In two-choice response tasks, participants respond faster and more accurate with the left hand to a small stimulus and with the right hand to a large stimulus as compared to the reverse assignment. This compatibility effect suggests the existence of associations between cognitive codes of physical stimulus size and cognitive codes of left/right responses. Here, we explore the nature of associations between stimulus-size codes and left/right response codes by using more levels of stimulus size than in our previous studies. For example, the strengths of the associations between stimulus-size codes and response codes might either change gradually when stimulus size changes, or the strength of associations might change in a more discrete fashion (i.e., associations switch at a particular size level). In Experiment 1, participants responded to stimulus color with a left/right keypress, and physical stimulus size had ten levels with 5mm steps. Results showed congruency effects for the smallest and the largest stimulus size only. In Experiment 2, physical stimulus size had six levels with 10mm steps. Results showed (similar) congruency effects for the smallest and some intermediate stimulus-size levels. In sum, the results point towards a discrete, or categorical, relationship between cognitive codes of stimulus size and left/right response codes. This pattern of results is consistent with an account of the correspondence effect in terms of the polarity-correspondence principle.

When an action yields a certain effect, we form bi-directional action-effect associations that allow us to anticipate both the location and timing of our actions' effects. This can be observed through anticipatory eye movements towards future effect location (proactive effect monitoring). Moreover, participants performed anticipatory eye movements earlier when the effect's delay was short rather than long (200/800ms). To assess whether anticipatory eye movements could also be reliably investigated using online eye tracking via participants' individual webcams, we developed an online experiment where a correct response contingently led to a spatially compatible (left response > effect on the left) or incompatible (left response > effect on the right) visual effect presented after a predictable short/long delay. Replicating offline experiments, we found that participants performed their anticipatory eye movements towards the effect earlier for short rather than long effect delays. Simultaneously and in contrast to prior studies, however, participants only anticipatorily looked towards the future effect of their actions (significantly but barely) above chance on compatible but not incompatible trials. Interestingly, participants' responses to post-experiment questions suggested that they intentionally focused more onto the middle of the screen where the targets appeared and tried to intentionally inhibit eye movements to the sides to optimize their performance. Following experiments will have to assess the influence of effect relevance on participants' strategies and eye movement patterns. Concluding, we demonstrate that anticipatory eye movements reflecting a time-sensitive proactive effect monitoring process can reliably be assessed offline as well as online.

When their actions are going to cause predictable effects in their surroundings, participants already move their eyes towards the locations of these future effects in anticipation. In this study, we used the neuroevolution of augmenting topologies (NEAT) algorithm to predict whether participants perform an anticipatory saccade (AS) towards the location at which a visual effect of their action is going to appear in the future. Previous research has linked such ASs to proactive effect monitoring (PEM) processes which facilitate the later comparison of expected and actual effect. Considerable inter-individual differences in the frequency and distribution of ASs, however, raise the question whether PEM also underlies the individual distribution of ASs across trials. We used data of two experiments and selected the data of participants with high proportions of ASs (i.e., presumed high PEM; criterion-based model) to train a population of neural networks (NNs) via the NEAT process to predict whether an AS was performed in each trial. We then assessed the performance of these NNs on the remaining data (testing) and on data from another experiment (transfer). Prediction accuracy of our criterion-based model was comparable to NNs trained on a randomly selected, bigger subset of data (basic model). Moreover, prediction accuracy for individual participants correlated with their scores on the criterion. These findings suggest that a systematic PEM process underlies the distribution of AS even though there is substantial inter-individual variation. More generally, we demonstrate the potential of using neuroevolutionary machine learning in theory-driven research.

The dynamics and development of cognitive control are typically studied by examining how participants process stimuli that contain competing relevant and irrelevant information in so called conflict tasks. Adjustments in performance following an experience of conflict, also termed as conflict adaptation, is of central importance in the study of cognitive control. The Congruency Sequence Effect (CSE), which is defined as the reduction of the congruency effect following a conflict trial, has been observed in both children and adults when completing trials of the same task. In our environment, however, we are often required to adapt to a variety of different settings and task demands. The extent to which these performance adjustments are observed in the context of switching between different types of conflict remains in question. The present study aims to investigate how children (aged 6 and 10 years) and adults adjust performance based on previously experienced conflict within- and across- different tasks. In an online study, participants performed child-friendly versions of the Simon and Stroop task and response dynamics were assessed via mouse-tracking. Based on previous evidence, we expect to observe a within-task CSE in each age group, decreasing in magnitude with age. Since these two tasks are rather low in context similarity (see Braem et al. 2014, Frontiers in Psychology), no across-task CSE is hypothesized in adults. It is anticipated that the presence or absence of an across-task CSE in children will provide insights into how conflict is represented across development. Identifying the conditions in which performance adjustments are observed may further our understanding of the recruitment of cognitive control across different contexts and its development.

Humans experience themselves as causing events in the outside world when these events follow their actions in a contingent and contiguous manner. Sometimes, they even experience control over the consequences of action when actual control (contingency) is missing. One such illusion of control is the density bias: Actions are often judged to be more effective in producing non-contingent outcomes when the overall frequency of the outcome is high rather than low. Blanco and Matute (2014) showed that the density bias depends on participants' goal. They observed a typical density bias (i.e., more subjective control for frequent than for rare outcomes) only when participants were instructed to learn to produce a desired outcome (a light associated with a reward) by pressing a key. The density bias is reversed when participants were instructed to prevent light events that were associated with punishment. In our experiment, we extended the Blanco and Matute (2014) study in several regards. In order to investigate whether the density bias is modulated by desirability of outcomes in general, we substituted gain and loss of points associated with switching on a light bulb with traffic lights that could either switch to red or to green. Moreover, we orthogonally varied prevent/produce instructions and outcome valence to explore the relative contributions of (instructed) intention and outcome valence to the density bias. Results will be discussed with respect to sense of agency in general and contingency learning in particular.

Consistent stimulus-response (S-R) practice (i.e., repeatedly applying an arbitrary S-R assignment in a consistent manner) is assumed to result in automatic S-R translation due to the formation of associations along which responses are activated by perceiving a corresponding stimulus of the practiced set, even in the absence of an intention to execute the practiced task. Application of a divergent S-R assignment after practice therefore likely requires executive processes in the service of overcoming such conflicting activation. These control processes may evidence themselves by interacting with basic processes involved in completing a given task, such as implicit categorizing of nominally irrelevant stimulus information. To investigate the impact of having to adapt practiced response selection on implicit processing, participants made parity judgments on visually presented digits by means of pressing response keys located on their left vs. right side, thus allowing us to assess the SNARC effect. After the first half of the experimental session (i.e., after 4 blocks of 64 trials each), the parity-response assignment was reversed. This reversal was associated with a reduction of the SNARC effect resulting from selectively slowed responding in SNARC-congruent trials. The reduction notwithstanding, a substantial Congruency Sequence Effect (i.e., lower SNARC effect after incongruent than after congruent trials; CSE) was found in both phases of the experiment (i.e., pre-reversal and post-reversal, respectively). Our results may reflect a ceiling effect for conflict in incongruent trials or a reversal-induced switch to a more controlled processing mode. Changing the S-R assignment after practice offers new options for investigating mechanisms underlying the CSE.

In the Eriksen flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974), the presence of irrelevant flanker stimuli, surrounding the target, induces response activation that can be either congruent or incongruent to the required response. As a result, responses are slower with incongruent than with congruent (or even neutral) flankers; the flanker effect. Researchers have employed proportion congruency (PC) manipulations where the frequency with which irrelevant information conflicts with relevant information is varied. As a result, the flanker effect is smaller in contexts with high than with low proportions of conflict. It is assumed that during a learning phase, associations between features of the conflict-predicting context and the respective most frequently applied control-set are acquired. Encountering that context later again will then automatically activate the respective control set. In the present study, we investigated whether another form of context manipulation might lead to similar control adjustments. Across 6 blocks, incongruent (I), neutral (N), and congruent (C) trials occurred in a repeating 6-element sequence (e.g., C-N-C-I-N-I). We hypothesized that the participants incidentally learn this sequence so that, over time, the cognitive system might become similarly prepared for upcoming conflict as in a PC manipulation. As a result, the flanker effect should become smaller across the sequence blocks, but should increase again in a subsequent random block. One first (online) experiment (\(N = 32\)) provided mixed results. The hypothesized interactions were partially present in the error rates, but not in the RTs. Therefore, in a second (lab) experiment, we prolonged the learning phase and omitted neutral flankers to reduce the complexity of the sequence. Results are pending.

Various studies have shown that phasic alertness increases congruency effects in the flanker task. Yet, the mechanisms that drive this paradoxical effect are still being debated. In the present study (\(N = 38\)), I further investigated potential boundary conditions for observing the alerting-congruency interaction. Specifically, I examined whether alertness increases congruency effects only if the target is spatial in nature. For this purpose, I designed a flanker task in which I varied the stimulus type used for the target and the flankers: In separate blocks, the target and the flankers were either left- or right-pointing arrows (spatial stimuli) or the letters H and S (non-spatial stimuli). To induce phasic alertness, I presented an auditory alerting signal (AS) before the flanker display in half of the trials. As expected, I observed solid effects of phasic alertness and congruency on reaction time: Participants responded faster in trials with an AS than in trials without an AS, and they responded slower in incongruent than in congruent trials. Furthermore, replicating previous findings, the congruency effect was larger for arrows than for letters. Most importantly, however, a reliable alerting-congruency interaction was observed for both stimulus types, even though it was (numerically) larger for arrows than for letters. Summarized, these results show that the alerting-congruency interaction does not depend on a spatial target itself, but may rather depend on the ability to form stimulus-response (directional) associations.

In a globalizing world, characterized by digitization and rapid technological progress, the increasing competition and barriers of online trading are forcing companies to proof the suitability of traditional marketing methods and rely on more appropriate approaches. Multisensory marketing is one of the methods, aimed to seducing the consumer by using their senses to influence their feelings and behavior. Multisensory descriptions are a form of sensory marketing, for which already positive effects have been shown. This study investigates the power of a congruent, multisensory product description to examine the influence on brand attitude, perceived tangibility and buying intention. An one-factorial online experiment in between-subject design was conducted. The experimental group evaluated a t-shirt within an online shop with a congruent, multisensory product description. The control group rated a t-shirt within an online shop with a congruent, non-multisensory product description. The results indicate that the type of product description has a positive influence on the intention to buy and on the brand attitude of consumers. Furthermore, it can be seen, that a congruent and multisensory product description results in a higher perceived tangibility of the product. Further studies can validate the effect for other products and examine multisensory effects of pictures.

Due to the problem of misinformation and disinformation in social media, the question arises a) which sources of information are perceived as credible and b) whether perceived source credibility is taken into account when assessing a statement's truth status. Recent work by Nadarevic et al. (2020) demonstrated effects of source expertise (expert sources vs. lay sources) and source trustworthiness (real, trustworthy news sources vs. faked news sources) on participants' truth judgments. However, the experiments lacked a direct comparison of lay sources versus faked news sources. The current work addressed this issue by means of simulated social media postings. One third of the postings appeared with names and pictures of lay people, one third appeared with names and logos of faked news sources, and one third appeared with the label "unknown source". Not only did participants rate the credibility of faked news sources higher than that of lay people, but they also rated the postings as more likely to be true when presented with faked news sources than when presented with lay sources or without sources. This result is particularly noteworthy because fake news is spread, among other things, by sources that imitate reputable news sources in their appearance.

She is left with a "frozen soul". Her and countless other victims of the abuse cases that are now slowly coming to light, which took place in Catholic churches. The children were of kindergarten or primary school age and were sexually abused and tortured by priests, bishops and other powerful men in the church. The negative impact of these incidents on the catholic church has been amplified by the at times inadequate cooperation between the Catholic Church and authorities. The present study was carried out to investigate to what extent different crisis communication styles help to maintain parts of the positive image in a scandal of this magnitude. Based on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (Coombs & Holladay, 1996), the types "denial" and "rebuild" of crisis communication were examined in terms of their effectiveness. Statements were manipulated in different ways and then examined to determine whether the manipulation resulted in a lower or more severe loss of image. The following hypotheses were focused: A full apology with admission of guilt and request for forgiveness of the victims would cause the least image loss of the church (H1). The Catholic Church tends to be rated better by devout Catholics than by all other groups (H2). If the person communicating regarding the abuse cases is socially respected, the statements tend to be received more positively (H3). Pre-crisis reputation moderates the influence of crisis communication strategy (H4). These were tested using an online experiment that is presently ongoing. Results will be analyzed using a 2 \(\times\) 2 \(\times\) 2 ANOVA to test hypothesis H1 to H4. The study is preregistered (https://aspredicted.org/see_one.php).

Meditation is an umbrella term subsuming many different techniques. To date, only few studies have investigated possible commonalities and differences between these techniques. Our study compared four basic techniques that were drawn from a new empirical classification system covering the width of meditation practices. Using an experimental single-case research design, we examined the effects of observing thoughts, humming, walking, and concentrative meditation on healthy participants. 43 participants were randomly assigned to four conditions and three baselines, and 41 participants completed the treatment. Participants enrolled in a six-to-eight-week course, starting consecutively according to their baseline. During baseline and treatment phases participants received daily questionnaires measuring a wide range of dependent variables. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 24 participants at the end of the study. A preliminary analysis of the data revealed many commonalities between the four meditation techniques. All four techniques increased participants' well-being, emotion regulation, and body awareness, and did not change mind-wandering. Contrary to the other techniques, walking meditation did not increase decentering and had the least adverse effects on participants. Individuals varied in response to the treatment. Qualitatively, participants reported many similar experiences while learning meditation, but also experiences specific to their technique. With this study we hope to answer an urgent question in meditation research, namely, whether and how diverse meditation techniques differ from each other. Our results suggest they might have a lot in common. This would allow people interested in meditation to choose and practice the technique they like most.

