that seamlessly combines decision and response-time data to infer a person’s strategy use. The approach also allows to compare different assumptions about the information processing in compensatory strategies (e.g., regarding how the amount of available evidence influences response error and response times), taking into account the model complexity inherent in the assumptions. I apply the approach to examine the influence of the cognitive costs of integrating attribute information on strategy selection in decision from givens (where all attribute information is openly provided). Participants were asked to decide between two alternatives and both the number of attributes shown for each alternative and how attribute information was coded were manipulated. The results show that participants predominantly selected a noncompensatory strategy when the number of attributes was high and the attribute coding scheme varied across attributes; otherwise, they mainly relied on a compensatory strategy. I suggest that the pattern of strategy selection reflects an adaptive response to the costs of information integration, a previously neglected factor for strategy selection. The findings suggest an explanation for a puzzling inconsistency in previous studies on strategy selection in decision from givens; they also reveal boundary conditions of automatic compensatory processing in decision making.

In motive research, the analysis of experimental data by means of mathematical models like the diffusion model is not yet a common approach. Based on the results of two studies (N1 = 108, N2 = 104), I demonstrate that the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978) is a useful tool to gain more insights into motivational processes. The experiments were inspired by findings of a study by Brunstein and Hoyer (2002). They observed that individuals high in the implicit achievement motive who receive negative intraindividual performance feedback speed up in a response time task. The reduced mean response times were interpreted in terms of an increase in effort. In the two studies, in which I used a similar feedback manipulation, individuals with high implicit achievement motive decreased their threshold separation parameter. Thus, they became less cautious over the time working on the task. Accordingly, the decrease in response times previously reported might mainly be attributable to a change in strategy (focusing on speed instead of accuracy) rather than to an increase in effort. The results will be discussed in the context of emotion regulation strategies.

Conflict tasks are one of the most widely studied paradigms within cognitive psychology, where participants are required to respond based on relevant sources of information while ignoring conflicting irrelevant sources of information. The flanker task has been the focus of considerable modeling efforts, with only three models being able to provide a complete account of empirical choice response time distributions: the dual-stage two-phase model (DSTP), the shrinking spotlight model (SSP), and the diffusion model for conflict tasks (DMC). Although these models are grounded in different theoretical frameworks, can provide diverging measures of cognitive control, and are quantitatively distinguishable, no previous study has compared all three of these models in their ability to account for empirical data. Here, we perform a comparison of the precise quantitative predictions of these models through Bayes factors, using probability density approximation to generate a pseudo-likelihood estimate of the unknown probability density function, and thermodynamic integration via differential evolution to approximate the analytically intractable Bayes factors. We find that for every participant across three data sets, DMC provides an inferior account of the data to DSTP and SSP, which has important theoretical implications regarding cognitive processes engaged in the flanker task, and practical implications for applying the models to flanker data. More generally, we argue that our combination of probability density approximation with marginal likelihood approximation provides a crucial step forward for the future of model comparison, where Bayes factors can be calculated between any models that can be simulated.

In a typical visual working memory task, the participant is shown a display containing one or multiple items, followed by a delay, followed by a response screen on which the participant is asked to provide the remembered feature value at a marked location in a near-continuous response space. Theories of the limitations of visual working memory have given rise to numerous computational models to account for the distribution of participants' errors in these tasks. Classes of models differ in the assumptions they make about the nature of memory precision. For example, variable precision models assume that memory precision varies across items and trials even when the number of items across trials is fixed, while fixed precision models assume that precision is invariant. In model comparisons, variable precision models tend to provide the better fit of the model to the observed data, as measured by information criteria. In this project, we explore how well these models fare when the models are judged not just by how well they predict the observed data, but also by how well they predict unseen data. We use cross validation approaches to test the out-of-sample predictive ability of these visual working memory models. Thus, rather than focusing on models' ability to merely fit the observed data, we propose to take the generalizability of a model into account when selecting between computational models.

Cognitive process models are a popular tool to examine the underlying processing structure of cognitive phenomena. When interpreting these parameters it is useful to consider individual differences. Previously, these models were either applied on the individual level, and individual differences were assessed via classification of parameter values, or they were applied on the aggregate level, and individual differences were ignored. With the introduction of Bayesian statistics in the field, hierarchical process models are developed as a tool to draw inference on the aggregate level while still accounting for individual variability. Usually, individual parameter estimates are ignored and only distribution parameters are interpreted. Yet, this practice does not account for severe, qualitative individual differences. For example, an experimental manipulation may affect all individuals' guessing parameter in the same direction, or it may affect guessing differently for different participants. This assessment is crucial when assessing empirical validity of process models. In this talk, we show how a strict test of selective influence can be performed using ordinal constraints on individuals’ parameters. This assessment is a general tool for a wide range of cognitive process models.

Music festivals have become an important element of the cultural and turistic programme of the western cities. These events are the origin of several intangible impacts such as the socio-cultural or the emotional which are linked to the personal identity. Understanding the emotional impact as an indicator composed of the description of the emotions and their intensity, this impact may help to comprehend the intense experience of the attendant in the context of these events. In that perspective, we stablished two aims for the research. Firstly, propose a model of evaluation of the emotional impact in music events in relation with the cultural construction of the identity. Secondly, test the model in four different music festivals. This combination becomes the first attempt to combine different models of psychological identification of emotions with the cultural impact event evaluation. Moreover, allows the observing on attendees experiences in how emotion affects the participation in music festivals and serves to understand the role of emotions in the construction of the cultural identity of the participants. The findings confirmed the correlation between the existence of intense emotions and the creation of several items in the personal cultural identity, namely: the sense of community, the city pride, the consolidation of music preferences or the creation of new aesthetic interests.

Since Darwin the vagus nerve has been proposed as an essential anatomical foundation enabling optimal social interactions. Specifically, vagal activity is assumed to be causally related to facial expressivity. Although repeatedly proposed supporting empirical evidence is exclusively correlative in nature. Here we aimed at directly testing the proposed causal link between vagal activity and facial expressivity as indexed by facial mimicry. For this, we employed transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) as a non-invasive neuromodulation technique. Specifically, we manipulated vagal activity by superficially stimulating the cymba conchae ¬– a vagally innervated region of the external ear. In two sessions, participants received active or sham stimulation before and during performing a facial mimicry task including electromyographic recordings. We observed a typical facial mimicry effect which, importantly, was more pronounced in the active as compared to the sham condition. Thus, our study is the first to demonstrate a causal role of vagal activity in facial expressivity which expands existing knowledge about the neuroanatomical regulation of facial mimicry and highlights the role of vagal activity for optimal socio-emotional functioning.

Information integration principles have an influence on how information about the presence or absence of an ingredient may lead to buying decisions. Based on the theory of perceived threat (Slovic, 1987) we propose that both form and content of conveying information about presence and absence have separate influence and present two experiments that test this assumption. In a 2 (label vs. no label - within) x2 (label information: presence, absence - between) x2 (healthiness of food product: healthy, not healthy - between) mixed design 142 participants saw a label that indicated either the absence or the presence of an unknown ingredient. Participants’ task was to compare the product with the label to the same product without the label in terms of its tastiness and healthiness. Furthermore, we measured their tendency to buy the products. Ambivalence was assessed objectively with the Griffin scale and subjectively by asking directly. Participants indicated a preference to buy products without a label. Products without a label were also perceived as tastier than those with a label. Confirming our prediction that form and content interact asymmetrically, products without a label were rated as healthier than products without a label, if the label said “with” rather than “without”. Objective ambivalence correlated highly with subjective ambivalence for products without a label, but not for products with a label. In a second experiment to be reported we varied label information verbally rather than visually. Meaning of results will be discussed in both a basic and an applied sense.

We investigate attitudinal ambivalence using diffusion models, which compute different parameters mapped to cognitive processes. This allows us to compare ambivalent trials on speed of response execution (d), non-decisional time (t0), and drift rate (v). Participants were instructed to respond speedily to obtain a sufficient amount of incorrect trials for the diffusion modelling. Experiment 1 (N=76) used ambivalent words as primes in an evaluative priming paradigm. Mixed model analysis showed higher latencies for ambivalent trials than for congruent trials. The diffusion modelling, with correct and incorrect as the decision boundaries, also showed differences with congruent trials, where the t0-parameter was higher for the ambivalent trials. Both methods showed little difference between ambivalent and incongruent trials. In Experiment 2 (N=73) ambivalent words served as target stimuli instead of primes. Mixed model analysis showed that ambivalent targets were categorized more slowly than congruent trials. The diffusion model analysis was conducted with positive and negative as the decision boundaries. For both the d-and t0-parameters, negative target trials had significantly lower values compared to both positive and ambivalent target trials. The v-parameter was also significantly different between all three conditions, with positive and negative trials showing drift rates in the direction of their respective boundary, and ambivalent trials showing no preference. In conclusion, it seems that ambivalent targets allow for a faster response execution and non-decisional time than negative targets. This contrasts with ambivalent primes, where their dual nature makes them inherently incongruent with positive or negative targets.

Studying the ebb and flow of affect in daily life provides important insights into psychological functioning and well-being. However, little attention has been paid to the sources and underlying processes of these short-term changes. We propose a model in which affect is conceptualized as the output of dynamic processes. Given that affect reflects transactions between an organism and its proximal environment, we relate the evaluative aspect of events in terms of their pleasantness or unpleasantness (iV, “valence”) to fluctuations in momentary affective experience (dV, “affect”). The model explains affective experience as resulting from the cumulative effects of previous valent events (“accumulation principle”). The core of the model consists of parameters that moderate the relation between valent events and affective experience. These parameters reflect individual differences in the extremity of short-term changes (reactivity) and in longer-term changes in affective experience (attenuation) caused by positive or negative events. A simulation study revealed identifiability of the model’s core parameters via Bayesian data analysis. An empirical application of our model will be presented using daily affect and event ratings from 315 individuals ranging in age between 14 – 86 years. The general pattern of results suggested more age-related similarities than differences. For reactivity and the attenuation of negative event impact, no age-related changes were found. However, attenuation for the impact of positive events decreased with increasing age. We discuss potentials and limitations of the approach and close with an outlook on the broader implications for understanding emotional development.

The sexual distractor task is designed to measure sexual interest indirectly based on performance and eye-movements recorded during a mental rotation task and the simultaneous presentation of neutral and sexually (non-)preferred distractors. However, current empirical evidence suggests low distractor processing and small interference effects of sexually preferred distractors used as an indicator of sexual interest. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the level of distractor processing and hence interference effects elicited by sexually preferred distractors increase systematically due to an increased load of higher cognitive functions (dual-task coordination). Therefore, the original version of the sexual distractor task was modified by implementing a randomized trial-by-trial change between the mental rotation task and an additional evaluation task leading to an increased dual-task coordination load. The level of distractor processing and interference effects of sexually preferred distractors were compared between the original (single-task) and the modified version (dual-task) among N = 53 healthy male participants. In the modified version, the level of distractor processing was significantly higher compared to the original version. Nevertheless, there was no difference regarding interference effects of sexually preferred distractors indicating sexual interest. Exploratory analysis suggests a further investigation of trials immediately preceded by a task switch.

Recent studies on individual differences in multitasking demonstrated that individuals differ considerably to what extent they voluntarily prefer to separate or interleave the performance of two tasks. These preferred response strategies (i.e., so-called blocking, switching or response grouping) can be identified in the free concurrent dual-tasking (FCDT) paradigm, where individuals may choose the order of their responses to two independent task threads. Previous reports indicated that the individually preferred strategy is highly stable, even when the interleaved performance of two tasks is facilitated by reduced task similarity resulting in improved dual-task performance. Here, we examined whether this stability of individual preferences for response strategies also holds true for task characteristics that deteriorate rather than facilitate the interleaved performance of tasks. For this purpose, we tested 57 participants under two conditions of varying risk of between-task crosstalk in the FCDT paradigm. In the condition of low risk of crosstalk, participants performed two tasks concurrently involving univalent stimuli (i.e., classified digits and letters). The condition of high risk of crosstalk included bivalent stimuli (i.e., two letter classification tasks with different rules). Despite the increased risk of interference between tasks, almost all individuals preferred the same strategy of response organization in the high crosstalk compared to the low crosstalk condition, even though clear detrimental effects on the efficiency of switching and response grouping strategies in both crosstalk conditions were found. The study, thus, underlines the stability of individual preferences for specific strategies of response organization independent of task characteristics.

Encoding of information during free viewing is determined by the scanning pattern of the eye. The task being performed is a crucial determinant of the saccade plan. We examined neural activity related to saccade planning during a visual search and memorization task. To capture the effect of task demands on the saccade plan, we compared EEG amplitudes between first fixations and refixations for task-relevant (targets) and task-irrelevant (distractors) items. In this task, target and distractor refixations are driven by different working memory processes. While target refixations are made for rehearsal of target items, distractor refixations are due to forgetting of distractor locations. We hypothesized that these differences in working memory processes to affect preparation of the following saccade. To test this, we assessed saccade related potentials (SRPs) in the interval preceding the saccade away from a fixation or refixation. SRP amplitudes were higher for first fixations than refixations in the occipital region only for task-relevant items. No difference was found for task-irrelevant items. This finding shows that both task-relevance and working memory contents affect the saccade plan.

Humans rely on a powerful mechanism to control their actions – they bind features of their response to stimulus features, which allows for a seamless access of that response upon a future encounter of the same situation. An open question is how these bindings come about: Is the success of a response, the mere co-activation of a stimulus and a response, or the intended goal of the action the driving force of binding? We present an approach that disentangles these three accounts by examining binding effects for action slips, i.e., unintended, erroneous responses. Participants provided speeded responses to letters and we assessed binding of task-relevant stimulus features and response features through sequential analyses of performance as a function of the extent of feature overlap between trials and the success of responding. The results support the view that successful and unsuccessful episodes enter bindings and that these bindings pertain to the intended, correct response rather than to the executed, erroneous response. This finding qualifies binding as an immediate measure to learn from errors.

For the efficient control of goal-orientated behavior, the human cognitive system is provided with several mechanisms regarding stimulus selection, encoding, and processing. One of these mechanisms is the binding of stimuli and responses. According to the theory of event coding (Hommel, 1998, Hommel, 2004), an object and the belonging features of that object are integrated together with the executed response in one event file. Every reencounter with one or more of the stored features leads to the automatic retrieval of the previously constructed event file including the response features, thereby influencing ongoing actions. One factor that is assumed to modulate feature integration (but has not yet been systematically investigated in the area of action control) is the salience of a feature (Hommel, 2005). That is, features might be weighted by perceptual salience, leading to a benefit of salient features or stimuli for the integration process. Furthermore, an influence of salience on binding effects could be assumed for task-relevant target stimuli (in Stimulus-Response Binding), as well as for task-irrelevant distractor stimuli (in Distractor-Response Binding). A first series of experiments (N > 100) suggests that the influence of salience is not as substantial as assumed. The perceptual salience of an irrelevant stimulus does not per se lead to larger binding effects.

In this study we investigated processes of stimulus-response binding and retrieval for erroneous responses. Are mistakes stored and retrieved from memory, like correct responses, leading to a perpetuation of erroneous behavior? Or do people take into account that an error was made, storing and retrieving only correct or corrected responses? Two experiments were designed to assess SR binding and retrieval effects in a sequential prime/probe design using a colour classification task, with an orthogonal variation of response relation (colour repetition vs. change) and stimulus relation (word repetition vs. change). Experiment 1 (n=83) measured SR binding and retrieval for errors that occurred under time pressure (chance errors), while Experiment 2 (n=81) required participants to deliberately respond erroneously (instructed errors) in some of the trials. We found standard SR binding effects following accurate responses in the prime in both experiments. However, no significant SR binding effects were obtained in trials following erroneous prime responses, indicating either that errors are not bound and/or retrieved from memory, or that retrieval of both erroneous and corrected responses might have neutralized each other.

When facing particular combinations of stimuli and responses, people create temporary event files integrating the corresponding stimulus and response features. Repeating one or more of these features retrieve the entire event file, which impairs performance if not all features repeat (partial-repetition costs). We studied how durable event files are over time and how sensitive they are to intervening objects or stimulus-response events. After-effects of relevant and irrelevant stimulus-response bindings were assessed after intervals of 1-5 seconds between creation and retrieval of the binding that were either unfilled (Experiment 1A), filled with 0, 2, or 4 presentations of the same neutral stimulus (1B), or of changing stimuli (1C), or filled with 0, 2, or 4 task-unrelated stimulus-response combinations (2A) or the same number of repetitions of the binding-inducing stimulus-response combination (2B). Taken altogether, the findings show a strong impact on the duration of the interval but no systematic effect of the type and number of intervening events. This suggests that event files disintegrate over time, as a function of spontaneous decay, but not due to interference from other bindings.

Storage and retrieval of episodic stimulus-response (SR) bindings are core mechanisms of action regulation. Yet, it is an unresolved issue how these transient SR bindings relate to longer lasting learning effects. Empirical findings are scarce and unsystematic so far. The present talk explores the relation between transient SR bindings and principles of Pavlovian Conditioning. A series of experiments addresses to which extent SR binding and learning effects reflect similar or different mechanisms. We used an overshadowing procedure to test whether transient binding effects for distractors “mimic” typical overshadowing effects, that is, whether binding effects are attenuated for a distractor presented together with another, but more salient, distractor. This approach has the potential to unravel how processes of selective prioritization will impact on SR binding. Furthermore, it will provide first insight to which extent transient SR bindings might be understood as the “cognitive bases” of longer lasting learning effects.

How do we adapt to shield ourselves against distractors so that these do not prevent us from achieving our goals? This question is usually investigated through conflict tasks as e. g. the Stroop task. In particular, researchers are interested in the sequential congruency effect (SCE), which is characterized by a modulated influence of task irrelevant information after different levels of conflict. Theoretically, there have been two opposing explanations for this effect. While control accounts explain the SCE as top-down attentional adaptation process, binding accounts attribute this effect to the bottom-up binding of stimulus-response (S-R) associations. Recently, the idea was raised that not only S-R associations could be bound (and later retrieved) but also the state of cognitive control itself, i. e. an attentional configuration that is independent of a specific S-R combination. In a first experiment we used a Stroop task in which we provided task-irrelevant context information. Based on previous research, we predict that in sequential trials the repetition of this context information enhances the retrieval of previously bound cognitive control and, therefore, leads to a stronger SCE. Going beyond these results, we wanted to replicate the rapid decay of S-R bindings for the binding of cognitive control. For this reason, we manipulated the retrieval delay speculating that longer delays impair the retrieval of cognitive control, i. e. the context-specific SCE. We will discuss the implications of the results for the integration and extension of control and binding accounts.

Visual events are structured in space and time, yet models of visual working memory have largely relied on tasks emphasizing spatial aspects. Here, we show that temporal properties of visual events are incidentally encoded along with spatial properties. Across several experiments, participants performed a colour-change-detection task, in which each item had unique but task-irrelevant spatial and temporal coordinates at encoding. The key manipulation concerned the retrieval context: The test array was identical to the memory array in terms of either its entire spatiotemporal structure, or only its spatial or temporal structure. Removing spatial or temporal information at retrieval resulted in performance costs, indicating that memory relied to some degree on both spatial and temporal contexts in which items were initially perceived. No comparable costs were observed for a different task-irrelevant feature dimension (size). Encoding of the spatiotemporal structure occurred incidentally, not strategically, as it was robust even when the retrieval context was perfectly predictable. However, spatial and temporal inter-item spacings influenced the weighting of spatial and temporal information: It favoured the domain in which items were more widely spaced, likely facilitating their individuation and thereby access to memory representations. Across individuals, the weighting of spatial and temporal information varied substantially, but it remained consistent across days, suggesting stable preferences for coding in the spatial or temporal domain. We propose that time serves a similar function as space in the representational architecture of visual working memory, providing a reference frame in which objects are bound.

When memorizing the locations of multiple objects in visual working memory, these locations are not represented individually but based on the global spatial configuration formed by the memorized objects. We performed multiple experiments studying the reorganizing of spatial configurations in visual working memory based on an informative retro-cue within a location change detection task. We observed that participants could reorganize the global spatial configuration into a partial configuration containing the retro-cued objects during maintenance. Further, reorganization occurred across a wide range of different set sizes even up to 16 objects. Finally, our data suggests that the organization of visual working memory based on spatial configurations seems to depend on eye movements. That is, the influence of spatial configurations on change detection performance was stronger when participants were allowed to move their eyes than when we enforced fixation using an eye-tracker. We discuss our findings in the context of the potential memory representation underlying spatial configurations in visual working memory.

o Only certain sounds disturb certain cognitive functions. Verbal serial recall of unrelated verbal items (e.g. numbers, consonants, or words) has been proven to be significantly reduced by certain task-irrelevant background sounds (Irrelevant Sound Effect), e.g. speech. So-called changing-state sounds, characterized by successively differing auditory-perceptual tokens (e.g. "beh, tie, peh, buh, ..."), disturb verbal short-term memory significantly more than so-called steady-state sounds, which are constituted by a repeating auditory-perceptual token (e.g. "bah, bah, bah, ..."). It is still subject of debate, whether phonological interferences between automatic processing of the background speech signal and volitional processing of the verbal memory material are decisive for the disruptive effect to occur. Thus, reducing the phonological content of background speech should diminish its disturbance impact on verbal serial recall. In one experiment (n=30), we compared the effects of changing-state and steady-state syllable sequences on verbal serial recall. These background sounds were either presented as the original speech signal, or as its modified version through sinewave synthesis (sinewave speech). Sinewave synthesis largely preserves the temporal-spectral complexity of the speech sound (and thus the changing-state content), while the phonological content is greatly reduced. As expected, changing-state sounds were more disturbing than steady-state sounds in both sinusoidal and natural speech. However, the changing- and steady-state sinewave speech sequences reduced performance less than the corresponding original speech sounds. We conclude that despite comparable temporal-spectral complexity, the original speech reduced verbal short-term memory to a greater extent than the phonologically degraded sinewave speech due to its higher phonological content.

The development of the four basic arithmetic operation skills is the main objectives of the primary school mathematics (math) curricula. Recent research shows that these skills are related to working memory capacity of the students. In line with these findings, the purpose of this research is to determine the impacts of the working memory components on the multiplication skills of 3rd graders. The study was carried out with 60 third grade students (23 female and 37 male) at a private primary school in Istanbul. In order to measure the participants’ capacity of working memory due to its components, the tasks named as the counting recall test, digit span test, block recall test were designed and administered on computer programs. In addition, participants’ multiplication skills were measured by multiplication tests. Linear multiple regression was used to analyze the data. The results of analysis revealed that the best predictor variable of multiplication skills was the central executive component of working memory. However, the phonological loop (PL) and the visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSSP) components of the working memory were not significant predictors for multiplication skills of the 3rd grade students.

Previous work has shown bidirectional interactions of Working Memory (WM) and perception, in that the contents of WM can alter what we perceive and vice versa. However, from a decision-theoretic perspective, subjective perceptual reports can be altered through at least two separate mechanisms (i) multiplicative modulations of perceptual sensitivity (that are expressed e.g., in the local slope of the psychometric function) and (ii) additive shifts of the response criterion (that are expressed e.g., in parallel displacement of the psychometric function). Here, using a novel spatiotemporal sampling paradigm and reverse correlation analysis of psychometric weight, we demonstrate both types of interaction and show that they are functionally dissociable. Concurrent WM content modulated local perceptual sensitivity, consistent with a low-level bias of visuospatial attention. However, this effect was ephemeral and dissipated quickly with perceptual task engagement. Independently, we observed a strong additive response bias that was lasting and bidirectional, indicating a locus of interference at a late decisional processing stage. Together, these findings indicate that WM and perception may interact at distinct stages of the cortical processing hierarchy and at different levels of abstraction, consistent with a dynamically distributed view of WM storage.

Though ubiquitous in human communication, pointing is often misunderstood. Here, we examined how the observer’s perspective affects pointer-observer misunderstandings. We hypothesize that observers rely on different visual cues when interpreting distal pointing gestures from different viewpoints. That is, observers extrapolate the pointing arm when seeing it from the side but use the pointer’s index finger position in their visual fields when assuming viewpoints close to the pointer. Hence, small changes in the observers’ head positions should have a negligible effect on interpretations in the former case but a relatively large effect in the latter case. We tested this hypothesis in a virtual reality and a real word experiment, in which participants estimated the location on a screen at which a pointer was pointing. We manipulated the observer’s viewpoint, view height, and the pointed-at region. As expected, small modifications in the observer view height resulted affected judgements considerably when standing behind the pointer but not when seeing the pointer from the side. This pattern could be found in the real world and VR setting. In conclusion, the data suggests that observers base interpretations on the index finger position in the visual field when sharing the pointer perspective but extrapolate the pointing arm when seeing the pointer from the side.

Alpha-frequency band rhythms (9-13 Hz) are thought to reflect inhibitory control on neural excitability in visual cortical areas. Consequently, previous research has established strong links between visual perception and alpha rhythms. For example, whether we see a visual stimulus or not has been found to depend on the power and phase of occipital alpha rhythms before stimulus onset. Here, I present magneto-encephalography (MEG) evidence that suggests that alpha rhythms impact the speed and the content of our visual experiences. First, the frequency of alpha rhythms over occipital and inferior temporal cortex increases when task demands emphasize segregation vs. integration of visual inputs over time. These findings link alpha frequency to the temporal resolution of visual perception and show that it can be strategically adjusted to meet task goals. Second, network states between occipital and inferior temporal cortex that communicate at alpha frequencies predispose the future perception of the bi-stable Rubin’s face-vase stimulus. These results suggest that pre-established, alpha-timed connectivity pathways bias not only the detection of visual stimuli but also their perceived contents. Overall, this work relates the time profile of alpha rhythms to visual speed and content. It suggests that dynamic visual inputs are processed through an alpha-timed (~100 ms cycle period) rhythmic-temporal architecture in the visual cortex.

Grapheme-color synesthetes have color sensations when viewing specific letters or numbers (inducers). It is known that the visual cortex of synesthetes is highly excitable. We here investigate a possible link between increased visual cortex excitability and color misperceptions in synesthetes. Visual cortex oscillations were entrained by rapid serial presentations of inducers and non-inducers, and steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) in the EEG were analyzed at the driving frequencies. Inducers compared to non-inducers produced larger occipital SSVEP amplitudes, originating from neural sources in calcarine sulcus and middle occipital cortex. Moreover, SSVEP amplitude differences between grapheme conditions predicted the vividness of color sensations. No effect was found in a sample of non-synesthetic control participants who saw matched sets of graphemes. Thus, in synesthetes, inducers entrained strong brain responses in the lower visual cortex. The increased brain activity might be maintained during further processing and increase the likelihood for irregular grapheme and color bindings.

Research on the functional segregation of action- and perception-related processing streams in the visual system often studies preserved priming effects in motor responses, which occur independently of perceptual discriminability of the prime stimuli. However, experimental design decisions could influence the resulting relationship between priming and visibility. Here, we reanalyzed a recent dataset on priming effects under Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS), a particularly potent variant of interocular suppression (Valuch & Mattler, 2019, Journal of Vision). Participants completed the same number of priming and visibility trials. Priming and visibility functions were computed for each participant based on an incremental increase of the number of trials, relative to the start of the experiment (8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48 or 56 trials per experimental condition). The analysis revealed that priming effects remained stable when more trials were added to the analysis. A completely different pattern emerged for visibility effects. The estimated visibility of the prime stimuli increased substantially and monotonically with adding more trials to the analysis. Using a lower number of trials for measuring visibility compared to priming effects (which is not an uncommon choice), could thus underestimate the actual visibility of the primes. We discuss implications for evaluating dissociations between priming and visibility and assess the generalizability of this observation for visual masking techniques beyond interocular suppression.

A growing body of research suggests that seeing something with the mind’s eye—mental imagery—may not be all that different from seeing something literally with one’s eyes, since both engage similar brain areas. Yet, the time course of neurocognitive mechanisms that support imagery is still largely unknown. The current view holds that imagery does not share early mechanisms with perception, but starts directly with high-level, holistic representations. However, evidence of earlier shared mechanisms is difficult to obtain because imagery and perception tasks typically differ in visual input. To control for low-level differences, we tested imagery and perception of objects while manipulating the degree of associated object knowledge. Event-related brain potentials showed that imagery and perception were equally influenced by knowledge already at an early stage, reflected in the P1 component, revealing shared mechanisms during low-level visual processing. Later holistic processing observable in the N1 component was increased for successful compared to incomplete imagery. Further, activity over frontal brain areas suggested that stabilizing mental images demands increased monitoring from higher-level areas. It follows that imagery is not merely perception in reverse, but both are active and constructive processes that share mechanisms even in an early phase.

