Perception and Action in Complex Movements: The Emerging Relevance of Auditory Information

Recent studies explored the contribution of auditory information in ecological contexts to biological motion perception and its influence on movement execution. This work provides an overview of the most influential scientific contributions in this domain and analyzes the most recent findings, both in sport and motor rehabilitation. Overall, the literature indicates that ecological sounds associated with movements are relevant for perceiving some important features of sport movements. Auditory information is also relevant during performance execution, and can be used to create training protocols. Also, similarly auditory information can be used in clinical contexts to provide rhythmic information to enhance the efficacy of motor rehabilitation protocols. In conclusion, we can say that the role of ecological sounds of movements is examined in conveying complexity of information from a gestalt perspective

When articulation does not enhance lightness contrast

Simultaneous lightness contrast (SLC) is the condition whereby two equal greys look different when they are placed one against a dark background and the other against a bright background. Adelson (1993) noticed that the SLC magnitude increases when the homogeneous backgrounds are replaced with more articulated ones. In Adelson's display, all darker patches are on one side of the stimuli whilst the brighter are on the other. The aim of this research is to test whether this regularity causes the SLC magnitude to increase. On a paper-based experiment, participants were requested to match on a Munsell scale two greys placed against a dark and a white background while the luminance of additional elements was manipulated: dark and bright elements could have been added to either side. Results show that when bright elements where added to the darker background and bright elements where added to the darker background the SLC magnitude reduced. Vice-versa, when bright elements were added to the bright background, and dark elements were added to the dark background, the SLC magnitude increased. It is concluded that the photometric relationships in the stimuli determine the SLC magnitude, not the level of articulation per se

A SNARC-like effect for music tempo

The Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) suggests the existence of an association betweennumber magnitude and response position, with faster left-hand responses to small numbers and faster righthandresponses to large numbers (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). Moreover, Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà,& Butterworth (2006) showed that the internal representation of pitch height is spatially organized, especially inparticipants with formal musical education (i.e., Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes: the SMARC effect).In the present study we investigated whether a similar association exists between music tempo (beats per minutes)and the spatial position of response execution. Participants were all musically untrained persons. To test ourhypothesis they performed both an order-relevant task (i.e., time comparison task) and an order-irrelevant task (i.e.,timbre judgment task). Results showed a global trend with faster left-hand responses to slower beat sequences andfaster right-hand responses to faster beat sequences. From this evidences we can finally conclude that a SNARC-likeeffect exists for music tempo similar as for pitch height and numbers

Don’t worry, be active: how to facilitate the detection of errors in immersive virtual environments

The current research aims to study the link between the type of vision experienced in a collaborative immersive virtual environment (active vs. multiple passive), the type of error one looks for during a cooperative multi-user exploration of a design project (affordance vs. perceptual violations), and the type of setting in which multi-user perform (field in Experiment 1 vs. laboratory in Experiment 2). The relevance of this link is backed by the lack of conclusive evidence on an active vs. passive vision advantage in cooperative search tasks within software based on immersive virtual reality (IVR). Using a yoking paradigm based on the mixed usage of simultaneous active and multiple passive viewings, we found that the likelihood of error detection in a complex 3D environment was characterized by an active vs. multi-passive viewing advantage depending on: (1) the degree of knowledge dependence of the type of error the passive/active observers were looking for (low for perceptual violations, vs. high for affordance violations), as the advantage tended to manifest itself irrespectively from the setting for affordance, but not for perceptual violations; and (2) the degree of social desirability possibly induced by the setting in which the task was performed, as the advantage occurred irrespectively from the type of error in the laboratory (Experiment 2) but not in the field (Experiment 1) setting. Results are relevant to future development of cooperative software based on IVR used for supporting the design review. A multi-user design review experience in which designers, engineers and end-users all cooperate actively within the IVR wearing their own head mounted display, seems more suitable for the detection of relevant errors than standard systems characterized by a mixed usage of active and passive viewing