Previous research studies on service-guest interactions have found that a friendly smile from a service worker can increase their tip. But what happens if the guest cannot properly perceive the workers' smile because he or she is wearing a mask? A recent study of 632 participants addressed the question of whether service workers wearing masks receive fewer tips and whether different masks (conventional blue surgical mask, black surgical mask, mask with a smiley face printed on it or no mask) affect the amount of the tip. The results of the study were surprising: the mask alone neither positively nor negatively influenced the tip. Gender also plays no relevant role in tipping. Service workers were found to be perceived as friendlier when wearing a blue surgical mask. Increased perceived friendliness in turn can lead to higher tipping. When wearing the black surgical mask and the smiley mask, on the other hand, the facial expressions of the service staff are perceived as more closed. Another interesting finding: female service staff are perceived as friendlier than male service staff. The fact that the mask alone does not improve or worsen the tip of the service worker could be related to the fact that society has become accustomed to wearing a mask and that it is an asset rather than a constraint in a service-guest interaction. The particularly friendly effect of the blue surgical mask could be related to the fact that it symbolizes a trusting standard of hygiene, as people have become accustomed to it as a result of the pandemic. The guest wants to feel well taken care of – in normal times, this is achieved by a friendly smile from the service staff. In an advanced pandemic, however, a blue surgical mask can achieve the same thing.

Mental imagery compared to verbal thought has been shown to amplify emotion, which may prove useful to motivate adaptive behaviours. So far, however, the majority of findings are based on self-report measures. We extended this literature to the physiological level by investigating this difference in emotionality between mental imagery and verbal thought using pupil dilation as a measure of emotional arousal (Preregistration: https://osf.io/93yvu). A final sample of 75 participants recruited from the general population listened to audio tapes describing an everyday activity in a positive manner. They were randomly assigned to an Episodic Simulation condition (ES; \(n = 38\)) or an Abstract Verbal Thought condition (AVT; \(n = 37\)). Participants in the ES condition imagined performing the activity described in the audio tapes, while participants in the AVT condition visualised the words constituting the descriptions. We conducted a mixed ANOVA controlled for mental effort with pupil dilation in one-second time bins and condition as factors. As predicted, ES led to greater pupil dilation than AVT. Self-reported emotionality assessed throughout the task also was greater for ES than AVT, yet no difference was found for subjective ratings of arousal, anticipated reward or motivation to perform the activity. Our findings support previous work demonstrating the superiority of mental imagery to verbal thought in amplifying emotion on a physiological level. The absence of a transfer to motivation, although expected, is in line with recent findings using verbal thought as a control condition to mental imagery.

Two competing theories explain the other-"race" effect (ORE) either by greater perceptual expertise to same-"race" (SR) faces, or by social categorization of other-"race" (OR) faces at the expense of individuation. Neuroimaging studies report findings supporting both theories, in areas reflecting visual and socio-affective processing, respectively. To assess perceptual and outgroup categorization contributions to the ORE, a promising - yet overlooked - solution is comparing neural responses to different other-"races". We present a label-based systematic review of neuroimaging studies comparing activation in response to other "races" (African, Caucasian, or Asian) with activation to the same "race" of participants. Hypothetically, while common activations would reflect general aspects of other-"race" perception, differential ones would represent effects of "race"-specific visual appearance. We find that faces of different other-"races" consistently engage occipito-temporal areas, presumably due to higher demand on the visual system. Other frequently reported areas (midcingulate gyrus, precuneus, declive and caudate nucleus) are related to categorization, theory of mind and behavioral regulation. Despite little support specifically for reduced motivation in OR face processing, our results suggest the importance of both perceptual expertise and social categorization. Importantly, we also identify areas preferentially responding to specific OR faces, thus reflecting effects of visual appearance.

Emotions are rapid and multifaceted processes that include changes in experience, expressivity, and physiological arousal. In most cases, people additionally implement emotion regulation strategies to manage unpleasant emotions. Of the available emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal (i.e., reinterpret the situation) was described as an efficient strategy, increasing the likelihood of successful regulation. In contrast, suppression (i.e., not showing the emotion felt) seems inefficient, leading to higher physiological and cognitive costs and an increased risk of cooccurring psychological disorders. This study aimed to better understand how these different efficiencies unfold over time after the onset of an emotional episode. Using an index focusing on differences, we sought to better understand the efficiency dynamic of reappraisal and suppression strategies. Emotionally charged positive and negative images were presented to 102 participants (78.4% females, \(M_{\mathrm{age}} = 20.75\), \(SD_{\mathrm{age}} = 2.15\)). Their task was to reappraise, suppress, or just watch the images, while their experience, expressivity, and physiological arousal were recorded. A difference index (DI) was created to highlight regulation efficiency over time and between strategies. As expected, reappraisal helped decreasing negative experience, while suppression did not. It however emerged as being more effective than reappraisal in reducing negative expressivity. More importantly, in all studied parameters, the strategies efficiency significantly changed across time. With the help of the DI, we were able to uncover at which moment each strategy became efficient, revealing it as an effective method to study dynamic changes and turning it into a new possible methodological approach to measure emotion regulation.

Our eyes can convey our current mental states based on how we gaze. The pupils can also reflect an individual's cognitive effort despite being regulated by the autonomic nervous system. We investigated whether varying pupil sizes could influence how we perceive various characteristics of another person. Participants were recruited to complete one of two online experiments. In each experiment, participants saw pairs of colored Caucasian eyes with different pupil sizes (small, medium, big, vergence). We used neutral expression eyes that gazed into the camera. The eyes were never presented twice with different pupil sizes. Pupil sizes were either grossly exaggerated (Experiment 1), or subtly manipulated (Experiment 2). Participants rated each eye-pair on several perceived traits such as attractiveness, intelligence, and realism. Results indicated that the pupils influenced how intelligent the eye-pairs appeared in both experiments. However, the influence of pupil sizes on perceived intelligence was inconsistent across experiments. Our findings hinted that pupil sizes could influence how we perceive another person. However, the mechanism behind pupil size and perceived traits requires further investigation.

Security practice due to the COVID-19 pandemics comprises wearing a face mask to cover mouth and nose as well as keeping an interpersonal distance of minimally 1.5m. Both of these practices impair social interaction in humans. Especially communication should be affected, since reading others emotional facial expressions was shown to be impaired by face masks as well as by increasing interpersonal distance. In the present study we investigate how perceived distance and face masks together affect evaluation of emotional facial expressions. To that means participants were asked to evaluate perceived valence and arousal of neutral, happy and fearful faces in an online Experiment. Faces were presented masked or unmasked. Perceived distance was manipulated by a dynamic size change, either increasing or decreasing picture size over time, signaling approaching or receding faces. Mean picture size was the same in both conditions. Results confirm typical effects of emotion on valence and arousal ratings of faces: Happy faces were rated more positive and with higher arousal than neutral faces, while fearful faces were rated more negative and with substantially higher arousal than neutral faces. Covering mouth and nose with a face mask resulted in less extreme valence ratings compared to unmasked faces, but did not affect arousal ratings. Although, a manipulation check confirmed distance manipulation, perceived distance did not affect valence or arousal ratings. Probably subtle effects of perceived distance did not emerge because reduced controllability of presentation size and viewing distance in the online Experiment. Therefore, the Experiment is replicated in a lab setting, measuring skin conductance as an psychophysiological indicator of emotion perception in addition.

Sportliche Betätigung kann therapeutische/präventive Zwecke fördern, z.B. zur Erhöhung der psychologischen Resilienz. Wir untersuchten experimentell die Wirksamkeit und Spezifität von Achtsamkeitsübungen zur Stressreduktion, Steigerung des Wohlbefindens und der Achtsamkeit. Am Interventionsprogramm mit Achtsamkeitsübungen und Wartekontrollgruppe (Prä-, Post-Design) nahmen 95 Probanden teil (\(M_{\mathrm{Alter}} = 36.4 J.\); 27 m.). Reitsport-Probanden wurden randomisiert in zwei Interventionsgruppen (IG) aufgeteilt (je \(n = 22\); Kontrollgruppe, KG, \(n = 51\)). Es wurden das aktuelle Wohlbefinden, Achtsamkeit und Stresserleben mit 3 etablierten Skalen erfasst. Die IG führten 7 Tage selbstbezogene Achtsamkeitsübungen (AG) oder pferdegestützte Achtsamkeitsübungen durch (PG). Zweifaktorielle ANOVAs (Zeitpunkt [2] \(\times\) Gruppe [3]; AVs: Wohlbefinden, Stress & Achtsamkeit) zeigten keine Interaktionseffekte (alle \(F < 1\), n.s.). Geplante Post-hoc-Vergleiche je Gruppe ergaben eine Stressreduktion für die PG (\(t(21) = -3.38\), \(p < .05\)), eine Steigerung der Achtsamkeit für die AG (\(t(21) = 2.28\), \(p < .05\)) & tendenzielle Achtsamkeitssteigerungen für die PG (\(t(21) = 1.93\), \(p = .068\)) und Stressreduktion für die AG (\(t(21) = -2.0\), \(p = .058\)); keine signifikanten Veränderung in KG. Auch zeigte nur die PG Verbesserungen in allen abhängigen Variablen im Vergleich mit der KG in der Post-Messung (alle \(t > 2.15\), alle \(p < .05\)). Wie erwartet, zeigen nur die IG Veränderungen (Stresserleben & Achtsamkeit); Wohlbefinden zeigt keine Veränderung. Die Daten legen eine spezifische Stressreduktion durch tiergestützte Achtsamkeitsübungen nahe (AG nur tendenziell signifikant); auch zeigt die PG vor der Studie ein höheres Achtsamkeitserleben als die KG. Die Befunde zeigen ein gesundheitsförderliches Potenzial (tiergestützter) Achtsamkeitsübungen.

Many decisions require prioritizing relevant over less relevant information. To decide adaptively in risky, non-compensatory environments, probabilities must be used to weight information according to their relevance. We investigated whether participants with high ability (university PhD students, postdocs, and lecturers) and high motivation due to generous performance-dependent payment will be able to use probabilities effectively for prioritizing relevant over less relevant information in a probabilistic decision task and, therefore, decide adaptively and achieve better outcomes. A variant of the standard probabilistic-inference-paradigm of decision research was used for which interindividual variability has been repeatedly demonstrated. We assessed whether participants' statistical-methodological competence can explain these differences in adaptive decision making. Contrary to the assumption of adaptive decision making, our participants looked up twice the amount of information that was necessary. The findings also show that people have difficulty in consistently prioritizing relevant information – even highly able and motivated participants. In explicit decision contexts, participants achieved high decision accuracy, yielding high monetary gains. However, when information was conflicting, the overuse of information led to mistakes – specifically, to a deviation from adaptive behavior. Statistical-methodological competence and numeracy could not explain the deviation.

Syntactic Complexity as a Cue for Judging Truth The illusory truth effect describes the phenomena that repeated statements are judged as true more often than novel ones. The fluency theory explains this finding by assuming that easily processed statements are judged as truer than disfluently processed ones. In the context of fake news, this offers an explanation for misjudging truth as well. Often, fake news communicate complex content in a simple way, for instance by using simple syntax. Since the effects of syntactic complexity on truth judgements have not yet been investigated, we conducted two preregistered online studies. Experiment 1 extended the classical truth-effect paradigm by manipulating syntactic complexity as a within-subjects factor (simple vs. complex). Besides replicating the repetition-based truth effect, we did not find a significant main effect of syntactic complexity on truth judgements. Assuming that this might have been due to the low salience of the complexity manipulation, Experiment 2 increased the salience of syntactic complexity by explicitly letting participants rate the syntactic complexity of statements during the exposure phase. In contrast to the fluency account, we found that complex statements were judged as true more often than simple ones. This suggests that the feeling of fluency and the perception of syntactic complexity are used as separate cues for truth judgments.

Psychological research on human learning has often focused on mechanisms of individual learning, whereas in reality, we learn as much from social information as our own experiences. Yet the validity of social information is limited by individual preferences or circumstances, which may not match one's own. After all, taking restaurant recommendations from someone with different culinary preferences or financial means may result in an unenjoyable or unaffordable experience. How can social information be useful despite individual differences in reward outcomes for the same behavior? Prior research has proposed various mechanisms, integrating social information at different stages of the decision-making process, including direct imitation of actions (decision-biasing) or increasing the value of socially observed actions (value-shaping). However, these strategies have limited efficacy under diverse individual rewards. Thus, we introduce a Gaussian process regression model of social generalization, where social observations are generalized less broadly than individual learning. This allows social and individual information to be integrated, with social observations having less weight when generalizing about novel outcomes. We test these theories using a modified version of the spatially-correlated multi-armed bandit task: we add social correlations, such that rewards are also correlated across individuals. Social information thus points towards high rewards, but cannot be taken verbatim. Participants perform the task in groups of four, with reward information shared across participants. Our experimental results and model simulations advance our understanding of social learning, shedding light on the mechanism underlying the integration of social and personal information.

The famous "footbridge problem" has often shown people's reluctance to push a stranger onto train tracks to save five others from an oncoming train. This preference for the deontological choice can further be enhanced by invoking empathy in the decision-makers (Conway and Gawronski, 2013). However, with increasing calls for acting more utilitarian in moral choices (e.g., Singer, 1972; Harris, 2010) and for empathy to play a lesser role in these decisions (Bloom, 2016), there is a need for understanding ways of enhancing the utilitarian choice for the greater good. The present research proposes a new way of enhancing this utilitarian response, by asking people to imagine themselves as being an uninvolved extra-terrestrial alien observing the scenario from above. In 5 preregistered studies (total \(N = 3,563\)), across different scenarios, the present research shows that taking the perspective of an uninvolved observing alien (vs. a control group) significantly increased responses favouring the utilitarian option (Cohen's \(d\) ranged from 0.38 to 1.01). This was true of both hypothetical scenarios such as footbridge dilemmas, as well as the real-life question of whether all U.S. nuclear weapons should be destroyed. Overall, the present research shows a new way of enhancing people's responses favouring the greater good in moral dilemmas. The results were consistent across different studies and different scenarios including real-life moral questions.