Causal explanations and causal concepts are often regarded as being domain-specific across languages and cultures. Accordingly, a large amount of psychological studies scrutinized causal inferences within the boundaries of predefined domains, such as biology, psychology or physics, and some studies even hint at the availability of meta-representations that include abstract knowledge about the structures of causal relationships in a specific domain. To what extent, however, are causal judgments influenced by domain-specific information in different languages and to what degree do assumptions on causal structures differ between domains? Several experimental studies will be presented that have investigated the impact of domain-specific information on causal judgments using different task in multiple cultural or linguistic contexts. Results indicate that causal knowledge and causal judgments vary between domains and that these variations seem to be roughly similar across the languages investigated. Thus, the results provide interesting implications for discussions on the cross-linguistic unity or diversity of causal cognition.

Moral judgment research frequently uses sacrificial dilemmas, in which one has to decide whether to kill one person in order to save several others. In this paradigm, not killing is usually assumed to suggest adherence to absolute norms, while killing is taken to indicate sensitivity to consequences of an action. Research employing this approach indicates the existence of a foreign language effect (FLE), such that willingness to engage in sacrificial killing is higher when scenarios are considered in a foreign compared to one’s native language. However, methodological limitations prevent much of past research from speaking clearly about its underlying mechanisms. Moreover, as some evidence suggests the FLE may be restricted to scenarios enforcing high levels of personal involvement, the boundary conditions of this effect are somewhat unclear. Avoiding these limitations we applied multinomial processing tree modeling to estimate sensitivity to aggregate consequences, norm-sensitivity, and preference for inertia over interference as independent determinants of dilemma responses. Results of two experiments (N1 = 247, N2 = 574) suggest that the FLE may be restricted to high-involvement dilemmas, in which foreign language reduces norm-sensitivity and inertia alike. In response to low-involvement dilemmas no consistent effects were observed. These findings thus help to clarify how several cognitive mechanisms jointly contribute to the FLE in dilemma-judgment. While partly compatible with previous research, our findings also suggest the FLE to be in part an artefact resulting from uncontrolled response tendencies, specifically inertia, which systematically bias responses in other dilemma paradigms.

Switching between two different tasks is facilitated by knowing which task needs to be performed next. However, we do not yet know how predictability of sequences affects language switching. Given that the costs of task switching and language switching are correlated in individuals (Declerck, Grainger, Koch & Philipp, 2017, JML), we hypothesized that language switching—like task switching—would benefit from predictability. To investigate this, unbalanced German-English bilinguals (L1 = German; L2 = English) were recruited in two independent experiments (N1 = 22, N2 = 35). In both, participants named images of frequent semantic concepts either in German or in English. In the majority of blocks, trials followed a predictable language sequence (L1, L1, L2, L2, L1, L1, etc.), while the language sequence was random in a negative-transfer block. In both experiments, we observed shorter reaction times in German than English naming trials. In addition, switch trials resulted in longer RTs than repetition ones. Importantly, however, we found no evidence for a predictability benefit in language switching; in contrast, there was a tendency for a predictability cost in Experiment 1. Together, our results suggest that predictable language sequences do not facilitate switching between languages, but that instead knowing which language comes up next increased cross-lingual competition, potentially due to larger parallel activation of L1 and L2.

In the present study, we examined the influence of morphological configuration (i.e., the structure of morphemes in a word) in language switching. We conducted several experiments in which not only the relevant language (German, English or Spanish) varied between trials but also the rule for the morphological configuration of a word. In Experiment 1 and 2, we used two-digit numbers because the morphological configuration (i.e., the composition rule of the number words) varies between languages (e.g. inverted composition rule with unit before decade vs. non-inverted composition rule with decade before unit). Experiment 1, participants (n=36) had to name a visually presented two-digit number, whereas the numbers were presented auditorily in Experiment 2 and participants (n=48) had to determine the numerical distance (i.e. 2, 3 or 4) between the numbers in the current and the previous trial. In Experiment 3, participants (n=48) had to name compound words for which the morphological configuration (verb+noun vs. noun+verb) differed between languages. The results of all experiments demonstrated language-switch costs, which is a better performance in language-repetition trials than in language-switch trials. Importantly, language-switch costs were modulated by repeating or switching the morphological configuration. More specifically, a language-repetition benefit (i.e., switch cost) was observed when the morphological configuration repeated in two successive trials but was reduced or even reversed when the morphological configuration switched. Our results indicate that the morphological configuration plays a critical role in the representation and the production of compound words in language switching.

Overclaiming is the tendency to overstate one's knowledge, a behavior that is frequently encountered in personnel selection contexts. To identify applicant faking behavior, overclaiming questionnaires (OCQs) capture whether applicants claim to know vocabulary that does not actually exist. Studies investigating the usefulness of OCQs in assessing faking behavior reported mixed results. However, previous studies neglected the fit between OCQ and selection context. Applicants may not perceive a good result in the OCQ as crucial to their success in the application procedure if the fit of the questionnaire to job requirements is poor. In such cases, the OCQ may not contribute to the identification of faking behavior. To examine the influence of the fit between OCQ and selection context on overclaiming, we manipulated the selection context in a simulated application procedure which included an OCQ on general knowledge. A total of 432 participants answered the questionnaire either while applying for a job as a science journalist (good fit), while applying for a job as a psychological therapist (poor fit), or without application context (control). Participants overclaimed most when general knowledge was most relevant, that is, when applying for the job as a science journalist. If participants applied for the job as a therapist, they still overclaimed more than without any application context. We conclude that the fit between OCQ and application context is important and should be considered when evaluating the usefulness of OCQs in detecting faking behavior.

Previous research results show that recruiters’ assessments of personality traits are regularly invalid or unreliable (Patton & Haugland, 2000; Cole et al, 2009). Self-confident appearance and presentation is a central requirement in many professional positions and is therefore an integral part of many assessment centers. The accurate and automated measurement of self-confidence and other relevant personality features could increase the objectivity of assessment centers and other application processes by relying on physiological measurement approaches instead of subjective judgements. Therefore, we present an explorative two-step approach which aims at the automated and objective extraction of job-relevant personality features (e.g. interpersonal competence, confidence, communication skills) from short application videos. For this purpose, we conducted and recorded structured application interviews on a demographically representative sample of N = 100 male and female participants of various age groups. In addition to rating the applicants interview performance, all videos were annotated along a comprehensive behavioural catalogue of 137 different basal gestures, postures and facial expressions, which are in a first step used to identify complex compound features and to predict various personality characteristics. A second step is concerned with an automated detection and classification of relevant gestures and expression, based on the annotated labels. Here we present univariate and multivariate associations and dynamic transition flows between relevant features as well as a preliminary classification model. Future models could be used within the framework of online based platforms for an objective and ecologically valid form of video applications or personal self-assessments.

Both trait extraversion and extraverted behavior are associated with greater positive affect. A recent study found this association to be mediated by perceived social contribution, a dimension of the social well being scale. However, a more comprehensive investigation of potential underlying mechanisms of the extraversion-positive affect link is still lacking. In the present study, we investigated if additional dimensions of well-being mediate the relationship between enacted extraverted behaviors and positive affect. One-hundred and eight participants were instructed to enact either extraverted or introverted behaviors (versus no instruction) in a group discussion of three participants. Contrary to prior findings structural equation models demonstrated that state social contribution was not a significant mediator of the relationship between enacted extraverted behavior and positive affect. Instead, the well-being dimensions 'engagement' and 'relations' significantly mediated the relationship between enacted extraverted behavior and positive affect. This suggests that extraverted behavior may increase the experience of flow and the feeling of being appreciated during the task which may in turn lead to increases in positive affect. Limitations of the study and implications for the relationship between personality and well-being are discussed.

Online communication is getting increasingly important in shaping our everyday experiences; especially since it can be used to spread threatening and/or harmful messages. Internet trolling is considered a negative form of online interaction and can have tremendous effects on people’s well-being. The present preregistered (osf) experiment had two aims: First, to replicate prior findings of a relationship between internet users’ trolling behavior and the Dark Tetrad of personality (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism; RQ1). Second, to investigate the effect of experiencing social exclusion on people’s immediate motivation to troll others (RQ2). For our investigation, we conducted an online study. Participants (interim results n = 711) completed self-report questionnaires assessing personality and baseline trolling (i.e., someone’s regular trolling activities). Afterwards, participants were randomized to one of two conditions using the Cyberball paradigm: social inclusion vs. social exclusion. Finally, participants rated their immediate trolling motivation. To answer RQ1, we looked at the correlations of the Dark Tetrad with baseline trolling behavior. To answer RQ2, a t-test compared included and excluded participants concerning their immediate trolling motivation. Preliminary results regarding RQ1 indicate highly significant correlations between baseline trolling and the Dark Tetrad. However, our analysis for RQ2 does not suggest that excluded participants experience higher trolling motivation than included participants. The present study confirms that trolling behavior is associated with the Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism. Though exclusion did not affect trolling behavior, this study contributes to psychology by being one of the first preregistered experimental investigations of trolling behavior.

Previous research results indicate that an increased proportion of blue light has a physiologically activating and emotionally stabilizing effect – nonetheless, its impact in patients with neurodegenerative diseases as confounding factors remains unclear. In the present study, the psychophysiological influences of a chronobiologically adapted light-system with variable amounts of low- and high-frequency light components was investigated in 50 elderly patients with dementia (as measured with MoCA). Besides a multidimensional psychological evaluation, an objective steroidal analysis was carried out based on hair segments that had grown over the course of a month. The values of 31 seniors from an assisted-living facility with an adaptive lighting system (intervention group) were compared with those of 19 seniors from an independent control facility with a regular lighting system (control group). After controlling for environmental and intrapersonal confounders, a significant higher level of corticosteroids was observed in the intervention group (11.4 pg/ml), compared to the control group (5.9 pg/ml), corresponding to that of a younger and healthier sample. Further, the intervention group reported significantly less daytime sleepiness, higher levels of physiological activity, energy and an overall greater satisfaction with environmental lighting-conditions. Regarding general sleep quality (KSS, PSQI), depressiveness (GDS), stress perception (PSS) and anxiety (STAI), no significant group differences could be observed. Overall, the results suggest a physiological impact of chronobiologically adapted lighting in patients with dementia, which can be interpreted as a protective factor in the intervention facility.

Most vaccines protect both the vaccinated individual and the society at large by reducing the transmission of infectious diseases. In order to eliminate infectious diseases, individuals need to consider social welfare beyond mere self-interest — regardless of ethnic, religious, or national group borders. It has therefore been proposed that vaccination poses a social contract in which individuals are morally obliged to get vaccinated. However, little is known about whether individuals indeed act upon this social contract. If so, vaccinated individuals should show positive reciprocity toward other vaccinated individuals and negative reciprocity toward non-vaccinated individuals. Moreover, a social contract should be universally valid, i.e., reciprocity should occur irrespective of context factors, such as others’ group membership. The present studies investigated reciprocal prosociality toward vaccinated and non-vaccinated others as a behavioral indicator for seeing vaccination as a social contract. Three pre-registered experiments tested the reciprocity hypothesis and its universality, investigating how a person’s own vaccination behavior, others’ vaccination behavior, and others’ group membership influenced a person’s prosociality toward the respective others. The pattern of results revealed by an internal meta-analysis (N = 1,032) suggests that especially those who get vaccinated, and therefore comply with the social contract, show negative reciprocity toward non-vaccinated individuals. Moreover, reciprocal prosociality was independent of others’ group membership, suggesting a universal moral principle. Emphasizing that vaccination constitutes a social contract could be a promising intervention to increase vaccine uptake, prevent free riding, and, eventually, eliminate infectious diseases.

Hospital visitors pose a risk of transmitting pathogens that can result in nosocomial infections. Using alcohol-based hand-rub is the single most effective method to reduce the transmission risk. However, a majority of visitors do not clean their hands during their stay at a hospital. The present study aimed to evaluate an evidence-based intervention to improve visitors’ hand hygiene behavior through persuasive signs. For the field experiment, seven signs were designed according to Cialdini’s principles of persuasion: reciprocity, consistency, social-proof, unity, liking, authority, and scarcity. These principles have been successfully applied to change human behavior in many different settings. Each sign was displayed on a TV-screen for one week directly above the hand-rub dispenser in a hospital lobby. Between each posting, the screen was blank for one week (control). Visitor traffic and dispenser usage in the lobby was recorded via an electronic monitoring system. Overall, 246,102 entries and exits and 16,954 dispenser usages were recorded. During the blank control weeks, the dispenser usage did not vary significantly. The signs based on the authority and the social-proof principles significantly increased the hand-rub dispenser usage rate in comparison to the average baseline usage rate. These findings indicate that the principles of persuasion can be easily and cost-efficiently translated and implemented to initiate behavior change in health-care settings. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

This study assesses whether an extended knowledge approach, based on theories of semantic network structures, helps to increase learning performance in older adults by connecting new information to activated, pre-existing knowledge. Providing information about risks, that links the primary diseases such as influenza, to secondary diseases (sequelae) such as pneumococci and sepsis – can decrease vaccine hesitancy in older adults and may serve as a new vaccine communication approach. In a pre-registered, longitudinal online experiment, 585 participants (>60 years of age) were randomly assigned to a 3 (time: before, after leaflet presentation, 3 months follow-up, within) x 3 (educational leaflet type: sepsis leaflet with extended knowledge concept, traditional leaflet without extended knowledge concept, control leaflet, between) mixed design. We assessed knowledge about influenza, pneumococci and sepsis, risk perceptions and their relations to immediate and long-term vaccination intentions and future behavior. Applying the extended knowledge approach increased older adults’ immediate pneumococcal and sepsis knowledge and their long-term sepsis knowledge. Risk perceptions increased immediately after reading the sepsis leaflet. Both vaccination intentions (but not long-term behavior) increased after participants read the sepsis leaflet. A significant indirect effect in exploratory mediation analyses showed for both vaccinations that the sepsis leaflet increased immediate knowledge, which lead to increased risk perceptions and consequently increased vaccination intentions three months after the experiment. This study shows that vaccination intentions can be increased permanently by extended health knowledge. Doctors should provide targeted information shortly before patients are faced with important health decisions.

Meditation is commonly practiced in a specific context, e.g., the eightfold Yoga path. To date, only few studies have investigated the effects of adding specific components of this path to the practice of meditation. Our study was the first to address this issue. Using an experimental single-case research design, we investigated the effects of mantra meditation alone or in combination with physical Yoga exercises and/or ethical practice on healthy participants. This study was part of a project evaluating a new Mind-Body program called Meditation-Based Lifestyle Modification. 46 participants were randomly assigned to four conditions and three baselines. The conditions were meditation alone, meditation plus exercises, meditation plus ethics, and meditation plus exercises and ethics. Participants enrolled in an eight-week course, starting consecutively according to their baseline. Personality traits were assessed during pre-testing. During baseline and treatment phases participants received daily questionnaires measuring a wide range of dependent variables. This talk will present preliminary results of this study and highlight the benefits of experimental single-case designs within the context of meditation research. While all participants showed an increase in emotion regulation, we found a great heterogeneity of responses in other variables. The ethical living component seemed to have a positive effect on wellbeing but inhibit increases in body awareness and decentering. Certain personality traits and experiences during meditation could predict the outcome of the treatment. With this study we hope to answer an urgent question in meditation research, namely, whether and how the traditional Yoga context influences the effects of meditation.

Dual-task (DT) situations require task-order coordination processes that schedule the processing of two temporally overlapping tasks. Evidence for these processes stems from the observation that when participants can freely decide about task order they tend to repeat the task order of the previous trial resulting in fewer order switches compared to order repetitions. This order repetition bias suggests that intentionally switching compared to repeating task order requires additional and intention-based task-order coordination processes. In two experiments, we investigated whether the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dLPFC) is causally involved in implementing these intentional scheduling processes by employing transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS). For this purpose, we applied a DT consisting of an auditory and a visual 3-choice reaction time task with random stimulus order. Importantly, participants were instructed to freely decide about task order. Additionally, in a control condition, participants were instructed to perform the two tasks with constant (and not changing) task order. Anodal (Experiment 1) and cathodal (Experiment 2) tDCS was administered over the left dLPFC. As a result, anodal stimulation improved whereas cathodal stimulation impaired DT performance in order switch trials compared to sham stimulation. Performance in order repetition trials as well as in the control condition was unaffected by stimulation. In sum, our experiments indicate that the dLPFC is indeed causally involved in intentionally switching task order and, thus, contributes to self-organized task scheduling in multitasking situations.

To examine practice related changes in valence-dependent neural feedback processing, thirty-two students learned a sequential arm movement with 192 trials in each of five practice sessions. EEG was recorded in the first and last session. An adaptive bandwidth for movement accuracy led to equal amounts of positive and negative feedback. The ‘feedback-related-negativity’ (FRN; 250 ms after feedback onset) reflects reward prediction errors in reinforcement learning (Holroyd & Coles, 2002). In this study, a frontal located deflection in the time window of the FRN was more negative for negative feedback (p>.001; η2p=.41). An increase of this negativity after the practice phase (p=.002; η2p=.26), indicates that the smaller errors in the later practice might be harder to predict. The P300 (300 ms after feedback onset) is associated with updating of internal models (Donchin & Coles, 1988). Here, the P300 was more positive for positive feedback (p>.001; η2p=.35), yielding that positive feedback is more effective for updating processes. The valence-independent increase (p=.017; η2p=.17) after the practice phase might reflect an improved ability to update the internal model, based on feedback information. The late fronto-central positivity (LFCP; 450 ms after feedback onset) reflects processes of supervised learning (Krause, Koers & Maurer, in press). As expected, the LFCP was more positive for negative feedback (p>.001; η2p=.32) and is assumed to be associated with behavioral adaptions based on feedback with higher complexity. Together, these results demonstrate changes in valence-dependent neural feedback processing after practice of a motor task.

To date, the extent to which neural activity related to romantic love is affected by couple conflict is unknown. Furthermore, there is still a scarcity of studies on interventions that can promote conflict resolution in romantic couples. To fill these gaps, we conducted two randomized controlled studies (Study 1 N = 74; Study 2 N = 72). In both studies, romantic couples discussed a topic of recurrent disagreement with or without a mediator. Romantic couples in the mediated condition reported more agreements and higher satisfaction compared to the non-mediated condition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data show that seeing the romantic partner was related to activations in striatum, insula, and precuneus prior to the conflict. However, these activations decreased after the conflict. Nonetheless, couples in the mediated condition had higher post-conflict activations the nucleus accumbens – a key region for reward – than couples in the non-mediated condition.

The Rotation-Related-Negativity (RRN), an ERP component emerging 300-600 ms after stimulus onset at parietal electrodes (Provost et al., 2013), increases with higher requirements of mental rotation. In the experiment, stimulus sets of human figures (backview; left/ right arm abduction) and alphanumeric characters („R“; normal/ mirrored) were used. Participants (n = 26; 21.77 years, SD = 1.95) had to judge parity between an upright (0°-orientation) and a comparison stimulus (stimulus disparity; 0°, 45°, 90°, 135° or 180°). There was a significant main effect of orientation for the behavioral (reaction time), F = 72.69, p < .001, eta²p = .74, as well as for the neural data (RRN), F = 32.97, p < .001, eta²p = .57. The interaction with stimulus type was not significant for the reaction time, F = 0.67, p = .511, eta²p = .03, but for the RRN, F = 3.26, p = .031, eta²p = .12. Lower RRN-amplitudes for parity-judgment of letters indicate a more pronounced use of alternative processes (e.g., memory retrieval) other than mental rotation to identify letters as being normal or mirrored. Future studies might clarify if the assumed differential use of memory retrieval also explains that the correlation between RRN-amplitude and the slope of the reaction time as a function of disparity is only evident for the stimulus set of letters, but not for bodies.

In order to better understand stress responses, neuroimaging studies have investigated the underlying neural correlates of stress. Amongst other brain regions, they highlight the involvement of the prefrontal cortex. Here we investigate haemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex during the Maastricht Acute Stress Test (MAST) using mobile functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), examining the stress response in an ecological environment. The MAST includes a challenging mental arithmic task and a physically stressful ice-water task. In a between-subject design, participants either performed the MAST or a non-stress control condition. FNIRS data were recorded throughout the task. Additionally, subjective stress ratings, heart rate and salivary cortisol were evaluated, confirming a successful stress induction. The fNIRS data indicated significantly increased neural activity of brain regions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in response to the MAST, compared to the control condition. Furthermore, the mental arithmetic task indicated an increase in neural activity in brain regions of the dlPFC and OFC; whereas the physically stressful hand immersion task indicated a lateral decrease of neural activity in the left dlPFC. The study highlights the potential use of mobile fNIRS in clinical and applied stress research.

Perception is an active inference in which perceptual priors are combined with sensory input. It is still unclear how the precision of prior expectations is represented in the human brain. Prior precision could be represented with prior content itself in sensory regions. Alternatively, there could be distinct, specialized brain regions that represent precision separately from the content of the prior. Here, we used multivariate functional resonance imaging to test whether the precision of face priors can be measured together with expected face identity in face-sensitive regions. Participants were trained to relate images of scenes and faces. Each scene predicted three faces: one with low, one with intermediate, and one with high probability (10, 30, or 60 %). Behavioural results showed that participants correctly associated the three scenes and faces with the corresponding low, intermediate, and high probabilities. An independent functional localizer run was recorded before the training to define face-sensitive regions of interest. We used representational similarity analysis (RSA) to test whether multivariate pattern similarity between presented and expected faces depends on the prior strength (Nili et al., 2014). During face anticipation, representations of expected face identity increased with prior precision in the face-sensitive anterior temporal lobe. In contrast, during face presentation, representations of face identity increased with surprise in the insula. Our findings suggest that precision of face priors is represented in higher-level face areas. These priors seem to influence the representation of face input in specialized brain regions which signal surprise to unexpected stimuli.

Previously inspected faces can affect the perception of faces seen subsequently. The underlying mechanisms of these face adaptation effects (FAEs) have been considered to be based on sensory adaptation processes. However, by employing famous faces, recent studies were able to demonstrate that FAEs are very reliable and robust over long periods of time. This suggests a high level processing and an adaptation on a rather representational memory basis. Although research on FAEs seems to be well-advanced, our knowledge is still quite limited in terms of which qualities of a face can be adapted, as most studies have focused only on configural information (i.e., mostly 2nd-order relations). By employing brightness and saturation alterations, we investigated whether non-configural face information also play a significant role in the processing and storage of faces. Our results provide clear evidence for robust non-configural color adaptation effects which seem to be very unique within the context of faces.

People recognise familiar faces from an impressive range of highly variable images. Recently, we found highly reliable event-related potential (ERP) correlates of personally familiar face recognition when participants were tested with large numbers of highly variable “ambient” images, both in the N250 (visual recognition) and in the Sustained Familiarity Effect (SFE; integration of semantic/affective information). Interestingly, corresponding effects were not observed for celebrities. These findings may suggest that famous and personally familiar faces are processed qualitatively differently. However, they might alternatively reflect insufficiently robust representations to identify random celebrities from highly variable images. Here, we compared participants’ ERPs to “ambient” images of their favourite celebrities (Experiments 1-3), personally familiar faces (Experiments 1 and 2), strongly disliked celebrities (Experiment 3), and unfamiliar faces. Most importantly, we found clear familiarity effects for favourite celebrities, both in the N250 and the SFE. Moreover, the SFE was larger for personally familiar faces than favourite celebrities (Experiment 1), and for favourite relative to disliked celebrities (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that ERP familiarity effects are not qualitatively different for personal versus media-based familiarity. Instead, increasing familiarity may result in more robust representations that allow recognition from increasingly variable images.

Faces and voices both affect how an individual is perceived by interlocutors. In addition, both modalities carry information about the individual’s age. In two experiments, we combined photos of middle-aged faces (ca. 40-50 years of age; Ebner et al. 2010) with voices (Zäske et al., 2019) that were either substantially younger or substantially older than the faces (approx.. 20 vs. > 65 years old). Participants were asked to rate each person for trustworthiness, attractiveness, and dominance, and, in a final block, to guess the person’s age. The difference between Experiment 1 and 2 was the age of the participants: Experiment 1 tested 27 students (M = 22 years old); Experiment 2 tested 29 senior citizens (M = 75 years). The students rated faces combined with younger voices as more attractive than the same faces combined with older voices; for senior raters, voice age did not affect attractiveness ratings. For dominance ratings, the pattern reversed: Students experienced faces combined with older voices as more dominant, senior raters found faces with younger voices more dominant. Trustworthiness ratings were not affected by voice age or participant age. Age guesses tended to be close to the actual age of the face. Interestingly, despite age differences of roughly 20 years between faces and voices, only very few (primarily female) face-voice pairings were experienced as strange or mismatching. In summary, these experiments contribute to recent efforts to tease apart differential contributions of faces and voices to first impression formation (Mileva et al., 2018).

Die Einnahme leistungssteigernder Medikamente ohne medizinische Notwendigkeit, sogenanntes Pharmaceutical Cognitive Enhancement, hat sich zwischen 2015 und 2017 verdreifacht. Auf Grund zunehmend herausfordernder Arbeitsbedingungen wird weltweit weiterhin mit steigenden Nutzerzahlen gerechnet. Dabei werden neben synthetischen, verschreibungspflichtigen Medikamenten auch pflanzliche Medikamente wie Gingko biloba eingesetzt. Der Natural Bias, der zu einer systematischen Unterschätzung der Risiken pflanzlicher Medikamente führt, wurde im Bereich Cognitive Enhancement bisher wenig untersucht. Bis heute gibt es außerdem keine Studie, die hierbei den zugrundeliegenden Prozess des Urteilsfehlers über die Affektheuristik berücksichtigte. Auf Grundlage der risk-as-feelings Perspektive wurde eine präregistrierte Online-Vignettenstudie mit 819 Teilnehmenden durchgeführt. In einem 2 (Eigenschaft des Medikaments: natürlich vs. synthetisch) x 2 (Wahrscheinlichkeit der Nebenwirkungen: hoch vs. niedrig) x 2 (Schwere der Nebenwirkungen: stark vs. leicht) between-subjects Design wurde untersucht, inwiefern pflanzliche Medikamente im Vergleich zu identisch wirkenden, synthetischen Medikamenten zu einer geringeren Risikowahrnehmung, Angst vor Nebenwirkungen und einer höheren Einnahmeintention führen. Die Einnahmeintention natürlicher Medikamente ist bei gleichen Risiken höher als die Einnahmeintention synthetischer Medikamente. Die präregistrierten Mediationsanalysen zeigen, dass natürliche Medikamente im Vergleich zu synthetischen Medikamenten zu einem positiveren Affekt und in Folge dessen zu einer geringeren Risikowahrnehmung, zu einer geringeren Angst vor Nebenwirkungen und zu einer höheren Einnahmeintention führen. Informationen zu natürlichen Eigenschaften eines Medikaments beeinflussen implizit die Risikowahrnehmung und Gesundheitsentscheidung von Konsumenten, indem sie einen affektiven Prozess anstoßen, während risikorelevante Informationen wie die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Nebenwirkungen zweitrangig sind.

We aim to contribute to a better understanding of the psychology of risk by describing the semantic representation of risk across the life span using a novel word-association paradigm. We obtained responses from 1204 respondents (age range = 18-86) to a word-association task that involved naming associates of the word “risk” as well as word associations to the risk-associates (30 responses per participant). We find that the types of risks and clusters elicited by our task overlap extensively, albeit not perfectly, with past approaches to the psychology of risk. We also find that associates vary systematically across age groups, with older respondents showing more negative connotations and mentioning more often certain types of activities as being associated with risk (e.g., recreational activities). Our work has implications for the measurement of risk perception and risk preference in psychology and related fields by suggesting that risk has different meanings to different individuals and age groups.

Cognitive functions are essential for making advantageous decisions. This has been shown experimentally by use of gambling tasks measuring decision making under different situational conditions. Studies on media-multitasking report differences in cognitive functions in individuals who highly frequently multitask with different media (HMMs), compared to those who do not (LMMs). The current study investigated whether HMMs and LMMs differ regarding their decision making performance in different situations. In an online pre-study (N=182) we identified HMMs and LMMs respectively, who were invited into the laboratory. Participants performed two decision-making tasks: the Game of Dice Task (GDT) and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Furthermore, several tests of cognitive functions (Stroop, TMT, MCST, logical reasoning test) and scales assessing attention-related cognitive error, impulsivity, and risky Internet use were conducted. Controlling for impulsivity and age, HMMs did not differ from LMMs regarding performance in the GDT and that in later IGT trials. However, the groups differed regarding IGT performance in the earlier trials (HMMs < LMMs) as well as regarding cognitive functions and risky Internet use. More precisely, HMMs performed better in the Stroop and TMT but weaker in the MCST and logical reasoning test. HMMs reported more attention-related errors and higher tendencies towards risky Internet use. Results indicate that HMMs may have advantages in information processing but difficulties in logical thinking and decision making under ambiguous risk. Decision making under objective risk doesnot seem to be affected. The findings suggest associations between media multitasking and fast/impulsive information processing.