Large as being on top of the world and small as hitting the roof: A shared magnitude representation for the comparison of emotions and numbers

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Previous work on the direct Speed–Intensity Association (SIA) on comparative judgment tasks involved spatially distributed responses over spatially distributed stimuli with high motivational significance like facial expressions of emotions. This raises the possibility that the inferred stimulus-driven regulation of lateralized motor reactivity described by SIA, which was against the one expected on the basis of a valence-specific lateral bias, was entirely due to attentional capture from motivational significance (beyond numerical cognition). In order to establish the relevance of numerical cognition on the regulation of attentional capture we ran two complementary experiments. These involved the same direct comparison task on stimulus pairs that were fully comparable in terms of their analog representation of intensity but with different representational domain and motivational significance: symbolic magnitudes with low motivational significance in experiment 1 vs. emotions with rather high motivational significance in experiment 2. The results reveal a general SIA and point to a general mechanism regulating comparative judgments. This is based on the way spatial attention is captured toward locations that contain the stimulus which is closest in term of relative intensity to the extremal values of the series, regardless from its representational domain being it symbolic or emotiona

EMOTIONAL SEMANTIC CONGRUENCY BASED ON STIMULUS DRIVEN COMPARATIVE JUDGEMENTS. FACES IN UPRIGHT/INVERTED ORIENTATION AND NUMBERS

The left-to-right spatial mental representation of emotional valence has been extensively studied in the past decades. Studies based on speeded classification of centrally presented emotions showed a valence-specific lateral bias, characterized by faster left-sided responses for negative emotions (angry face) and faster right-sided responses for positive emotions (happy face). However, it is not clear whether the valence-specific lateral bias occurs in a valence comparison task (CT) between pairs of simultaneously displayed facial expressions (horizontally aligned), with the instruction to choose the most negative/positive. Differently from studies involving single emotion, in the CT there is a lateralization of both the stimuli (one face is presented at the left- and one at the right-side of the screen) and the responses (using left- and right-hands). In the present study, I investigated the possible occurrence of the valence-specific lateral bias in a valence CT pairing facial expressions, belonging to the anger-to-neutral-to-happiness emotional continuum, into two types of stimulus pairs: (1) mixed-facial expressions pairs (i.e, a neutral face paired with a 100% emotional angry/happy face); and (2) complete-facial expressions pairs (i.e., a 50% or 100% emotional face paired with another emotional face of the same emotional intensity, but with the opposite emotional valence). In the Study 1, I demonstrated that in a valence CT (with stimulus self-terminated by the participant response), the lateralized motor reactivity is independent from any valence-specific lateral bias. The motor reactivity resulted to be proportional to the target absolute emotional intensity relative to the cutoff (i.e., the neutral face), irrespective of the response side and the congruency with the spatial arrangement of the pair with the left-to-right spatial mental representation of emotional valence. The occurrence of this bias, namely Emotional Semantic Congruency effect (ESC), is fully consistent with a stimulus-driven theoretical framework and a capture of visual spatial attention due to emotional stimuli. The attentional capture phenomenon is predicted by a direct Speed-Intensity Association (SIA) with a remapping of three source of intensities, all intrinsic in the stimulus pairs, into response speeds. The three sources of intensities are: the target absolute emotional intensity relative to the cutoff, the average emotional intensity of the stimulus pair, and an additive/subtractive constant which formalizes an emotion anisotropy, that produces a general improvement of the performance for relatively positive vs. negative emotion intensities. ESC resulted to be independent on lateralization of emotions and it occurs both under tachistoscopic presentation of stimuli and in indirect task condition in which the valence intensity is task irrelevant. In the Study 2, I demonstrated that ESC is independent from motivational significance of the stimuli, and it is generalizable from the specific domain of emotion (non-symbolic with high motivational significance) to the domain of numbers (symbolic with low motivational significance). In the Study 3, I demonstrated that ESC is independent from the type of stimulus processing (i.e., part-based or holistic) involved in the processing of face. ESC resulted to be independent form inversion of facial expressions (beyond a global slowing down of responses due to the face inversion effect). Furthermore, I investigated the nature of the emotion anisotropy which is cutoff dependent, and it occurs only in the case in which the cutoff need to be extrapolated from image pairs. In conclusion, the present work revealed a general mechanism regulating CT, based on a capture of visual spatial attention by the extremal values of a series. This capture is independent from both the representational domain (emotional vs. numerical) and the type of stimulus processing involved (holistic vs. part-based)