"Scientist created virus in lab!". The spread of misinformation is a societal problem. When confronted with emotional news, the valence of the headlines affects social judgments, while the trustworthiness of the source is often neglected (Baum & Abdel Rahman, 2020). Investigating the effects of source credibility on social judgments in different populations will help shed light on underlying cognitive mechanisms. Due to age-related cognitive changes like deficits in content-source-binding and greater reported trust, older adults (OAs) are vulnerable targets of misinformation and need effective counter-strategies. This is illustrated by the fact that adults over 65 share more misinformation online than younger adults (Guess et al., 2019). In our online study, 30 OAs receive a cognitive intervention that consists of rating the credibility of well-known media sources before news is read. They are then presented with person-related news headlines (negative, neutral, positive) from trustworthy and untrustworthy media sources and asked to make a social judgment about the person that had been the subject of the headline. If OAs benefit from this intervention, we hypothesize that news from distrusted sources will lead to less emotionally valenced person judgments. Preliminary results of our pilot study (\(n = 10\), with a mean age of 72 years) show that despite the intervention, the headline valence influences social judgment for both trusted and distrusted sources. However, results suggest an attenuated effect of headlines from distrusted sources on person judgment. We outline ideas for improving and testing strategies that can guard OAs against emotional misinformation.

Motivational dispositions are assumed to influence people's decision making under risk. Achievement motivation, which is separated into hope for success and fear of failure, is thought to influence risky decisions, when options unambiguously differ in advantageousness (= in known outcome probability and value, i.e., expected value), so that the outcome is indicative of the decision maker's abilities. In this study, 108 participants (mean age = 22.86 years; 73% female) completed a gambling task in which they choose between a risky and a safe option with known outcome probabilities. Outcome probability and value of the risky option were systematically varied, so that choices were risk-advantageous, risk-disadvantageous, or had the same expected value compared to the safe option. Consistent with previous findings, participants took more risk if the choice was advantageous than if it was disadvantageous. Hope for success predicted a higher risk preference when the expected value was equal for the safe and risky option (ambiguous situation). As both options did not differ in advantageousness, outcomes are, in contrast to previous findings on achievement motivation, not indicative of the decision maker's abilities. We speculate that individuals with higher hope for success show a higher risk preference under equal expected value conditions because of a higher tendency to explore choice options in ambiguous situations.

Creative language production is traditionally characterized by a high number of unusual and varied responses. Verbal fluency tests, where a speaker has to generate as many exemplars of a category as possible, allow to quantify different aspects of creative speech. Our goal was to explore how the performance in verbal fluency tasks depends on creativity and vocabulary size. One hundred participants performed a verbal fluency task with 24 semantic categories of varying difficulty (e.g. easy: "animals", medium: "trees", difficult: "precious stones"). The number of correct responses, the frequency of each answer (over all participants) and the position of each answer (within participants) were analysed. Verbal fluency results were then correlated with a creativity (Alternative Uses) and a vocabulary task (MWT-B). For many categories, more frequent answers were more likely to be mentioned earlier (e.g. "dog, cat, mouse" for "animals"). However, there were also categories with highly unpredictable orders of answers (e.g. the categories "hobbies", "vessels", "dances"). Performance on these categories was positively correlated with the creativity task, but uncorrelated with the vocabulary task. Meanwhile, vocabulary compared to creativity was most important for the difficult categories. The results demonstrate how verbal fluency tasks measure different aspects of language, depending on the category used. Often, categories like "animals" are used to measure divergent thinking or executive functions, and the number of correct answers are the default metric. The present work suggests that in order to derive richer measures of language production, it might be interesting to use categories that are inherently more unpredictable and to analyse the participants' order of answers.

We investigated the organization of the bilingual lexicon by analyzing how interlingual homographs (IH) - words with identical writing in at least two languages - are comprehended. Using a lexical decision (LD) task, we examined if the distributional semantic similarity between prime and target predicted LD times in a priming experiment (using exclusively IHs and pseudowords). Participants' L2 was made salient by using L2 for instructions and by a picture description task where participants had to describe cultural anchor points at the start of the experiment. Only participants living in a country where their L2 was the official language were recruited, which was either English native speakers in Germany (\(N = 45\)) or German native speakers the UK (\(N = 45\)). We expected to find cosine similarities in participants' L2 to be predictive for LD times as the experimental setting made participants' L2 salient. Contrary to expectations, model comparisons showed no significant effect of cosine similarities of participants' L2, suggesting that semantic similarity between words in participant's L2 did not influence word comprehension in this experimental setting. A post-hoc comparison revealed that only for German participants living in the UK, cosine similarities of participants native language were a significant predictor. These results suggest that cosine similarities can be predictive for participants' reaction times in an LD task even when exclusively using IHs, but that bilinguals may process homographs in their L1 even if their L2 has been made salient.

Pragmatic views of language comprehension assume that non-linguistic information is integrated during sentence processing. Interestingly, it has recently been suggested that producing and comprehending linguistic negation is associated with specific facial signs of anger, disgust, and contempt – the so-called "not face" (Benitez-Quiroz et al., 2016). In two pre-registered experiments, we investigated whether perceiving non-linguistic information in terms of a "not face" can facilitate sentential negation comprehension. Participants read affirmative and negated sentences (e.g., "Ja, ich will ein Glas Wasser haben" vs. "Nein, ich möchte nicht ins Kino gehen") in a self-paced manner (Experiment 1) or judged the sensibility of affirmative and negated sentences (Experiment 2), respectively. Prior to each sentence, we displayed a photographic representation of a "not face" or a positive control face. However, we did not observe any compatibility effect: Neither reading times (Experiment 1) nor sensibility judgment times (Experiment 2) for negated sentences were significantly faster when they were preceded by a "not face". Thus, the current research does not provide evidence for the integration of non-linguistic facial signs during sentential negation comprehension. In our presentation, we will discuss methodological issues as well as potential theoretical implications.

Aktuell ist wenig darüber bekannt ist, wie psychosoziale Faktoren die Sprachwahrnehmung beeinflussen können. Dies ist überraschend, da gesprochene Sprache unser primäres Kommunikationsmittel ist und eine Beeinträchtigung dieses Systems unter Stress vielfältige negative Auswirkungen haben kann. In der aktuellen Studie, welche wir online an 200 deutschen und 200 englischen Muttersprachlern durchgeführt haben, untersuchen wir die Performanz der Emotionserkennung in der Sprache in Abhängigkeit von dem subjektiven Stressempfinden und sozialen Copingstrategien. Dazu schätzen die Versuchspersonen, die Emotion von einem gehörten Pseudosatz ein. Die Sätze wurden sowohl emotional neutral als auch in 4 Emotionen (angenehme Überraschung, Trauer, Angst, Freude) eingesprochen. Als abhängige Variable haben wir die unbiased Hit Rate gemessen. Außerdem haben wir das subjektive Stressempfinden sowie die Copingstrategien der Versuchspersonen abgefragt und die Personen auf der Basis ihres Stresssempfindens in 4 Gruppen aufgeteilt (low, medium, high, very high stressed). Die Daten zeigen, dass Personen, die ein mittleres chronisches Stressempfinden haben, selektiv besser die Emotion Angst in der Sprache wahrnehmen (Interaktion Stressgruppe \(\times\) Emotion). Außerdem korrelierte das wahrgenommene Stresslevel mit der unbiased Hit rate für die Emotion Angst. Die Performanz in den anderen Emotionskategorien war von dem Stresslevel unbeeinflusst. In der Moderationsanalyse zeigte sich kein Hinweis darauf, dass die soziale Copingstrategie ein signifikanter Moderator dieses Effekts ist (keine Interaktion von Stress und sozialem Coping).

The personality trait sensory-processing sensitivity (SPS) is marked by a greater sensitivity and responsiveness to internal and external stimuli. The trait's characteristics among others are a deeper and more thorough cognitive processing of stimuli and a sense of subtle details (Aron et al., 2005; Aron, 2020). Prior studies have shown that SPS comes along with neural correlates in response to subtle changes in visual scenes (Jagiellowicz et al., 2011). In order to examine if and how these properties influence also visual word processing and the language system, a lexical decision task was conducted on 116 subjects. Stimuli varied in lexical frequency and lexicality and were counterbalanced by multiple factors like neighbourhood density or length. SPS was measures by the German version of the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (Konrad & Herzberg, 2017). We found a significant interaction between lexicality and SPS showing longer latencies for pseudowords according to high SPS, while SPS had no effect on reaction times for words. The overall findings suggest an impact of SPS on language processing, potentially caused by the depth of processing and a "pause-to-stop"-reaction induced by the strangeness of the pseudowords. Stimuli, with which subjects are not familiar, seem to lead to more thorough processing and longer latencies in people scoring high in SPS. To further examine how the language processing system is affected by SPS, a second experiment was conducted. A masked semantic categorization task along with a masked lexical decision task was constructed, with primes consisting of related and unrelated words and congruent and incongruent pseudowords to test for the locus of the effect in the language system. Data collection is complete, results will be on hand by January.

The understanding of the discourse depends on an individual's ability to integrate new information into a given context. A discourse appears plausible if (i) a reference is possible to information that was already mentioned in the context or (ii) relations can be inferred from semantic context. In two online rating studies, we investigated the role of memory and semantic plausibility on discourse understanding. Participants listened to several context sentences followed by a verbal test sentence including a critical noun phrase. The definite determiner of the noun phrase presupposes the existence of a target noun in the context, whereas the indefinite noun phrase presupposes its non-existence. These presuppositions were either fulfilled or not. To investigate whether detection of fulfilment depends on memory, in Study 1, we manipulated the sequential position of a potential target (far or near to critical noun) within the context. In Study 2, semantic coherences was established by a plausible or implausible context for a noun phrase, which was not mentioned in the context. Participants rated the adequateness of the test sentences relative to the context. In Study 1, ratings depending on presupposition fulfilment were less extreme for far distances than for near ones. This result indicates that presupposition violations seem to be more severe for entities highly present in memory than for those mentioned a longer time ago. In Study 2, ratings were influenced by plausibility, but not by presupposition fulfilment. This result indicates that global semantic context dominates more local reference violations evoked by presupposition processing. Altogether, the two studies show that the way how presuppositions are processed is influenced by memory and semantic plausibility.

Expectations help people to predict the future on the basis of past experiences and knowledge. Expectation violations disrupt an individual's predictive ability and cause uncertainty. This uncertainty evokes a common syndrome of arousal which motivates palliative efforts after worse-than-expected events. The ViolEx Model defines accommodation, assimilation, and immunization as coping strategies after expectation violation. Our study addressed situational and dispositional predictors that may be decisive influences on the use of the three coping strategies. We conducted an experiment with \(n = 439\) students. In our study, we manipulated valence and degree of expectation violation, and relevance of the expectation in an achievement test. We furthermore assessed dispositional coping tendencies, optimism, and need for cognitive closure as possible dispositional predictors. Participants experienced the expectation violation in an analogy solving test in which we created and then violated positive vs. negative achievement expectations with manipulated task difficulty and achievement feedback. Negative valence of expectation violation predicted stronger efforts to fulfil the expectation (assimilation) and the combination of negative valence and large degree predicted stronger immunization. Furthermore, dispositional coping tendencies and need for cognitive closure predicted coping with the expectation violation. Thus, our study provides initial evidence that situational influences and personality dispositions both predict coping with expectation violations. Participants showed strong efforts to protect the academic self-concept from unexpectedly threatening feedback by devaluation and ignorance of discrepant information.

During their first attempts in lesson planning student teachers plan linearly instead of dynamically, incoherently and without proper consideration of students' preconditions. These problems may be explained by the interplay of the lesson planning task's high intrinsic cognitive load, the limited capacity of human working memory and novices' lack of lesson planning routines: The intrinsic cognitive load of a task is dependent on the number of task elements, their interrelations (element interactivity), and previous knowledge stored in long-term memory. During lesson planning, a large number of interrelated elements (e.g., objectives, content, methods, materials) has to be considered that may overload working memory. At the same time, student teachers as novices do not have routines they could retrieve to circumvent the working memory capacity threshold. These assumptions have not been tested yet. To build evidence for the explanation of novices' lesson planning problems presented above, an experiment is designed in which the intrinsic load of the planning task (within, IV1) and the previous knowledge on planning principles (between, IV2) is modified. The experiment is administered online. Participating student teachers are asked to work on closed vignettes of planning situations in which few, several or many planning elements must be considered. After each vignette, intrinsic load is self-assessed. This assessment serves as one of three dependent variables besides performance and answer time. While there is some evidence for the generic nature of the vignettes from pretests, closed answer options and the self-assessment of the intrinsic load are limitations of the study. The proper data analysis needs further discussion as well as the manipulation of previous knowledge.

Pictures have different cognitive functions. For instance, informative pictures provide topic-relevant information, whereas decorative pictures motivate readers (Lenzner et al., 2013). Interactive pictures compared to static pictures allow readers to actively manipulate the variables and thus fosters constructive learning (Rey, 2011). However, it is not yet clear whether interactive informative pictures enhance learning compared to interactive decorative vs. static informative vs. static decorative pictures. We therefore plan to conduct a study with picture type (informative vs. decorative) and interaction level (interactive vs. static) as between-subject factors. Participants will be randomly divided into one of the four groups. They receive a pre-test on prior knowledge, a learning material on Comets (Müller, 2011), and post-tests (on motivation and cognitive load). The study will be conducted via a R Shiny Application and will take approximately 30 minutes. The four groups will be compared in terms of accuracy (retention), reading time, testing time and click frequency. An interaction effect is hypothesized for the two between subject factors picture type and interaction level. We plan to start the data collection from December 2021 to February 2022.