Decision environments have become increasingly complex with an ever-increasing amount of information available to inform our decisions. However, it remains unclear how complexity influences risky choice or risk preferences in general. Previous research that investigated the relationship has revealed somewhat conflicting results, with some researchers finding complexity aversion and others finding complexity neutrality. We address these conflicting findings by investigating the effect of complexity on risk preferences in two experiments. In the first experiment, we use a dual approach involving perceptual and preferential judgements to investigate three possible effects of complexity on risk preferences: (i) direct influence of complexity on valuation (ii) indirect influence, with unsystematic errors causing inaccurate judgements and (iii) indirect influence, with systematic errors causing biased judgements. Bayesian multilevel model analyses support the second hypothesis, showing that complexity has an effect on valuation accuracy. Concerning the first and third hypothesis, we find no systematic influence of complexity on valuation. Taken together, this suggests that complexity increases the noise in the decision process, but has no systematic influence on risk preferences as would be expected according to the previous literature that found an effect of complexity aversion. Furthermore, our results suggest that previous findings of complexity aversion might have been due to the employment of asymmetric experiment designs, which were affected by an increase of unsystematic errors. Finally, we further extended our results in a second experiment, in which we investigated risky choices in a large, representative sample (n=300) of the US population.

Humans’ behaviours under risk and uncertainty are often characterized as irrational, in that they over- or underweight outcome probabilities and treat missing information suboptimally. Such behaviours are routinely observed in lab-based tasks involving discrete choices, e.g., between monetary gambles. However, the risks associated with many real-life activities depend not only on extrinsic parameters but also on intrinsic capacities. How human risk-taking integrates endogenous action precision is poorly understood. Here, we designed a task to disentangle endogenous and extrinsic sources of outcome variability in real-time risk-taking. While recording electroencephalography, participants race an imaginary car across a virtual track to accumulate rewards, but without overshooting a certain point after which a massive loss is incurred. On any given trial, the car’s properties are either known or unknown, varying the role of intrinsic versus extrinsic sources of uncertainty. For either source, we examine the extent to which subjects adopt boundedly rational risk-taking policies that maximize rewards under the respective uncertainty levels. Preliminary data indicate that participants adopt a moderately risk-averse strategy to protect from inherent driving imprecision, and a more risk-averse strategy in the face of uncertainty about the environment, both of which appear paradoxically optimal in maximizing long-term returns. Turning to the EEG data, we use multivariate pattern analysis to examine whether these adaptive behaviours are mediated by the endogenous sampling of anticipated outcomes (gain, loss) and/or by preferential representations of worst-case environmental states in the face of uncertainty.

Evaluation is at the core of our lives. It not only guides our judgments and decisions, but also dictates how we treat other people or which products we consume. Moreover, much of our more automatic (e.g., habitual, or addictive) behaviour is thought to strongly depend on evaluative processes. It is therefore of critical importance to understand how, when, and why evaluations are established and can be changed. Many theorists have argued that the learning of evaluations and related automatic behaviour is the outcome of implicit processes that operate through mental associations rather than explicit, belief-based processes that drive more controlled behaviour. In applied fields, intervention studies targeting maladaptive behaviour have often used associative learning procedures designed to facilitate automatic changes in mental associations. Yet, recent findings do not fit well with dominant associative (or dual-process) theories and challenged key underlying assumptions of these theories. Building on recent theoretical developments in the field of cognitive (neuro-) science, we proposed an alternative single-process view, that evaluative learning is determined by automatic inferential reasoning processes. From this perspective, automatic inferences determine how we feel and act in response to stimuli. This inferential theory represents a shift in thinking about human behaviour and how we can most efficiently promote behavioural change that benefits our environment at the individual and societal level (e.g., to improve people’s well-being, treat clinical disorders, or facilitate protection of our natural environment). I will discuss recent research testing the value of this theoretical framework.

Negative attitudes tend to be “stickier”, or more difficult to reverse, than positive attitudes. We tested if this is also true when attitudes are conditioned via evaluative conditioning (EC), which is a change in the liking of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) due to its previous pairings with another stimulus (unconditioned stimulus; US). In a preregistered study, we paired CSs with either positive or negative USs in an initial conditioning procedure; then, in a counter-conditioning procedure, we paired the same CSs with USs of the opposite valence that they had previously been paired with. We hypothesized a larger attitude change for positively conditioned and negatively counter-conditioned CSs compared to negatively conditioned and positively counter-conditioned CSs. In other words, we hypothesized a larger attitude change (from pre-counter-conditioning to post-counter-conditioning) for positive-to-negatively paired CSs than negative-to-positively paired CSs. Results showed a significant change in attitudes for both initially positive and initially negative paired CSs. In line with our hypothesis, there was a significantly greater attitude change for initially positively conditioned and negatively counter-conditioned CSs compared to initially negatively conditioned and positively counter-conditioned CSs. Results support previous findings in sequential (re)framing literature by revealing a negativity bias in evaluative counter-conditioning. Our research also suggests that attitudes are not stable over time, but they seem to rather be based on multiple pieces of information and the order that the information is received matters.

If persons, objects, or other stimuli are presented together with evaluative information observers often acquire new attitudes about them. This is for example the case in evaluative conditioning where simple pairings between neutral and valent stimuli are presented together or in attitude formation paradigms where valent behavioral information is provided about a person. Based on declarative memory models of evaluative learning, we predicted that for these attitude learning effects to occur it is important that episodic evaluative information from the acquisition phase is retrieved when the attitude is measured. In two evaluative conditioning experiments (N = 93; 87) and in one experiment where attitudes where established with valent behavioral information (N = 93), we tested whether the reactivation of the paired evaluative information (vs. equally valent but non-paired information) during the measurement phase increased the attitude acquisition effects. This was the case across experimental procedures. In addition, we conducted two studies on autobiographical memories about everyday objects (N = 64; 80). We found that object evaluations were more influenced by the valence of an autobiographical memory episode when the episode was recently retrieved than when it was not recently retrieved. We discuss these findings in the context of models of evaluative conditioning and the debate of attitudes as constructions vs. enduring entities.

Evaluative conditioning describes a change in valence of a mostly neutral stimulus by pairing it with a valent stimulus. The mechanisms underlying this effect are subject to intense debate. According to the Implicit Misattribution Model (Jones, Fazio, & Olson, 2009), the affective reaction to the valent stimulus is implicitly misattributed to the co-occurring neutral stimulus and leads to a change in its valence. Yet, empirical evidence for this process is mixed. We present results from three pre-registered online experiments in which we tested whether implicit misattribution occurs during stimulus pairing. As predicted, Experiment 1 (N=90) showed that directly after a pairing, neutral stimuli were evaluated in line with the paired valence. Implicit misattribution presumably depends on close spatiotemporal presentation of both stimuli. Accordingly, Experiment 2 (N=224) revealed that the effect on stimulus evaluations during conditioning was larger when paired stimuli had simultaneous onsets compared to when onsets were asynchronous and the probability of misattribution therefore presumably reduced. Results from Experiment 3 (N=195), however, indicated that this finding was due to the amount of temporal overlap of both stimuli and not to the simultaneity of stimulus onset. Together, our results question the validity of implicit misattribution as a process underlying evaluative conditioning effects and add to evidence against implicit evaluative learning.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to a change in valence brought about by stimulus pairings. A traditional EC procedure consists of repeated pairings of neutral "conditioned" stimuli (CSs) with positive or negative “unconditioned” stimuli (USs) and does not provide additional information on the meaning of these pairings. By contrast, relational EC paradigms combine a manipulation of US valence with an additional manipulation of CS-US relations which specifies the meaning of the CS-US pairings. Whereas traditional EC procedures typically yield a main effect of US valence, the most common finding in relational EC paradigms is an interaction of US valence and CS-US relation; specifically, a regular EC effect when CS-US pairings are accompanied by an assimilating relation (e.g. cause), and a reversed EC effect when CS-US pairings are accompanied by a contrasting relation (e.g. prevent). Whereas this interaction unequivocally demonstrates the role of propositional learning in EC, the additional finding of a main effect of US valence is interpreted as evidence for a parallel influence of association formation. This main effect is due to the fact that the reversed EC effect in the contrasting condition is in absolute terms smaller than the regular EC effect in the assimilating condition. Whereas dual-process accounts of EC can explain this pattern as the result of the presence of evaluative proposition as well as associations, we present data suggesting that the main effect of US valence is a propositional phenomenon and does not provide evidence for association formation.

Prominent dual-process theories of attitude assume that evaluations can be acquired unconsciously. Research on Evaluative Conditioning that relied on a Process Dissociation (PD) procedure appears to support this unconscious attitude learning view. In the present research, however, we argue that basic assumptions inherent to the PD procedure are both theoretically and empirically unjustified. Here we introduce and empirically validate an alternative item-level assessment of subjective memory states. The data of the validation study (i) are inconsistent with central assumptions of the PD procedure and (ii) fail to support prominent dual-process models of attitude learning. We discuss the implications of the present findings for research on attitude learning

The present study investigates mechanisms and neural correlates of adaptive cognitive control in working memory (WM). WM is conceived as a system for short-term maintenance, updating and manipulation of representations required for goal-directed action. Adaptive control refers to the finding of flexible adjustments of control processes in face of conflict. For instance, the conflict adaptation effect denotes that conflict on the previous trial leads to a higher level of cognitive control on the current trial. To investigate adaptive control in WM, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) in a modified Sternberg paradigm. Participants memorized two differently colored lists of four number items (i.e., 2 5 7 1), in which corresponding positions in both lists contained the same digits (congruent items) or different digits (incongruent items). Participants were required to validate whether a given probe matched a particular digit at its corresponding position in the correct list of the memory set. Behavioral data indicated a conflict adaptation effect, that is, responses to incongruent probe items were slower and this congruency effect was reduced following trials with incongruent probe items. In ERPs, we could differentiate dynamic adaptations of match decisions from mismatch decisions: a conflict adaptation effect for match but not for mismatch decisions was found at frontal electrode sites whereas a conflict adaptation effect for mismatch but not for match decisions was found at posterior electrode sites. These results demonstrate adaptive control in WM and link the respective mechanisms to WM-related neural activity.

Persistence and flexibility represent two antagonistic cognitive control states. It has been argued that individuals have a trait-like bias towards either, but also that they can flexibly switch between control states to adapt to different task demands (Mekern&Hommel, 2019). Reward has been shown to promote flexibility, but it has been pointed out that people’s baseline state matters for the extent of the effect (Dreisbach&Fröber, 2019). This study aimed at contributing to the debate about weighted influence of stable individual differences vs. task-dependent adaptivity, and examined the influence of both states on subsequent dual-task performance. Participants first completed an unrewarded dual-task, were then divided into two groups completing tasks promoting either flexibility or persistence, and finally repeated the dual-task with reward conditions. On day two, participants passed through the same procedure but changed from the flexibility to the persistence induction and vice versa. This within-subjects design allowed us to test both the intra-individual responsivity to cognitive state inductions, as well as the differential impact of flexibility vs. persistence on unrewarded and rewarded dual-task performance. If we consider switch rate as a direct marker of flexibility, and presume that individuals adapt to task demands, we should find higher switch rates in the dual task after participants have completed the flexibility compared to the persistence induction. If we presume an influence of trait-like biases towards one state, there should be no major differences between testing days. Data collection will be finished until conference presentation.

Ever since Vygotskij, the role of talking to oneself to keep track of plans and achieve goals has been identified to play an important role in the socio-cultural development of children. In our project we investigate whether these inter-individual differences in evaluative and motivational inner speech are also indicative of successful goal-directed behaviour in young adults. We gave our participants a Simon task and manipulated stimulus orientation (i.e., vertical vs. horizontal arrangement) as well as stimulus material (i.e., words vs. gratings). To assess inter-individual differences in inner speech, we asked them to complete three questionnaires. We found inverted Simon effects for word stimuli presented in vertical arrangement, and the habitual use of inner speech predicted the size of the inverted Simon effect. We replicated this finding in a larger individual difference study and found the same pattern of results for an arrow flanker task. In the present study, we aim at investigating the impact of the number of stimulus-response episodes for this predictive effect of inner speech use in both paradigms, the Simon as well as the arrow flanker. To this end, for both paradigms we increased the stimulus-set size to four. For the Simon task, we again manipulated stimulus orientation. For the arrow flanker task we ran an online experiment. As before, participants completed the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire and we predict congruency effects to depend on the habitual use of motivational and evaluative inner speech.

In unconscious priming a masked prime stimulus influences the behavioural and neural responses of a subsequent target stimulus (indirect task) even though participants are close to chance-level when directly discriminating the prime (direct task). Many studies report such effects on various tasks and stimuli with high- and low-level properties, interpreting it as an advantage of the indirect task over the direct task; a pattern we dubbed “indirect task advantage” (ITA). Typically, an ITA is interpreted as evidence for probing preserved unconscious processing of the prime in the indirect task, while absence of conscious awareness of the prime was established in the direct task. However, we demonstrated that the predominant statistical rationale used in the literature to infer an ITA is flawed and can lead to erroneous conclusions. Only when there is a good indirect discrimination of the prime stimuli (determined by using the priming effect to discriminate the primes) and a poor direct prime discrimination, we can state that there is an advantage of the indirect task over the direct task. In six experiments (total N=96), we tested whether an ITA exists for low-level stimuli (Gabor patches) and investigated the role of masking technique and peripheral presentation. Overall, we found in almost all conditions no evidence for an ITA if appropriate methods are used. This stands in stark contrast to the literature that has reported ITAs as being almost ubiquitous.

In priming research, many researchers claim that processing of task-irrelevant stimuli can be better than processing of task-relevant stimuli (a pattern we dubbed ‘indirect task advantage’, ITA). Typically, two tasks are compared: In the ‘direct’ task, participants discriminate a masked ‘prime’-stimulus and perform close to chance-level. In the ‘indirect’ task, participants respond to a 'target'-stimulus following the masked prime. Despite the prime is now task-irrelevant, it nevertheless has effects on reaction times (RTs): Responses are faster if prime and target are congruent (and vice-versa). Based on this pattern of close-to-chance discrimination of the prime in the direct task and a significant effect of the prime on RTs in the indirect task, the standard reasoning concludes a better, internal discrimination of the prime in the indirect task than in the direct task. However, our group showed that this reasoning is flawed for mathematical reasons. The correct approach would be to convert the significant RT-effect in the indirect task to a discrimination performance and then compare the discrimination performances in the direct and indirect tasks. We selected two typical stimulus-sets from the literature and tested whether the correct approach would still yield an ITA: (a) semantic processing of numbers (experiments1+2) (b) discrimination of the orientation of simple lines (experiment3). In all three experiments, discrimination performances in direct and indirect tasks were similar (direct/indirect for exp1:57.2%/56.9%; exp2:55.4%/53.1%; exp3:68.1%/66.4%). This suggests that earlier claims for ITAs with these stimuli might have been premature.

It is an interesting finding that subjective randomness differs from stochastic randomness. For examining subjective randomness, people are asked to place a dot at a randomly selected position in an empty square or rectangular frame. Results show that persons are not capable of placing dots randomly. Rather, cumulating the dots across participants reveals a clear tendency for the dots to cluster near the center and the diagonals of the frame. Interestingly, it has also been shown that this structure is highly similar to aesthetically pleasing ones. In the present study, we conducted two experiments with a square and a rectangular frame, respectively. However, instead of asking participants to randomly place a dot in a frame just once, they were required to repeat the placement in an empty frame ten times in a row. As a result, the cumulated dots again clustered near the center and the diagonals. However, if the dots are accumulated across participants separately for each of the ten placements, then one sees a systematic sequence of patters. In the first frame, dots were placed in the left upper quadrant by most participants, whereas in the second frame dots were placed near the center. This suggests that, if a sequence of randomly placed dots is required, participants are planning a certain sequence of locations ahead, which is surprisingly similar across different persons.

Compositional (structuralist) theories of behavior are ubiquitous in cognitive sciences, and they are also a prerequisite of interpreting key press studies in terms of a pars pro toto for the control of behavior in general. For example, dual-task theories typically assume that dual-task processing is composed of two combined single-task processing streams, plus some additional mechanisms to account for performance costs (e.g., prolongation/interruption of task processing stages, or altered activation/inhibition dynamics). Here, the compositional assumption is put to a test by having participants switch between single- and dual-action demands. In a set of experiments, we neither observed consistent partial repetition benefits nor costs. Instead, dual action demands appeared to be represented similar to a third, holistic action demand, unrelated to its two components. We interpret these observations by proposing a Gestalt view of action control. However, when the two actions no longer shared a common (spatial) dimension, partial repetition benefits emerged, indexing compositional action representation. The results highlight the role of dimensional overlap between actions as a precondition for forming holistic action representations. We propose that in daily life, multiple action control is usually co-ordinated by means of common dimensions and goals, so that Gestalt-like representations of action demands are likely the norm rather than the exception.

Compared to repeated presentation of study material, a retrieval attempt prompted by a memory test enhances later memory recall success (testing effect). Memory performance is further increased by presenting the material again following the memory test, providing both implicit information about the correctness and a restudy opportunity (test-potentiated encoding, TPE). Less is known about how reinforcement by explicit performance feedback affects TPE. Here, 25 native speakers learned 180 weakly associated word pairs once. Next, all word pairs were repeated twice as either restudy or retrieval practice trials with correct-answer feedback. For half of the retrieval practice trials, explicit performance feedback was presented after the retrieval attempt in order to facilitate error monitoring before restudying the material. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during all study phases and during a final cued recall test on the following day. Behaviorally, retrieval compared to restudying on Day 1 increased memory performance on Day 2. Explicit feedback further enhanced TPE in the final test. Event-related oscillatory activity increased in the theta and decreased in the alpha band across conditions. For previously tested items, in particular for performance feedback trials, a selective increase in frontal alpha/beta power (12 – 15 Hz) was observed between 500 - 700 ms after item presentation in the final test. This suggests that the cognitive processes underlying recall on Day 2 are modulated by prior retrieval attempts. In sum, our results suggest that testing compared to restudying leads to a modification of recall processes, especially when combined with additional feedback.

The main objective of the present research was, for the first time, to assess a potential similarity in the representational bases for the base rate neglect in memory versus conditional probability judgment. The base rate neglect refers to the human and even animal tendency to overestimate the conditional probability judgment of a low base rate event when the event is meaningfully related to the condition. In one experiment, participants learned target and filler words, each of which was presented on a separate list (List 1 or List 2) and in a distinct colour (red or blue), with a manipulation of different base rates for these colour and list categories. During recognition tests, participants made prior and posterior episodic judgments (e.g., "What colour was the word?", "Given that the word was in red, in which list was the word?") on the target words, which respectively parallel independent and conditional probability assessments that figure in Bayes' theorem. The results implied that biased prior and posterior judgments presumably cause the base rate neglect, inasmuch as a low (high) base rate prior cue is likely to lead to a bias toward retrieving high (low) base rate posterior evidence. There was also a finding showing that memory analogues of probability estimates reflect the base rate neglect in both low and high base rate categories, but is presumably stronger with posterior judgment of Colour|List than List|Colour relative to the high base rate category.

Trying to guess what the correct answer to a question might be can facilitate future learning of this answer when presented in the form of corrective feedback. One issue that determines the effectiveness of guessing as a learning strategy is the timing of the presentation of feedback: it can be presented either immediately after the guess, or after a delay. Whereas the timing of feedback is of little importance for complex materials such as trivia questions, previous research suggests that for simpler materials such as related word pairs guessing seems to benefit learning only when feedback is immediate. In order to test whether this always has to be the case, we conducted two experiments in which we enhanced study materials by superimposing the to-be-learned word pairs over unrelated context pictures. We then manipulated the match between contexts at study and at test, and at the time of feedback delivery. Contrary to previous studies showing no benefits of guessing with delayed feedback, our results show that learning related word pairs can benefit from guessing even when feedback is delayed. These benefits of guessing occur if participants are reminded of their guessing at the time of feedback delivery. Our results help constrain theories of guessing benefits and extend theories of reminding.

Retrieval is enhanced when it takes place in the same context as that in which the material was first learned. This is referred to as context dependent memory. Many different types of stimuli have been found to be effective contextual mnemonic cues. One potentially powerful type of mnemonic cue is odor. Indeed, when odors are used as contexts in context dependent memory studies, the effect sizes are generally larger than most other types of cues, including places. While it is clear that odors can act as effective mnemonic cues, it is not clear what about an odor is stored in the episodic memory that makes it an effective cue. In the experiment presented here, which is still be completed, we aimed to determine whether odors present during learning lead to the activation of a semantic concept or whether the odor presented during learning is stored as a unique odor object. We had subjects intentionally learn a list of words in the presence of an odor. During retrieval subjects were either exposed to the same or a different odor, or to visual representations of the source of the same or a different odor. If odors are stored as semantic concepts, then we could expect CDM effects with the reinstatement of the same odor or its visual representation. However, if odors are stored as unique objects, then only reinstating the same odor should lead to CDM.

Using lists of unrelated items as study material, recent studies have shown that selective retrieval of some studied items can impair or improve recall of the nonretrieved items, depending on whether the lag between study and selective retrieval is short or long. This study examined whether the results generalize when the items are studied together with their category labels (e. g., bird-magpie) and the category labels are reexposed as retrieval cues at test (e. g., bird-m___ ). Experiment 1 employed lists of unrelated items in the absence of any category labels, replicating both the detrimental and the beneficial effect of selective retrieval. Experiment 2 employed the same items but provided the items' category labels during both study and retrieval, and Experiment 3 employed a categorized list, again providing the items' category labels during study and retrieval. In both Experiment 2 and Experiment 3, selective retrieval impaired recall in both lag conditions, indicating a critical role of category labels for the effects of selective retrieval. The results are consistent with a two-factor explanation of selective retrieval and the assumption that reexposure of category labels during retrieval reinstates study context after longer lag.

The perception of time varies with the degree of cognitive engagement in attentionally demanding tasks. Perceived passage of time accelerates while working on highly demanding tasks, whereas time appears to drag during boring situations. Our present experiment aimed at investigating whether this relationship between time perception and cognitive engagement is mutual: Can an experimental manipulation of subjective time passage systematically affect the attentional resources applied to a cognitive task? We measured performance and the EEG in a whole-report working memory paradigm with six items of different colors that each had to be reported after a short delay period. The 32 participants were informed about the time of day after each 20 trials, while the clock was running at either 100% (normal clock), 120% (fast clock) or 80% (slow clock) of normal clock speed depending on the experimental block. Task performance (the mean number of correctly reported colors per trial) was significantly increased in the fast as compared to the slow clock condition. In the EEG, we focused on neural oscillations during working-memory encoding and storage. As an electrophysiological correlate of task engagement, frontal theta power during the storage interval was generally increased during the fast-clock condition. Also nicely in line with the behavioral effect, the power of frontal theta oscillations during storage predicted the number of correctly reported colors on a single-trial basis. Our results indicate that the subjective passage of time can be manipulated successfully, affecting attentional processes in the same way as vice versa.

Voluntary actions and causally linked sensory stimuli are perceived to be shifted towards each other in time. This so-called temporal binding is commonly assessed in paradigms using the Libet Clock. In such experiments, participants have to estimate the timing of performed actions or ensuing sensory stimuli (usually tones) by means of a rotating clock hand presented on screen. The aforementioned task setup is however ill-suited for many conceivable setups, especially when they involve visual effects. To address this shortcoming, the line of research presented here establishes an alternative measure for temporal binding by using a sequence of timed sounds. This method uses an auditory timer, a sequence of letters presented during task execution, which serve as anchors for temporal judgements. In four experiments, we manipulated four design factors of this auditory timer, namely interval length, interval filling, sequence predictability, and sequence length, to determine the most effective and economic method for measuring temporal binding with an auditory timer. The auditory measure was in principal apt to measure both action as well as effect binding in all four experiments (N = 192). While interval length and sequence length had a particularly strong influence on temporal binding, interval filling and sequence predictability did not seem to be of utmost importance. Participants’ task load gave additional information on the best configuration of an auditory timer.

Judgements of the subjective intensity (loudness) of sounds varying in level across time depend more strongly on early temporal portions of a sound than on later parts (primacy effect; e.g., Oberfeld, Hots & Verhey, 2018, JASA). A potential explanation for this pattern of temporal weights arises in the context of evidence-integration approaches, which assume that in discrimination tasks participants accumulate evidence over the time course of the stimulus until a decision threshold is reached. Because the sequential sampling process represents a supramodal decisional mechanism, an interesting prediction from this concept is that temporal weighting patterns for different sensory channels or different stimulus dimensions should be similar on an individual level. In two experiments, participants judged a) the loudness of time-varying sounds, b) the brightness of a sequence of rectangles varying in luminance, and c) the mean of a sequence of visually presented random numbers in a two-interval, two-alternative forced-choice (2I,AFC) task. The tasks were randomly interleaved within each block and were presented at the same level of difficulty. Temporal weights were estimated via multiple logistic regression with the response of the participants as the criterion and the varying stimulus properties as predictors. The results showed that the average pattern of temporal weights differed significantly between the tasks. Therefore, the role of a supramodal decisional mechanism as the underlying cause of the temporal weighting patterns is questionable. Correlations between the patterns of weights in the different tasks on an individual level are discussed.

It is well known that the human auditory system is more sensitive to temporal than spatial information. Here we aimed to examine whether systematic manipulations of auditory information (i.e. pitch) would modulate temporal accuracy more than spatial accuracy in a manual interception task. To this end, participants were presented with a sound that moved in a parabola curve (via vector-based amplitude panning) across a large touchscreen. The sound was produced by five loudspeakers positioned in a pentagon manner around the touchscreen. The manipulations included five different pitches (100Hz, 200Hz, 400Hz, 800Hz and 1200Hz), three different trajectories, three different velocities and three occlusion times (with slight differences between experiments). Participants had to indicate where and when exactly the sound would cross a ground line that was presented on the touchscreen, by tapping at the predicted location. The main difference between experiments 1 and 2 was that the sound stimulus moved in a parabola manner oriented vertically (exp. 1) or horizontally (exp. 2) across the display. Temporal and spatial accuracy was calculated as root mean square errors. Results revealed no effect of sound manipulations on the temporal and spatial accuracy in exp. 1. However, in the horizontal condition, there was a main effect on spatial precision, but nor temporal precision. Taken together, our findings do not seem to support that pitch manipulations affect temporal representations more than spatial representations.

When people expect a sound to happen but it is unexpectedly omitted, a response to omission can be recorded using EEG. Recent models of perception state that this response is the result of error signaling caused by a prediction of a sound that is not met by any input. SanMiguel and colleagues (2013) used button presses coupled with sounds to induce auditory predictions in two conditions: in one condition button presses were coupled with a single sound, where in the other condition the sound changed after every button press. When sounds were unexpectedly omitted, ERPs showed oN1, oN2 and oP3 prediction error-related responses to omission only in the single sound condition, while no such responses were observed in the changing sound condition. The authors therefore concluded that a prediction can only be formed when the identity of the upcoming stimulus is known. Given the importance of omission responses for understanding the role of prediction in perception, we replicated the study of SanMiguel and colleagues (2013). We used double the number of participants to enhance power, and Principal Component Analysis to extract components. Our results replicate the effects observed in the single sound condition, but we additionally observed smaller oN1 and oP3 responses in the changing sound condition. This suggests that an unspecific prediction - some sound is expected at a certain time - is formed even if no identity information is available about the upcoming stimulus. Significant amplitude differences between conditions imply that sound identity nevertheless plays an important role.

Imitation is an important social construct (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). People do imitate a wide range of different behaviors, including language (e.g. Capella & Penalp, 1981), gestures (e.g. Bernieri, 1988) and simple movements (e.g. Genschow et al., 2013). One of the most commonly used measurement methods in this context is the imitation-inhibition task (Brass, Bekkering, Wohlschläger, & Prinz, 2000). Like all other measurements of imitation, this task has only been carried out in the laboratory so far—a time-consuming and costly procedure. To solve this issue and to offer an imitation procedure for online settings, we validated a javascript-based imitation-inhibition task within two studies. In Study 1 (N = 87), we tested the functionality of the online task. In Study 2 (N = 180), we compared the effects and reliability of the online task with those of a laboratory study. Reaction times and the error rates were recorded as dependent variables. Across both studies, we replicated the typical imitation-inhibition effects: congruency effect (individuals responded faster and with fewer errors to congruent than to incongruent trials), facilitation effect (individuals responded faster in congruent than neutral trials) and interference effect (individuals responded faster in neutral than incongruent trials). Compared to the laboratory sample the effects produced with the online measure were similar in size and reliability. Thus, the online imitation-inhibition task provides a well-functioning alternative to its laboratory version.