SNARC flexibility is explained by the semantic congruity effect

Recently, a growing consensus has emerged regarding the instructional flexibility of the mental format of non-symbolic magnitudes (e.g., quantities of objects\u2019 collections, just-learned height, animals\u2019 size). Indeed, while it is well-established that symbolic magnitudes are stably organized according to a left-to-right orientation, this organization is less clear regarding non-symbolic magnitudes. Flexibility has been invoked for accounting for patterns of response times generally observed in tasks involving comparative judgements and deviating from the standard SNARC (i.e., faster left-sided responses to small magnitudes vs. faster right-sided responses to large magnitudes). We reinterpret flexibility in terms of the Semantic Congruity Effect (SCE): a general tendency for extreme, rather than intermediate, magnitudes to be detected more readily amongst a pair of elements belonging to the same semantic category (i.e., small-small/large-large) when the comparison task requires judging greater/lesser. A major prediction of SCE is a reversed SNARC for pairs of magnitudes displayed in incongruent spatial orientation with the left-to-right mental format. Right-sided responses should be faster for small magnitudes, and vice-versa for large magnitudes, when paired with an intermediate magnitude. We re-analysed the data of some previous studies and show that, in line with our results (Fantoni et al., ECVP2017), a reversed SNARC did reliably occur \u2013 consistent with SCE. This undermines preceding interpretation of results in the context of comparative judgements based on SNARC flexibility. In this context SCE provides a more general model than SNARC, being SNARC incidental to the spatial properties of a pair

A SNARC-like effect for music tempo

The Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) suggests the existence of an association betweennumber magnitude and response position, with faster left-hand responses to small numbers and faster righthandresponses to large numbers (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). Moreover, Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umiltà,& Butterworth (2006) showed that the internal representation of pitch height is spatially organized, especially inparticipants with formal musical education (i.e., Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes: the SMARC effect).In the present study we investigated whether a similar association exists between music tempo (beats per minutes)and the spatial position of response execution. Participants were all musically untrained persons. To test ourhypothesis they performed both an order-relevant task (i.e., time comparison task) and an order-irrelevant task (i.e.,timbre judgment task). Results showed a global trend with faster left-hand responses to slower beat sequences andfaster right-hand responses to faster beat sequences. From this evidences we can finally conclude that a SNARC-likeeffect exists for music tempo similar as for pitch height and numbers

The temporal dynamics of emotion comparison depends on low-level attentional factors

Abstract Humans are predisposed to attend to emotions conveyed by facial expressions. However, compulsory attraction to emotions gets challenging when multiple emotional stimuli compete for attention, as in the emotion comparison task. In this task, participants are asked to choose which of two simultaneously presented faces displays the most positive (happiest) or negative (angriest) emotion. Participants usually respond faster to the face displaying the most intense emotion. This effect is stronger for face pairs that contain globally positive rather than negative emotional faces. Both effects are consistent with an attentional capture phenomenon driven by the perceptual salience of facial expressions. In the present experiment, we studied the temporal dynamics of attentional capture in the emotion comparison task by tracking participants’ eye movements using gaze-contingent displays and responses. Our results show that, on the first fixation, participants were more accurate and dwelled longer on the left target face when it displayed the most intense emotion within the pair. On the second fixation, the pattern was reversed, with higher accuracy and longer gaze time on the right target face. Overall, our pattern of gazing behavior indicates that the typical results observed in the emotion comparison task arise from the optimal combination over time of two low-level attentional factors: the perceptual salience of emotional stimuli and the scanning habit of participants