Multimedia and interactive features in electronic storybooks can improve information processing efficiency and recall performance in pre-schoolers. However, focusing attention on relevant information while ignoring several nonrelevant sources is problematic. Interactive features, in particular, can interfere with information processing because they might be a source of distraction and increase the cognitive load. Despite their importance, executive functions are usually not discussed in the literature of electronic storybooks. Thus, the goal of our study was to investigate how multimedia and interactive features in electronic storybooks may facilitate learning. We were interested in the influence of attentional performance and working memory capacity on recall performance in pre-schoolers. Participants (\(N = 30\), \(M = 5.57\) years) were exposed to three different stories in three separate sessions, saw two electronic storybooks (one with only multimedia and one with interactive features), and listened to one story (as baseline). After each session children were asked to answer 10 questions assessing how well they remembered the story. We measured children's working memory capacity and attentional performance in separate sessions. Caregivers filled out the ADHD Rating Scale-IV for each child. Our results indicate that multimedia and interactive features improve recall performance. However, we observed a positive relationship between recall performance and efficiency in sustained and selective attention in both the interactive and multimedia electronic storybook conditions. This effect was more emphasized in the interactive condition. These results highlight that digital educational environment should adapt to individual needs of the children.

For some time, there has been a debate in cognitive psychology about how multiple features of an object are stored in long-term memory. Whereas the mutual cuing hypothesis posits that stored features are directly linked to each other, the binding variability hypothesis assumes that features are linked only indirectly via the object. Disentangling these two hypotheses experimentally poses a challenge, because feature retrieval is typically tested with object information present and thus, successful retrieval of features can be caused either by direct links between features or by idiosyncratic links between each feature and the object. In the present study, we aim to remedy this limitation: Participants learn a list of everyday objects with different combinations of two features (i.e., color and orientation). Subsequently, they perform a four-alternative forced-choice recognition test in which one old and three new feature combinations are presented. Importantly, only in half of the trials, the feature combinations are shown with the same objects as in the learning phase, whereas they are presented with new objects in the other half. We propose a multinomial processing tree (MPT) model to disentangle the processes underlying successful retrieval of feature combinations with and without the learned object being present. By means of this MPT analysis, we directly test whether retrieval of feature combinations is possible in the absence of object information (supporting the mutual cuing hypothesis) or not (supporting the binding variability hypothesis).

Learning novel foreign vocabulary often occurs within a semantic context. Such context can be provided by sentences in which foreign words are embedded. These sentences can be predictive – they can lead the reader to believe that they can infer the correct translation – or nonpredictive – so ambiguous that the chances of predicting the translation are low. Previous research on prediction error suggests that such errors should boost memory compared to conditions where error is low. We thus investigated how presenting novel foreign words within predictive or nonpredictive sentences affects their memory. We presented foreign Finnish words at the end of predictive and nonpredictive sentences. Importantly, in predictive sentences the most obvious translation was never correct. Also, for half of the sentences participants were asked to guess the translation before being presented with the corrective feedback - they made overt predictions – and the other half of sentences presented the correct translation straightaway so that participants could only make covert predictions while reading. Experiment 1 tested associative recognition performance for correct translations when cued with their Finnish counterparts and only revealed better performance for words from nonpredictive than predictive sentences. Experiment 2 changed the test format to simple recognition and only revealed a benefit of overt compared to covert predictions. In Experiment 3 we tested memory for translations instead of Finnish words by cuing them with the sentences in which they were embedded at study, revealing a benefit of predictive sentences and overt predictions, but no interaction. The results suggest that the effects of predictiveness and overt vs. covert predictions are independent of one another.

Implicit learning is thought to be a basic learning mechanism, taking place without conscious awareness about the fact that one learns or what one learns. It is assumed to take place in distributed sets of specialized and parallel working modules. If this were the case, multiple regularities processed in different modules should be learned concurrently. However, it is not clear yet what exactly is processed in these modules. Do modules either process purely perceptual or purely motoric information or do they process distinct features regardless of whether they belong to perception- or motor-related processing. In the current experiments, we focused on exactly this question. First, we tested whether two independent regularities of colors and shapes – both processed within the visual modality – can be learned concurrently. Experiment 1 (\(n = 40\)) replicated an artificial grammar learning experiment providing first evidence that concurrent learning of a color grammar and a shape grammar is possible. Experiment 2 (\(n = 62\)) demonstrated the generality of these findings by using a serial reaction time task showing concurrent learning of a color sequence and a shape sequence. In Experiment 3, our results suggest that a perceived color sequence transfers to a sequence of eye movements. Here, we wanted to show that learning is neither purely perceptual nor purely motoric, but abstract and even transferrable. Overall, the findings converge to the assumption that implicit learning is based on modules that process perception- and motor-related information of distinct features.

While the importance of pattern reinstatement during long-term episodic memory (eLTM) retrieval has been long recognized, it is difficult to assess retrieval independently from attentional processes at the level of scalp topography. Previous studies suggested that switching the focus of attention within working memory representations is associated with alpha/beta oscillations (8 ‐ 20Hz), while the same activity has been also linked to pattern reinstatement during eLTM retrieval. The current design allows us to measure independently the two processes reflected in alpha/beta-band activity. In the encoding phase, subjects were presented with an object on a certain position on the screen (left, tight, top or bottom) and their task was to imagine it on a new position for later report. In each trial, either the task-irrelevant presentation position or the task-relevant imagination position was lateralized. In the retrieval phase, objects were centrally presented and subjects were required to make an old/new judgement, followed by the report of the imagination position associated with each old object. Changes of lateralized alpha/beta activity reflecting pattern reinstatement would predict similar topographical effects during encoding and retrieval. Conversely, the influence of attentional control processes during retrieval would be associated with the suppression of alpha/beta power contralateral to the to-be-reported imagination position and a contralateral increase relative to the irrelevant presentation position. Our results support this latter pattern. This shows that an experimental differentiation between selective attention and pattern reinstatement is necessary when studying cortical reinstatement processes during eLTM retrieval.

Evidence exists that social media usage is an effective means to influence learning, memory, and motivation. However, little is known about its effects on memory when used directly after learning. In the present study, we explored the question to what extent social media usage immediately following new encoding affects verbal long-term memory. In a counterbalanced within-subject design with healthy younger adults, we show that compared to a brief period of post-encoding wakeful resting, social media usage had a detrimental effect on 1-day memory retention. Furthermore, the memory detrimental effects of social media usage were similar in its extent like working on a mentally demanding working memory task. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

Animate words are consistently remembered better than inanimate words. This animacy effect hints at an evolutionary adaptation of our memory system, prioritizing information crucial for survival. Yet there is little insight into the proximate mechanisms leading to the effect. Previous research discusses attention, threat and arousal among other suggestions. One relevant aspect to gain a better understanding might be the amount of control participants have over the effect. In two self-paced learning experiments, the participants were informed and instructed to prioritize either animate or inanimate words and allocate their time and attention accordingly (without neglecting the other). The first experiment consists of an sequential learning task, while the second experiment implements a less restricted and more controllable learning task. The results are discussed regarding the effect of focused attention on animate and non-animate words.

Retrieval practice can enhance learning of newly studied information. In two experiments, we investigated this forward testing effect in learning of spatial information, that is, arrays filled with objects; participants were instructed to memorize the objects' locations in four learning blocks. We tested the hypothesis that retrieval practice reduces proactive interference (PI) and thereby enhances the learning and retention of objects' locations in the final array. To test this hypothesis, we employed a two-factorial mixed design, with practice type (retrieval vs. restudy) being a within-subject factor and PI (matrices with same vs. different objects across learning blocks) being a between-subjects factor. In each of two sessions, participants studied arrays (Exp. 1: 3 × 3 objects; Exp. 2: 4 × 4 objects) either filled with the same objects but in different locational arrangements (i.e., high PI) or with different pictures in the four learning blocks (i.e., low PI). In Learning Blocks 1-3, participants received either an interim test after each array (retrieval practice) or were asked to restudy the array (restudy practice). In Learning Block 4, all participants were tested on the final array. Consistent in both experiments, retrieval practice led to a significantly better location performance in Learning Block 4, compared to restudy, and the forward effect of testing was marginally higher in the context of high, compared to low PI. Furthermore, retrieval practice reduced the number of confusion errors in Learning Block 4 in the high-PI group, compared to restudy. The results indicate that retrieval practice enhances subsequent learning of locational information, at least partially by reducing PI from previously learned arrays.

In this study, we probe whether individual differences in the audio-visual temporal binding window (TBW; i.e., the interval at which delayed auditory and visual stimuli appear to emerge simultaneously) can be assessed reliably in online experiments. To do so, we evaluated the reliability of three standard tasks measuring the temporal binding window, namely the Temporal Order Judgment Task (TOJ), the Simultaneity Judgment Task (SJ), and the Two-Interval-Forced-Choice Task (2IFC), in a browser-based web experiment. Each participant (\(N = 108\)) completed each task twice on two consecutive days, either in the lab (using the same laboratory computer) or at home (using their individual computers). For each task, we calculated the TBW for each participant, and obtained the test-retest reliability across the two sessions. Regarding the temporal binding window, all tasks provided good reliability estimates, however, we observed substantially more data exclusions for the 2IFC and the SJ than for the TOJ (due to poor model fits). In all tasks, the width of the TBW was highly correlated with raw accuracy in the task. Since raw accuracy revealed higher reliability scores than the TBW, it might be worth considering using raw accuracy as proxy for individual differences in the TBW. Importantly, there were no substantial differences between the online- and lab-based estimates of the reliability scores. Therefore, the reliability scores in the online tasks cannot be attributed to systematic differences in the technical setups. We conclude that it is possible to study individual differences in the audio-visual TBW online. We made the code of all three tasks available, but we recommend using the TOJ.

In visually ambiguous situations, cross-modal information such as tones influence the way how observers establish object correspondence. A good experimental paradigm mimicking such visual ambiguity is the bouncing/streaming display. In this display, two identical discs move horizontally toward each other, overlap in the center of the screen, and then move apart again. Object correspondence can be resolved either as two discs bouncing off or as two discs streaming past each other. While the visual display is typically perceived as streaming, a brief tone that coincides with the visual overlap typically induces the perception of bouncing (auditory-induced bouncing). Besides this, a brief tone also reduces the amount of perceived overlap between the moving discs (auditory-induced illusory crescent). In this study, we probe an attentional explanation for how auditory-induced bouncing and auditory-induced illusory crescents are related. We propose that a tone-induced distraction of attention induces the illusory crescents which in return might elicit an increase in perceived bouncing. To test this explanation, we manipulated the speed of the moving objects measuring auditory-induced bouncing as well as auditory-induced illusory crescents within the same participants. Object speed hardly affected perceived bouncing but increased illusory crescents. However, the speed manipulation did not alter the effect of the coinciding tones in both illusions. This rules out the attentional distraction hypothesis. Nevertheless, we observed correlations between the magnitude of both illusions within each level of object speed. This suggests that both illusions in general are related although the exact origin remains unresolved.

Efficient and robust object perception can be challenged by noisy and ambiguous input. Our visual system is dealing with this problem by a hierarchy of low-, mid- and high-level representations that interactively shape our visual experience. To better understand the individual contributions of these different levels to object-selective neural and behavioral responses, previous studies developed stimulus sets to separate "lower" and "higher" representations of object categories. For example, images of objects were reduced to unrecognizable textures that only preserved mid-level texture and form information, or were chosen such that visual (e.g. shape) and semantic properties (e.g. categories) of objects could be dissociated. Here, we introduce the AmbigObj stimulus-set consisting of shape-matched images from small vs. large objects (e.g., broccoli vs. tree) and animate vs. inanimate objects (e.g., snake vs. rope). Crucially, we complemented each of these object pairs with a customized ambiguous drawing, compatible with either categorical 'high'-level interpretation (e.g., either a broccoli or a tree). In two rating studies (\(N{\mathrm{size}} = 35\); \(N_{\mathrm{animacy}} = 28\)), we investigated the perceptual similarity of drawings and real objects, as well the perceived properties of these stimuli (e.g., shape, real-world size, vividness). Results confirmed that our ambiguous drawings are compatible with multiple perceptual interpretations. Together, drawings and measurements define a well-controlled stimulus set, which can be used to isolate effects of different categorical interpretations with identical input. We plan to make these stimuli publicly available and currently use them to study the role of learned interpretations for Stroop effects and ventral stream representations.

The objects around us move and they can disappear behind other objects or change their appearance, e.g, if the lighting conditions change. Nevertheless, the visual system is able to integrate this new spatio-temporal and feature information into the existing object representations and thus to establish correspondence. It is unclear, however, how this information is weighted during the correspondence process. Here, we investigated if this weighting can be influenced by prior experience. We used an ambiguous apparent motion display, the Ternus display, in which three elements can be perceived as either moving independently (element motion) or together as a group (group motion). Which percept is seen depends on how correspondence has been resolved. To manipulate prior experience, we presented in a first phase different types of Ternus displays. For one group of participants correspondence could be based on spatio-temporal information as the interstimulus interval (ISI) between the Ternus elements varied. For the other group correspondence could be based on feature information, as the Ternus elements were presented in different colors, compatible with group or element motion. In a second phase we then showed both groups of participants the same Ternus displays, in which correspondence could be based on both factors. The results showed that the ISI had a stronger effect for the group that was trained on a variable ISI compared to a control group that only participated in the second phase, suggesting that prior experience can influence correspondence. We also looked at the stability of this prior experience effect by presenting the second phase 24h after the first phase and found that the effect was decreased, but did not disappear completely.