There is accumulating evidence that the actions of others are represented in the motor system, leading to automatic imitation. Whereas early work focused mainly on the effects of observing a single agent, recent studies indicate that the actions of multiple agents can be represented simultaneously. Yet, theorizing has lagged behind. In my talk, I will present a computational model of automatic imitation that is able to include multiple agents and will demonstrate that this model is able to capture four critical multi-agent effects. Importantly, to do so, it was necessary to augment the model with a control mechanism regulating response inhibition based on the number of observed actions. Furthermore, additional simulations indicated that this mechanism could be driven by response conflict. Together, our results demonstrate how theories of automatic imitation can be extended from single- to multi-agent settings. As such, they constitute an important step towards a mechanistic understanding of social interaction beyond the dyad.

People can represent their actions in terms of the behavior these actions evoke in others, as proposed by the sociomotor framework. In line with this idea, motor actions are facilitated if they are foreseeably being imitated by a social partner and impeded if a social partner reacts with incompatible actions. In social interactions such as imitation this approach thus highlights the acting model rather than the responding person. We investigated how exactly another’s behavior is represented in such situations. The beneficial effect of anticipated imitation could be explained by two different forms of compatibility between model and imitator actions: correspondence of anatomical features (imitative compatibility) and correspondence of spatial features (spatial compatibility). Both forms of compatibility often go hand in hand, but research on motor priming has shown that they are represented independently. We therefore investigated to which degree the benefit of being imitated is caused by spatial or imitative compatibility. We found that only spatial compatibility of the imitator’s behavior influenced the model’s actions, while imitative compatibility had no influence. Actors thus seem to represent actions of their social partners mainly in terms of nonsocial, spatial features.

Regulation of motor resonance processes in the social environment is indispensable. The automatic imitation task is a model of motor resonance, creating interference by (in) congruency of a target cue and task-irrelevant concurrent movement. In two studies we investigated interference control during automatic imitation in varying social contexts and its underlying neuro-cognitive dynamics, using event-related potentials. The first study examined interference control by different ethnicities (White and Black hands) on the stage of stimulus processing (late positive potential (LPP), N190,P3) and response execution (Pre-Motion Positivity (PMP), Reafferent Potential (RAP)). We observed that the N190 indexed purely visual self-other distinction, while the PMP predicted behavior. This suggests that PMP indexes motoric self-other distinction. The P3 and PMP together could reflect a dynamic process linking perception to action execution, incorporating motoric self-other distinction at movement initiation. The second study investigated whether self-other distinction processes (PMP) or cognitive conflict/action monitoring (N2, CRN) underlie interference control during automatic imitation in an extended social context (adding White and Black happy and angry faces). N2 and CRN components were modulated by social context, yet the PMP again predicted behavioral results. This suggests that while interference control via cognitive conflict/action monitoring provides information about the social context to motor resonance processes, motoric self-other distinction upon movement initiation may underlie interference control in the automatic imitation task. Overall, we suggest that the PMP may reflect motoric self-other distinction processes upon movement initiation during automatic imitation.

As the saying goes “monkey see, monkey do” it is widely agreed that individuals automatically imitate their interaction partners. However, current research shifts away from the picture of the human being that automatically imitates whatever it observes. For example, research has shown that individuals less strongly imitate others when they are faced with out-group members, non-human agents, or when they are in a competition mode. Despite evidence of these—and other—inhibitors, past research has not yet offered a comprehensive model that allows integrating them. Here, we suggest that taking into consideration Mussweiler’s (2003) selective accessibility model may allow offering a new perspective on the integration of different moderating variables in automatic imitation. That is, all the inhibitors may elicit a focus on dissimilarities, as compared to similarities, and thus affect automatic imitation. In order to test whether a dissimilarity focus, as compared to a similarity focus, decreases automatic imitation we conducted three experiments in which we manipulated participants’ focus. Experiment 1 finds decreased automatic imitation when individuals focus on dissimilarities between themselves and their interaction partner, as compared to when they focus on similarities. By including a neutral condition in Experiment 2 and 3, we replicate this finding. Moreover, further analyses show that a focus on dissimilarities decreases automatic imitation, but a focus on similarities does not increase automatic imitation. In sum, by taking into account comparison processes between interaction partners, the results help understanding why individuals do not always imitate each other.

A major part of research dedicated to age-related changes concentrates on cognitive or sensory deficits. This is also the case in vision research. However, the majority of older adults ages without major cognitive or optical deficits. These are foremost good news, but even in the absence of neurodegenerative or eye diseases changes in visual perception occur. It has been suggested that these changes are due to general decline. However, more recent studies reveal large individual differences within the ageing population and whereas some functions show age-related deterioration, others are surprisingly unaffected. Overall, it becomes increasingly apparent that perceptual changes in healthy ageing cannot be attributed to one single underlying factor. I will present studies related to low-level motion, biological motion and orientation perception that challenge the view that age-related changes in healthy ageing are based on decline. Instead, our findings suggest an age-related specification based on visual experience across perceptual functions. The studies presented are not only of interest for ageing researchers, but will also lead to a more complete understanding of the processes underlying visual perception in general.

Perceptual decisions are usually accompanied by a subjective sense of (un)certainty. The metaperceptual ability to access this uncertainty and to judge the validity of one’s perceptual decisions is known as perceptual confidence. In younger adults, better perceptual performance is typically linked to greater confidence in being correct. Aging, however, might challenge perceptual confidence judgments as noise in the sensory systems increases and cognitive control resources decrease. Using a confidence-forced choice paradigm, we explored age effects on visual confidence in a group of younger (19 – 38 years) and older adults (60 – 78 years). On each trial, participants performed two contrast discrimination judgments and indicated afterwards during which contrast judgment they felt more confident. We then determined discrimination thresholds for trials in which perceptual judgments were chosen as confident and in which they were declined as confident. Our findings indicate that both younger and older adults can reliably track their own uncertainty as perceptual performance was linked to confidence judgments in both age groups. On average, however, metaperceptual performance was reduced in older compared to younger adults. Interestingly, though, we observed great variability in metaperceptual performance – especially in the older adult group. These individual differences in metaperceptual performance were closely linked to cognitive control capacities. Hence, our findings suggest that cognitive control capacities might be a crucial resource for performing metaperceptual tasks. In an ongoing study, we further explore the link between cognitive control capacities and perceptual confidence judgments across different modalities.

Faces are an extremely reach source of socially relevant information (e.g., age, gender, identity, emotions) in everyday human-human interactions. In my talk, I first describe the mechanisms involved in perceptual processing of faces and face recognition, as well as mechanisms that allow us to recognize and to represent emotional states of others. By focusing on characteristics and age-related changes in face perception, identity and emotion recognition we show that these processes are subject of life-long changes, but to different degrees. For example, our findings demonstrate stability in mechanisms of holistic face perception across the adult life-span, while an age-related decline in identity and emotion recognition was found irrespective of stimuli and task used. Importantly, our studies show that decline in identity and emotion recognition is associated with age-related changes in other cognitive functions (i.e., memory, mental rotation ability) and with age-related decrease in frequency of social contacts and emotional expressivity. Finally, we demonstrate that age-related differences in identity and emotion recognition are not reflected in less adaptive social behaviour of older adults during social interactions. The data are discussed with regard to the two-systems account of social cognition. We also provide an outlook how these age-related differences may be relevant for affective computing models in the context of human-robot interactions.

Prospective memory describes the ability to remember delayed intentions. It is a crucial skill for functional independence in everyday in older age. To realize intentions successfully, the appropriate moment (i.e., prospective memory cue) has to be detected in the environment and the intended action has to be retrieved from memory. In the present study, we were interested if (A) providing an encoding strategy and (B) manipulating the association between the prospective memory cue and the intended action influences prospective remembering across the adulthood. We assessed behavioral and neurophysiological measures (i.e., EEG) of prospective memory performance 40 younger and 40 older adults. Participants worked on a two-back picture task as ongoing activity with an embedded prospective memory instruction. At the beginning of each block, they had to encode two prospective memory cues and the respective actions. The cue-action pairs varied in their lexical association being highly associated or not. Furthermore, half of the sample received an imagery strategy to support encoding. Results show that prospective memory performance differs between the two age groups with older adults showing reduced performance rates. Moreover, both, cue-action association and strategy use seem to influence performance. Especially associative demands seem to be relevant for the decline of prospective memory performance in older adulthood. Strategies benefited both age groups. Neural correlates further foster the understanding of associative and strategic demands. The results will be discussed in light of models on episodic memory and prospective memory.

Reduced postural control increases the risk of falling and represents a critical issue for older adults. Although keeping balance is considered to be primarily an automatic process, stability can be modulated by secondary tasks that impose cognitive demands. Notably, saccadic eye movements seem to boost postural stability. We investigated age effects on interferences between oculomotor and postural control. We measured mean velocity of postural sway in 3 eye movement conditions, i.e. fixation, prosaccades, and antisaccades, and varied postural demands by standing positions, i.e. Standard Romberg and Semi-Tandem Romberg. In addition, we assessed individual differences in cognitive as well as in physical fitness abilities. A total of 24 younger (19-33 yrs) and 24 older (60-78 yrs) adults participated in our study. Older adults overall showed a higher mean velocity of sway and were more challenged by standing position demands. We observed beneficial effects of saccades across both age groups. Furthermore, our data supported that postural sway during saccades is increased if cognitive demands are enhanced. Interestingly, our results indicate that in younger adults saccadic eye movements modulate postural sway consistently across standing positions, while in older adults modulation was absent in the more challenging standing position. Additionally, we determined a significant link between cognitive as well as physical abilities and postural sway. Our findings suggest that older adults might prioritize postural control in challenging standing positions to minimize the risk of falling and that higher cognitive as well as physical fitness provide a stabilizing resource.

It is well known that older adults have problems in spatial navigation, which is often tested empirically by using virtual reality (VR) setups. However, such studies typically implement their tasks in empty environments, although evidence from animal research suggests that the brain’s navigation system maps spatial information about conspecifics and that observational learning has similar effects on the acquisition of spatial knowledge as the actual exploration. Moreover, successfully navigating in VR requires a certain degree of immersion, which can be facilitated by the presence of an avatar. Here, we tested whether biological motion information supports navigational learning in older adults in a virtual city-like environment. In several learning phases, participants traveled along a route while an avatar or a point-light walker was moving in front of them. A condition with scrambled motion and traveling in an empty environment served as controls. During retrieval, participants traveled short route segments, either in the same (repetition trials) or opposite direction (retrace trials) as during learning and performed a route intersection task and a pointing task. Results confirm that performance in both tasks was better during repetition trials, particularly at the beginning of learning. By using a Bayesian implementation of a multilevel model with or without motion condition as predictor, we show that biological motion information does not influence performance suggesting that an avatar may not help older adults to perform in VR. Using eye tracking, we further checked whether focusing on landmark or biological motion information during learning affects learning performance.

Automated driving is one of the most important developments within the automotive industry which can lead to a lot of potential benefits like safer roads, more effective road use, and optimized energy usage. Another significant consequence with increasing level of automation is drivers, now (passive) passengers, can engage in non-driving activities. In this context, vehicle interiors and seating arrangements (e.g. rotated seating positions) can be designed according to the desired activities. To assess which rotated seating positions are generally accepted and perceived as most comfortable for users, an empirical test track study was conducted using a mixed design. It was investigated, whether the subjective evaluation of seat orientations is influenced by visual or proprioceptive factors and the phenomenon of motion sickness. Participants (N = 61) were asked to rate seven rotated seating positions with(out) view to the outside as a within subject factor. Further, driving direction was altered (counter) clockwise as a between subjects factor. The results show significant differences in the subjective evaluation of left- and right-wing rotations dependent on the driving direction, indicating that visual and proprioceptive factors play an important role. As backwards rotations were not part of the present study, these should be addressed in follow up studies.

Establishing highly automated driving is a challenge in the automotive industry. An advantage of automation is the ability to use the travel time for non-driving-related activities. Therefore, it is discussed how to adapt in-vehicle seating positions to these activities by rotating seats along the horizontal axis. In this context, passenger psychology related topics like the acceptance of rotated seating positions were considered theoretically but rarely investigated experimentally. In an initial study evidence was found that left-turned positions are preferred in right-hand traffic, although an explanation for these effects has remained open. Based on this, the current study examines the influence of visual perception as one possible explanation for these findings. For this purpose, participants were initially screened for their motion sickness susceptibility to create a balanced sample. The included sample (N=31) experienced seven rotations in a vehicle on a test track both with and without view outside the vehicle. The results show that in both visual conditions the left-turned rotations were rated significantly better regarding their acceptance. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis of open reasoning shows strong relevance of visual perception for the evaluation of seat rotations. Summarizing, the results indicate existence of visual dominance. However, visual processes alone cannot explain the differences between sides. Both, ergonomic and individual factors also have an impact on subjective ratings. Due to current relevance, the results offer potential for further research as well as for the derivation of practical implications in the development of future vehicle interior concepts.

Motion sickness of car passengers, also called carsickness, has a lifetime prevalence of 2/3. Especially, visual activities like reading can increase its occurrence. We tested whether an inflation of the lateral seat cushions could mitigate carsickness by providing information about the direction of upcoming turns and stabilizing the passenger while turning. Sixty-six participants took part in a 15-minute drive sitting on the passenger seat reading continuously instructed to not look outside. Carsickness was assessed via Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) and Misery Scale (MISC). The inflation served two purposes: Before the turn as a directional cue and while turning as a stabilization. In the resulting 2x2 between-subjects design, either of the countermeasures could be active or not. There was a significant increase in carsickness over time. Descriptive statistics of the SSQ and the MISC showed tendencies of less carsickness for the countermeasure groups compared to the control group, but none of the values reached statistical significance. In the current configuration, neither of the countermeasures led to a large mitigating effect. The between-subject approach and the comparably small sample size, did not allow testing for small or medium effect sizes. Future studies should focus on inter-individual differences in carsickness susceptibility while optimizing timing and modality of the countermeasure. Further, allowing participants to look outside when being provided with a cue could increase the mitigation potential.

Due to the role change from driver to passenger in automated vehicles, human perception of driving changes. Not being in control of the driving task in addition to new activity options can provoke discomfort up to motion sickness. Physiological parameters could serve as early indicators of user discomfort, allowing for preventive actions such as changes in driving style or information presentation. To investigate the potential of physiological parameters in uncomfortable driving situations, two driving simulator studies have been carried out with 40 and 41 participants aging from 24 to 84 years. All participants experienced a highly automated trip including three very close approaches to a truck driving ahead. Perceived discomfort was assessed continuously using a handset control. The smartband MS Band 2 was used to measure Heart Rate (HR) and Skin Conductance Level (SCL), eye-tracking glasses captured pupil diameter and eyeblinks, and a seat pressure mat recorded body movements. Consistent effects of both studies showed a situation-specific increase of pupil diameter, reduction of eye blinks and a “push back” movement of the body. A decrease in HR could be observed if the HR-sensor was placed at the (more sensitive) inner side of the wrist, not if the MS Band 2 was turned by 180 degrees. SCL showed a steeper increase during discomfort situations, with more pronounced effects when measured at the inner side of the wrist. To conclude, physiological parameters have the potential of providing reliable and useful discomfort information in these close approach situations.

The development of automated vehicles promises numerous benefits for future mobility. However, the acceptance and therefore usage of this technology will be determined by the degree of comfort and safety users perceive when transferring vehicle control to an automated system. It is assumed that these aspects of the driving experience can be improved via Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) helping passengers to understand and predict the behavior of the automated vehicle. This approach was evaluated in a driving simulator study with 41 participants aging from 24 to 77 years. Each participant experienced two highly automated trips along a 9 km long test track including six complex and therefore potentially uncomfortable driving situations such as intersection and obstacles on the road. In one of both trips, an HMI was activated in the instrument cluster when approaching each of the six driving situation to inform the passenger about the traffic elements detected by the vehicle, the planned maneuver for this situation, and the time to the start of the maneuver. Compared to the trip without HMI, participants experienced significantly decreased discomfort with the HMI, as indicated continuously during driving via handset control. Using standardized questionnaires after each trip, participants also reported significantly increased perceived safety, trust in automation and system acceptance after driving with the HMI. To conclude, an HMI-based increase of system transparency has the potential to improve users’ automated driving experience and hence their evaluation of automated vehicles.

In human communication, interlocutors are creating and interpreting messages according to their context. We present the results of an artificial language task that investigates the importance of the shared context, i.e. the amount of knowledge two interlocutors have in common, for the successful emergence and use of novel conventions. In two laboratory communication experiments, we asked pairs of participants (in the role of either sender or receiver) to use black-and-white pictorial symbols to convey the target color in an array of four colors. We manipulated access to the shared visual context by removing all distractor colors from the arrays of senders. Both experiments demonstrate that access to the visual context promotes more successful communication. We then implemented the paradigm in a smartphone application that was distributed worldwide. This method has several advantages over classical experimental designs, for instance in scale and partner choice, but is limited in experimental control. A key difference in the design was that we varied the number of distractor colors exhaustively from 0 to 3. Our analyses of this dataset show that while the number of colors still replicates our known effect, it is modulated by the chromatic position of the target color in an array, and outperforms an alternative measure based on information theory that we expected to be more accurate. This provides further support for the influence of shared context on successful communication, but opens up the question about the nature of the information extracted from the context and used by interlocutors.

Eye-tracking is widely used in psychological research, on topics such as reading, decision making, neuroscience, education, and in many applied areas. In recent years. several artefacts have been found in video-based pupil-corneal reflection (P-CR) eye-tracking. We show new data from the Dual-Purkinje Imaging (DPI) eye-tracker and many P-CR eye-trackers that eye rotations of amplitudes between 1 arcmin and around 2 degrees are frequently erroneously measured by the video-based eye-trackers, but not by the DPI. The corneal reflection (CR) feature of these P-CR eye-trackers is shown to be the major cause of the erroneous measurements. Other recent studies have shown that the pupil feature causes similar artefacts. Our data suggest that some results from research on reading, microsaccades, and vergence, where the amplitude of small eye movements have been measured with past or current video-based eye-trackers, may need to be reconsidered. Furthermore, we present a new analogue eye-tracker and bench-mark it against the DPI and the Tobii Spectrum in several tasks, including a simultaneous co-recording of the DPI with our new analogue eye-tracker. Our data provide evidence that for the measurement of saccade rotations of amplitudes up to around 2 degrees, analogue eye-trackers generally outperform video-based eye-trackers.

Investigations of physiological and behavioral time series data have shown that such data contain complex autocorrelation profiles, known as long-memory, fractal fluctuations, or 1/f noise. Such autocorrelation profiles are characterized by a less-than-exponential decay of correlation strength with increasing lag. The main hypothesis on the origin of such long-memory is, that it is a result of the non-linear interactions between cognitive or (neuro-)physiological components (such as cells, organ systems, cognitive functions). However, currently available analysis techniques that are used to quantify long-memory, such as spectral-based analysis or detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), take only univariate data to quantify long-memory. Hence, the first part of this talk presents a new analysis technique, multidimensional detrended fluctuation analysis (MdDFA), which allows to analyze multivariate time series data. The result of such an analysis is a Hurst exponent H, which quantifies the strength and type (persistent or antipersistent) of long-memory in multivariate time series data. The second part of this talk presents the application of MdDFA to EEG data from a timing study, investigating the effects of accuracy feedback on time interval production and showing how MdDFA can be used to capture global long-memory characteristics in EEG dynamics. In conclusion, MdDFA allows to quantify global or cluster-wise long-memory processes in multivariate data sets, and does so more accurately then combinations of univariate applications, such as simple DFA.

Prevalent rates of statistical misconceptions among researchers (e.g., Oakes, 1986) have raised concerns about the statistical rigour in psychology. Namely, widespread misunderstandings of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) have led to a set of common p-value fallacies (Badenes-Ribera et al., 2015). While these misconceptions have been deemed “impervious to correction” (Haller & Krauss, 2002, p.1), such claims stem from single timepoint assessments, rather than evidence of ineffective instructional interventions. The current research investigates individual rates of improvement, and sustainability of learning gains, applying linear mixed model (LMM) and latent growth model (LGM) approaches. In the first wave of data collection (N = 2,320), we evaluated baseline p-value misconception rates (8 true/false items), with two follow-up assessments across an 8-week online course. In the second wave (N = 2,903), we randomly assigned learners to a control (n = 1,499) or experimental (n = 1,404) group. The experimental group completed an additional assignment in week 1, which explicitly clarified common p-value misconceptions. LMMs revealed statistically significant improvements, for both immediate (post-test1, weeks 1 & 4) and retained (post-test2, week 8) learning. Moreover, the second wave provided evidence that learners in the experimental group incurred more pronounced improvements as compared to controls. LGM analysis found effects to be conditional on self-rated statistical expertise at t1. Findings demonstrate that p-value misconceptions are flexible and can be reduced; LGM analysis suggests that statistical expertise-level may be an important consideration affecting the learning process.

Data visualizations can be of enormous help in conveying patterns in the underlying data. What form of visualization is selected for communication is primarily based on tradition, aesthetics, or intuition. Here we propose an approach to quantify the perceptual efficiency of data visualizations, to provide empirical grounds for informed applications of visualizations. In two experiments, we asked observers to estimate the mean of a displayed sample drawn from a circular Gaussian (von Mises) distribution, varying the presentation duration in a range from 30–2000 ms. In Experiment 1, we found that estimation performance increased with increasing presentation duration and that circular histograms communicated means more effectively than circular line plots, or the combination of both plots. We modeled behavioral reports using Speed-Accuracy-Tradeoff (SAT) functions with parameters for onset-performance, slope, and asymptote. Circular histograms outperformed the other visualizations in terms of onset performance. Circular line plots showed worst performance at onset and in the asymptote. In Experiment 2, we then varied the signal-to-noise ratio of the data (SNR), and found that better performance for data with higher SNR was largely independent of presentation duration. SAT modeling corroborated this finding—performance was already better for high- than for low-SNR both at onset and in the asymptote. In summary, our approach allows us to quantify the effectiveness of different visualizations by decomposing behavioral performance into parameters characterizing information extraction. This approach can inform choices of visualizations given particular communication goals, as shown here for the estimation of circular means.

Halo effects are one of the most well-known types of judgment biases. Although they have been intensely researched, it is still unclear how knowledge and motivation influence halo effects. Based on recent findings, positive halo effects are proven to be stronger and less affected by external factors than negative halo effects. Hence, it is plausible that the same is true regarding internal factors. That is, a higher knowledge and a higher motivation should be more effective in reducing negative halo effects than in reducing positive halo effects. In three experiments, participants judged fictitious target persons. Knowledge was manipulated by different forms of prior rater rating. Motivation was manipulated by personal relevance regarding group memberships. As expected, personal relevance had a stronger impact on negative halo effects compared to positive halo effects. In contrast, training, especially the advanced training, reduced halo effects regardless of valence. These results present an important starting point for investigating the question, whether halo effects are judgment biases or ontogenetic learning and thus simply reflect the true state of the world. Further, the studies successfully implemented an effective advanced training procedure which may explain the conflicting results of previous research regarding the effectiveness of rater trainings.

Humans rapidly form personal impressions about others based on appearances as conveyed by faces or voices. For instance, stable impressions of trustworthiness are established within less than 100ms visual exposure to static faces, and even from short acoustic exposure to utterances such as vowels. For more naturalistic dynamic audiovisual face-voice stimuli, however, it is unclear how and when first impressions are formed and stabilized. Here we manipulated exposure times to videos of 60 unfamiliar speakers uttering a short sentence, and measured ratings of trustworthiness and dominance from two groups of 30 listeners each: while exposure time to videos was constant and maximal for Group 1 (1958ms), it was varied for Group 2 (50ms, 125ms, 313ms, 783ms, or 1958ms). Ratings made after maximal exposure (Group 1) were significantly correlated with ratings in all exposure time conditions (Group 2) except for the shortest 50ms exposure time, for both rating dimensions. Across consecutive exposure times, significant increases of correlations were seen only between 50ms and 125ms for both rating dimensions, and between 313ms und 783ms for dominance. Confidence in ratings increased with exposure times, and was higher overall for dominance than for trustworthiness. These results suggest that impressions based on dynamic face-voice information stabilize within ~125ms and ~783ms for trustworthiness and dominance, respectively. Additional exposure time nevertheless promotes confidence in judgments.

The widespread assumption that emotions are “written on the face” is deeply engrained in our social beliefs. By contrast, a growing body of research suggests that intense facial expressions may not convey reliable affective valence information. Instead, the body and other types of context have been shown to play a crucial role in emotion recognition. We present results of four online experiments (Ntotal = 641; 271 female) investigating the role of face and body in emotion recognition, using a novel set of dynamic video clips taken in natural real-life situations. In each experiment, participants viewed videos of ecstatic sports fans and rated the valence and arousal of the fans’ reactions. They viewed either only the fans’ faces, bodies, or the corresponding faces and bodies (face+body). On average, people easily identified the body reactions as highly positive, while they had difficulties to do so when viewing isolated faces. Intriguingly, faces+bodies received more appropriate valence and arousal ratings than isolated bodies - even if the isolated faces were incorrectly rated as negative. The more appropriate face+body ratings came along with higher confidence in the respective rating. Evidence from two experiments shows that these results could not be explained by an increase of empathy or from a consciously controlled process. Rather, participants integrated information from face and body automatically. We suggest that, while only intense body expressions may communicate affective valence, intense facial expressions may increase the amplitude of valence and arousal read from the body during the consideration of the entire gestalt.

People use different processing styles when perceiving ingroup and outgroup faces: Ingroup faces are individuated, whereas outgroup faces are processed categorically. However, the specific cognitive processes underlying individuation vs. categorization are still poorly understood. The present eye-tracking study investigated how individuation instructions alter visual attention while White participants completed a recognition task with White (i.e., ingroup) and Middle Eastern (i.e., outgroup) faces. One group of participants (n = 58) was instructed to attend to individuating features of outgroup faces; a control group (n = 46) received no such instructions. Overall, recognition was better for ingroup compared to outgroup faces (i.e., an other-race effect), but outgroup individuation instructions diminished this effect. Further, individuation instructions lead to more fixations for outgroup faces. Different from previous research, individuation instructions did not affect attention to the eyes. In the control group, pupil dilations were larger for outgroup compared to ingroup faces, which is usually explained by greater cognitive effort directed to outgroup faces. However, individuation instructions did not affect pupil dilations for ingroup and outgroup faces, contradicting the cognitive-effort account. We conclude that individuation instructions alter visual attention and recognition, and we discuss potential avenues for future research.

The parallel constraint satisfaction model of decision making (PCS-DM) has been proposed as a formal model of probabilistic reasoning and decision making (Glöckner & Betsch, 2008; Glöckner, Hilbig, & Jekel, 2014). The model assumes that participants automatically weight and integrate all available pieces of information and partially distort information in the decision process for reaching maximally coherent interpretations of evidence for choice options. The model has two individual free parameters: sensitivity to differences in validities P and preference-consistency for options lambda. Based on participants’ probabilistic inferences in an online study, we individually fitted the two parameters and tested in how far they relate to other personality constructs as predicted such as HEXACO, cognitive reflection, numeracy, risk aversion, and loss aversion.

Searching for information to base one’s decisions on always comes at a cost in a real-life context. Be it the time one has to invest or actual money one has to pay to access certain information, the cost linked to it is an integral aspect of information search. Hence, all paradigms that incorporate information search should also include information cost in order to develop more realistic settings and ensure the accuracy and generalisability of their findings. In this series of four studies (N= 330), we implemented both time and money as information cost for information sampled about one or two options. The amount of information obtained by sampling was determined by the participants themselves, meaning that they had to weigh the benefits of additional information (higher accuracy) against its cost (additional time or money spent). When information cost was time, which was implemented as a speed-accuracy trade-off, participants had an extreme focus on the benefit of accuracy and neglected the cost of further sampling. When information cost was financial, participants still tended to prefer accuracy, but to a less extreme extent. Independently of that, they showed fairly successful adaptation to parameter changes (such as payoff and task difficulty). These insights are highly relevant to a whole range of paradigms, including social paradigms examining person and group perception, since those judgements are determined by the size of the information sample to a large extent.

Humans routinely make decisions based on sequential samples of numerical values, for instance, when deciding which of two online shops is cheaper. A common conclusion from analyses based on descriptive models in behavioral economics (e.g., Cumulative Prospect Theory, CPT) is that numerical values are subjectively compressed, such that extreme values weigh relatively less than prescribed by normative theory. However, several recent psychophysical studies of sequential number comparison instead showed anti-compression, that is, a relative overweighting of extreme values. Here, we examine possible reasons for this apparent discrepancy in findings across research traditions. Does it result from the use of different formal analysis frameworks and/or from experimental factors, such as the distribution of number samples (uniform or non-uniform), or the use of an economic vs non-economic task? To address these questions, we analyze existing and newly collected data sets, using both economic (CPT) and psychophysical (sample-level) analysis models. The results show that the two modeling frameworks converge on indicating compression in a traditional economic sampling task, but anti-compression in an equivalent task with distinct sample distribution (uniform-discrete). These findings suggest that distortions in number weighting may flexibly adapt to properties of the to-be-explored sample space.

