Ernesto Valentini

Breve biografia di Ernesto Valentini, uno dei protagonisti della storia delle "scienze della mente" in Italia

The sound motion controller: a distributed system for interactive music performance

We developed an interactive system for music performance, able to control sound parameters in a responsive way with respect to the user’s movements. This system is conceived as a mobile application, provided with beat tracking and an expressive parameter modulation, interacting with motion sensors and effector units, which are connected to a music output, such as synthesizers or sound effects. We describe the various types of usage of our system and our achievements, aimed to increase the expression of music performance and provide an aid to music interaction. The results obtained outline a first level of integration and foresee future cognitive and technological research related to it

Intersection of reality and fiction in art perception: pictorial space, body sway and mental imagery

Background The thesis of embodied cognition claims that perception of the environment entails a complex set of multisensory processes which forms a basis for the agent’s potential and immediate actions. However, in the case of artworks, an agent becomes an observer and action turns into a reaction. This raises questions about the presence of embodied or situated cognition involved in art reception. Aims The study aimed to assess the bodily correlates of perceiving fictional pictorial spaces in the absence of a possibility of an actual physical immersion or manipulation of represented forms. Method The subjects were presented with paintings by Vermeer and De Hooch, whilst their body sway and eye movements were recorded. Moreover, test and questionnaires on mental imagery (MRT, VVIQ and OSIQ) were administered. Results Three major results were obtained: (1) the degree of pictorial depth did not influence body sway; (2) fixations to distant elements in paintings (i.e. backgrounds) were accompanied by an increase in body sway; and (3) mental rotation test scores correlated positively with body sway. Conclusions Our results suggest that in certain cases— despite the fictional character of art—observers’ reactions resemble reactions to real stimuli. It is proposed that these reactions are mediated by mental imagery (e.g. mental rotation) that contributes to the act of representing alternative to real artistic spaces

Why early tactile speech aids may have failed: no perceptual integration of tactile and auditory signals

Tactile speech aids, though extensively studied in the 1980s and 90s, never became a commercial success. A hypothesis to explain this failure might be that it is difficult to obtain true perceptual integration of a tactile signal with information from auditory speech: exploitation of tactile cues from a tactile aid might require cognitive effort and so prevent speech understanding at the high rates typical of everyday speech. To test this hypothesis, we attempted to create true perceptual integration of tactile with auditory information in what might be considered the simplest situation encountered by a hearing-impaired listener. We created an auditory continuum between the syllables BA and VA, and trained participants to associate BA to one tactile stimulus VA to another tactile stimulus. After training, we tested if auditory discrimination along the continuum between the two syllables could be biased by incongruent tactile stimulation. We found that such a bias occurred only when the tactile stimulus was above its previously measured tactile discrimination threshold. Such a pattern is compatible with the idea that the effect is due to a cognitive or decisional strategy, rather than to truly perceptual integration. We therefore ran a further study, where we created a tactile version of the McGurk effect. We extensively trained two Subjects over six days to associate four recorded auditory syllables with four corresponding apparent motion tactile patterns. In a subsequent test, we presented stimulation that was either congruent or incongruent with the learnt association, and asked Subjects to report the syllable they perceived. We found no analog to the McGurk effect. These findings strengthen our hypothesis according to which tactile aids failed because integration of tactile cues with auditory speech occurred at a cognitive or decisional level, rather than truly at a perceptual leve

Head centred meridian effect on auditory spatial attention orienting

Six experiments examined the issue of whether one single system or separate systems underlie visual and auditory orienting of spatial attention. When auditory targets were used, reaction times were slower on trials in which cued and target locations were at opposite sides of the vertical head-centred meridian than on trials in which cued and target locations were at opposite sides of the vertical visual meridian or were not separated by any meridian. The head- centred meridian effect for auditory stimuli was apparent when targets were cued by either visual (Experiments 2, 3, and 6) or auditory cues (Experiment 5). Also, the head- centred meridian effect was found when targets were delivered either through headphones (Experiments 2, 3, and 5) or external loudspeakers (Experiment 6). Conversely, participants showed a visual meridian effect when they were required to respond to visual targets (Experiment 4). These results strongly suggest that auditory and visual spatial attention systems are indeed separate, as far as endogenous orienting is concerned

Attentional processes during P3-based Brain Computer Interface task in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients

To be available for a wide range of end-users a brain-computer interface (BCI) should be flexible and adaptable to end-users’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses. People’s cognitive abilities change according to the disease they are affected by, and people suffering from the same disease could have different cognitive capacities. We aimed at investigating how the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease, and two different cognitive attentional aspects [1] influenced the usage of a P3-based BC

Where is uphill? Exploring sex differences when reorienting on a sloped environment presented through 2-D images

One of the spatial abilities that has recently revealed a remarkable variability in performance is that of using terrain slope to reorient. Previous studies have shown a very large disadvantage for females when the slope of the floor is the only information useful for encoding a goal location. However, the source of this sex difference is still unclear. The slope of the environment provides a directional source of information that is perceived through dissociable visual and kinesthetic sensory modalities. Here we focused on the visual information, and examined whether there are sex differences in the perception of a slope presented through 2-D images with a desktop computer connected to an eye-tracking device. Participants had to identify and point to the uphill direction by looking at different orientations of two virtual, slanted environments (one indoor and one outdoor). Men were quicker and more accurate than women, indicating that the female difficulty with slope emerges at an early, unisensory, perceptual level. However, the eye-tracking data revealed no sex differences in the slope cues used, providing no support to the hypothesis of sex-specific, visual-processing strategies. Interestingly, performance correlated with a test of mental rotation, and we speculate that the disadvantage in mental rotation ability might be an important factor responsible for females’ difficulty using slope

Where is uphill? Exploring sex differences when reorienting on a sloped environment presented through 2-D images

One of the spatial abilities that has recently revealed a remarkable variability in performance is that of using terrain slope to reorient. Previous studies have shown a very large disadvantage for females when the slope of the floor is the only information useful for encoding a goal location. However, the source of this sex difference is still unclear. The slope of the environment provides a directional source of information that is perceived through dissociable visual and kinesthetic sensory modalities. Here we focused on the visual information, and examined whether there are sex differences in the perception of a slope presented through 2-D images with a desktop computer connected to an eye-tracking device. Participants had to identify and point to the uphill direction by looking at different orientations of two virtual, slanted environments (one indoor and one outdoor). Men were quicker and more accurate than women, indicating that the female difficulty with slope emerges at an early, unisensory, perceptual level. However, the eye-tracking data revealed no sex differences in the slope cues used, providing no support to the hypothesis of sex-specific, visual-processing strategies. Interestingly, performance correlated with a test of mental rotation, and we speculate that the disadvantage in mental rotation ability might be an important factor responsible for females’ difficulty using slope