According to models of aesthetic appearance, various factors, including the speed of processing, memory processes and the meaningful interpretation of stimuli, influence their aesthetic impression. In this study, we investigated whether visual spatial attention modulates the aesthetic impression of art drawings (https://robertbalke.de). Following the presentation of an endogenous spatial cue, two drawings were presented simultaneously on the screen, and participants indicated whether the cued one was green or blue. The second drawing served as distractor stimulus. As a control for the orientation of attention, a colour decision was required for a small dot (20% of the trials) that could appear at the validly cued position or at the non-cued position. Following the attention task, previously used drawings (targets and distractors) or unknown drawings were evaluated by means of a questionnaire. The questionnaire measured beauty, the coherence, the arousal potential and also the recognition performance for the drawings on a seven-point scale. Faster response times for validly compared to invalidly cued dots assured the effective orientation of attention. Importantly, spatial attention increased the aesthetic evaluation for targets compared to distractors and previously unseen drawings. In summary, the results suggest that paying attention to a stimulus positively influences its aesthetic impression.

To perceive an object in motion our visual system has to establish correspondence between the different instances of that object over space and time. It has been shown that spatio-temporal continuity as well as object-based information, like features, influences correspondence. So far, however, little is known about how exactly the available information is weighted for establishing correspondence. One possibility is that it depends on the immediate context information. To test this idea, we used a Ternus display, an ambiguous apparent motion display. Depending on how correspondence is solved, three elements are either perceived as moving together (group motion) or as one element jumping across the others (element motion). We used biased versions of this display, in which the elements were colored differently, such that they were either compatible with element motion (element bias), group motion (group bias) or both (competitive bias). We manipulated the immediate context via the frequency of the bias conditions in a between-subject design by mixing the competitive bias display with either the group bias (GB-group), the element bias (EB-group) or the competitive bias display (neutral-group). If this context influences the correspondence solution, we expected percepts in the competitive display condition to be more dependent on the more frequently presented bias because this information would be more reliable. Thus, compared to the neutral-group we expected more group motion percepts for the GB-group and more element motion percepts in the EB-group. Results showed a difference between groups, suggesting an influence of intermediate context information, but in the opposite direction as expected, maybe due to habituation processes.

Previous research showed that the sensory consequences of self-initiated sounds are attenuated as indicated by the auditory N1 suppression effect compared to externally-initiated sounds. This effect has also been shown in the visual domain, however, here, self-initiated pictures triggered either an attenuated N1 response or an enlarged N1 response. The present study investigated with cross-modal stimuli and employes three conditions, an auditory condition with self-initiated sounds, a visual condition with self-initiated pattern reversals of a checkerboard, and an auditory-visual condition with simultaneously occurring self-initiated sounds and pattern reversals. For each condition, externally-generated sounds or pattern reversals were collected in a separate block in order to compare them with the self-initiated ones. The physical features of each stimulus in the self-initiated and externally-initiated conditions were completely identical. EEG was recorded from 27 subjects. Initial analyses indicated differences between the self-initiated action effects and the externally-initiated ones in the N1 and P2 time range. Those N1 and P2 differences were further modulated by the different conditions. Preliminary results showed sensory attenuation in those conditions including auditory stimuli. Our results have important implications for understanding how perception could be influenced by self-initiated sensations across different sensory modalities

Distinctive voices are thought to stand out of a crowd and should therefore facilitate stream segregation of simultaneous voices. We tested this hypothesis using auditory scenes comprising three simultaneous voices of young adults, all uttering the same sustained vowel. Voice distinctiveness was manipulated using voice caricaturing. According to the MDVS framework, caricatures and anti-caricatures, increase and decrease acoustic differences of a given voice relative to an average voice, respectively. In an online study, 14 participants rated caricatured voices as more distinctive than anti-caricatured voices. Afterwards, they compared two consecutive multi-singer stimuli (S1 and S2) in an object disappearance paradigm: S1 stimuli contained three voices, one of which (target voice) was caricatured, anti-caricatured or unaltered. S2 was either identical to S1 (same trials) or lacked the target voice (different trials). As predicted, matching performance was highest for trials containing voice caricatures. This suggests that voice caricaturing enhances perceived distinctiveness and reduces "change-deafness" in multi-singer scenes. It remains to be determined, exactly which acoustic parameters contribute to this effect and if these findings generalize to more complex utterances.

Previous studies have shown that the size of a stimulus affects its perceived duration, and this is not only the case for physical size but also for subjective size. In the present study, we tested whether the effect of the Ebbinghaus illusion on perceived duration can be explained by an altered time perception during encoding of the stimulus or by higher level interference. In our experiment, participants had to reproduce target intervals of 400, 600, or 800ms by terminating a reproduction stimulus. The Ebbinghaus illusion was applied either during the target interval or during the reproduction phase. If the Ebbinghaus illusion affects time perception during encoding of the stimulus, subjective size should have opposite effects on temporal reproductions depending on when the Ebbinghaus illusion is presented. That is, larger subjective size should lead to longer reproductions when the Ebbinghaus illusion is presented during the target interval and to shorter reproductions when it is shown during the reproduction phase. In contrast to this prediction, results showed the same effect of subjective size irrespective of when the Ebbinghaus illusion was presented. This result pattern suggests a higher level interference between subjective size and temporal processing.

In a constantly changing environment, goal-directed behavior requires a dynamic balance between goal persistence and goal disengagement. While a growing body of research is dedicated to factors that modulate this balance, little is known about setups that include more than one (co-) actor. The present study investigated how a reliable vs. unreliable co-actor affected participants' goal persistence in a novel joint goal-setting paradigm. Specifically, a participant and a confederate had to move a target in two steps from the bottom center to the top left or right corner of the computer-screen. First, participants indicated their goal choice by moving the target halfway towards either corner. Then, the confederate moved the target to its final position. In the first block (baseline), the confederate always followed the participant's choice. In the second block (test), the confederate followed the participant's choice in 50% (unreliable follower) vs. 80% (reliable follower) of the trials. As DV we used the proportion of participant's goal repetitions in dependence of whether the confederate had followed the participant's choice or not. Results show increased goal persistence (goal repetitions) after the confederate did not follow the participant's choice. Crucially, this effect was stronger when the confederate was a reliable (80%) rather than an unreliable (50%) follower. We conclude that interdependent goals are only maintained when the co-actor is perceived as reliable.

Considering the privileges held by individuals is becoming an increasingly prominent topic in social justice discourses. However, systematic analysis of the psychological processes involved in the perception of privilege has yet to be provided. Following research from the area of expectancy violation, I develop a theory that aims to explain how people form privilege judgments. I theorize that two aspects, in particular, are relevant for assessing privilege: (1) the extent to which individuals deviate from the perceived norm concerning a socially relevant characteristic and (2) the causes of existing deviations. I hypothesize that an individual is judged as being privileged, if deviations from the norm are exceptionally big (exceptionality) and if the causes for these differences are judged as unfair. Two studies (\(N = 360\)) with German online samples were conducted to test this hypothesis. In both studies, participants were given information about the income of a fictitious person, Martin, and asked to assess the extent of his privilege. The findings of Study 1 support the stated hypothesis. The stronger Martin's income deviated from the income one could expect to be earned in Germany and the more participants judged this to be due to unfair reasons the more privileged he was perceived. Study 2 replicates these findings and demonstrates further that, when given limited information, people intentionally seek information that allows them to assess a person's exceptionality and the fairness of existing norm deviations when asked to assess privilege. This research is the first to socio-psychologically theorize and analyze how people form privilege judgments. In doing so, it lays a first foundation for developing an understanding of the processes underlying privilege judgments.

Social exclusion is often perceived as painful by the victim. Previous studies showed that social pain is processed in similar brain areas as physical pain. Bullying, particularly the experience of social exclusion could hence lead to the victim being constantly exposed to a feeling of pain, which in turn seems to alter the perception of pain. Little is known about the underlying changes in the neural processing due to exposure of bullying as well as the relationship between the exposure to bullying and the change in physical pain perception. We investigated the electrophysiological correlates of physical pain perception depending on the bullying experience. Furthermore, the relationship between individual bullying experience and sensitivity to rejection was of interest. We used 60 color pictures showing a person's hands in painful (\(N = 30\)) or non-painful (\(N = 30\)) situations within a Go/NoGo response paradigm. 60 young women have to decide whether in the current trial the same picture as in the previous trial was presented, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Individual bullying experience and rejection sensitivity were assessed. Compared to the participants without any bullying experience, participants with that experience showed a smaller nociceptive evoked potential (NEP) when watching to painful pictures (relative to non-painful). Moreover, there was a negative correlation between the NEP and the extent of sensitivity to rejection. No differences were found in later ERP components related to pain processing. Our results suggest that individuals with bullying experience showed a greater fear of social rejection and seem to pay less attention to potential painful stimuli.

Which factors influence solidarity-based actions towards out-groups? Why do advantaged group members engage in action for disadvantaged groups? When are these actions in a hierarchy-maintaining vs. hierarchy-challenging manner? Led by these main research questions, we aim to investigate a model specifying the interplay of Justice Sensitivity, Social Dominance Orientation, and Social Identification on different levels of inclusion for solidarity-based collective action – thereby bridging personality and social-psychological perspectives. All three factors have been proposed as important determinants of behavior in favor of a group (e.g., collective action). However, a limitation of past research is the missing integrated perspective. A first study (\(N = 119\)) measured Justice Sensitivity and manipulated the level of Social Identification (Europe vs. World) in order to test how these variables separately and in interaction affect perceived injustice, political solidarity, and helping intentions and behavior in favor of outgroups on both identification levels. Construct validity of the scales was given. Although we found theoretically meaningful correlations, our experimental approach in manipulating social identification was not yet successful. In the next step, we will aim to improve the manipulation of social identification as well as test the variables' added value for explaining and predicting the two different types of solidarity-based actions (i.e., hierarchy-challenging and hierarchy-maintaining). We discuss the adequacy of the model guiding our research as well as the use of different experimental designs.

When two participants perform a Go/NoGo task together, one's own and partner's actions have to be precisely turned to one another. In these kinds of task, stimuli are arbitrary associated with the different co-actors, for example through assigning one particular stimulus color to each co-actor. Both participants carry out this Go/NoGo task together (joint condition) or alone (individual condition). Previous research (Baess & Prinz, 2015) showed an N1 modulation for action-associated stimuli depending on the social contexts. The present EEG experiment assigned different auditory stimuli to each participant. Across two separate sessions, the participants received either arbitrary tones (i.e. sinus tones) or personal significant tones (i.e. message tone of one's own mobile phone). In both cases, one tone was mapped with one's own response (Go-trial), whereas two other tones, i.e. partner-associated tone and a neutral tone, did not require a response (NoGo-trials). The research question was two-folded: i) whether similar early top-down influences of social setting could be obtained in the auditory domain; and ii) whether the personal significance of the stimulus material modulates the early auditory responses further. The preliminary results showed that the N1 response due to different action-associated stimuli in the NoGo trials differed when using personally significant tones, but not for the arbitrary sinus tones. Further differences occurred in the P2 time range.

People usually have different in-group memberships. However, the norms of these groups can be contradicting, which may elicit dissonance within the social self. This is different from dissonance at the individual level because it stems only from people's membership in ingroups with conflicting norms. Building on Social Identity Theory and Cognitive Dissonance Theory, we test whether norm conflict between ingroups increases psychological discomfort as a measure of dissonance. Not only is norm conflict between ingroups an inconsistency in important aspects of the self; it also leads to a goal conflict created by opposite ingroup norms and should therefore be strongest for people who are highly identified with both groups. In a first experimental study (\(N = 404\)), we investigated how people experience and respond to conflicting ingroup norms. To rule out conflict between personal and social norms, we separately analysed data from a subsample of participants (\(N = 109\)), who had no previous opinion on the topic of the norm. Norm conflict was manipulated by presenting the results of a bogus survey, indicating that two ingroups agreed or disagreed on the topic of mandatory blood donation. The results of the experiment revealed a main effect of norm conflict on psychological discomfort as a measure of dissonance. An interaction effect of norm conflict and ingroup identification indicated that persons with low identification levels for both groups were less likely to experience psychological discomfort in reaction to norm conflict. Distancing from the ingroups and downplaying the credibility of the norm manipulation emerged as strategies to cope with salient normative conflict. A preregistered replication study is planned, and its results will also be presented.

Contextual cueing (CC) studies have shown that people take less time to visually search for and discriminate a target when it is in a consistent position within a repeated configuration of shapes than when it appears in novel configurations (e.g., Chun & Jiang, 1998). However, when a target is shown alternating between two or more different locations in a repeated context the search benefit is smaller, occurs later, and might result from an average of benefits for one location and costs for the other(s) (e.g., Chun & Jiang, 1998; Kunar, Michod, & Wolfe, 2005; Zellin et al., 2011). In two experiments, we investigated whether in real-world scenes, subjects show a comparable CC effect for contexts with one or two possible target locations. Experiment 1 replicated a study by Brockmole and Henderson (2006), who showed a pronounced contextual cueing effect in real-world scenes. Subjects searched and discriminated a small "T" or "L" superimposed on photographs of real-world scenes. Half of the trials showed repeated scenes with one possible target location each, half showed novel scenes. In Experiment 2, two conditions were added. In one of them, targets appeared in repeated scenes alternating between two possible locations per scene. In the other condition, targets appeared in repeated contexts but at new locations. This controls for a typical confound of repeated pairing of target location and context with context repetition in CC paradigms. Using high-resolution eye tracking during search and a recognition test in both experiments we asked, at which point in the trial the CC effect arises, and whether longer search times to the less favored target location in contexts with two possible target stimuli are due to a detour of the eyes to the other possible target location.