Signal detection theory (SDT) usually assumes a single axis on which observations take place, with observations to the right indicating a high probability of the signal being present and observations to the left indicating a low signal probability. Applied to memory research, “signal present” means the detection of a learned item (target), i.e., of a stimulus seen before. The classical single-axis model assumes a single type of observation, whatever the target. Usually, however, there are many possible targets. It is not evident that they all project to the same axis in the same manner. Moreover, participants are able to identify targets by telling their names. This cannot be modeled with classical SDT. A multi-axis model assumes as many axes as there are learned targets, with each axis corresponding to a specific target. High values on observation scale X would indicate a high probability of “target X present”. Such a model can in addition to yes-no responses also predict naming performance. However, it differs significantly from the classical model. The “internal sensitivity” of this model differs from the experimental observable “effective sensitivity”, with the latter decreasing as a function of the number of learned targets. The predictions of a multi-axis model are compared to experimental data presented last year (Kaernbach et. al, 2019). In contrast to the analysis of last year, the experimentally observed naming performance is much worse than predicted by the multi-axis model. Possible causes are discussed, and possible future experiments are suggested.

If the way people learn about probabilities differs across options in decisions under risk, people have to integrate these representations to make a choice. However, currently it is unclear how people process probabilities and make choices in such an environment. Therefore, we investigated information search and probability weighting in decisions between a described and an experienced option (mixed paradigm). We examined if a description-experience gap occurs within a choice in the mixed paradigm and if not, how probability weighting relates to that of choices between two identical formats. In two between-subjects experiments (N = 239; N = 209), participants chose repeatedly between two monetary gambles. While both gambles were described and experienced in the description and experience condition, respectively, participants in the mixed condition made choices between a described and an experienced gamble. Based on choices, we estimated CPT parameters, both with separate and equal parameter values for both options. Results showed that people drew larger samples per option in the mixed condition (vs. experience condition). Further, probability sensitivity was similar for the described and experienced option in the mixed paradigm. While the original description-experience gap was replicated, probability sensitivity of the mixed condition was in the middle of this gap. In conclusion, our results suggest that decision makers treat probabilities in different formats similarly across options but different than in purely description- or experienced-based choices. Finally, our findings show that the evaluation of an option is influenced by the format of the other option.

Recent research into evaluative conditioning (EC) shows that information about the relationship between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli can exert strong effects on the size and direction of the EC effect. Additionally, the co-occurrence of these stimuli seems to exert an orthogonal effect on evaluations. This finding has been interpreted as support for two independent types of EC effects. However, previous research devoted to this question relied on aggregated evaluative measures, allowing for alternative interpretations. In four experiments, we developed and validated a multinomial processing tree model that distinguishes effects of the pairings from effects of the meaning of the pairings. Our findings suggest that two independent EC effects contribute to overall evaluative change in a relational EC paradigm. The model that we developed offers a helpful method for future research in that it allows for an assessment of the effects of manipulations on processes rather than overall performance on an evaluative measure.

Recent research relying on a multinomial processing tree model that separates parameters representing controllable and uncontrollable learning demonstrates that both controllable and uncontrollable processes contribute to attitude acquisition in evaluative conditioning. The present research is concerned with two ways of exerting control and the conditions under which they occur. We distinguish between integrated and valence-plus-tag representations. Whereas valence-plus-tag representations store the CS-US pairing and a tag that indicates whether US valence should be applied or reversed, integrated representations store the US valence that results from applying the instructions. We conducted four experiments (total N = 447) to investigate the way in which participants exert control. We demonstrate that the encoding of integrated representations is more likely when participants receive validity information before the conditioning phase as compared to after. Moreover, integrated representations show a smaller decline over the course of 24 hours than valence-plus-tag representations. Moreover, valence-plus-tag representations are less stable than integrated representations so that the tag can become dissociated. Under such conditions, the uncontrollable parameter can be artificially inflated. Finally, we use both a control paradigm that instructs participants to exert control and a relational paradigm that provides information on the relationship between CS and US without control instructions. The current research thus sheds light on the representations formed when participants exert control, relates control paradigms to relational paradigms, and delineates the boundary conditions for the validity of the uncontrollable parameter as a parameter of uncontrollable attitude acquisition.

When presented with neutral stimuli (i.e., conditioned stimuli, or CSs) paired with valent ones (i.e., unconditioned stimuli, or USs), individuals may prove unable to fully reverse the influence of the US on the impression they form about the CS (i.e., evaluative conditioning, or EC). This may suggest that both controllable and uncontrollable processes are involved in attitude learning. Whereas these two processes would operate in a same direction under standard attitude formation conditions, they would oppose each other when participants attempt to exert control on (i.e., to reverse) their evaluative impressions about an attitude object. The examination of absolute evaluative rating scores and the use of a multinomial processing tree modelling approach have supported this view in past research. In two experiments, we aimed at extending this investigation using more direct, precise, parsimonious and phenomenologically comprehensive measures of conflicting evaluative processes assumed in earlier studies (i.e., ambivalent attitude measures; Experiment 1, N = 182), and testing the associative assumption that uncontrollable EC effects should not be observed when the CS-US pairings are not directly experienced (i.e., instruction-based paradigm; Experiment 2, N = 188). Overall, we observed convergent evidence for uncontrollable EC effects, that should however not be confidently interpreted as evidence for the operation of associative attitude learning.

Evaluative conditioning procedures change people’s evaluations of stimuli that are paired with pleasant or unpleasant items. To test whether influence awareness allows people to resist such persuasive attempts, we conducted three experiments. In the first two experiments featuring low levels of influence awareness (N1 = 96, N2 = 93) we manipulated the degree of control people have in expressing their attitudes, by providing participants in one condition with the option to “pass” rather than respond, when they felt influenced in their evaluations of conditioned stimuli. In the third experiment (N3 = 240) we manipulated the level of influence awareness by using a warning instruction similar to the one found in prior controllability studies, while giving everyone the option to pass the evaluation when they felt influenced. All studies found that participants often failed to use the skip option to exert control over conditioned preferences. In some cases, this may be because participants failed to notice the pairings, but in most cases because participants lacked awareness that the pairings could influence them. Even when explicitly warned that the pairings could influence them, participants seemed to believe that they were not vulnerable to such effects. Post hoc analyses also revealed default effects. The decision whether to use the pass option or not was also influenced by how the evaluation task was framed. This suggests that people ability to resist conditioned attitudes is dependent both on their influence awareness and on the way the choice task is set.

In contrast to previous arguments that direct experience with an attitude object was necessary to form implicit evaluations, recent evidence suggests that information about that experience (e.g., instructions) is sufficient. Indeed, in some cases mere instructions may even be more effective than actual experience at forming an evaluation measurable by implicit measures (Smith, Calanchini, Hughes, Van Dessel, & De Houwer, 2019). I review evidence comparing learning procedures of mere exposure, evaluative conditioning, and approach/avoidance training in establishing evaluative responses as measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In this work, participants either experience a learning procedure (e.g., they view one product once and a second product ten times) or only read about it (e.g., they are told that they will later see one product often and a second product rarely). A comparison of IAT D-scores and Quad model estimates of the Activation of evaluative information in IAT responses indicates that 1) each of these learning procedures is sufficient to impact IAT responses and 2) there is rarely any difference in the effectiveness of experience versus instructed versions of the procedure. These findings have implications for our understanding of the processes that mediate evaluative learning effects and for the conditions under which those processes operate. On the whole, they continue to challenge the view that the processes associated with implicit measures are themselves associative in nature.

One of the most remarkable abilities of humans is their cognitive flexibility to switch between tasks. However, few studies investigated whether the anticipated performance on the subsequent trial influence task choices. Here, we examined how differences in anticipated costs of cognitive control influence the decision to repeat or switch tasks. More specifically, we examined whether the two factors task difficulty and error commission and their associated costs in cognitive control influence participants’ voluntary choice. We increased the difficulty of the current task but not the other task. With this design, participants switched between the two tasks without any instructions provided to switch tasks. In 3 experiments, we show that voluntary task switches depend on the relative difficulty between tasks and error commission. More precisely, with increasing task difficulty, participants were more likely to switch to the alternative task after error commission, but not after accurate responses. This effect increased with larger differences in relative difficulty (Experiment 2), and independent of response contingent feedback (Experiment 3).

The emergence and underlying mechanisms of individual differences in coping with multiple task demands remain elusive in contemporary psychology. We investigated whether individual preferences for serial or overlapping processing in a task switching with preview paradigm (TSWP) are correlated to different neurophysiological patterns. Specifically, we examined at which processing stage of task switches potential differences occur focusing on the visual-attentional stage and the response-selection stage. First, the individually preferred processing mode (serial vs. overlapping) was identified in a pre-classification session with the TSWP paradigm, in which the preview of the upcoming switch stimulus allows for serial or overlapping processing of both tasks. In a second session, 26 participants with a clear preference for serial or overlapping processing (n=13) repeated the TSWP paradigm and a task switching paradigm that forced all participants to process both tasks serially. Additional to reaction times and errors, event related potentials (ERPs) were analyzed. Regarding ERPs, we found no differences in the posterior-contralateral negativity in switch trials between the two different processing preferences in either paradigm indicating comparable attentional deployment strategies. Strikingly, overlapping processors showed a significantly earlier onset of the lateralized readiness potential in switch trials only during TSWP. This lends strong support to the assumption that overlapping processors already selected an upcoming switch response and prepared response execution while they were still completing the previous trial of the other task. These results contrast previous findings and may pave the way for a better understanding of individual differences in cognitive control.

In task-switching, modality compatibility refers to the degree of overlap between the modality of the stimulus and the modality of the anticipated response effect. Switching between two incompatible modality mappings typically leads to larger mixing- and switch costs than switching between two compatible modality mappings. This has been attributed to the anticipation of response effects in the opposite modality than the stimulus modality, which is theorised to create crosstalk between the tasks. However, it is unclear at which stage of processing these modality-compatibility effects occur: The between-task crosstalk with incompatible modality mappings could arise either before or after response selection, or affect both stages to some extent. We investigated this by introducing a factor known to influence response selection – stimulus-response compatibility – and examined its possible interactions with modality compatibility: In Experiment 1, stimulus location was task-irrelevant, with participants responding to colour (a Simon task); in Experiment 2, stimulus location was task-relevant (a spatial-discrimination task with variation of element-level stimulus-response compatibility). Participants responded manually or vocally with the responses “left” and “right” to visual or auditory stimuli. With an overall sample size of 80 participants (N = 40 per experiment), results revealed no interaction between stimulus-response- and modality compatibility, neither in the Simon nor the spatial-discrimination task. This suggests that modality-compatibility effects occur either before or after response selection; we propose that the latter is more likely, due to effect anticipation during response initiation.

Cognitive abilities are limited when dealing with multiple cognitive tasks. This is indicated for example by longer response times for task switch compared to task repetition trials. Additionally, participants seems to prefer task repetitions over task switching in voluntary task switching experiments. Here we investigate the interplay of task choice and task performance. In each trial, participants freely decide whether to categorize a letter stimulus as vowel or consonant or a number stimulus as even or odd. The stimulus, needed for task switch occurs immediately, while the stimulus associated with just performed task appears delayed. This delay increases with each repetition until the participant decides to switch. Previous research has shown that this delayed presentation of the repetition stimulus leads to increased switch rates. Moreover, waiting time for repetition stimulus mostly corresponded well to switch costs. Therefore, individuals were sensitive to their switch costs and to the waiting time for the repetition stimulus and used this information to optimize their multitasking behavior. In the present study, we manipulated the switch costs by varying the inter-trial-interval and the delay increment per repetition. We conjecture that participants’ might maximize their attempt to tradeoff waiting time and switch costs for specific relations of switch costs and delay increment. Correlational analyses indicate relations between individual switch costs and individual switch rates across participants. Importantly, we identified one specific relation of switch costs and delay increment where participants could trade their switch costs and waiting time for the repetition stimulus most efficiently.

Cognitive training may exercise executive functions shared across many tasks, thus improving general cognitive abilities. In later life, this may protect against cognitive decline, and improve general wellbeing. Task switching training has shown potential to enhance performance in similar untrained tasks (near transfer), but also dissimilar tasks which measure traits like fluid intelligence. However, the boundary conditions which constrain the effectiveness of task-switching training are unknown. One possibility is the modalities of training and testing material; if training potentiates neural pathways only for the trained modality, then cross-modal benefits should be absent. In two studies we demonstrate evidence to the contrary. In Experiment 1 (Kattner et al., 2019), N=57 young individuals were trained on either auditory task switching (AT), auditory single tasks (AC), or received no training (PC). In the AT group only, but not in the AC or PC groups, the RT costs resulting from mixing the two auditory tasks were reduced after four training sessions. Crucially, these mixing costs were also reduced for task switching in the visual modality. In Experiment 2 (Toovey et al., in prep.), with N=36 older adults (aged 60+ years), we observed the same pattern of effects: auditory task switching training reduced the mixing costs and transferred to the visual modality, whereas no training or transfer was observed in the control groups. The consistency of this result implies that task switching trains amodal cognitive processes rather than modality-specific strategies, and that aging is not a barrier to such cross-modal mechanisms.

In a previous study on hand-selection in a sequential reaching task, the authors found a shift of the point-of-change (POC) to the left of the midline in right-handed dominant participants. This implies that participants conducted a number of contra lateral reaches with their dominant hand. Contra lateral reaches have longer planning and execution times and a lower precision. In the current study, we asked whether lower mechanical costs of motor execution or lower cognitive costs of motor planning compensated for these disadvantages. Theories on hemispheric differences postulate lower mechanical costs in the dominant hemisphere and lower cognitive costs in the left hemisphere (independent of handedness). In right-handed participants, both factors act agonistically to reduce the total cost of right-handed reaches. To distinguish between the cost factors, we had left- and right-handed dominant participants execute a sequential reaching task. Results showed a significant left-shift of the POC in the right-handed, Z = 4.517, p < .001, r = .615, and a significant right-shift in the left-handed group, Z = -3.495, p < .001, r = .476. Both shifts were similar in magnitude, Z = 1.990, p = .093, r = .271. These findings indicate that only the lower mechanical cost of motor execution in the dominant limb compensates for the disadvantages of the contra lateral reaches, while the cognitive cost of motor planning is irrelevant for the POC shift.

Everyday behavior often requires doing multiple aspects of a task at once: When crossing a street, the decision of how to avoid cars is implemented while controlling locomotor behavior (i.e. gait). Such behavior is typically thought to be organized hierarchically, that is, “higher-level” cognitive processes are assumed to govern the execution of “lower-level” motor processes. Yet, research on multitasking, embodiment, and ideomotor theory questions this unidirectional impact and advocate that lower-level motor processes could also affect higher-level decision making. Therefore, we examined to what degree lower-level motor processes influence higher-level cognitive processes in nested tasks. To this end, participants first walked towards a central obstacle and then bypassed it to collect rewards displayed on a left or right positioned target table (Y-configuration). To manipulate “lower-level” stepping behavior the starting position was predetermined, which resulted in varying body states before passing the obstacle (left or right foot in front). Results showed that a left-footed last step before the obstacle increased the odds of going to the right side and vice versa. This effect was robustly observed in a neutral reward condition. When the reward was biased towards one side, only a small subsample was affected by the body state. As such lower-level stepping behavior seemed to influence the higher-level decision. It follows that hierarchical models of nested tasks would be well advised to integrate crosstalk from motor to cognitive processes.

Previous studies found people re-plan their movements to adapt to unexpected changes in the target object (size, orientation, etc.), as well as the action goal. For grasping, an action goal is not restricted to reaching and grasping the object (initial goal; how to grip). The action goal is also important for a later, subsequent goal (final goal; the action effect). The planning and coordination (i.e., processing) of initial and final action perturbation on re-planning grasp movements are still unknown. Here, we cued participants to grip a handle (initial) and then rotate it to a target position (final). The initial or final goals changed unexpectedly for some trials (25%) and participants had to re-plan their movement when the goals changed. Event-related potentials (ERP) were used to examine the neurophysiological mechanisms of re-planning in different perturbed conditions. Behaviorally, goal perturbation slowed down the reaction time and the execution time. Additionally, participants reacted and executed more slowly when initial goals were perturbed, as compared to the final-perturbed and non-perturbed. Larger frontal P2 and more positive centro-parietal slow waves time-locked to perturbation cues were found for initial-perturbed trials. No difference was found for frontal N2 and parietal P3 between the initial- and final-perturbed conditions. The results suggest that re-planning grasping movements to adapt to the unexpected changes in the initial goal needs more efforts and initial demands seem to be more demanding than final demands for modifying an existing movement plan.

When people grasp to-be-manipulated objects, they typically select grasps that result in a medial, comfortable arm posture at the end of the object manipulation. (end-state comfort effect). It has been suggested that medial end-states are preferred because these arm postures provide the highest degree of control (i.e. movement speed and precision) over the wielded object. We directly tested the precision hypothesis by manipulating the arm postures that maximize control over an object using a virtual reality object manipulation task. In two experiments, participants predominantly selected grasps that maximized control over the object in the final phase of an object manipulation even when this implied adopting excursed, uncomfortable end-states. In a third experiment, we show that medial end-states allowed participant to exert a higher level of control than excursed end-states and that this benefit might suffice to elicit the end-state comfort effect. In summary, these findings directly support the hypothesis that the end-state comfort emerges because it maximizes the control over the manipulated object at the end of object manipulations.

Executing two responses at once typically yields performance decrements. These costs are often distributed unevenly among the involved responses, especially when they are executed using different effector systems. In recent years, we provided cumulative evidence for a consistent prioritization pattern (ordinal structure of the extent of dual-response costs) based on the effector systems involved. However, the functional significance of (or the underlying mechanism to explain) this type of prioritization remained elusive. In the present study, we focused on the role of response selection difficulty as a potential explanatory factor. To do so, we compared pedal vs. manual dual-response (and dual-task) performance using one common stimulus (or two distinct stimuli) in the crossed-incompatibility paradigm (CIP). This paradigm requires participants to execute two responses, while either one or the other response is spatially (in)compatible with the relevant stimulus. The results reveal the extent to which spatial stimulus-response compatibility affects effector system-based task prioritization. Thereby, we provide first evidence for assessing the role of response selection difficulty on capacity allocation among output-related systems. The results represent a first step towards explaining effector system-based task prioritization.

After having learned a fact or the outcome of an event, people often overestimate what they had known beforehand. According to a prominent account, this hindsight bias is a by-product of adaptive knowledge updating (Hoffrage et al., 2000). This proposal, however, has not been submitted to a rigorous empirical test. We conducted such a test in the context of numerical estimation. Participants (N = 146) provided estimates of country populations, received feedback about the correct answers, were asked to report their initial estimates (hindsight task), and provided new estimates. To index the amount of knowledge updating, we quantified individual seeding effects (Brown & Siegler, 1993)—improvements in accuracy on new estimates due to feedback on old estimates. If hindsight bias reflects knowledge updating, the strength of seeding effects should be related to the strength of hindsight bias. Further, the magnitude of this relationship might depend on the time available to integrate the feedback with existing knowledge. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group, in which no information about correct responses was provided (n = 51), or to one of two experimental groups with correct responses shown either during (“intermixed”, n = 47) or prior to the hindsight task (“delayed”, n = 48). Providing correct responses elicited a seeding effect and hindsight bias. However, the strength of seeding effects were unrelated to the strength of hindsight bias. The results suggest that hindsight bias is not a by-product of knowledge updating, but might rather reflect the operation of anchoring processes.

Learning materials often consist of pictures which do not pursue a learning goal but an aesthetics function. Such decorative pictures were found to hinder learning by an increase of learning-irrelevant cognitive load (i.e., the seductive detail effect). Studies also showed that various details within a learning setting could have retrieval-enhancing function, when shown again in a retrieval phase (i.e., the memory cues effect). This talks is aimed to present results from an experimental series with four experiments (with more than 100 participants in each experiment) testing decorative pictures in a learning video on marketing concepts as memory cues. In order to reach this effect, one group achieved these decorative pictures again in their learning tests. All experiments showed that the seductive detail effect occurs when pictures were only shown in the learning videos. In addition, when decorative pictures are also used in the learning tests, learning results increased in comparison to a group without decorative pictures. Across the experiments, significant moderators (e.g., salience of the cues, the associative connection between the cues and the learning information, and the modality of the cues) were found. Results can be partially explained by differences in additional measures on mental load, mental effort and intrinsic motivation.

It has been a long-standing belief that perceptual long-term memory is rather limited regarding both the quantity and quality of stored memory representations. Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that storing information in perceptual long-term memory is an effortless and natural product of perception and that the stored memory representations are detailed and durable (Hutmacher & Kuhbandner, 2018; 2019). However, not all incoming information is stored equally well. So what are the selection mechanisms that determine which information is stored? One possible answer to this question is provided by the so-called ‘attentional boost effect’ (Swallow & Jiang, 2010; 2014), which claims that memory performance is enhanced for perceptual information processed at behaviorally relevant moments in time – not only for information that is important for executing an ongoing task, but also for concurrently perceived, unrelated information. However, to date, it has remained unclear what a behaviorally relevant moment in time actually is. It could be either the moment in which one perceives a stimulus or the moment in which one reacts to a stimulus, a distinction which has not been made in previous studies. By disentangling stimulus-logged and response-logged attentional boost effects, the data presented here allow for distinguishing between these two options. Implications for models of perceptual long-term memory are discussed.

Modern media reports news remarkably fast; mostly before the reported information is confirmed. Even if such early reports correctly identify information as suspicions rather than facts, however, it is possible that the preliminary nature of the information is not accurately considered by readers. Linguistic theories suggest that the process of understanding a suspicion requires its reconstruction as factual assertion which can later be erroneously remembered. This should result in the tendency to falsely remember suspicions more often as facts than vice versa. In a series of experiments, however, we demonstrate the opposite result pattern. We asked participants to read headlines reporting explanations for distinct events either as factual or suspicion (i.e. as being under investigation). Our results indicate that participants’ belief in the correctness of these explanations was equally affected by formerly read suspected vs. factual formulations. However, contrary to the predictions from linguistic theories, our results point to a reverse distortion: A bias to falsely remember and treat the "fact" as if it was merely suspected. Possible explanations for this reversed memory tendency are discussed.

Two of the most prominent causes of episodic forgetting may be interference-induced and delay-induced forgetting. While interference-induced forgetting refers to the finding that retrieval of some target material can suffer when additional information has been encoded before retrieval, delay-induced forgetting denotes the observation that retrieval is typically impaired when the delay between study and retrieval is prolonged. We compared the effects of interference-induced and delay-induced forgetting on recall totals and response latencies of younger and older adults. Subjects studied a list of target items that they recalled after short delay (control condition) or prolonged delay (delay condition); in a third condition, study of further nontarget items preceded encoding of the target items (interference condition). Relative to the control condition, recall totals decreased and response latencies increased in the interference condition, and both effects were larger in older than younger adults. In contrast, both recall totals and response latencies were reduced in the delay relative to the control condition, and the effects were similar in size across age levels. The latency results indicate that induced coactivation of nontarget items caused the forgetting in the interference condition, whereas unsuccessful sampling of target items caused the forgetting in the delay condition.

When haptically exploring objects, humans enhance their perception by using prior information to adapt their behavior. E.g. humans use higher initial peak force when expecting a smaller difference between the compliance of two objects or harder objects. Higher peak forces increase differential sensitivity. Here we investigated if expected constrictions of exploration length influence exploration. When exploring freely, humans gather sufficient sensory information about softness using successive indentations. When the number of indentations is limited, also the sensory information input is limited. We hypothesize that humans compensate limited sensory input in short explorations by using higher peak force. Participants performed a 2IFC task discriminating the softness of two rubber stimuli out of one category (hard, soft). In two conditions trials of different softness categories were presented either randomized or in blocks of one category only. In Experiment 1 (N=8), exploration length was limited to one or five indentations per stimulus. In Experiment 2 (N=8), exploration length was free or limited to one indentation. Initial peak forces were higher when indenting stimuli only once as compared to five times or free exploration (leading to three indentations, on average). No difference in peak forces between blocked and randomized presentation was found. No difference in the percentage correct responses was found between the different exploration lengths. However, participants performed better when stimuli were presented in blocks. We conclude that humans can trade off different ways to gather sufficient sensory information for perceptual tasks, integrating also prior information on exploration length to enhance their performance.

Tactile stimuli on a moving limb are rated as less intense compared to a resting state. This phenomenon, known as tactile suppression, is discussed in the context of an internal feed-forward model that establishes sensorimotor predictions: When planning a movement, an efference copy of the motor command is used to predict and, eventually, cancel the associated sensory consequences of the movement. Humans can establish accurate predictions, but when uncertainty about the sensory feedback increases they may use the most recently obtained information to plan the next movement. For instance, when grasping an object with uncertain task-relevant properties, humans grasp as if it had the properties experienced in the previous trial. Here, we examine whether such effects of predictive control do not only modulate the kinematic behavior but also the processing of the predicted somatosensory consequences of the movement indexed by tactile suppression. We asked participants to grasp and lift an object with its mass distribution changing in a pseudo-randomized order, unknown to the participant. In line with previous findings, our results show that when grasping an object with uncertain properties, humans utilize somatosensory feedback from the previous trial to plan their next movement. However, tactile suppression was not affected by the mass distribution of the previous trial. These suggest that, under uncertain sensory feedback, recent information is used to adjust the kinematics but not the prediction of the movement’s sensory consequences. The question remains, how much evidence the brain needs to acquire to establish reliable sensorimotor predictions.

In the reinforcement learning framework, credit assignment describes the process which allows an agent to link its actions to the corresponding outcomes, thereby constituting a prerequisite for learning. While it has been shown that humans are able to solve the credit assignment problem even in probabilistic and volatile environments, little is known about the underlying computational and neural mechanisms. In the present study, we investigated these mechanisms by considering event-related potentials in a probabilistic learning task comprising two independent decisions. Following the decisions, two feedback stimuli were presented without explicitly indicating which feedback was linked to which decision. On the behavioral level, successful credit assignment was indicated by a specific stay/switch pattern in the learning task. Furthermore, subsequent transfer task performance showed that participants were able to explicitly act on the acquired decision-feedback mapping due to devaluation instructions. On a computational level, behavioral data could be explained by an extended reinforcement learning model. Core assumption of this model is that credit assignment can be solved within a hierarchical task representation through comparative evaluation of reward prediction errors based on alternative decision-feedback assignments. Crucially, prominent neural components of feedback processing (FRN and feedback-P3) were sensitive to central parameters of this computational model, indicating a comparison of reward prediction errors between valid and invalid decision-feedback mappings.

Regularities in a sequence of sounds can be automatically encoded in a predictive model by the brain. When a sound deviates from the one predicted by the model, mismatch negativity (MMN) is elicited, a brain response reflecting a prediction error. Many studies investigated deterministic regularities, only few the brain’s ability to encode non-deterministic regularities. We applied a simple stochastic regularity, namely two different pitches X and Z each of them occurring with a probability of 0.45, which was occasionally violated by a sound with pitch Y (p=0.10). If X, Y, and Z were cards, a gambler would bet on X or Z rather than on Y, because he/she would rightly expect one of these two cards to be more likely to be drawn. How will the MMN system behave? We found MMN when the deviant was outside the pitches of the standards, but not when it was between them. Importantly, when we alternated the occurrence of the same two standards, making them deterministic, the deviant elicited MMN, even when its pitch was between those of the standards. Moreover, when deviant detection was task-relevant, MMN was not elicited. Thus, although the MMN system is extremely powerful in establishing quite complex deterministic regularities, it fails with a simple stochastic regularity. This failure of the MMN mechanism to use what every gambler knows is a constraint of the regularity encoding reflected by MMN level. We conclude that the MMN system does not know basic probability, it rather relies on transitional probabilities.

