Embodied decision biases during walking

For many years, research of psychology has viewed cognition as a sequential and modular process, with action being only as the output of a higher-level cognitive process. This is a problem when studying decision-making in everyday behavior, where lower-level motor control (such as walking) often needs to occur at the same time as higher-level decision processes (such as avoiding an obstacle to the left or right). For these situations, research in multitasking, embodiment, and specifically embodied decision-making suggests that information-processing at the level of motor control can influence decision-making through crosstalk between the processes and parallel feedback of action costs. This challenges the traditional view of decision-making as a modular and sequential process. Thus, we set out to investigate the assumed influences of lower-level actions on higher-level decisions when action and decision-making must run concurrently. To do that, we first implemented a novel experimental paradigm for studying decision-making during the whole-body movement of walking. Participants were asked to walk toward an obstacle and to concurrently decide to turn toward a target on the left or right for reward. We manipulated the action of walking toward the obstacle by predetermining the swing leg before turning in front of the obstacle. Results revealed that the body dynamics of concurrent action influenced decision-making. More specifically, participants preferred turning toward the side of the swing leg, even at the expense of receiving less reward. After validating the experimental paradigm, we investigated the type of embodied decision bias present in the walking task. Thereby, we focused on the bias by action costs during action. If the decision process receives parallel feedback during movement, the cost dynamics during movement should influence decision-making. In four experiments, we manipulated the action costs of turning under various conditions

Spatial distances affect temporal prediction and interception.

The more distant two consecutive stimuli are presented, the longer the temporal interstimulus interval (ISI) between their presentations is perceived (kappa effect). The present study aimed at testing whether the kappa effect not only affects perceptual estimates of time, but also motor action, more specifically, interception. In a first step, the original kappa paradigm was adapted to assess the effect in temporal prediction. Second, the task was further modified to an interception task, requiring participants to spatially and temporally predict and act. In two online experiments, a white circle was successively presented at three locations moving from left to right with constant spatial and temporal ISIs in between. Participants were asked to either (i) indicate the time of appearance of the predicted fourth stimulus (Exp. 1) or to (ii) intercept the predicted fourth location at the correct time (Exp. 2). In both experiments the temporal response depended on the spatial intervals. In line with the kappa effect, participants predicted the final stimulus to appear later (Exp. 1) or intercepted it later (Exp. 2), the more distant the stimuli were presented. Together, these results suggest that perceptual biases such as the kappa effect impact motor interception performance. [Abstract copyright: © 2022. The Author(s).

"Öffentlich ist draußen und nicht drinnen ...": Stadtwahrnehmungen im Kontext des künstlerischpartizipativen Videoprojekts 'Mitte von Hamburg', realisiert in Kooperation mit Jugendlichen

"Öffentlich ist draußen und nicht drinnen ...": Stadtwahrnehmungen im Kontext des künstlerischpartizipativen Videoprojekts 'Mitte von Hamburg', realisiert in Kooperation mit Jugendliche

"Öffentlich ist draußen und nicht drinnen ...": Stadtwahrnehmungen im Kontext des künstlerischpartizipativen Videoprojekts 'Mitte von Hamburg', realisiert in Kooperation mit Jugendlichen

"Öffentlich ist draußen und nicht drinnen ...": Stadtwahrnehmungen im Kontext des künstlerischpartizipativen Videoprojekts 'Mitte von Hamburg', realisiert in Kooperation mit Jugendliche

Auditory perception dominates in motor rhythm reproduction

It is commonly agreed that vision is more sensitive to spatial information, while audition is more sensitive to temporal information. When both visual and auditory information are available simultaneously, the modality appropriateness hypothesis predicts that, depending on the task, the most appropriate (i.e., reliable) modality dominates perception. While previous research mainly focused on discrepant information from different sensory inputs to scrutinize the modality appropriateness hypothesis, the current study aimed at investigating the modality appropriateness hypothesis when multimodal information was provided in a nondiscrepant and simultaneous manner. To this end, participants performed a temporal rhythm reproduction task for which the auditory modality is known to be the most appropriate. The experiment comprised an auditory (i.e., beeps), a visual (i.e., flashing dots), and an audiovisual condition (i.e., beeps and dots simultaneously). Moreover, constant as well as variable interstimulus intervals were implemented. Results revealed higher accuracy and lower variability in the auditory condition for both interstimulus interval types when compared to the visual condition. More importantly, there were no differences between the auditory and the audiovisual condition across both interstimulus interval types. This indicates that the auditory modality dominated multimodal perception in the task, whereas the visual modality was disregarded and hence did not add to reproduction performance

"Öffentlich ist draußen und nicht drinnen ...": Stadtwahrnehmungen im Kontext des künstlerisch-partizipativen Videoprojekts "Mitte von Hamburg", realisiert in Kooperation mit Jugendlichen

"Öffentlich ist draußen und nicht drinnen ...": Stadtwahrnehmungen im Kontext des künstlerischpartizipativen Videoprojekts 'Mitte von Hamburg', realisiert in Kooperation mit Jugendliche

Möglichkeiten der Anwendung einer adaptiv rekursiven Korrelationsschätzung in der Biosignalanalyse

Die in Biosignalen häufig anzutreffenden Instationaritäten in Signalverläufen erschweren oftmals eine Anwendung der gut bekannten Fouriertransformation zur Ermittlung spektraler Kenngrößen. In einer Vielzahl von Anwendungen konnte bereits gezeigt werden, dass sich derartige Instationaritäten im zeitlichen Verlauf durch adaptiv rekursive Schätzverfahren beschreiben lassen. Aufbauend auf den Möglichkeiten zur Schaffung komplexer adaptiv rekursiver Schätzungen kann eine Schätzung der Korrelationsfunktion im Zeitbereich entwickelt werden. Zudem ist bekannt, dass sich über die Korrelation ebenso spektrale Kenngrößen ableiten lassen. Im folgenden Beitrag wird an ausgewählten Beispielen gezeigt, dass sich über die Korrelation sehr effektiv ein Monitoring von Spektralkenngrößen realisieren lässt