According to the Attentional Dwelling Hypothesis, irrelevant abrupt-onset cues capture attention in a stimulus-driven way, and attention then dwells at cue position until target display onset. As a consequence, search can be facilitated if a target is presented at the cued location (in valid conditions) relative to presenting the target away from the cue (in invalid conditions). Critically, effects of stimulus-driven capture can go undetected when search is too easy. Here, we used both behavioral measures (i.e., cueing effects and distractor-compatibility effects in reaction times and error rates) as well as event-related potentials (N2pc effects) to test if irrelevant abrupt-onset cues captured attention and if humans engaged in processing of visual information at the cued locations. Even under difficult search conditions, we found no direct electrophysiological or behavioral support for the Attentional Dwelling Hypothesis. In addition, regarding behavioral cueing effects, results from a follow-up experiment pointed toward choices made in experimental designs as well as in data preprocessing as moderating factors for if or if not evidence in favor of the Attentional Dwelling Hypothesis can be found.

In a visual search task, the behavioural and attentional inhibition of neutral physically salient distractors is possible based on the Signal Suppression Theory. According to previous research, threatening information also acts salient, although there is no consensus about what makes them so. Evolutionary theories say that fearsome affective valence plays a crucial role in the quick attention capture of threatening objects. On the other hand, the General Feature Theory claims that threatening stimuli are salient because of their unique features, such as their shape, movement, or sound. Previous research has proved that curvilinear shapes and downward pointed 'V' shapes elicit the same response as snakes and angry faces, for example. In the present study, we aimed to test whether threatening information as distraction can be inhibited, and whether the attentional bias towards threats is caused by the affective information or the general feature of shape. Participants completed a semantic vigilance task, where they had to differentiate between 'living' and 'non-living' neutral words presented and masked in the centre of the screen. Alongside the words, four icons were presented in either of three spatial conditions: on the fovea, parafovea or periphery. Three of the four icons were always neutral, while one could be a threatening one (snake), a non-threatening but shape-similar one (caterpillar) or a neutral control (fish). Our findings suggest that threatening information comes both from affective information and general features, but the latter is easier to inhibit.

In two prior studies, we observed that valence affects visual search times (presented at TeaP 2021, Ulm). In one experiment, positively and negatively conditioned targets were detected more quickly than neutral targets. In the second experiment, we observed a reduction of the response time difference between two set sizes of stimuli (8 and 16) for negatively conditioned targets, suggesting that negative valence facilitated target search. Here we present three experiments to investigate further possible effects of valence on reaction time in a visual search task in accordance to set size as well as in regard to feature and conjunction search. This will provide further information on the parameters when valence appears to be a salient stimulus feature leading to exogenous attention, enhancing stimulus processing and thereby reducing search times. In Experiment 1, targets were paired with positive images, and in Experiments 2–3 targets were paired with positive, neutral, or negative images during evaluative conditioning. In Experiment 1, feature and conjunction search was contrasted at two different set sizes (8 and 16 items). In Experiment 2, participants were asked to conduct a feature search with two different set sizes of stimuli (8 and 16), and in Experiment 3, set size (16 items) was held constant across trials for both feature and conjunction search. Differences in reaction times were expected between neutral and negative as well as neutral and positive targets.

Acoustic signals (AS) can be used as cues in visual search tasks. The spatial congruency of stimuli can cause faster detection. In addition, cues can also refer to the location of target stimuli in endogenous ways. The aim of our study was to measure whether AS affect the distribution of attention in a visual task just via their spatial attributes, or if the subjects can understand the meaning of the AS and therefore use just the stimuli with high predictive value as a cue. We used a conjunctive visual search task. During the task high or low AS were presented on the left or right side. Our task contained a practice phase in which the participants could learn the role of AS in the task. In the practice phase, subjects had to select the target stimulus from two visually identical stimuli using the sound. If participants moved the cursor to target stimuli, they heard an ascending tone; in the opposite case, a descending tone was presented. So participants could learn that the high tone indicated the location of target visual stimulus. In the test phase, both the high and low tones were presented in target's location in half of the cases. According to our predictions, in case of spatially congruent stimuli, faster detection can be measured and the congruent high pitches affect reaction time the most. Although the reaction times were lower in conditions with high pitches and the congruent presentations helped solve the task quickly, these effects were independent. Based on our results, the participants were able to distinguish between the role of the pitch in task, but during the visual search task only the exogenous, spatial cues affected the spatial distribution of attention.

During visual search, attentional guidance is influenced by facilitation and suppression of features depending on search goals and bottom-up factors. Here, we investigated how features that positively and negatively defined the target influenced attentional guidance. Participants searched for a target conjunctively defined by one positive (present with the target) and one negative (absent with the target) feature. For example, the target was composed of two bars. One was blue, and the other bar was nonred but had an alternative nontarget color that changed from trial to trial. We examined attentional guidance using singleton cues with the positive, negative, or neutral (i.e., entirely task-irrelevant) color. The cue preceded the target at the same (valid trials) or a different position (invalid trials). For cues with the positive color, reaction times were faster in valid compared to invalid trials, indicating that they captured attention. However, for cues with the negative color, reaction times were slower in valid compared to invalid trials, suggesting proactive suppression of the negative color prior to the target display. Unexpectedly, cues with a neutral color produced similar results as cues with the negative color, indicating that they were also suppressed. Thus, search for a target conjunctively defined by one positive and one negative color seems to elicit feature-based capture of attention by the positive color, while, at the same time, any not-to-be-searched color is suppressed.

Physical salience and search goals are the main factors guiding attention during visual search. However, salience alone is typically not sufficient to capture attention. For example, if cues do not match the current searched-for target feature, they do not capture attention despite being salient. However, it has recently been argued that the usually used nonmatching cues are just not salient enough to capture attention, and more salient cues would capture attention even if they do not match the searched-for feature. We investigated this claim by varying the physical salience of matching and nonmatching cues in a contingent capture protocol. Participants searched for a target color amongst four colored stimuli (feature search), while a singleton cue with a target-matching or nonmatching color preceded the target at the same position (valid trials) or a different position (invalid trials). Here, slower reaction times in invalid trials compared to valid trials (i.e., the validity effect) would indicate attentional capture by the cue. To vary the cue's salience (low vs. high), we presented the cue block-wise amongst three or seven color homogeneous nonsingleton stimuli. Nonmatching cues did not elicit significant validity effects, regardless of their salience. In contrast, matching cues elicited significant validity effects that were stronger for highly than lowly salient cues. The results showed that nonmatching cues do not capture attention even if they are highly salient. However, the physical salience of matching cues influenced attentional capture, showing that bottom-up salience's influence depends on top-down guidance.

When people perform multistep motor actions, early actions are typically executed in anticipation of the requirements of later actions. The end-state comfort effect is an example for this behavior. Albeit anticipatory actions are ubiquitous in everyday life, their acquisition is barely understood. Here, we thus examined how prior experience with a task without the possibility for anticipatory action and different instructions affect the acquisition of anticipatory actions in a novel, unfamiliar task. Participants controlled a cursor by producing isometric forces with the hand. The force produced at the end of a first movement segment determined the ease of a second segment. We varied prior experience and instructions in a between-participant design. Some participants could pre-train the task without the possibility of executing anticipatory actions, whereas other did not have this opportunity. Additionally, participants were either naive, informed about the interdependency of movement segments, or instructed to use anticipatory actions. Participants informed about the interdependency of segments showed more anticipatory actions than naïve participants, irrespective of prior exposure to the task. Prior exposure only affected anticipatory actions when participants were instructed to use them. This suggests that the acquisition of anticipatory actions requires the construction of a task representation that allows to plan the first action segment with respect to its successor. How specifically the first segment is tailored to the second one does not depend on prior experience with the second segment, but depends on experience from performing the interdependent two-step action sequence.

Multiple methods are used to measure the temporal attraction between actions and their outcomes, called intentional binding. Results from studies using different methods seem to be interpreted interchangeably. The aim of our study was to measure intentional binding in the same participants using two common methods: interval estimation and the Libet clock. Previous research suggests that intentional binding depends at least partially on personal factors. Therefore we expected the binding from the two methods to be positively correlated. Using Bayes factors as a stopping criterion, 36 healthy adult students participated in the preregistered experiment. Task features such as action-outcome delay and action conditions were matched between the two methods. Bayes factors showed moderate evidence for the binding in the two methods to be uncorrelated. This suggests that different mechanisms underlie the binding effects in the two methods reported in previous research. We suggest further investigation of the available methods to build a reliable basis for understanding the processing of action-outcome relations.

The ability to perceive an object as one coherent representation is due to binding processes between its features. Empirically, such binding processes can be measured via partial repetition costs, a performance pattern of faster reaction times when either all features of a given object repeat or switch as compared to the repetition (or switch) of only one feature. Feature binding has been shown for a large number of features in the visual and auditory domain. The purpose of the present two experiments was to investigate whether such binding effects can also be found in the domain of music. More precisely, we aimed to examine whether the tones of a two-tone chord are temporarily integrated into a music event-file. In the first experiment, we applied a pitch classification task. The auditory stimulus consisted of two simultaneous tones (one out of two upper tones of different pitch, and one out of two lower tones of different pitch). Participants responded with a left or right keypress to the pitch of the upper tone. The two-tone chord was always consonant. The lower tone was irrelevant but could also be low or high. Analyses of reaction times and error rates revealed partial repetition costs indicating binding: performance was better when both tones repeated or alternated relative to partial repetitions (only the upper or the lower tone repeated). The results thus show that two consonant tones are integrated into one event-file. In a second experiment, we are currently investigating whether the same holds true for dissonant harmonies.

During the last years numerous researchers reported for various eye movement tasks stable individual differences in parameters such as fixation durations and saccades. To date however, little is known about how these differences behave in tasks consisting of sequences of manual actions and how they evolve over the course of learning. Here, we looked at individual differences of eye movement parameters while participants repeatedly performed an action sequence. More precisely, we conducted a computerized version of the Trail-Making-Test, which requires participants to click through a series of ascending numbers, or numbers and letters. They first completed a block of novel (trialwise changing) spatial arrangements of the task. Subsequently a fixed spatial arrangement was repeated multiple times. We compare both instances of learning, novel and fixed arrangements, looking at a variety of eye movement parameters and their respective development over time. Our results shed new light on the nature of individual differences in learning action-sequences and demonstrate systematic changes in eye movement control strategies.

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC; Hommel et al., Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 2001) posits, that perception and action are integrated into one common representational domain. One assumption of TEC is that events are coded by integrating simple, modality-unspecific feature codes into an event file. Research in context of the TEC often adapts an ideomotor point of view, assuming that actions are addressed by anticipating their consequences. One precondition for this is, that actions and their effects become associated in the first place (in an acquisition phase). The present study addresses a potential limitation of previous research, as the effects of the acquisition phase and the stimuli of the test phase are physically identical in most studies, not allowing for a clear answer whether an (amodal) abstraction of the effects or the modal information of the actual effect are relevant. We modified Exp. 1 of Hommel et al. (Visual Cognition, 2003), and investigated, whether action effects generalize to a superordinate category (e.g., whether "chair" generalizes to "furniture"). Also, we used (instead of a forced-choice test phase) a free-choice test phase and measured the bias towards congruent responses. We found in the control group, where effects and stimuli were exactly the same, a congruency bias, suggesting that an association between action and effect was learned. However, in the experimental group there was a much smaller congruency effect. This suggests, that no full generalization from the exemplar words to the corresponding superordinate categories has occurred.

The literature on narcissism suggests two contradictory ways how highly narcissistic individuals deal with failures: They might consciously avoid failures or vigilantly turn towards them as failures provide essential cues for the pursuit and protection of grandiosity. We tried to dissolve these (seemingly) contradictory positions by studying event-related potential components of error processing and their variations with narcissism. With a speeded Go/noGo task, we examined how the error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) and the error positivity (Pe) vary with Admiration and Rivalry, two narcissism dimensions (Back et al., 2013), under ego-threatening conditions. Using multilevel models, we showed that participants with high Rivalry displayed higher Ne/ERN amplitudes. We did not find variations of either narcissism dimension with the Pe. Thus, the results only supported the second position, a heightened vigilance to errors at early, rather automatic processing stages (reflected in a higher Ne/ERN). However, future studies might find reduced conscious error perception at later processing stages (reflected in Pe variations) by distinguishing between an early and a late Pe (Endrass et al., 2007) and by considering the error evidence accumulation account (Steinhauser & Yeung, 2012). After all, if one respects the temporal dynamics of error processing and different narcissism dimensions, highly narcissistic individuals might show heightened vigilance to and conscious avoidance of errors.

Performing two actions at the same time is sometimes easier than performing only one. Such dual-action benefits occur when the demand to execute a single action is accompanied by a costly demand to inhibit another action. In this context, failures of inhibition are characterized by false-positive executions of the unwarranted action. Previous work demonstrated that the frequency of inhibition failures depends on the degree of prepotency of the action to be inhibited. The current study addresses temporal dynamics of inhibitory control difficulty by focusing on time pressure and preparation time. Participants performed manual button presses, highly prepotent saccadic eye movements, or both actions together toward a single peripheral visual target. In Experiment 1, we manipulated time pressure by imposing a short (350ms) and a long (700ms) response deadline. In Experiment 2, we manipulated preparation for inhibition by means of different preparatory intervals (100ms, 400ms, 700ms, 1500ms). We observed more inhibition failures and thus larger dual-action benefits with a short (vs. long) response deadline and, in particular, with shorter (vs. longer) preparatory intervals. Our results thus reveal that, apart from action prepotency itself, the relative difficulties of appropriate implementation of and preparation for inhibitory control are important determinants of dual-action benefits in multiple action control.