We conducted an EEG experiment to investigate the predictive nature of auditory event-related potentials. According to the predictive coding theory, perception is seen as a process that continuously aims to minimize potential mismatches between the sensorial input and dynamic mental models trying to predict and interpret it. If a mental model fails to explain sensorial input (e.g. not foreseeing it) a prediction error response is thought to be caused, signaling the need to modify it or to change to an alternative interpretation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are argued to reflect this prediction error. To test this hypothesis, we measured 20 subjects' electrophysiological responses to four different types of (un)expected stimuli. First, subjects were habitualized to a short melodic pattern in which three sine tones are always followed by one specific standard tone. This pattern was played in a loop for seven minutes. In a subsequent experimental phase, some of the trials replaced the standard (70% of trials) by deviant events (30% of trials). There could either be silence (10%), white noise (10%), or both white noise and the standard played simultaneously (10%). The difference wave between the ERPs to standards and deviants reflects the processing of the mismatch, the so-called mismatch negativity (MMN). If the MMN reflect predictive processes, responses to noise and omissions should be equal. Importantly, the MMN to noise-tone combinations should be smaller than following the other deviants, due to a partial prediction success. We discuss our result's implications for predictive coding theory.

The Weapon Identification Task (WIT; Payne, 2001) and the First-Person Shooter Task (FPST; Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002) are speed task methods, measuring in their original version the stereotype association between black males with guns in comparison to white males with guns in the US. Both methods claim to measure the association of black men with violence, respectively the perceived threat posed by black men. In German society the stereotype of North African males being dangerous and violent might be present. This can be observed in the political discussion about asylum policies during the last years in Germany and the discussion about violent assaults in Cologne at new years eve 2015 by allegedly predominant North African immigrants. The talk presents a conceptual adaptation of the WIT and FPST with North African male faces in comparison to Caucasian male faces with knifes as weapons. The study was conducted with a student and an Amazon MTurk sample. Beside Implicit Bias measures, explicit face ratings and stereotype ratings for evaluation of threat posed by North African males are presented.

A recurrent debate centers on the malleability of the Evaluative Decision Task (EDT; Fazio et al., 1986) to the influence of non-evaluative semantic stimulus relations: There is little empirical agreement on whether and how evaluative and non-evaluative semantic stimulus relations (interact to) produce evaluative priming effects in the EDT, and there is not even agreement on whether evaluative priming effects emerge in the absence of non-evaluative semantic stimulus relations. A lack of priming effects in conditions where stimuli are only evaluatively related would be surprising inasmuch as it is hardly reconcilable with the dominant theories explaining evaluative priming effects via response activation. Resolving these conflicting results would thus greatly inform theorizing on the mechanisms behind evaluative priming. In addition, it would have implications for sound measurement in the EDT, since in many applied studies, stimuli do not only vary on the evaluative dimension. In a first study (N=81), we suggest that research on this topic so far has suffered from a confound that renders the EDT’s measurement outcome difficult to interpret. In a second study (N=80), we show that in a research design that does not suffer from this confound, evaluative and non-evaluative semantic stimulus relations co-determine the EDT’s measurement outcome, and evaluative priming effects also emerge in the (relative) absence of non-evaluative semantic stimulus relations.

Different lines of research suggest that motivation (“wanting”) and evaluation (“liking”) reflect separate systems of behavior regulation. Further, it has been speculated that the selective dysregulation of one but not the other system underlies clinical disorders like addiction, impulse control disorders, depression, and schizophrenia. However, the distinction between “wanting” and “liking” has not yet been adequately acknowledged in the development and application of implicit measures. This means that in most cases we do not know whether a measure properly captures “wanting”, “liking”, or both. It is argued that well-designed validation studies have to be carried out to address this question systematically. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that a separate assessment of “wanting” and “liking” is possible with two qualitatively different versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

o Despite incoherent conceptualizations and findings many researchers still use the concept of implicit self-esteem (ISE) and associated measures as if their validity and usefulness were self-evident. Some studies demonstrated how relatively easy it is to manipulate measures of ISE, suggesting that ISE is a state-like attribute. However, it also has been shown that ISE is in fact partially predicted by remembered parenting behaviour, and displays a certain degree of temporal stability highlighting its rather trait-like nature. Aiming to reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings we decided to apply a latent state-trait approach to measures of ISE. We are conducting a longitudinal study measuring ISE with two different indicators (IAT, NLT) at four points in time (initial sample size N=120). Additionally, explicit trait and state self-esteem (ESE) are measured as well as relevant covariates of self-esteem (neuroticism, depression). Taking into account recent criticism of the IATs validity, we apply measurement models to extract more pure estimations of self-associations for the IAT. Thereby, we hope to shed light on the temporal dynamics of these associations and supposed confounders of the IAT effect. Finally, we investigate whether estimates of trait ISE extracted in this manner are able to predict self-esteem correlates over and above trait ESE.

Many studies have shown that irrelevant background sounds impair performance in immediate serial recall tasks. According to the duplex-mechanism account, performance disruption due to irrelevant sounds may result from attentional capture or interference-by-process, i.e., an overlap of the resources involved in preattentive, obligatory sound processing and task-related processes. In this study, we compared the effects of irrelevant speech and environmental sounds on performance in German third-graders and German adults. Based on prior evidence, we hypothesized that irrelevant speech evokes interference-by-process, whereas environmental sounds evoke attentional capture. Environmental sounds should cause a stronger disruption in children compared to adults, because of childrens’ limited attentional control. We designed a task that required monosyllabic German nouns presented pictorially to be immediately recalled in serial order. Irrelevant speech evoked comparable impairments in both age groups, but only the children were significantly affected by the environmental sounds. The differential age effect supports the duplex-mechanism account of performance decrements due to irrelevant sounds.

Walking is human’s most important locomotion. Until recently, walking was seen as an automated motor task which requires only minimal cognitive resources. However, recent studies indicate that walking requires higher-level cognitive processes such as executive functions. A different line of research suggests that executive functions consist of three core components, i.e., inhibition, switching, and updating. Combining these findings, the present study clarified which executive-function component is most essential for human walking. Applying a dual-task methodology, adults (n = 37) and 8- to 13-year-old children (n = 134) walked repeatedly across an electronic pathway while solving three different concurrent tasks measuring inhibition, switching, and updating skills. Results showed the largest gait alterations when adults performed the updating and switching task as opposed to inhibition. Adults’ cognitive performance revealed the largest performance reductions in updating. An identical pattern of effects was found on children’s walking and cognitive performance. Overall, our results highlight remarkable similarities in children’s and adults’ performance with updating working memory representations and switching between rule sets being the most important cognitive processes for walking. These similarities across age groups point to a general gait-cognition process. Results have high theoretical value and hold practical implications for creating effective intervention programs.

In a world where people are constantly bombarded by an endless array of internal and external stimuli, especially older people show increasing problems. Particularly, processes of selection of appropriate actions, switching between different tasks, as well as quick adaptations to changes in the environment, are discussed in this context. During recent years, converging evidence indicated an inverted u-shaped curve of task-switching performance over the lifespan. However, the process of switching between different attentional demands is somehow neglected. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effect of age as well as working memory and inhibition on the performance of switching between attentional demands, within two experiments. In the first experiment, 116 younger adults (age: M=22.31 years, SD=3.17) and 93 elderlies (age: M=68.29years, SD=6.18) completed the SwAD-task. In the second experiment, 64 participants (age: M=44.52 years, SD=14.21) completed the SwAD-task as well as further tasks of working memory and inhibition. Findings indicated longer response times in the elderly compared to younger adults in each condition of the SwAD-task. Furthermore, 25.6% of the variance of selective attention and 18.0% of divided attention under conditions of switching attention can be explained by the used variables: age, working-memory, and inhibition. Age-related differences in selective and divided attention are explained by a reduced processing which is accompanied by deficits in white matter integrity, an early age-related deterioration of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a reduction in occipital activity, as well as a hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults.

Involuntary distraction of attention by infrequent and unexpected sensory events can be prevented when these events are predictable. The present auditory-visual oddball study investigates this top-down cognitive control of distraction from a developmental perspective. The P3a event-related potential (ERP) is assumed to reflect involuntary attention shift and the enhanced processing of novel events at the neurophysiological level. Also, the pupil dilation response (PDR) was reported to be enhanced in response to unexpected events. In the present study, we presented an oddball sequence consisting of 80 % repeated standard and 20 % novel sounds. To improve the ecological validity of the study, different environmental sounds were used as novel sounds. Visual cues correctly predicted the sound type (standard or novel) in 80% and incorrectly in 20% of trials. We measured participants' reaction times, ERPs, and pupil size. The type of sound was irrelevant for the task that required the discrimination of the direction of sounds' movements. In both children (7-8 years) and adults, correctly predicted sounds (especially novels) caused shorter reaction times, smaller amplitudes of P3a and decreased PDRs compared to the incorrectly predicted sounds. These differences were less pronounced in children than in adults suggesting that voluntary control of attention is not yet fully matured in this age group.

The unexpected occurrence of task-irrelevant sounds can involuntarily capture attention and can impair performance. A distinctive sequence of components in the event-related potentials (ERPs) in the EEG has been associated with different steps of attention capture. Moreover, event-related changes in pupil size enable conclusions on the activity of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system that modulates attention. The present work aimed to examine attentional orienting/evaluation and reorienting mechanisms in response to emotional distractor sounds in 7 to 10-year-old children (n=32) and adults (n=32). We simultaneously registered ERPs and changes in pupil diameter in response to frequent repeated standard sounds and rare emotional and neutral novel sounds. Participants were asked to ignore the sound sequence and to watch a silent video. Emotional compared to neutral distractor sounds evoked larger amplitudes of ERP-components associated with attentional orienting and larger pupil dilation responses in both groups. Attention-related ERP amplitudes to novelty were enhanced in children compared to adults. ERP results indicate an ongoing maturation of involuntary attention in the context of novelty processing in 7 to 10-year-old children. In contrast, processing of the emotional content of novel sounds did not differ between children and adults. Importantly, our results support the idea of a correspondence between the pupil dilation response and attention-related ERPs in the framework of attentional orienting in children. Results demonstrate that pupillometry is a suitable method to investigate the development of involuntary attention mechanisms that might be applied to sensitive groups.

Im Rahmen der vorgestellten Studie wurde untersucht, ob eine ökologische Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstelle bzw. ein sogenanntes Ecological Interface, so wie in der Theorie beschrieben, weniger kognitiv belastend ist als eine konventionelle Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstelle. Die visuelle Darstellung von Grenzen akzeptablen Verhaltens und die damit einhergehende Unterstützung von automatisiertem Verhalten (skill-based behaviour) sollte der Theorie nach die kognitive Belastung der FahrerInnen reduzieren. Um dies zu untersuchen wurde ein herkömmliches Tachometer mit einem Distanztachometer, also einem Ecological Interface, in einem statischen Fahrsimulator verglichen und evaluiert. Hierzu wurden vier Szenarien dargestellt, um einen kontrollierten Vergleich unter verschiedenen Bedingungen zu ermöglichen. Beide Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstellen wurden im Head-up-Display angezeigt und die Fahraufgabe wurde konstant gehalten. Das Experiment wurde als Messwiederholung mit 49 TeilnehmerInnen durchgeführt. Zur Messung der kognitiven Belastung wurde eine taktile Version der Detection Response Task genutzt. In Einklang mit den Hypothesen konnte gezeigt werden, dass das Ecological Interface tatsächlich eine geringere kognitive Belastung erzeugt und zudem eine bessere Fahrleistung ermöglicht.

In naher Zukunft werden menschliche Fahrer hochautomatisierte Fahrzeugen (SAE Level 3) zunehmend häufiger auf der Autobahn begegnen. Unklar ist bislang jedoch, ob menschliche Fahrer diese Fahrzeuge im Mischverkehr erkennen und wie menschliche Fahrer auf diese Fahrzeuge reagieren. Dazu wurde eine Fahrsimulatorstudie durchgeführt, bei der menschliche Fahrer in vier ausgewählten Fahrszenarien entweder einem hochautomatisierten Fahrzeug oder einem anderen menschlichen Fahrer begegneten. Zusätzlich wurde die Wirkung der Kennzeichnung des hochautomatisierten Fahrmodus mittels Statusanzeige nach außen untersucht (keine Kennzeichnung, richtige Kennzeichnung, falsche Kennzeichnung). An der Studie nahmen N = 51 Fahrer im Alter von 20 bis 71 Jahren (22 weiblich) teil. Die Auswahl der Fahrszenarien erfolgte basierend auf Experteninterviews. Die Fahrer bewerteten jede Begegnung mit einem Zielfahrzeug hinsichtlich subjektiver Sicherheit. Bei den erhobenen Fahrdaten wurden insbesondere (minimale) Abstände zu den Zielfahrzeugen ausgewertet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es aus der Außenperspektive menschlicher Fahrer im Mischverkehr möglich ist, hochautomatisierte Fahrzeuge anhand ihres Fahrverhaltens von anderen menschlichen Fahrern zu unterscheiden. Eine Kennzeichnung beeinflusste diese Unterscheidung nur, wenn diese nicht mit dem aktuellen Fahrmodus des Fahrzeugs übereinstimmte, d.h. diese nichtzutreffend war. Insgesamt bewerteten Probanden die Begegnungen mit hochautomatisierten Fahrzeugen nicht wesentlich risikoreicher und unangenehmer als Begegnungen mit anderen menschlichen Fahrern. Dennoch zeigt die Fahrdatenanalyse, dass situationsspezifisch ein Gefährdungspotenzial des automatisierten Fahrverhaltens vorhanden ist, das durch das streng regelkonforme Verhalten ausgelöst wird.

To support drivers’ comfort and acceptance, automated vehicles (AVs) need to communicate with other traffic participants. For safe and comfortable interaction, AVs should operate consistently by using known manually driving behavior. Thus, parameters regarding informal communication and potential influencing factors need to be investigated for the implementation in AVs’ (e.g., gap acceptance parameters). The present video simulation study investigated the effects of participants’ age, vehicle type and vehicles’ speed on participants’ gap acceptance in a shared space setting. The pre-recorded real-world video material was presented to N = 42 participants (two age groups: < 30 years vs. > 45 years). The recordings displayed a left turn parking maneuver from the drivers’ perspective including an overlap of the ego-vehicles’ and the oncoming vehicles’ trajectory. The material contained three vehicle types (scooter, passenger car, truck) approaching with different speeds (10 - 35 km/h). A mixed ANOVA showed main effects for participants’ age, vehicle types and vehicles’ speed. Time gaps increased by vehicles’ size, with smallest gaps for the scooter and largest for the truck. Moreover, lower (i.e., riskier) time gaps were selected for higher speeds. Older participants preferred more conservative gaps compared to younger participants. The results are in line with previous studies on size-arrival effects and pedestrian-to-vehicle interaction. To meet human expectations and enhance comfort and acceptance, AVs should particularly consider speed related time gaps. Age related time gaps could serve as basis for different automated driving style profiles, e.g. defensive vs. dynamic driving style.

The action-effect paradigm suggests that actions are controlled through bidirectional associations between motor patterns and their perceivable consequences. With the present experiment (N = 37) we aimed to provide a conceptual replication of a classical action-effect paradigm with whole arm responses instead of finger button presses. In a free-choice response task (learning phase), participants experienced a co-occurrence of left and right arm push movements performed on two joysticks and background color change to green and red. In the test phase, the same background colors preceded responses in a categorization task. The main analysis did not provide statistical evidence that response times and errors in the test phase depended on previously learned associations between background color and response. However, post-hoc analyses indicate that the degree of randomness of the free-choice responses in the learning task influenced the response pattern in the test phase. The more random the participant responded, the more was the result pattern in line with action-effect principles – color facilitated the respective previously associated response. Such findings contribute to the argument that involvement of participants (e.g., through a more salient response representation) in the learning phase may be an important pre-requirement for action-effect learning.

In bimanual actions, programming parameters for one hand influences programming and executing movements with the other hand. A well-known observation in this regard are the longer response times (RTs) when both movements are incongruent (e.g., when they have different amplitudes) compared to when they are congruent (e.g., both have the same amplitude). This spatial interference effect may be attributed to central processes of translating the stimuli into according motor movements or, alternatively, to problems during motor execution of incongruent movements. Empirical evidence has been reported for both, central and motor contributions. We here report two experiments employing the effect propagation logic and the psychological refractory period approach to distinguish between both possible sources for this congruency effect. Task 1 was a bimanual pointing task, and Task 2 was a binary tone discrimination task with a vocal response. Stimuli in both tasks were separated by a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 50 or 1000 ms on each trial. First, a spatial interference effect was observed in Task 1. Second, the same (or even a larger) RT difference was observed in Task 2 (in particular with a short SOA). In other words, the spatial interference propagated into Task 2. This result does not support a motor source for the spatial interference effect, but is in line with the idea that the congruency effect is caused by limitations in central processing.

Previous studies showed that separate chunks are being acquired when participants alternate between two sequences that start with the exact same responses in single-tasking (Perlman, Pothos, Edwards & Tzelgov, 2010). This raises the question if separate sequence representations are also acquired if the overlapping sequences are presented in dual-tasking. It was also tested if the sequences were learned implicitly. Subjects should do either a single task or a dual task exercise. In both conditions, the subjects should react to a stimulus in the form of an „X“ by pressing certain keys on a keyboard. The stimuli were presented in two different sequences, which occurred with different frequencies. In a variant of the experiment, an eye tracker was added to track anticipatory fixations concerning overlapping vs. non-overlapping parts of the sequences as a further indicator of separation of sequence representations. The results show that the sequences were learned separately and in part implicitly in both conditions.

A frequent observation in dual-tasking is that spatially or conceptually (in)compatible Task 2 response features can interfere with responses in Task 1 (backward crosstalk effect; BCE). Such between-task interference can be, at least to some degree, under strategic control. It has been shown that the size of the BCE can be modulated by instructions, contextual regularities, recent experience of conflict, and motivational factors. Especially large temporal task overlap (i.e., short stimulus-onset-asynchrony, SOA) represents a condition of high levels of between-task interference. Accordingly, Fischer and Dreisbach (2015) showed that specific stimuli, associated with mostly short SOAs, were able to reduce the size of the BCE. In the present study, we investigated whether a regular sequence of SOA levels can also be used for contextual regulation of the BCE. In a dual-task with spatially (in)compatible hand- and foot-responses, we implemented a repeating sequence of three SOA levels. If participants learned this sequence and used it strategically, the BCE should decrease over time in regular sequence blocks but should increase in a subsequent random sequence block. However, this prediction was not confirmed (N=32). Instead, the size of the BCE was constant across all blocks (BF = .002 for the interaction). This is a first important result, as it points at the necessity to further disentangle the type of contextual regularities that can serve the shielding against between-task interference.

The present work investigated the role of motor proficiency depressed patients. Physical activity has been suggested to entail changes in brain structure (e.g., increased hippocampyl volume) and improvements in cognitive functions (e.g., Kandola et al., 2016). Specifically, physical activity was found to ease some symptoms of depression (e.g., Balchin et al., 2016). Here, we asked whether healthy people differ from patients with unipolar depression in terms of their motor coordinative abilities? Thirty patients and 30 normal/healthy people participated in a motor proficiency test (based on Tittlbach et al. 2005 & Wydra, 1992)and their sum scores were compared. Motor proficiency was better in healthy people than in patients. The difference between the healthy group and the patients was significant (t58 = 3.917; p < .05). This effect was maintained when splitting the groups for sex (male: t32 = 2.954; p < .05 & female: t28 = 2.962; p < .05). Participants with no signs of depression showed a better performance in motor proficiency than patients with unipolar depression. This effect seems to be independent of age and sex (at least in the tested age range, adults). The results form the basis for future potential use in the investigation of therapeutic methods. Future steps will include an intervention programme for the patient group (together with a balance control group). The results may provide insights into the basic relation between physical activity and affective states during disorders and in normal/healty people.

It has been shown that the mere presentation of objects primes the associated grasps. If object movements are likewise associated to certain grasps, as assumed by the ideomotor account, also the presentation of object motion should prime specific grasps. As it is commonly observed that one uses different grasps for different object manipulations (“end-state comfort effect”), it could be expected that different object movements would prime different grasps. To test this, we created a series of experiments in which participants had to grasp (but not manipulate) an object in different ways. The stimuli used for the instruction of the grasp either corresponded to an object manipulation that could easily or hardly be achieved with the selected grasp. On the table was a fixed bar which could be grasped with either a palm-up or palm-down grasp. In the compatible condition, a clockwise tilted stimulus instructed a palm-down grasp and a counterclockwise tilted one a palm-up grasp. In the incompatible condition, this mapping was reversed. If the object motion implied by the stimulus is indeed associated with the appropriate grasp, reaction times should be lower in the compatible condition than in the incompatible condition. The results of those experiments will be discussed with regards to the modern accounts of ideomotor theories and constrain models of grasp selection for object manipulation.

When preparing for the moment of action in situations where the preparatory interval, or foreperiod (FP), varies unpredictably between trials, responses become faster with increasing FP length. This has initially been assumed to reflect a strategic process of conditional-probability monitoring, while a more recent view holds that it results from asymmetric sequential FP effects due to trial-to-trial reinforcement learning (Los et al., 2001). Accordingly, FP repetitions should be beneficial for speeded responding. In two experiments, we examined long-FP repetition benefits as a function of overall response speed and contextual temporal uncertainty (i.e., FP range). We observed that the usual long-FP repetition benefit turned into costs in the slowest quarter of participants if contextual time uncertainty (varied between experiments) was large. This pattern replicates previous findings in children (Vallesi & Shallice, 2007) and, together with self-report data on stress state, argues for the existence of another, possibly “energetic” source of sequential FP effects beyond reinforcement learning.

Prior studies have shown that mind wandering affects executive control and that the activation of a relevant goal led to more mind wandering episodes. This study aims to induce mind wandering by maximising the level of demand in cognitively demanding tasks like reading. We hypothesized that participants with a second task still in mind (unfinished condition), engage more in off tasks thoughts (TUTs) and achieve a better result in the second task compared to participants who think a second task is finished (finished condition). 60 participants were presented with a scenario in which they had to study 24 items of a to-do list for a recall test. After cued recall of 10 items, participants were either told that the recall task was finished or that the retrieval of the to-do list tasks was interrupted and continued later. All participants then started reading a coherent or incoherent version of the same unfamiliar hypertext and were presented with task-embedded thought probes. Text comprehension measures followed. As expected, participants in the unfinished condition showed significantly more TUTs than participants in the finished condition. Furthermore, participants showed significantly more TUTs while reading difficult rather than easy texts. On the other hand, cued recall of the remaining items was not better in the unfinished than in the finished condition and the manipulation of to-do-list-task goals did not affect text comprehension. These findings provide insights into processing attention during reading hypertexts.

Contingent-capture effects are taken to demonstrate that visual attention is guided by top-down search templates. That is, when searching for a specific color, only those irrelevant stimuli (cues) that are similar to the searched for target show evidence for attention capture, whereas target-dissimilar cues show no evidence for attention capture. Recent research is divided over the question whether or not several features can guide visual search simultaneously. A variety of effects has been used to distinguish between these two possibilities: (a) comparisons of contingent-capture effects in single- vs. dual-target color versions of the contingent-capture protocol (the size of validity effects by target-colored cues relative to validity effects by irrelevant colored cues), (b) switch costs (performance decrements in trial-by-trial target-color switch compared to trial-by-trial target-color repetition conditions), (c) mixing costs (performance decrements in trial-by-trial target-color repetition conditions compared to single target-color search blocks), and (d) within-trial-cue-target-congruence effects (slower responses in cue-target-incongruent compared to cue-target-congruent trials). In the present study, we directly compared these effects under single- and dual-task conditions. Our results suggest that switch and mixing costs, as well as within-trial-cue-target-congruence effects can be taken as robust criteria for distinguishing between parallel and sequential search for two colors, whereas the size of contingent-capture effects does not seem to reliably distinguish between parallel and sequential search in two-color search conditions.

In everyday life, external events often demand one’s attention and thereby disrupt working memory (WM) processes and performance. Here we investigated the reason for this effect of interruptions on WM and its underlying neurocognitive processes measured by means of the electroencephalogram (EEG). We presented a memory array containing two randomly oriented bars on either the left or right side of the fixation cross. A retroactive cue (retro-cue) indicated one bar and its orientation had to be reported at the end of the trial. Before the retro-cue, participants were either interrupted by a high- or low-demanding math task or had to keep fixation on a central cross (no interruption). Behavioral data revealed decreased WM performance in interruption trials, which was strongest for the high-demanding interruption task. On EEG level, a suppression of posterior alpha power contralateral to the side of the two bars indicated the re-orienting of attention to the primary task following an interruption. Importantly, this effect was only evident after high-demanding interruptions, indicating that more resources were required to bring the focus of attention ‘back on track’. Furthermore, the power of frontal theta oscillations after the retro-cues was weaker following interruptions (compared to the no-interruption condition), indicating that interruptions depleted the cognitive resources available for the attentional selection of WM content. Taken together, we present behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the detrimental impact of interruptions on WM processes, especially with regard to the selective retrieval of information from WM.

Focusing on the most relevant pieces of information in visual working memory (VWM) allows us to make efficient use of this limited system, and several visual attributes have been shown to effectively guide attention to specific representations. Given that the world we live in is not static, temporal properties of visual events can be assumed to contribute to an optimal utilization of VWM by tuning attention to representations related to relevant points in time. However, the role of temporal attention for prioritization in VWM has been largely neglected. Here, we directly compared attentional orienting based on temporal position with orienting based on spatial location, which is typically considered the most powerful selection mechanism. In a colour change detection task, in which items were presented sequentially and at different locations, symbolic number cues validly indicated the upcoming temporal or spatial location of the test item either before encoding (precues) or during maintenance (retrocues). In separate sessions, the number cues mapped onto either the spatial or the temporal item locations. Thus, temporal and spatial cues were physically identical and only differed in their mapping onto time or space. All valid cues yielded cueing benefits as compared to uninformative cues, with larger benefits for precues than for retrocues. Importantly, benefits did not differ between spatial and temporal (pre- or retro-)cues – neither in size nor in their development across the experiment. These findings show that spatial and temporal properties can be used equally well to flexibly prioritize representations during maintenance in VWM.

If people are presented with a task they might form a strategy for successful completion. In other cases a strategy might be instructed. The question posed in the present experiment is, if both strategies (intention based/self-generated or instruction based) differ in their impact on a given task. To study this, a change blindness task is used. Letter matrices of 8*4 letters are presented with an embedded word. In every trial two letters change. One in the embedded word (rendering it a nonword) and one independent letter. In the first two blocks no cues are given, but the participants might use the embedded word for change detection. If they generate the strategy that word search can be used for change detection they should be quite successful. In blocks three to six cues are presented prior to each trial. They are either visual or verbal cues. Both cue forms are valid in 75% of the trials. It thus might be a valid strategy to attend to the cues but also search for the word (which is valid in 100% of the trials). To answer the question if both instruction based and intention based strategies differ, it will be analysed how much and which specific changes were detected in the different conditions.

Acoustic information can affect faster detection of visual stimuli. This effect is measured less in more complex attention tasks, like in visual search. In this case the integration of modality can depend on the relationship of the stimuli (compared to the detection task, where task-irrelevant stimuli can also affect the visual attention). In this research we measured the change in visual processes caused by task-relevant and irrelevant and important and neutral stimulus with 59 participant. We use a drawn picture of a drum as target stimulus between other drawn objects, and the sound of a drum and a bell as acoustic stimuli. The source of the acoustic information and the target stimuli could be on the same or on the opposite side. We measured the effect of this congruency on reaction time. We also want to measure the effect of the importance of the stimuli. To one group of participants (30 people) we presented unimportant (PlayStation login) sound. Another group of participants (29 people) heard voices that were important to them (Facebook notification) during the task. These sounds were rarely presented and not connected to the target stimuli in meaning, so they were task irrelevant. Based on our results, in case of spatial congruence with the often presented stimulus, the target stimulus was found faster, regardless of its meaning. However participants could block the spatial information of task-irrelevant sounds, even the important ones.

In adaptive behavior, flexibly shifting one’s attention between different objects or features is often required in order to navigate complex environments. Likewise, the inhibition of no longer relevant objects or features is crucial as well (see Gruber & Goschke, 2004). A powerful method to investigate how these control demands are conveyed in selective attention is frequency tagged EEG: With this technique, different stimuli are turned on and off at different frequencies to elicit steady state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs) in the EEG signal. The amplitude of these potentials indicates the degree to which a specific stimulus was attended by the participant (e.g., Scherbaum, Fischer, Dshemuchadse, & Goschke, 2011). To investigate the shifting of attention, the task switching paradigm is used by many studies. However, this paradigm suffers from a high number of repetition trials that are irrelevant for the phenomenon of interest, the shifting of attention. Here, we introduce a random dot kinematogram (RDK) task with attentional shifts between colors in each trial. This task, which is adapted from Müller, Trautmann, & Keitel, 2016, is comprised of three differently colored RDKs, each tagged with a specific frequency, in which coherent movement events have to be detected in the cued color. Importantly, during each five second trial the cued color switches halfway through. Coherent movement events can occur before and/or after the color switch. This offers us the opportunity to investigate attentional shifts and their effects (e.g. perseveration of the pre-switch color) in every trial.