Binding theories of action control assume that stimulus and response features of a single episode are stored in short-term episodic traces – event files. Repetition of any of the features results in an automatic retrieval of the file. Along with relevant stimuli, event files also contain features of irrelevant stimuli (distractors). Repeating a distractor automatically retrieves the event file, facilitating responding if the response must be repeated, but causing interference when a different response is required. The present study aims to test the effect of temporal attention on distractor-response binding effects. Orienting attention to specific points in time enhances the processing of stimuli occurring at that time point. In the present study, temporal attention was manipulated between subjects by varying the predictability of the stimulus onset. In the predictable condition, the stimulus always occurred after a fixed interval. In the unpredictable condition, the stimulus occurred after a random interval drawn from a random exponential distribution with the same mean as the predictable condition. In Experiment 1, the interval between the response to the prime and the onset of the probe stimulus was varied, targeting the retrieval process. Results indicated only a trend towards an effect of temporal attention on distractor-response bindings. In Experiment 2, the interval between the fixation cross indicating the start of a trial and the prime stimulus was varied, targeting the integration process. Additionally, in Experiment 2, the RSI between prime response and probe stimulus was varied. Preliminary results indicate that predictability of the prime stimulus may interact with RSI indicating that the decay effects are modulated by predictability of the prime stimulus.

To act successfully, agents must monitor whether their behaviour reached predicted effects. As deviations from predicted effects can result from own behaviour (response-errors) or from circumstantial unreliability (effect-errors), both the own efferent activities and the accomplished environmental outcomes must be monitored. In three experiments, we examined response monitoring and effect monitoring using a dual-task setup. Task 1 consisted of a three-choice flanker task and effects were displayed after the response. Crucially, in some of the trials, an incorrect effect was displayed after a correct response, whereas in other trials, a correct effect was displayed after an incorrect response. This disentangled response-errors and effect-errors. Task 2 was a simple discrimination task and served to measure the monitoring process. Task 2 responses slowed down after both response-errors and effect-errors in Task 1. These influences were additive, suggesting two independent monitoring processes: one for responses, capturing errors in efferent activities, and one for response effects, checking for environment-related irregularities.

Bystander counterspeech has proven to be an effective way to combat hate speech online (e.g. Garland et al., 2020). However, the mechanisms that motivate bystanders to speak up are not yet comprehensively understood. One influential factor could be social norms, i.e. the endorsement of counterspeech by relevant ingroups (Seering et al., 2017). In two studies with a total of 1,178 participants, we explored whether counterspeech by bystanders against online hate speech is predicted more strongly by the perceived endorsement of counterspeech by one's ingroup or if individually-held attitudes and beliefs exert a greater influence. In both studies, we presented students of a German university with an online discussion scenario that included a hate speech comment and subsequent counterspeech. In study one, the hate was directed at homosexuals and in study two, it attacked Czechs. Following, participants could write a comment themselves, "like" one of the comments, and indicate their support for counterspeech on a scale. In study one, we found that the perceived endorsement of counterspeech by one's ingroup predicted support for counterspeech substantially more strongly than individual morality and beliefs such as political orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, and attitudes towards LGBT* rights. Similarly, "likes" and own counterspeech were predicted more strongly by perceived ingroup norms. In study two, we found again that perceived ingroup normativity predicted support for counterspeech more strongly than attitudinal measures such as political orientation and support for Czech people. We discuss implications of our findings for online interventions and the role of identity performance in virtual conversations.

The stereotype content model predicts that Turkish women are stereotyped as being warm, but incompetent, which should result in negative competence-related impressions of them. However, findings are mixed, with sometimes more positive competence-related impressions of non-prototypical (i.e., Turkish women) as compared to prototypical (i.e., German women) applicants resulting in the hiring context (Niedlich & Steffens, 2017). We aimed to identify boundary conditions under which negative impressions of Turkish women in Germany result, hypothesizing that non-prototypical individuals who made a mistake are perceived less favorably than prototypical targets who made a mistake. We manipulated targets' group identity (German vs. Turkish/Kurdish) and performance (mistake vs. no mistake) and used a within-subject design with participants (\(N = 272\)) evaluating hypothetical assessments of four applicants. We did not find interaction effects between targets' group identity and performance: Replicating Niedlich and Steffens (2017), non-prototypical individuals were more likely to be recommended for promotion to team leadership than prototypical individuals (regardless of whether they made a mistake or not). Individuals who made no mistake were more likely to be recommended for promotion to team leadership than individuals who made a mistake. In contrast, non-prototypical individuals who made a mistake were excluded more often than all others for a future team project. This pattern applied equally to the sub-sample of participants who experienced racism (\(N = 123\)). We found no mediating effect of non-prototypical targets' internalized racism and prototypical targets' modern racism. We discuss these results in the context of the continuum model (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990).

Cognitive control has been shown to be a relevant mechanism in processes following automatically activated stereotypes (e.g Amodio et al., 2004; Payne, 2005). Therefore, training such abilities should result in improved suppression of pre-activated stereotype behavior. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve cognitive control though exact mechanisms are debated (e.g. Colzato et al., 2015 & 2016; Ostafin and Kassman, 2012). The present study compared effects of repeated mindfulness breathing meditation (\(3 \times 20\) minutes across 5 days) with progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) of the same length (active control) and podcast listening (passive control) on stereotype expression. At pre- and post-measurement participants (\(N = 96\)) finished the Shooter Task during which they were presented with Black or White target persons and had to decide whether the person was holding a gun or a nonharmful object. Results of a GLMM showed reaction time speed up for mindfulness and PMR compared to podcast listening for armed black targets. Accuracy improved for podcast compared to PMR for white unarmed targets and compared to mindfulness and PMR for black unarmed targets. Bayesian Drift Diffusion Models (Pleskac et al., 2018) indicated a greater improvement in evidence accumulation for podcast compared to mindfulness for all unarmed targets as well as for podcast compared to PMR for black unarmed targets. While no consistent shooter bias was found, results suggest that an induction of mindfulness and relaxation did not benefit unbiased decisions. Rather, they sped up decisions in a stereotype-congruent condition and affected evidence accumulation, resulting in less accurate decisions. Implications regarding cognitive demands in the Shooter Task and models of mindfulness are discussed.

People form attitudes about individuals and groups based on those attributes that differentiate them from previously encountered ones. That is, people consider redundant attributes less for individuals and groups that are encountered later. In two experiments, we tested whether this differentiation principle is based on differential weighting or learning of unique and redundant attributes. In both experiments, participants sequentially encountered three fictional groups with the same number of positive and negative attributes. We consistently found that attitude formation was guided by differentiation: Participants' attitudes became more negative (positive) for later-encountered groups when positive (negative) attributes were redundant and negative (positive) attributes were unique among the groups. When participants were asked to recall how many members of each group showed positive and negative attributes (Experiment 1), the recalled relative frequency of positive attributes mirrored participants' attitudes. When participants were asked to recall which attributes members of each group showed (Experiment 2), the number of correctly recalled unique attributes was equal for all three groups. However, the number of correctly recalled redundant attributes decreased for later-encountered groups. Experiment 3 found that the differentiation extends to communication as participants were more likely to describe groups with their unique attributes when they were encountered later. We conclude that the differentiation principle in attitude formation is based on differential learning of unique and redundant attributes and that it extends to communication processes. We discuss our findings' implications for the formation of intergroup biases and stereotypes.

Introduction: Growing literature indicates that Internet use disorder (IUD) and smartphone addiction (SPA) are associated with breakdown of different functional brain networks. According to recent behavioural studies' results, the extent of IUD has an impact on acute mental fatigue. The neural background of mental fatigue in IUD and SPA is not well understood, therefore investigation of the phenomenon with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is indispensable in these two conditions. Methods: Psychophysical Vigilance Task (PVT) was used to induce acute mental fatigue during fMRI. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent analysis was implemented to investigate mental fatigue induced brain activation changes in IUD and SPA. Self-reported questionnaires were used to assess IUD, SPA, and the subjective mental fatigue. Reaction times during PVT were measured the get an objective data of subjects' acute mental fatigue. Results: Positive associations were found between IUD, SPA and the extent of perceived mental strain, and subjective feeling of fatigue, during task implementation. The extent of SPA was in positive association with the objective level of mental fatigue. Brain regions related to default mode network (DMN) (left precuneus) and executive control network (ECN) (left frontal pole) showed reduced activation during the PVT, which correlated positively with the extent of IUD and SPA. Discussion: Our findings highlight the impact of IUD and SPA on acute mental fatigue, since positive associations were found between task induced brain activation changes and the extent of IUD and SPA. Moreover, according to previous results, we confirmed the altered functioning of brain areas connected to DMN and ECN in these two conditions.

Food Cravings describe a desire for specific foods, which can develop into an urge to consume those foods. The Elaborated-Intrusion Theory of Desire postulates that food cravings arise from a cognitive elaboration with mental imagery. This elaboration requires (visuospatial) working memory capacity and may thus be inhibited with competing working memory tasks. Based on these principles, the present study examines whether there is a difference in efficacy between tasks with visuospatial and auditory load on working memory in reducing food cravings. A total of 206 subjects participated in an online experiment (156 female, 50 male, M = 25.4 years, SD = 9.7 years). We first evoked food cravings with pictures of palatable foods. Subsequently, participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions in which they had to perform either a visuospatial (mental rotation) or auditory (mental singing) working memory task. Afterwards, the participants rated their current food cravings on visual analogue scales (VAS) and the Food Craving Questionnaire-State. The results showed that both experimental conditions led to a reduction of food craving through a working memory load (VAS), \(F(1,204) = 52.25\), \(p < .001\), \(\eta^2 = .05\). However, it could not be confirmed that visuospatial tasks lead to a stronger craving reduction than auditory tasks. This study was able to demonstrate that a brief, modality-independent working memory task in an online format leads to the reduction of current cravings. However, limitations arise from the differing task difficulty of both conditions, artificially evoked food cravings, and the lack of a neutral control group. Still, comparable tasks might serve as simple treatments in intervention settings (e.g., for individuals with eating problems).

Research on deviations of body perception in pathological illness anxiety is scarce but intrinsic to optimizing treatments. Building on findings on categorization effects in somatic symptom perception, we hypothesized that fundamental perceptual processes are disturbed in pathological illness anxiety. We asked the participants to breathe through a tube connected to a pulmonary training device. Their breathing effort was enhanced by linear increasing resistances. The weaker resistances were categorized with arbitrary labels 'A1' to 'A4' the higher with 'B1' to 'B4'. The participants were asked to memorize the sensations and resistances in a first and label them in a second experimental block. Signal detection analyses were used to calculate the sensitivity and response bias. Sensitivity was the ability to differentiate between categories. The response bias was the tendency to misclassify the category of each resistance. Complete data sets of \(N = 74\) participants were used to compare the average sensitivity between groups and predict the response bias by group, respiratory load and their interaction in a multiple regression. With similar sensitivity (\(t(72) = -0.69\), \(p = .4952\), \(d = -.16\)), patients responded more liberally than control participants before the category border (\(\beta_{\mathrm{group} \times \mathrm{resistance}} = .05\), \(p < .01\); \(\eta^2 = .02\)). Compared to the controls, patients misclassified resistances of the weaker category to belong to the higher one, especially at the category border. The assignment of arbitrary categories is sufficient to influence body perception. Patients tended to overestimate the respiratory effort at the category boundary. Thus, a liberally biased bodily perception focused on threat might contribute to this disorder.

The purported link between creativity and psychopathology has been studied extensively in the past and yet, there is no consensus on the matter. The Shared Vulnerability Model (Carson, 2011) proposes that both, creativity and psychopathology arise due to the same vulnerability factors. Whether those factors facilitate mental illness or increase creativity is determined by protective factors, such as high cognitive abilities. The present study investigated this idea in a normal population, using self-reported schizotypy and aberrant salience as vulnerability factors. 38 healthy, young, educated adults completed tasks on working memory, fluid and crystallized intelligence as well as two behavioral originality tasks. Multi-scale entropy (MSE) was calculated from the EEG recording during another originality task to obtain a neurophysiological correlate of creativity. To find the proposed interaction effects, multiple regression analyses were performed. Fluid intelligence interacted negatively with negative schizotypy on behavioral creativity as well as MSE. It interacted positively with disorganized schizotypy on behavioral creativity and with aberrant salience on MSE. Finally, disorganized schizotypy lowered MSE when controlling for cognitive abilities. Cognitive abilities correlated positively with behavioral creativity. No association between positive schizotypy and creativity was found. Overall, the present study does not support a direct link between schizotypy and creativity, or the influence of protective factors as moderators of this relationship. Instead, it highlights the need to investigate the schizotypy facets separately and the validity of multi-scale entropy of EEG signals as a neurological indicator of creativity.

Obesity and overweight are major health problems, with increasing prevalence rates worldwide. The responsiveness to behavioral weight loss treatment is limited; only a subgroup of people responds with substantial and persistent reduction in body weight. Bariatric surgery is an effective treatment for severe obesity. Previous studies found that weight loss following these procedures is achieved mainly through reduction of hunger, increased satiation during a meal and changes in food preferences, rather than physical restriction in food intake. Changes in homeostatic control of caloric intake as well as restoration of hypothalamic functioning might play a pivotal role in this transition. However, the interaction between recovered homeostatic control and the contribution of hormonal changes on the role of weight loss and food preferences after bariatric surgery is unclear. To investigate this interaction, the present study enrolled 20 participants with obesity (BMI 35–55kg/m²), planning to undergo bariatric surgery. To assess metabolic gut-brain signaling, participants will undergo fMRI scanning 2 weeks before and after surgery. Blood samples are collected to quantify hormonal satiety signals and food preferences as well as eating behavior are assessed via questionnaires. We expect to observe alterations in hormonal satiety signaling, hypothalamic reactivity and neuronal food reward processing. The proposed project could make it possible to differentiate the contributions of the individual parameters to the observed weight loss and thus better understand the underlying effective factors. Data collection is in an advanced state, so we will be able to present provisional data.