Phasic alertness influences performance in response-conflict tasks in two seemingly opposing ways: it reduces overall reaction time (RT), but increases the congruency effect as an index of response conflict. According to one recent explanation, this alertness-congruency interaction arises because phasic alertness facilitates processing of salient stimuli. In two experiments, I tested this assumption in different variants of the flanker task. In Experiment 1 (hybrid flanker-search task), participants searched for a target in a circular array, which was flanked by a neutral, a response-congruent, or a response-incongruent distractor. The distractor was always larger (more salient) than the target. In Experiment 2 (standard flanker task), participants responded to a central target, which was flanked by a response-congruent or response-incongruent distractor. The distractor was smaller (less salient), equal to, or larger (more salient) than the target. To manipulate phasic alertness in both experiments, I presented a sine tone before the array in half of the trials. In Experiment 1, I observed that phasic alertness increased the impact of the salient flanker on the response to the target, as indexed by longer RT and a larger congruency effect. In Experiment 2, I observed that phasic alertness either increased or decreased the impact of the flanker on the response to the target, depending on whether it was more or less salient than the target. These findings support the idea that phasic alertness facilitates processing of salient stimuli, which may then lead to an increase in response conflict.

Chronic cognitive dysfunctions are a major and debilitating problem in survivors of severe sepsis. While impairments in attention and executive functions have been reported repeatedly, a comprehensive deficit profile has not been established. Furthermore, the basic underlying mechanisms that are impaired in these patients and that lead to low performance in standard neuropsychological tasks are not identified. In the STARDUsT study patients of the Mid German Sepsis Cohort (MSC) are assessed with a normed neuropsychological standard battery, the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB), in order to retrieve a comprehensive cognitive deficit profile of sepsis survivors. Furthermore, the MSC patients are also assessed with experimental whole and partial report tasks based on the theory of visual attention (TVA), in order to quantify basic parameters of visual attention. The overall aim is to test whether changes in specific attentional parameters can explain the deficit profile shown by sepsis survivors in established clinical tasks. Relevant demographical and medical data, such as age, duration since sepsis, duration of delir and depression and anxiety scores will be taken into account in the analyses.

Acute stress is assumed to affect attentional and executive processing of stimulus information by narrowing the attentional focus and impairing attentional flexibility. The temporal flanker task, in which a target stimulus is preceded by congruent or incongruent distractors, allows investigating the deployment of attention to target and distractor stimulus information under conditions of varying utility of the distractor for response selection. Presenting a higher proportion of congruent trials usually results in a larger congruency effect (Proportion Congruent Effect, PCE). This effect is considered evidence for attentional adjustment to changing distractor-related contingencies. Consistent with this interpretation, previous studies observed enhanced distractor-evoked sensory potentials (i.e., posterior P1 and N1) in the EEG under conditions of a larger proportion of congruent trials. To investigate the effect of acute stress on such adjustment, we compared the PCE and related EEG measures after participation in the Trier Social Stress Test with a group of control participants with no stress induction (N = 34 for each group). Although behaviorally the PCE was not affected by the stress manipulation, electrophysiological measures suggested that stressed participants were impaired regarding the usage of distractor information for response preparation and the regulation of premature response activation. Moreover, stressed participants’ responses tended to be less accurate when the distractor-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) was long. Taken together our results do not support the notion of a stress-related deficit in attentional flexibility but hint at reduced action preparation and regulation under stress.

Spatial attention and awareness are both mechanisms involved in the selection and processing of visual stimuli. If—or under what circumstances—these mechanisms interact or work independently, has been a prominent research subject in recent years. We put this relationship to another test by conducting three experiments, where we combined bottom-up spatial attention with a manipulation of awareness. This was realized by object substitution masking (Exp. 1) and metacontrast masking (Exp. 2a and 2b). We found effects depending on the position of a color singleton among the masked stimuli in all three experiments. In line with bottom-up capture by salient color singletons, in Experiments 1 and 2a, we found enhanced performance if the target was a color singleton and impaired performance if a distractor was a color singleton (compared to a condition without singletons). To both replicate our findings and to ensure that attention was indeed captured by the singletons, we included a spatial cueing task as a second task besides target discrimination in each trial of Experiment 2b. The results were in line with the findings of Experiments 1 and 2a, and we additionally found validity effects depending on the position of the color singleton. The effects of the spatial attentional capture induced by the singleton manipulation were statistically independent from the level of awareness in all three experiments; these results provide new evidence that bottom-up attention and awareness are independent processes.

Studies on individual differences in multitasking revealed that people either adopt a serial or an overlapping processing mode when faced with multiple task demands. However, in line with the notion that multitasking causes costs, these studies seemed to indicate that none of the processing modes is beneficial in terms of higher dual-task performance compared to single-task performance. Here, we challenged this view by examining whether a facilitation of overlapping processing in terms of lowered task similarity improves the efficiency of this type of processing mode and consequently also increases its prevalence. For this purpose, individuals were tested with tasks differing in the degree to which they compete for the same versus different processing resources in the task-switching with preview paradigm (TSWP). In our ongoing data collection, we test n=48 participants and identify their preferred processing modes with the TSWP paradigm under two conditions of varying between-task resource competition. One condition comprised tasks that rely on spatial processing code only, whereas the other contained tasks reflecting a mixture of spatial and verbal processing code. So far, results do not indicate a significant adaption to the degree of resource competition in the individual processing modes. However, participants using an overlapping processing mode outperform those using a serial one. Moreover, individuals preferring an overlapping processing mode even achieve dual-tasking benefits relative to their single-task performance in the condition of low resource competition. These results highlight the importance of individual differences and task similarity when predicting multitasking performance.

When people consider an arbitrary number prior to generating a numeric estimate, their estimate is biased towards that number. This is called anchoring and has been called one of the most robust phenomena. However, the literature on anchoring is plagued by blatant contradictions, one of which is characterized by opposite statements regarding the question when subliminal anchors work. We are resolving this conflict by replicating both studies, using high-powered direct replications and pre-registration based on the ‘replication recipe’ (Brandt et al., 2014). Preliminary results indicate that anchoring effects via numeric priming do not occur even if the primes can be recognized.

Grounded Cognition approaches assume that modality-specific sensory-motor brain systems are substantially involved in conceptual processing. The significance of motor and auditory systems for the processing of word meaning has already been demonstrated for action- and sound- related nouns. The present study investigated the functional relevance of sensorimotor information for the processing of action- and sound-related verbs using a behavioral interference paradigm. Participants performed an explicit semantic context decision task, in which action-related verbs describing actions performed with the hands and sound-related verbs were presented with a semantically related context noun. During the semantic context decision task, participants performed a motor or an acoustic interference task, which included the execution of hand movements or the perception of sounds, respectively. We tested whether the simultaneous presentation of interfering motor or acoustic information specifically impairs the processing of action- or sound-related verbs. In the semantic context decision task, we found a specific impairment in the processing of less familiar sound-related verbs during the acoustic interference task. The motor interference task, however, did not incur processing costs for verbs of high action-related feature relevance. The results therefore indicate a functional relevance of the auditory system for less familiar verbs with high sound-related feature relevance, in which the semantic decision is presumably based on deep semantic processing and not on superficial verbal associations as in highly familiar verbs. The motor task might have been too easy to elicit interference effects for action verbs.

Different accounts in the literature propose that executed responses are bound together with the triggering stimulus in a memory trace or "event file". It is further proposed that whenever a feature is encountered that belongs to an event file, the other features are automatically retrieved. The overarching question of our study is whether binding is sensitive to task-relevant features only or whether task-irrelevant features are also bound into an event file. Our approach was to manipulate task-irrelevant contextual features in a task switching paradigm. In our studies, we had participants alternating between two tasks having two possible responses, while we orthogonally manipulated the task-irrelevant context. In two experiments (N= 32 each), context was differentially operationalized, in order to pinpoint the variables that affect integration of irrelevant features into event files. Specifically, context could either be an irrelevant feature of the cue, namely its colour, or a feature of the background, namely the colour of an empty frame surrounding cue and stimulus. We are interested in parsing how performance is affected by the three-way interaction between response switching, task switching and context switching. If context was bound in the event file, its repetition would retrieve actions and objects of the previous trial. We will discuss our results in terms of cognitive mechanisms in task switching and we will integrate them in an overarching framework of binding and retrieval in action control.

Changing automatized movement skills can be a particularly problematic process as proactive interference often impedes the change process. As a consequence, and often contrary to the actual purpose of the change intention, the performance level often initially decreases. Interestingly, individuals seem to vary quite largely with respect to their individual susceptibility to interference and experience the amount of performance decrements to a different extent. To scrutinize these interindividual differences, we confronted skilled touch-typists with a rule change which forced them to temporarily change their highly automatized motor skill. After typing a short text passage in the habitual manner, they were not allowed to use the left index finger which immediately disrupted their automatized motor behavior by inducing proactive interference (observable in highly increased typing times, errors and visual control). Regarding the interindividual differences, results revealed the amount of proactive interference to be positively correlated with age and baseline performance. Moreover, there was a trend towards less interference when the movement of the left index finger was physically restrained. Finally, prepotent response inhibition (a subdimension of inhibition) tended to predict the amount of proactive interference, whereas other executive functions (including working memory, cognitive flexibility and resistance to proactive interference) did not. These results not only provide first insights to explain individual interference susceptibility, but also suggest a particular relevance of response inhibition in overcoming proactive interference when aiming to change automatized motor skills.

Intact working memory not only means to retrieve items of a memory set, but also to remember in which episodic (spatial and temoral) context they have been presented. There is evidence that this context binding is specifically limited and that an increased rate of binding errors can be considered as a cognitive marker in early stages of dementia. Research on context binding focused primarily on the visual modality and the binding of a stimulus feature (e.g., color) to its spatial context (i.e., location). We here expand this research in two ways. First, we compare binding to a spatial context with binding to a temporal context. Second, we explore modality-specific aspects of binding by contrasting vision and audition. In a two-step delayed-reproduction task, participants were required to recognize a probe item as being part of the memory set (identity task) and, if so, to reproduce either the spatial or the temporal position (binding task). In the visual modality, a varying number of colored squares were presented either simultaneously at different locations or sequentially at the same location. In the auditory modality, either color names or tones were presented sequentially. Results showed the expected set-size effect for all conditions and tasks. For the visual modality, identity performance was unaffected by presentation context. Binding performance, however, was better for spatial than for temporal context. In the auditory modality, performance differed between materials. These results strengthen the necessity to investigate modality- and context-specific aspects of binding in working memory.

One of the most straightforward indications for the involvement of inhibitory processes in task switching are n – 2 repetition costs. In the present study, we used a modified task switching paradigm with three tasks and two kinds of cues. One type of cue consisted of a standard task cue indicating which task to perform in the upcoming trial, while in half of the trials, this cue was preceded by another cue (Pre-Cue) that reduced the set of candidate tasks from three to two. In the other half of trials, the Pre-Cue was non-informative. Results revealed a significant four-way interaction of Task Sequence and Pre-Cue in trials n, n – 1, and n – 2: n – 2 repetition costs were visible if the pre-cue was non-informative in all three trials of the sequence, while they were reduced to zero if the set of candidate tasks was reduced to two in at least one of the trials. This result is interpreted in terms of an establishment of antagonistic constraints among the two remaining tasks, thereby facilitating task set activation and reducing inhibition.

Recent research revealed significant improvements in mathematical problems after a mental rotation training (Cheng & Mix, 2014). Already in 1991, Dreyfuss highlighted the importance of imagery in mathematics and MCLean and Hitch (1999) were able to demonstrate the link between limited arithmetical skills and impaired visual working memory in children. Therefor, we implemented a training study to test the effect of improved visualization skills on mental arithmetic. 40 students were tested in simple and more complex addition and subtraction tasks at three different time points over a three months period. The subjects were divided into a training and a control group. The training group implemented an additional 10-minute every day visualization training between the tests, while the control group received no additional training. At all three points in time, participants were asked to solve visually presented one and two digit problems ranged from 1 to 20. In addition, in the second and third part, three digit problems had to be solved. These problems were presented in visual and auditory way. Dependent variables were the amount of correct responses and reaction times. Preliminary results reveal improved numbers of correct responses in the experimental group, especially in more complex auditory tasks. The easy operations show decreased reaction times between initial and final tests but also a strong ceiling effect due to the high degree of task simplicity.

Zielgerichtetes Handeln wird zum einen durch die Aktivierung handlungsleitender Repräsentationen, zum anderen durch die Hemmung irrelevanter Repräsentationen sichergestellt. Aktivierung und Hemmung stehen dabei in einem, an die aktuelle Situation angepassten Verhältnis. Neben situationalen Faktoren zeigt sich, dass Menschen Vorabinformationen über zu absolvierende Handlungen effektiv nutzen können, um die Balance zwischen Aktivierung und Hemmung zu optimieren. Gemeinhin werden diese Prozesse und ihr Zusammenspiel im Aufgabenwechselparadigma untersucht. In diesem Paradigma wechseln Teilnehmende zwischen zwei oder mehr einfachen Entscheidungsaufgaben basierend auf einem validen Hinweisreiz oder einer vorab instruierten Aufgabensequenz. Als Evidenz für Aktivierungs- und Hemmprozesse werden Differenzen in Reaktionszeiten und Fehlerraten analysiert. In unserer Studie gingen wir der Frage nach, wie sich musikalische Expertise bei den gleichen situationalen Charakteristiken (z.B. Aufgabenwiederholungshäufigkeit) auf die Leistung bei einfachen Klassifikationsaufgaben auswirkt. Die zu bearbeitende Aufgabensequenz musste vorab gelernt und dann aus dem Gedächtnis abgerufen werden. Musikalische Expertise wurde mit der Skala „Musikalische Ausbildung“ des Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Müllensiefen, Gingras, Musil, & Stewart, 2014) erhoben. Aktuelle Forschung (Slama, Rebillon, & Kolinsky, 2017) konnte zeigen, dass musikalische Expertise einen positiven Einfluss auf kognitive Flexibilität, gemessen in einem Paradigma, bei dem Teilnehmende zwischen Notierungen (Violin- und Bassschlüssel) wechseln mussten, hat. Allerdings ist offen, ob dieser Effekt auch über musikspezifisches Material hinaus Bestand hat. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen keinen Vorteil musikalischer Expertise in Maßen der kognitiven Flexibilität.

When emotional faces (EF) are presented with sentences spoken in the congruent emotional prosody (EP), identification of facial emotions is quicker and more accurate (Massaro & Egan, 1996; de Gelder & Vroomen, 2000). This automatic ‘bimodal integration effect’ for congruent emotional stimuli is well-documented, but effects on subsequent recall of spoken content have not been empirically addressed. Interestingly, the language processing literature provides a contrasting view: Semantic deviations (i.e. stimuli that violate one’s expectations) are difficult to integrate, and lead to automatic greater semantic processing (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980). Therefore, there are grounds to expect greater processing, and in turn greater recall, under incongruent conditions. Our study explores whether subsequent retention for semantic content differs between congruent and incongruent bimodal trials, for different emotions. Methods: Within-subject fully-crossed design, manipulating EF (angry, neutral, happy) and EP (angry, neutral, happy). DVs included measures of emotion perception (accuracy, reaction time) and subsequent recall (for sentences and faces). 2-way repeated-measures ANOVA [Emotion (angry, neutral, happy) x Congruency (congruent, incongruent)] was administered. Pilot results (N=37) revealed no main effects, but a significant interaction, (F(2,72)=4.176, p=.019, ηp2=.10): Incongruent-happy trials yielded significantly greater semantic recall rates (M=.78, SE=.03) than congruent-happy trials (M=.58, SE=.06, p=.001), whereas non-significant differences were observed for angry and neutral trials. Results may reflect prioritized processing of contextual semantic information during incongruent trials in light of conflicting information (Ding et al., 2014). This contributes to understanding the interaction between emotionality and contextual congruency on semantic processing.

Previous research has demonstrated that emotions, which are induced prior to a visual working memory (VWM) task, can influence VWM performance. However, up to date there is a striking lack of research on whether the task itself induces emotional experiences, and whether they impact VWM performance. In our registered report we argue that the VWM task can be considered an achievement situation (success vs. failure being very salient), therefore leading to participants naturally experiencing achievement emotions (AE) including joy, pride, anger, and shame. Specifically, we hypothesize (1) that these AE correlate with individual differences in VWM performance, that this link is (2) mediated by subjective task performance (STP; i.e. how well or how poorly participants think they are doing) and (3) moderated by performance goal orientation. Further, we believe (4) that task difficulty and performance goal orientation interact in predicting VWM, STP and AE. N = 100 participants will be recruited to perform the continuous color wheel task, a common paradigm used to measure VWM. The task shall be comprised of two blocks each consisting of 240 trials, which include arrays of either four (easy) or eight (difficult) colored squares. Participants’ AE and STP will be obtained by self-report once after each block. Additionally, during one block, AE and STP will be measured ‘in situ’ after every 30 trials. We expect that our findings will highlight the relevance of AE as a potentially confounding variable for interpreting an individual’s VWM ability.

There is evidence that processing of affective content in the native language differs from a foreign language (e.g., Caldwell-Harris, 2014; Bowers & Pleydell-Pearce, 2011; Vives, Aparaci & Costa , 2018). These findings are typically observed for higher-level cognitive tasks such as decision-making. In the current study we investigated whether this phenomenon could extend to lower-level perceptual processes. Native Germans with solid background in English were requested to perform a 2AFCtask on words that were presented either below or above a fixation point. Stimuli consisted of five neutral and five swearwords, each in German (L1) and English (L2). The spatial task was to indicate whether the target occurred above or below fixation, the semantic task was to decide whether the target was a neutral or a swearword. In 50% of the trials, the spatial location of the target was cued 100ms prior to target onset. Reaction times revealed an advantage of L1 over L2 in the sematic but not in the spatial task. Moreover, in the semantic task, cuing accelerated reaction time to neutral words but not to swearwords. However, this cuing-effect did not vary with language. In the spatial task, cuing accelerated reaction time to all types of stimuli. Pupillometric data showed an overall effect of cuing in the semantic task, with greater dilations with cues. The data suggest that our paradigm does not capture any automatic language-dependent processing of affective content. Rather, language proficiency and valence affect performance depending on the task.

Fear generalization refers to the spread of fear to novel stimuli. In contrast, generalization of extinction refers to the spread of extinction learning to other novel stimuli. Past studies found that presenting a generalization stimulus (a novel stimulus similar to a fear-related stimulus; GS) in fear extinction could not effectively extinguish fear to the original fear-related stimulus (CS+) or to other novel stimuli. That is, extinction learning to a GS could not effectively generalize to the CS+ or to other novel GSs. However, recent findings from our lab found that individuals may utilize different rules to guide their generalization process, which resulted in qualitatively different generalization gradients. In other words, the rule served as the basis of an individual's threat belief, which subsequently affected one's generalization of fear. In the present study, we utilized this rule-based generalization framework and examined whether rule-based generalization affects the extent of generalization of extinction. Participants first underwent a differential conditioning procedure, followed by a generalization test. A GS was then presented in extinction, followed by a re-test of fear generalization. We hypothesized that different rules formed during generalization would result in different threat belief towards the extinction GS, which subsequently lead to different extent of generalization of extinction gradients. Preliminary results will be discussed.

A flexible adaptation of one's affective experience to a changing environment is central to the psychosocial functioning of an individual. Although several studies have examined affective flexibility in young adulthood, it is largely unclear to what extent older adults are able to flexibly adapt their affective experience to different situations. Taking into account older adults’ strengths such as accumulated life experience and motivation to regulate emotions, we expected that older adults should be more affectively flexible than younger adults. To investigate age difference in the flexible adjustment of affective experience to situational changes, a series of pictorial stimuli differing in valence was presented to 30 younger (Mage = 25) and 29 older adults (Mage = 68). On the basis of each participant’s series of affect ratings for the picture stimuli, we computed measures of affective stability and change. Specifically, the autocorrelation between successive affect ratings was used as a measure of affective inertia, indicating to what extent affective reactions for one stimulus transferred to the subsequently presented stimulus. Furthermore, the frequency and extent of change in affect was quantified by computing the average value of squared changes in affect between successive trials for each participant. We did not find age difference in affective inertia or affective change, with Bayesian analyses providing moderate support for the null hypothesis. Implications for current theoretical work in the realm of emotional aging will be discussed.

The experience of grief, as a reaction to loss, acts as a postgoal emotion that is typically accompanied by a depletion of behavioral vigor, with the aim to preserve an organisms’ resources instead of mobilizing them for immediate action. This process should be reflected in a decreased psychophysiological activity. However, as opposed to emotions high in arousal, like lust or fear, experimental and biological psychological research has mostly neglected the topic of psychophysiological correlates of postgoal emotions. This study aimed to overcome this gap by employing a three factorial within-subject design. We presented 42 participants with three sets of visual stimuli, consisting firstly of projective iconographic pictures depicting grief scenarios, secondly of pictures from the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System, and lastly, as a control measure, neutral pictures, displaying ambiguous line art with no discernable shapes. These sets and the stimuli within each set were presented in a randomized order. Data on participants’ heart rate variability were collected throughout the experiment, acting as a measure for their psychophysiological arousal. This study therefore contributes to our understanding of the effects of emotions on the functional level of our cognition.

There are contradictory findings about the prioritizing of threatening objects in tasks that use multiple stimuli competing for attentional resources. Theories of attention suggest that orientation is the result of goal-driven and stimulus-driven perception. The stimulus-driven bottom-up and goal-driven top-down neural mechanisms interact, biasing this competition. This bias can be modulated by different stimulus attributes, like affective valence. The signal suppression hypothesis of controlled attention capture claims that the signal of a salient stimulus can be suppressed by top-down control before the bottom-up processing could start. That is, the top-down control actively suppresses the stimulus-driven processing in favor of the goal-driven processing for better performance. In the present study, participants had to find an exemplar of a neural category (eg. butterflies or locks, ie. target) among several other neutral objects of different category. In half of the tasks, there was either a threatening object (snake or gun) or a non-threatening but visually similar object (hairdryer or worm) in different distances to the target. Our findings suggest that bottom-up mechanisms can be suppressed by top-down mechanism for better task-performance and the prioritizing of threatening stimulus can somewhat be repressed.

Semantic context effects in picture naming tasks have been important in devising and evaluating models of word production. By now, there is strong evidence that semantic-categorically related distractor words slow the naming response more strongly than unrelated distractor words (e.g., “dog” vs. “bell”, when the target picture shows a horse; picture-word interference task). In contrast, the literature suggests that, in the absence of additional specific features of the experimental procedure, this does not hold for distractor pictures (picture-picture interference task) and the seeming absence of a corresponding effect has been important in the theoretical debate. Over the years, we have been collecting data with the picture-picture interference task in various contexts, with different item sets and a large number of participants, partly as control experiments in which we did not expected semantic effects. However, these experiments revealed semantic interference from distractor pictures in a highly consistent way and we present this body of evidence here. Our experiments differed on a number of variables (e.g., spatial arrangement, visual similarity, stimulus realism of target and distractor, response set membership of the distractor), but neither of these factors appears sufficient to explain the emergence of semantic interference. These results are therefore in contrast to previous picture-picture interference studies which did not find reliable semantic interference. It is as yet not clear how to account for this discrepancy. However, our data suggest that the generality of semantic interference from distractor stimuli should be appreciated when evaluating word production models.

Cumulative semantic interference (CSI) refers to a linear increase of naming latencies for pictures from the same semantic category (Howard et al., 2006). When naming pictures with a task partner, CSI can also be elicited by the partner’s naming (Kuhlen & Abdel Rahman, 2017; Hoedemaker et al., 2017). To what extent partner-elicited CSI is driven by lexical access on behalf of the partner (i.e. simulation) or by processing the partner’s naming response remains unclear. In the present study, we assess event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a joint picture naming setting. Participants name five members of different semantic categories, with an additional five members being named by either the partner (Joint Naming condition) or nobody (Single Naming condition). Electrophysiological correlates of CSI and lexical access that have been identified in single-speaker settings (e.g. Costa et al., 2009; Rose & Abdel Rahman, 2017) are taken in the present study as indexes of partner-elicited CSI that are employed to assess the relative contributions of simulation and processing of the partner’s response. Naming latencies and ERPs should reveal stronger CSI effects in the Joint compared to the Single Naming condition, reflecting partner-elicited interference. Additionally, participant’s ERPs when their partners are naming pictures should reveal evidence of lexical access before the partner’s speech onset, indicating simulated lexical access. We also perform exploratory analyses on the ERPs time-locked to the partner’s speech onset to investigate the potential influences of processing the partner’s naming response.

The literature on the simulation view suggests that language comprehension activates traces of related motor experience. In the reading-by-rotating paradigm (Zwaan & Taylor, 2006), participants read sentences on a frame-by-frame basis, by rotating a knob either clockwise or counterclockwise (e.g. He/turned down/the/volume). RTs were shorter when the described actions involved a direction of rotation matching the required direction of rotation of the knob (match advantage). However, a study by Claus (2015) with sentences describing two characters opening or closing containers with screw lids (e.g. bottles) produced the opposite result pattern (mismatch advantage). There are two main differences between these studies that might be responsible for the opposite results: different knob device and different number of characters. We ran an experiment with the knob device employed by Claus but changed the sentences to describe only one character. We did not find a significant difference between the match and the mismatch conditions. Interestingly, we observed differences between two groups of participants: those who typically use their right hand on the lid when opening/closing bottles showed a significant match advantage, whereas those with the left hand on the lid showed a significant mismatch advantage. We could replicate these results in an additional experiment with a slightly different task. The findings of our experiments indicate that neither the number of characters nor the device is a decisive factor. Rather, they suggest that readers re-activate their individual motor experiences while reading, providing support for a simulation view of language comprehension.

It is well established that visuospatial working memory is disrupted by a visual distractor (Stigchel et al., 2007). Data suggest that the impact is due to interconnections between visuospatial working memory and attention. Another line of research claims that location-associated words (e.g., 'sun' - up vs. 'grass' - down) orient attention reflexively to towards the corresponding location (Dudschig et al., 2012), possibly evoking perceptual simulations at that location (Estes et al., 2008). Hence, the sensory-motor system treats these words similar to an actual object in space. The current research is aimed at examining whether task-irrelevant word meaning would affect visuospatial working memory processes, specifically the recognition of a visual location. In a series of three experiments, participants memorized a dot, and in a recognition test, decided whether another dot was in the same position as the previous dot or not. The word as a distractor appeared during a retention interval, being presented visually in the center of the screen (1st, 2nd experiments), or auditorily (3rd experiment). The stimuli were directional words (‘up’ and ‘down’, 1st experiment) or location-associated words (2nd and 3rd experiments). We did not observe stable word effects across experiments. Irrelevant word meaning influenced visuospatial memory only in the second experiment in which the words were not presented multiple times, and only in conditions in which the physical location of the word matched the typical location of its referent. We will discuss the implications of these results for theories of attention and visual working memory.

Socio-cognitive theories of the own-race bias (ORB) propose that reduced recognition of other-race faces results from the failure to attend to individuating information in these faces during encoding. In support of this suggestion, individuating instructions that explicitly inform participants about the ORB and instruct them to pay close attention to other-race faces during learning can attenuate or even eliminate the ORB. In the present experiment, we investigated the effect of individuating instructions and encoding-related event-related potentials (ERPs) that contrast neural activity related to subsequently remembered and forgotten items (ERP Dm effects). In line with a socio-cognitive account, individuating instructions reduced the ORB in recognition memory, suggesting that increased attention to other-race faces can improve recognition. At the same time, individuating instructions increased ERP Dm effects for other-race faces, indicating that successful learning may require additional effort. Therefore, the present results suggest that although instructions to individuate can improve other-race face recognition, additional effort is needed to reduce difficulties resulting from a lack of perceptual expertise. This indicates that compensating for reduced experience with other-race faces is possible to some extent but requires additional resources.

Successful source memory retrieval is thought to rely on preretrieval processes including retrieval orientations (ROs), i.e. the specialized processing of retrieval cues depending on the type of searched-for information in memory. Contrasting event-related potentials (ERPs) on correctly rejected items (CRs) across retrieval tasks typically reveals slow-wave activity with task-specific timing, polarity and topography. However, the circumstances under which the adoption of ROs (as indicated by ERP slow waves) is beneficial for memory performance are not yet clear. One reason for heterogeneous results might be the induction of ROs by the use of memory exclusion tasks, in which participants are required to detect items of one target type (e.g. studied with a color) and reject items of another (nontarget) type (e.g. studied with a function) together with new items. This task enables the selective use of nontarget retrieval, probably reducing differences between retrieval tasks and thus RO. To overcome this limitation, the present research compared two types of source information (i.e. color or social group membership) and participants had to remember details within each source type, thus enforcing the retrieval of target information. Consistent with previous research, a positive frontal ERP component (600 - 800ms post-stimulus) differentiated between CRs in the group task and the color task. Moreover, this RO ERP effect was associated with better source memory performance. These results provide evidence for the beneficial effect of ROs on source memory performance, an effect that might be covered in memory exclusion task due to nontarget retrieval.

In the present study, we investigated behavioral aftereffects of ignoring task-irrelevant speech. Specifically, we were interested in whether participants’ subjective truth ratings would be higher for previously ignored statements than for new statements. To this end, participants performed a visual-verbal serial recall task either in silence or while task-irrelevant statements were presented over headphones. The truth status of these statements had been unknown to most participants in a pretest (e.g., “Singapore is the country with the highest population density.”). After the serial recall task, participants rated the truth of previously ignored and new statements. Previously ignored statements obtained significantly higher subjective truth ratings than new statements, suggesting that ignoring task-irrelevant speech can have profound effects on subsequent behavior.

The ubiquitous access to modern technological tools such as tablets allows the temporal externalization of working memory processes (i.e. cognitive offloading). Whereas using technological tools to offload cognitive processes improves immediate performance on different tasks, little is known about potential long-term consequences of offloading behavior. In the current set of experiments, we asked our participants to first solve a pattern copy task that allows for cognitive offloading and then to complete a subsequent memory test. In Experiment 1 (N=172), we observed a trade-off between immediate and subsequent consequences of offloading behavior. Decreasing costs for cognitive offloading resulted in more offloading and more efficient immediate task performance; however, this came along with less accurate performance in the (unexpected) memory test. In Experiment 2 (N=172), we observed less offloading accompanied by more accurate subsequent memory performance when the participants were aware of the upcoming memory test than when they were not aware of the memory test. In Experiment 3 (N=172), we replicated the detrimental effect of cognitive offloading on subsequent memory performance. Participants who were forced to maximally offload showed a reduced memory accuracy when they were not aware of the memory test. Interestingly, however, the participants were (at least partially) able to compensate the detrimental effects of offloading when they were aware of the memory test. Summarized, our experiments therefore suggest that offloading without the explicit intention to form memory representations diminishes memory performance. Nonetheless, such explicit memory intentions can help to evade the negative consequences of cognitive offloading.

Words that are rated in terms of their relevance for a hypothetical survival scenario tend to be remembered better than words processed in a scenario unrelated to survival. While evolutionary psychology considers this a clear example of adaptive memory, there is an ongoing debate about potential mechanisms that enable the positive effect survival processing has on memory. Recent research could not consistently identify whether the effect diminishes in conditions of high cognitive load. In further attempts to investigate the nature of resource dependency, we conducted three experiments, varying both the scenario in which words were processed (survival vs. non-survival) and the time each word was presented during encoding (5 seconds vs. 2 seconds). Assuming survival processing to be resource dependent, we predicted the reduction or even the disappearance of the survival processing benefit in the conditions with reduced presentation time. However, there was no consistent evidence for or against resource dependency across the experiments. We suggest and discuss further, more in-depth research concerning the influence of encoding time on the amount of the effect.

Immediate serial recall of visually presented verbal items is impaired by task-irrelevant background speech. ‎According to the “changing-state”-account of this “irrelevant speech effect” (ISE), pre-attentive, ‎obligatory processing of changing sound elements in a coherent speech stream results in cues to serial ‎order, which then interfere with the deliberate rehearsal of the serial order of the list items. In the current ‎experiment, we analyse whether the ISE is attenuated when the coherence of the irrelevant speech stream ‎is reduced by different talkers. In part 2 of the experiment, we assess the talker variability effect in serial ‎recall performance for spoken items, which has also been attributed to auditory streaming. We expect a ‎significant correlation between talker variability effects in both paradigms, resulting from individual ‎differences in pre-attentive auditory streaming. Results and implications for theoretical accounts of the ISE ‎and the talker variability effect in serial recall are discussed.‎

Our mind uses priors based on past experiences to predict outcomes and events in reality, thus enabling us to efficiently interact with our environment. Since the requirements of our environment are often changing, priors need to be constantly updated in order to meet new demands. One factor that can enhance these updating processes is prediction error (i.e., the difference between the predicted information and the actual evidence received). The strength of this errors reflects the amount of novel information that was not part of our mental representations of the world before the evidence was encountered. The present study measured the effects of three different levels of prediction error (high, medium and low) on memory performance. In four different phases we separately manipulated the establishment of the priors, the prediction verification as well as the immediate and delayed memory consequences. We were able to measure a significant effect of prediction error on memory performance: the effect of high prediction error exceeds the effect of low prediction error in the delayed memory test (i.e., after consolidation). Unexpectedly, we also measured an marked improvement in memory performance for medium prediction error. These results support the idea that predictive processing has a long-term influence on memory.

Retrieval practice has been shown to enhance the acquisition of new information in future learning opportunities by reducing proactive interference from prior lists. While prior work examined this forward effect of testing (FET) mainly with younger adults, there is almost no evidence of this mnemonic benefit in middle and old adulthood (but see Pastötter & Bäuml, 2019). To examine the FET as a function of age and to investigate semantic activation as a potential operating mechanism of the FET, we let 216 older subjects (30–69 years) study three lists of words in expectation to freely remember them in a final cumulative recall test; in between lists, they either recalled the items of each list (retrieval-practice group), studied them again (restudy group), or semantically judged them (judgement-practice group). After having studied all lists, subjects needed only to recall the last List 3. The results revealed a FET in both middle-aged and older subjects, with the retrieval-practice group recalling more list items and producing fewer intrusions than the restudy group. Critically, the judgement-practice group recalled less than the retrieval-practice group and did not reliably produce more intrusions. Together, these findings highlight retrieval practice as an education tool to reduce age-related memory decrements though they did not provide support for semantic activation as a key operating mechanism.

Online experiments have become a popular way of collection data in social sciences. However, high technical hurdles in setting up a server prevent a researcher from starting an online study. On the other hand, proprietary software restricts the researcher’s freedom to customize or share the code. We present Open Lab – the server-side application that makes online data collection simple and flexible. Available online at https://open-lab.online, the application offers a fast, secure and transparent way to deploy the study. It takes care of uploading experiment scripts, changing test parameters, managing the participants’ database and aggregating the study results. Open Lab is integrated with the lab.js experiment builder (https://lab.js.org/), which enables the creation of new studies from scratch or the use of templates. The lab.js study can be directly uploaded to Open Lab and is ready to run. Integration with the Open Science Framework allows researchers to automatically store the collected data in an OSF project. At the conference, we will present the main features of the web application together with results of empirical studies conducted with Open Lab.

The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) allows the investigation of phenomena in a naturalistic setting and in great temporal detail. However, participants can feel burdened by the requirement of frequent inputs, resulting in lower compliance and data quality. If participants’ smartphones are employed, as is common in modern ESM research, part of this burden is the overhead of retrieving, readying, and putting away the device. When the number of bings or events is high, this overhead might seem disproportionally large. This is especially problematic when participants are responsible for logging the data on their own, such as in event-based scheduling. To solve this problem, we promote the use of wrist-worn one-button wearables. Simple devices like these offer benefits like substantially reducing this overhead. They also offer certain benefits over alternative approaches, like smartwatches, as they can be operated without looking at the devices screen, and need less maintenance like charging the battery. We test these benefits in an ongoing study. Participants are asked to log laughter events throughout a four-week period, using either a wearable or a smartphone. First, preliminary results show a significantly higher number of logged events in the wearable group, which indicates an improvement in data quality over the smartphone group. We further discuss the possibilities and limitations of this approach.

Given the complex nature of scientific publishing, it is of great interest to assess what proportion of significant results is false positive. Analysis of the distribution of published p-values is one way of estimating that proportion. However, this analysis is surrounded by uncertainty in what model best describes the data, and the results from different models can lead to different conclusions (Gronau, Duizer, Bakker & Wagenmakers, 2017; Schimmack & Brunner, 2019). Instead of choosing a single best fitting model to obtain the estimate of interest, we propose Bayesian model averaging (BMA) as an “in between” solution, in which estimates of different models get weighed proportionally to their posterior probability. In addition to already proposed models, we develop and validate new models to apply this method to 587 significant p values published in the 2007 volumes of Psychonomic Bulletin & Review and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

Smartphones and wearables generate a plethora of data and thus provide rich insights into the lives of their owners. However, in psychology and other human behavioral fields data is still collected by using conventional methods such as surveys and focus groups, which is not only more cost-intensive and time-consuming, but also prone to errors. In addition, these methods usually generate coarse, less granular insights based on one-off snapshots with considerable bias. In 2014, we have developed a framework for data collection via smartphones – the Menthal project. Menthal is a unique scientific study of the behavior of more than 700.000 smartphone users that has been running since 2014 at the University of Bonn. The Menthal app - which has been developed by computer scientists and psychologists - tracks phone usage, computes in-depth analysis, and provides feedback to the user. With Murmuras, a spin-off from Menthal, this constantly evolving technology is now available for other scientific institutions. Researchers can independently record the behavior of participants via a smartphone app and wearables (e.g. time on the phone, app usage, steps per day). The data can then be evaluated, analyzed and correlated via a web platform. Our framework is GDPR compliant and the data of the participants will only be used for agreed study purposes. All servers are adequately secured and hosted in Germany. By providing this framework, we hope to improve the speed, quality and quantity of data collection in all fields of social sciences – especially in psychology.

Online surveys have become an extremely popular and widely used mode of data collection. However, despite the key goal of obtaining valid information, they are susceptible to multiple sources of measurement error that may lead to decreased data quality and, as a consequence, to biased estimates and invalid conclusions. One important source of measurement error are response difficulties which, therefore, need to be detected and prevented. Response difficulties may stem from different sources, such as complex formulations in task instructions or indecision between response options. However, none of the existing indicators that are systematically related to overall response difficulty (such as total response time) enable a differentiation between these different sources. The goal of the present study was to enable such a differentiation by tracking participants’ cursor movements while they fill out an online survey. Specifically, we hypothesized that different mouse movement patterns should be related to specific properties of survey questions that may each increase response difficulty. In a preregistered online experiment, we manipulated the properties question length, complexity and difficulty and hypothesized that they should lead to increased response times, hovers (mouse movement pauses) and y-flips (regressive movements along the vertical axis of the screen), respectively. As expected, each manipulation led to an increase in the corresponding measure. However, contrary to our hypotheses, the manipulations affected the other indices as well. Nevertheless, the strength of the effects differed between indices and manipulations, indicating that some measures might indeed be more affected by certain question properties than others.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between the home numeracy environment (HNE) and the mathematical skills of kindergarten children. In this study, 140 kindergarten children and their parents were recruited from kindergartens in Bavaria, Germany. Children were 39 to 88 months old (M = 61.51) and 66 were girls. The assessments took place in the kindergarten and children were assessed in their non-verbal intelligence, numeracy and literacy competencies. Parents completed a questionnaire about the HNE, which also included a title-recognition-test of math games. The results indicate that the HNE is related to the numeracy competence of children, but not significantly. In addition, the title-recognition-test predicted the children’s mathematical competencies. Whereas mathematical competencies did not differ significantly between children with or without a migration background, children from families with a high socioeconomic status showed greater competencies. Our findings have implications for future research on the association of the HNE with mathematical competencies of kindergarten children.

To this date, self-reports are the gold standard for pain assessment in medical settings. However, self-report, is not a viable option for everyone (e.g. children or speech-impaired patient groups), as only insufficient insights into the person’s everyday condition outside of treatment sessions are obtainable. Our aim is to support practitioners during their treatments and to enable continuous monitoring of the therapy progress in a telemedical setting. The objective of this study is to develop and design a measuring environment to objectively and automatically assess and classify different levels of pain. To this end, video-recordings of participants are produced during the intermitted administration of varying levels of pain stimuli in a laboratory setting. Using a video-based approach we extracted micro-expressions and head-movement indicators in a sample of N = 50 participants exposed to five pre-defined heat pain stimuli, administered by means of a Peltier-based contact thermode. In addition to independent observer ratings, continuous self-ratings of perceived pain-levels are captured using a slider-based monitoring system operated by the participants. Subsequently, the inference of pain intensity is based on a multidimensional feature vector, representing a combination of parameters extracted from various measured modalities, expressional features and state of the art classification algorithms. This video-based approach can prospectively be integrated into a multimodal platform for automatic and unobtrusive pain detection which can be utilised in physiotherapy and other medical contexts to enhance treatment success.

In research on decision making, experiments are often analysed in terms of decision strategies. These decision strategies define both which information is used as well as how it is used. However, often it is desirable to identify the used information without any further assumptions about how it is used. We provide a mathematical framework that allows analyzing which information is used by identifying consistent patterns on the choice probabilities. This framework makes it possible to generate the most general model consistent with an information usage hypothesis and then to test this model against others. We test our approach in a recovery simulation to show that the used information may be reliably identified (AUC> .90). In addition, to further verify the correctness we compare our approach with other approaches based on strategy fitting to show that both produce similar results.

The present study investigated whether the integration of separate parts into a whole-object representation requires attention to be allocated at the location of an object. To this end, an experiment was performed that required observers to maintain central fixation (which was controlled via eye tracking) while localizing a target configuration at varying eccentricities in peripheral vision among various distractor configurations. The target could either be a “grouped” whole-object Kanizsa figure, or an “ungrouped” configuration of identical figural parts, but which do not support object completion processes to the same extent. The results revealed that localization accuracy improved substantially for grouped targets as the target was presented closer to fixation (with target eccentricities ranging from 15° to 5°). By contrast, for the ungrouped target, accuracies were relatively low without any eccentricity-dependent variation. Moreover, an analysis of the pupillary dilation showed that for grouped targets, the pupil size was larger for more distant positions than for more proximal ones, while it remained constant, revealing a comparably large diameter for ungrouped targets. Pupil size can be considered to reflect the covert allocation of attention in the periphery. Our findings therefore indicate that the attentional demands required to integrate a given target object scale with the eccentricity-dependent increase in difficulty to process that item. This in turn shows that perceptual grouping requires attention to render a complete-object representation.

By use of the response priming paradigm with moving primes, the interaction of perceived and one’s own motion can be investigated. In response priming, motor pre-activations from a first event (i.e., the prime) to the response to a second event (i.e., the target) can be measured. Typically, two conditions are of interest: prime and target call for the same response (i.e., they are compatible) or prime and target call for different responses (i.e., they are incompatible). When using moving primes and static arrow targets, the results strongly depend on the stimulus onset asynchrony between prime and target: with short SOAs (up to 200 ms), there were faster responses to compatible than incompatible targets, with longer SOAs (above 300 ms), a reversed effect occurs. However, this reversal was not found with more biological motions (e.g., point light walkers). In the current study, subjects now performed a response priming task with moving prime stimuli while in motion themselves. Across 3 experiments, we used two different own motions (walking on a treadmill; rotating in a human gyroscope) and two different perceived stimulus types (rows-of-dots moving vs. static; point light displays with more or less biological motions). Compatibility effects depended on the stimulus type, the velocity of one’s own motion, and several interactions of perceived and own motion. We discuss our findings with respect to previous findings as well as theories on response priming and perception-motion interaction.

To navigate in our environment and accomplish complex tasks like driving a car or operating machinery, we have to constantly integrate information from different modalities - most of the time using limited attentional resources due to high cognitive load. Recently it could be shown that cognitive load affects multisensory integration and thus how we perceive our surroundings (Michail & Keil, 2019, Scientific Reports). But does this effect hold for more natural, uncontrolled testing situations? To answer this question, and to replicate and extend previous findings, we examined the effect of limited cognitive resources on multisensory integration with the same participants in the lab and outside the lab in an online experiment. This way, it was possible to test the robustness of the effect in an uncontrolled, natural environment in comparison with a controlled lab environment. Multisensory integration was assessed using the sound-induced flash illusion, in which a pair of short auditory beeps presented simultaneously with a short visual flash can induce the illusory perception of two flashes. Cognitive load was gradually increased using an orthogonal n-back task (0-back, 1-back, and 2-back). The testing situation was compared between lab and online condition. We hypothesized that - independent of the testing situation - illusion perception increases with increasing cognitive load. Our data show that the influence of cognitive load on multisensory integration is robust, even in an uncontrolled setting outside the laboratory.

Research and research communication on climate change seems to be a domain where data visualization is especially prominent. In the present studies, we are exploring the effect of different forms of data visualization on subjective assessments of data content and evaluation of trends. Seemingly arbitrary design choices might influence emotional and cognitive processing. In Study 1, we follow up on recent work suggesting that edgy shapes are associated with negative valence. Accordingly, we have participants evaluate graphs showing climate change data while varying whether data points are marked by triangles or other shapes. We expect that participants will rate the climate data presented with triangles as more threatening. Study 2 explores the impact of the form of data presentation (graphs versus tables) on the evaluation of trends in climate data. Past studies indicate that data comprehension is better in graphs, compared to tables. However, it remains unclear whether the advantage of graphs occurs at the expanse of subjective certainty with which the data trend is assessed. We expect that this advantage will enlarge even more in labelled graphs compared to a baseline group evaluating the same graphs without labelling. Both studies are conducted as online-experiments as part of research-oriented teaching with data collection finishing in December 2019.

Past research has shown that vertical perspective can affect distance perception. Higher vantage points lead to underestimation as compared to lower vantage points. In previous studies, we replicated this effect for conditions with static and restricted field-of-view. However, we used metric judgements to measure perceived distance, which can vary strongly for large distances. Our goal was to replicate our results with a more robust, indirect measure of distance. In two experiments, 48 participants compared the distance of a comparison object to the distance of the same object in a standard stimulus in a two-interval, two-alternative forced-choice paradigm. Each stimulus depicted a vehicle placed on a straight road. In the comparison, the vehicle was placed closer or farther away than the standard vehicle. The egocentric distance of the standard vehicle (16, 32, 48 m) and the vertical perspective in the comparison stimulus (standard, high, low) changed from trial to trial. Data were analyzed by calculating the point of subjective equality and difference limen (DL) for each condition. In Experiment 1, the standard always preceded the comparison. We found distance underestimation for high, but no effect for low perspective. In Experiment 2, both stimuli were presented simultaneously. This time, the expected effects surfaced for both perspectives. The DL did not differ between high and low perspective in either experiment. In sum, the effect of perspective shift on distance estimation seems to be a robust perceptual phenomenon, which should be accounted for, especially in indirect and restricted vision.

466 million people(WHO, 2019) suffer from disabling hearing loss. Although cochlear implants(CIs) are successful sensory prostheses to treat profound sensorineural hearing loss, they only permit a rudimentary form of hearing compared to normal hearers(NHs), with speech comprehension achieved by perceptual learning of sensory signals via cortical plasticity. Actually, there is some evidence for enhanced crossmodal face-voice processing in CI users, which seems to reflect genuine cortical reorganization. However, cortical plasticity in CI users has not been studied for the processing of emotional signals, although the ability to perceive emotions was previously found to be related to CI users’ perceived quality of life. To systematically investigate the role of multisensory information for CI users’ perception of vocal emotions, we produced high-quality videos depicting speaking faces: Using emotion induction rather than posed expressions, we recorded 12 speakers(6 females) speaking different pseudowords with different emotional expressions(angry, disgusted, fearful, happy, neutral, sad, surprised). We used temporal morphing technology to create precisely synchronized audiovisual stimuli with congruent or incongruent audiovisual expressions. We report initial data from 4 CI users and 22 NHs who rated these stimuli in an auditory-only, a visual-only, and a congruent audio-visual condition. While CI users and NHs were least likely to correctly classify auditory-only stimuli, CI users performed above chance but poorer than NHs in recognizing vocal emotions. Since they performed best at recognizing surprise and anger in voices only, we plan to use these emotions to further investigate multimodal emotion perception in CI users.

An event consisting of a disk that moves straight towards another stationary disk, then stops whereas the second continues the former’s motion in the same direction and speed is typically perceived as a causal launch—the vivid impression that the first disk physically caused the movement of the second disc. In the present study, we investigated the role of uncertainty in disk location for perceiving causality. In the experiment, we manipulated the overlap (in nine discrete steps) of the two disks at the point in time when the first disk stopped and second disk started to move. Moreover, we manipulated sensory uncertainty by increasing the retinal eccentricity of the event (either 0, 4, 8, or 12 degrees of visual angle). Both increasing overlap and eccentricity significantly decreased the proportion of perceived launching events. We compared a Bayesian model to several models that were based on parameters for the precision of the estimated disk location and a discrimination threshold (between a causal and non-causal percept). A heuristic model assuming a linear change of the precision parameter and the discrimination threshold with increasing eccentricity accounted best for the observed reports in our psychophysical task. In summary, increasing sensory uncertainty decreased the precision of position estimates at the time of contact. In addition, as uncertainty increased, observers accepted less overlap when reporting a launch. This heuristic outperformed a Bayesian model, suggesting the use of sub-optimal decision strategies in the perception of causality.

The authors tested a new theory of persuasion as a sequential process (PSP). Drawing on assumptions from both the Heuristic-Systematic-Model and the Parametric Unimodel of Persuasion, PSP predicts assimilation and contrast effects based solely on the sequence in which identical arguments are encountered. Specifically, if an initial argument is immediately followed by an argument of opposite valence (vs. a neutral argument), contrast effects are predicted to occur, despite the fact that the overall information is held constant. In a laboratory experiment, students (N = 216) read four arguments for or against the abolishment of cash. They were assigned randomly to the conditions of a 2 (initial argument: positive vs. negative) x 2 (subsequent three arguments: neutral, positive, very positive vs. neutral, negative, very negative) x 2 (order of subsequent arguments: neutral to extreme vs. extreme to neutral) between-subjects-design. After each argument, they listed one thought related to that argument; thoughts were subsequently rated as favorable versus unfavorable and aggregated into a thought valence index. Participants also reported their overall attitude toward the abolishment of cash. A-priori contrast analysis fully supported the predictions of PSP for the pattern of attitudes. In addition, the effects of experimental conditions on attitudes were fully mediated by thought valence. Theoretical and applied implications will be discussed.

“Fake News” – the term that The American Dialect Society elected Word of the Year 2017, became one of the most discussed phenomena among scholars and the public alike. While there is research on dissemination mechanisms and prevalence (Guess, Nagler, & Tucker, 2019), potential interventions (Lazer et al., 2018) and susceptibility to fake news (Pennycook & Rand, 2019) there are no empirical studies on how exposure to fake news affects individuals on a cognitive level. Previous studies show that corrections of political misperceptions can fail to reduce these misperceptions among the targeted ideological group (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010) and potentially increase ingroup identification when the sender is perceived an ingroup member (McKimmie et al., 2003). We suggest that this principle could also hold true for fake news and that exposure to and subsequent correction of fake news can lead to affective and attitudinal polarization. In an experimental between-subjects setting four fake news stimuli were displayed. The information that the respective stimulus was factually wrong was disclosed either early on or at the end of the study. We find that if the sender of the message is perceived an ingroup member and if identification with that ingroup is high, individuals displayed more extreme policy attitudes when fake news information was disclosed early (Study 1). A similar pattern was true for affective polarization where the distance between ingroup-like and outgroup-dislike was maximized (Study 2). Among other things, these results highlight the importance of social identity processes in political polarization.

The aim of our research was to assess short-term and long-term effects of social comparative social media use on self-esteem and depressive tendencies. For this, we conducted three different studies. First, we conducted an exposure experiment (N =75) including two experimental groups and one control group showing that social comparative internet use decreased participants’ performance-oriented state self-esteem as a short-term effect. Second, we conducted two correlational studies (Study 2 &3, Ns = 809, 145) indicating that passive Facebook use is associated with higher depressive tendencies mediated by a higher ability-related social comparison orientation and lower self-esteem as long-term effect. Third, to obtain more generalizable findings, we transferred the serial multiple mediator model successfully from private (i.e., Facebook) to professional (i.e., XING) SNS use (Study 3).

Studies on person perception showed that stereotypes can be activated by presenting labels associated to particular groups. However, it is not clear whether these semantic information activate stereotypes directly, or via an indirect cognitive pathway leading through brain regions responsible for affective responses. To disentangle the effects of semantic and affective content, first we scrutinized whether the representation of occupational labels is independent of the emotions they evoke. Participants (n=70) were asked to complete two tasks. In the first task they had to arrange 20 labels, randomly chosen from an item pool of 60 labels representing occupations, on a two-dimensional surface along the two axes. Participants were free to use any considerations for the arrangement along the axes which they thought makes a proper differentiation among the labels. With this spatial arrangement method, based on the coordinates of the labels, the relative semantic distance between the occupations were calculated. In the second task the axes’ names were defined a priori. Subjects were asked to arrange the labels according to valence and arousal, which referred to the extent to which the words evoked pleasant or unpleasant feelings, and excitement or calmness, respectively. The relative difference between the coordinates gave the affective distances between each of the labels. Based on the semantic and affective distances, two separate cluster analyses were carried out. The comparison of the two cluster structures revealed significant overlap, suggesting that semantic representation of occupations largely relies on the affective content evoked by the presentation of the labels.

Anticipation of pain triggers defensive responses such as startle potentiation, while its avoidance and termination result in positive sensations such as startle attenuation, called relief. These responses can become associated with and later elicited by other stimuli concurrently present. Importantly, social support reduces aversiveness of pain. We investigated the effect of social influence on relief responses and whether active relief (avoidance) differs from passive relief (pain termination) in 102 healthy females. During acquisition, the active group (N=33) learned to actively oppress a painful stimulation (unconditioned stimulus, US), the social group (N=35) believed that another participant oppressed the US, and the passive group (N=34) had no influence. A visual stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS+) followed US' termination. Subsequently (test phase), participants heard aversive startle probes presented with the CS+ or a novel visual stimulus (Control). Startle responses and fear ratings were collected as learning indices. After acquisition, all participants rated CS+ as more frightening than Control, suggesting that on the verbal level, the relief-associated stimulus elicited fear in all groups. After test, fear ratings of CS+ further increased but did not differ from Control. The same was evident for startle responses to CS+ and Control in both passive and active group. Thus, relief-physiological responses indicate equal implicit valence for passive and active relief. In comparison, the social group showed overall lower startle responses. However, responses were higher to CS+ than New. In sum, we confirmed that social influence reduces physiological fear response in general, but inhibits implicit relief-learning.

Generalized reciprocity is the phenomenon of reciprocating experienced behavior towards a third party. We investigated if generalized reciprocity occurs in a double dictator game (DDG) and if individual differences therein can be explained through personality traits. In a DDG, participants first receive money from a previous participant and then allocate additional money between themselves and a future participant. We hypothesized that there is evidence for generalized reciprocity, that is, we expected that the amount of money a participant received in the DDG would influence the amount this participant gave to a future participant. In addition, we investigated the relationship of generalized reciprocity with the HEXACO personality factors Agreeableness and Honesty-Humility. Due to its association with direct reciprocity, we predicted Agreeableness would moderate the relationship between the amount received and the amount given so that the relationship would be stronger for individuals low in Agreeableness. Additionaly, we expected that Honesty-Humility would explain the overall contributions of participants (regardless of the behavior of previous participants). In a preregistered online experiment, the amount of money received and Honesty-Humility predicted – as expected – the amount of money a participant gave to future participants. However, Agreeableness did not significantly moderate the relationship between the amount received and the amount given. In sum, the current study provides further evidence and a suitable paradigm for investigating generalized reciprocity in economic games. At the same time, the influence of Agreeableness on generalized reciprocity remains uncertain and requires more attention in future studies.

In this preregistered study, a subtle method was tested to reduce prejudice against one outgroup (Arabs) and generalize its effects to another non-targeted outgroup (Eastern Europeans). Students read a pretested alleged letter addressed to their university insisting on certain changes of the university’s infrastructure. Participants then signed a letter on a page that contained signatures of either only German students or German and Arab students. Combining elements of the contact hypothesis (institutional support, common goal, equal status, and cooperation) without inducing actual vis-á-vis contact, we hypothesized that the German and Arab condition (vs. the German only condition) (H1) would increase positive attitudes toward Arabs and (H2) that this effect would generalize to attitudes toward Eastern Europeans. Dependent variables were explicit evaluations, specific prejudices, and implicit associations toward both target groups. Social dominance orientation (SDO) and authoritarianism (RWA) were assessed as potential moderators. Supporting hypothesis H1, participants explicitly evaluated Arabs more positively in the German and Arab condition. However, opposite to hypothesis H2, participants tended to evaluate Eastern Europeans less positively in that condition, which resulted in an interaction effect of condition and target group. The prejudice measure and the implicit measure showed no effects. SDO and RWA were correlated with the dependent variables but did not moderate the effect of experimental condition. Results will be discussed in light of the contact hypothesis and social identity theory.