Dissociative symptoms, such as depersonalization (DP) or derealization (DR), were found to lead to greater body plasticity, as indicated by a stronger rubber hand illusion (RHI). Besides, the RHI was also related to interoceptive abilities in past studies. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether dissociative symptoms, in particular depersonalization and derealization, predict the RHI irrespective of interoceptive abilities or whether there is an interaction between both predictors. Accordingly, a questionnaire on dissociative symptoms (FDS), as well as a heartbeat tracking task and the RHI were completed by 112 participants. The DP/DR subscale of the FDS was used for analysis. As indicators for interoceptive abilities the accuracy of the participants' heartbeat counting abilities (Interoceptive Accuracy, IA), the confidence in their abilities (Interoceptive Sensibility, IS) and the meta-cognitive awareness of them (Interoceptive Awareness, IA) were used. The RHI was applied synchronously and asynchronously and was measured using a questionnaire (RHIQ) and a proprioceptive estimation. Results of linear mixed effects analysis indicated that the RHIQ was predicted by synchrony and an interaction of DP/DR symptoms with IA, where subjects with more symptoms had a higher RHI only if they simultaneously had a lower IA. The proprioceptive drift was predicted by synchrony, IS and IA, as well as an interaction of IS with DP/DR, showing that a higher IS was connected to a weaker RHI in participants with fewer symptoms, but to a higher RHI in participants with greater symptoms. We conclude that interoception plays a large role in the connection between dissociative symptoms and the RHI and that different interoceptive modalities need to be distinguished in this relation.

Body perception in illness anxiety disorder might be biased in the way that somatic signals are overreported. In the somatic signal detection task (SSDT), participants classify weak tactile stimuli as present or absent. Performance gives information on over- or underreporting of stimuli regardless of tactile sensitivity. The influence of illness-related cognitive schemata has not yet been studied using this task in patients with illness anxiety. Participants with illness anxiety (\(N = 44\)) and healthy controls (\(N = 40\)) underwent two versions of the SSDT in randomized order. In the original version, tactile and auxiliary LED stimuli were each presented in half of the trials. In the adapted version, illness words were presented instead of LED stimuli and compared to neutral words. Results showed 1) higher sensitivity and a more liberal response bias in LED vs. no LED trials, but 2) no differences in sensitivity and response bias between word types. 3) An interaction effect showed group differences regarding sensitivity: The illness anxiety group showed a more pronounced increase of sensitivity from no LED to LED trials, and a decrease of sensitivity from neutral to illness word trials as compared to the control group. The increase in sensitivity from no LED to LED trials in the illness anxiety group indicates increased multisensory integration, while the decrease of sensitivity in illness compared to neutral words implies greater distraction due to illness related schemata. Overall, low sensitivity in the adapted SSDT showed that attentional resources were exhausted by processing word stimuli. This effect might have carried over to the original SSDT when presented in this order, thus compromising group effects regarding sensitivity and bias in the original SSDT.

Sensory specific satiety, or the phenomenon that the pleasantness of a particular taste declines when certain types of food are consumed to satiety, plays an important role in food choice and meal termination. Since changes in taste, smell and appetite are commonly observed in obesity, previous studies investigated the relation of sensory specific satiety to weight gain, but observed conflicting results. To gain a more detailed understanding of the relationship between sensory specific satiety and weight homeostasis, we examined the rewarding effect of sugar in a group of 30 healthy participants with a body mass index ranging from 17.5 to 35kg/m². We employed a gustatory stimulation paradigm designed to induce sensory specific satiety for glucose. During fMRI scanning, glucose and water are applied orally using a gustometer. Furthermore, relevant hormonal satiety parameters are measured, as well as dietary behavior and food preferences in everyday life. This will allow us to assess neuronal stimulus processing in relation to the sensory satiety level and to investigate the relationship with everyday eating behavior. A better understanding of factors contributing to the development and maintenance of overweight are crucial for the development of new treatment options for obesity. Data collection is at an advanced stage, so that we can present a provisional data evaluation at the conference.

In healthcare, effective communication between providers is crucial for high quality care, especially in clinical handover situations. Particularly in polytrauma care, there is a high vulnerability for communication errors and information loss due to the complexity of injuries and time critical nature of transmitting (verbal) information to multiple people in multitasking situations. To assess the loss of information due to divided attention, the present study investigated the influence of a visual concurrent task on either encoding or retrieval of auditory information from long-term memory in a mixed design. Participants (\(N = 48\)) were asked to perform a visual-manual decision-making task while either simultaneously encoding an auditory word list (with unrelated words from a psychological context) or engaging in oral free recall of the previously encoded words. Performance of the decision-making and the memory task was also measured in a single-task condition as a baseline. Furthermore, to examine the possible influence of material similarity on performance of the two tasks, the material of the concurrent task was altered as a between-subjects factor (symbolic vs. verbal material). Divided attention significantly reduced memory performance (recall total and recall latency) as well as performance of the concurrent task (reaction times and error rates). Moreover, performance differences due to divided attention at encoding versus retrieval as well as the effect of material specificity are discussed. As complex sentences are more realistic stimulus material for the memory task in the context of healthcare, a follow up study will be conducted.

In dual-task studies with tasks in which responses have a spatial overlap, activated Task 2 response information exhibits an influence on Task 1 response selection. This is known as the backward crosstalk effect (BCE). The BCE might occur because Task 1 performance improves when Task 2 requires a spatially compatible response or because Task 1 performance becomes worse when Task 2 requires a spatially incompatible response. In other words, Task 2 response information might have a facilitatory or interfering effect. The present study separates these aspects by using neutral trials within a dual-task. On these neutral trials, Task 2 required a spatial response that did not overlap with the one necessary for Task 1. The results suggest that the BCE reflects both facilitation and interference effects of equal magnitude. This conclusion is backed up by modelling efforts and simulations within a recently developed diffusion model framework (Koob, Ulrich, & Janczyk, 2021, Psychological Review; Ulrich, Schröter, Leuthold, & Birngruber, 2015, Cognitive Psychology). The framework can explicitly describe the influence of Task 2 response information for each individual in compatible and incompatible trials. In sum, the results so far suggest that the BCE involves both facilitation and interference to a similar degree.

The degree to which two or more tasks can be carried out in parallel has attracted a large body of research in the last decades. More recently, approaches have been proposed which also consider individual differences in processing. They demonstrate that some people tend to process two tasks in parallel, whereas others pursue a more serial processing strategy. Yet, when interested in individual differences in multitasking, researchers face a methodological dilemma. In order for an individual to adopt their preferred processing mode within a paradigm, the respective paradigm has to be less controlled. At the same time, less controlled paradigms are unsuitable to pinpoint the specific processes and mechanisms which underly these individual differences. In the present study, we tried to circumvent this problem by applying cognitive modeling techniques. In particular, we assessed individuals' preferences for a more parallel versus serial processing mode using the Task Switching With Preview (TSWP) paradigm. Subsequently, we aimed for insights on corresponding differences in the underlying processes using a drift diffusion model. Our results suggest remarkable individual differences, which were particularly prevalent on switch trials. In these trials individuals using a parallel instead of a serial processing mode tend to use the preview of the switch stimulus to optimize switching performance. Specifically, we found that they required less evidence to determine a response on a switch trial while showing clear evidence of parallel running non-central stages (i.e., task-set reconfiguration, perception and/or motor execution).

Performing two actions at the same time usually results in performance costs. However, recent studies have also reported dual-action benefits: performing only one of two possible actions may necessitate the inhibition of the initially activated, but unwarranted second action, leading to single-action costs. Presumably, two preconditions determine the occurrence of such inhibition-based dual-action benefits: Firstly, there has to be dimensional overlap across action requirements. Secondly, the task situation should entail unpredictability regarding the particular responses and response types from trial to trial, meaning that all response alternatives have to be kept active in working memory. In the current set of dual-action experiments, we tested the latter hypothesis by comparing 1) a pseudo-randomized mode of trial presentation to 2) intermixed, but fixed sequences of trial types and 3) a completely blocked presentation. As expected, dual-action benefits were strongly present in 1, but significantly reduced in 2, and absent in 3. This pattern of results is compatible with newer theories of multiple action control which assume that differential inhibitory costs in single-action trials are the root cause of dual-action benefits.

Multitasking is inevitable in our lives as in many everyday situations, we must manage several tasks simultaneously. Still, the American Psychological Association (2006) recommends avoiding multitasking, especially for complex tasks, because multitasking has been shown to increase performance costs. This recommendation is questionable since (1) multitasking has mostly been studied with simple, not complex tasks, and (2) only some previous research has considered individual differences in the preference for serial or parallel task processing and their impact on performance. It has recently been shown that individual differences exist in the preference for serial or overlapping task processing in a task-switching paradigm. In the present study, we investigate whether the results regarding individual preferences and performance in a task-switching paradigm can be extended to a more complex multi-task paradigm. The participants will complete an online study consisting of two parts. In one experiment, they will perform the task-switching with preview paradigm using two simple classification tasks. In the other experiment, they perform a more complex task using an online version of the SynWin paradigm. We expect there to be a correlation between the performance in the simple and the more complex multiple tasks. We also expect to find that the participants tend to use the same individual processing preference in the simple- and complex- multiple tasks. We will also examine performance consequences of individual processing modes in the more complex task environment, expecting better multitasking performance for those participants with a preference for parallel processing.

Prior research in adults showed that spatial abilities contribute to multitasking performance, providing evidence that multiple deadlines are represented in a spatial manner (Mäntylä, 2013). In two studies, we tested this spatiotemporal hypothesis for the first time in children. In Study 1, 116 children (9–12 years) performed a touchscreen-based multitasking paradigm, asking them to monitor four different counters that ran at different paces, and to press a button whenever a counter had reached the end of its cycle. They also performed two mental rotation tasks measuring dynamic spatial abilities and two tasks assessing executive functions and visuo-spatial working memory. Regression analyses showed that spatial ability was an independent predictor of children's multitasking performance above and beyond age, executive functions, and visuo-spatial working memory. These results are the first to corroborate the prominent role of dynamic spatial abilities for children's multitasking. In Study 2, we aimed to replicate and extend Study 1 in children with 8 to 11 years. The procedure was identical to Study 1, with the following exceptions: Children performed the multitask paradigm with two and four timers, and also carried out tasks measuring static spatial abilities and verbal intelligence. We hypothesized that dynamic spatial abilities explain incremental variance in children's multitasking even when dual-task performance is accounted for. Together, the data showed supportive evidence for the spatiotemporal hypothesis in children and suggest that spatial abilities can play a critical role in coordinating multiple tasks.

The embodied account of language comprehension has been one of the most influential theoretical developments in the recent decades addressing the question how humans comprehend and represent language. It emphasizes a tight interconnection between language and the sensorimotor system. To examine its assumptions, many studies have made use of behavioral paradigms involving basic compatibility effects. The action–sentence compatibility effect (ACE) is one of the most influential of these action compatibility effects and is widely cited evidence for the assumptions of the embodied account of language comprehension. However, recently there have been difficulties to extend or even to reliably replicate the ACE (Papesh, 2015). The conflicting findings concerning the ACE led to the discussion whether the ACE is indeed a reliable effect. To address the question of the reliability of the ACE, we conducted a meta-analysis with the aim to compile previously published ACE studies with a study design similar to the original one (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002) in order to estimate the size of the ACE. Since previous ACE literature has shown that timing of the motor response in the ACE paradigm affects the magnitude of the ACE, we decided to include the factor "Delay of response movement" in our meta-analysis (e.g., Borreggine & Kaschak, 2006). The meta-analytic estimate of the overall mean effect size revealed a small but significant effect for the standard ACE (\(d = .129\), \(p = .007\)). Furthermore, the task-parameter Delay occurred as a factor of interest in whether the ACE appears with positive or negative effect direction. This meta-analysis further assessed for potential publication bias and suggests that there is bias in the ACE literature.

Amplitude reduction of the mu rhythm (~8‐12 Hz, recorded from central electrodes) has been suggested as a potential EEG marker for human mirror neuron system (MNS) activation. In the present study, 24 healthy neurotypical participants underwent EEG recording during two resting trials. During experimental conditions, participants observed two-minute videos showing a) Non-biological movements (moving balls), b) Not goal-directed biological actions (simple hand movements), c) Goal-directed biological actions toward an object (complex hand movements) and d) social interactions. Offline, the mu power (8‐12 Hz) was assessed in a 100s segment of artifact-free data per condition. Mu suppression index (MSI) was calculated relative to two different baselines: 1. Eyes open resting condition, 2. Non-biological movements. Results showed that relative to the Eyes open resting baseline, there was significant mu suppression during the observation of all experimental conditions with no significant differences between these scenarios. However, with non-biological movements as the baseline, there was no mu suppression. For simple and complex actions, even mu enhancement was observed. We speculate that this counterintuitive mu enhancement could be mediated by top-down inhibition and the interaction of the MNS with other cognitive systems, such as the default mode network. Also, there might be a functional distinction between the higher (~10‐13 Hz) and lower ranges (~8‐10 Hz) of the mu rhythms, with the former synchronization but suppression of the latter during the observation of goal-directed movements. Finally, more research is required on the mu rhythm paradigms, but this frequency band still seems a promising marker for investigating the human MNS.

Goal of the study was to investigate the effect of different embodied stimuli in mental rotation tasks (MRT) on postural stability. As it is already known that embodied MRTs lead to less body sway than non-embodied MRTs, we conducted two separate experiments to systematically investigate the influence of embodiment in egocentric and object-based MRTs on postural stability. We hypothesized that using posture-related body parts as stimuli in MRTs, would induce a decrease of postural sway compared to body parts which are not essential to postural control. Both experiments used the same stimulus pictures for the MRTs (whole-body, hand, foot) and a fixation cross as a control condition. Postural stability was measured by Center-of-Pressure course over time while standing in a both-legged narrow stance on a force plate. Experiment 1 (\(N = 46\)) focused on egocentric MRTs and revealed significant differences between stimuli. However, the hypothesis has to be rejected. Hand and foot stimuli tended to cause more body sway than whole-body figures. Additionally, hand and foot stimuli showed an increasing body sway for higher rotation angles of the MRTs. In experiment 2 (\(N = 109\)) object-based MRTs were examined. Different stimuli did not evoke different levels of body sway but higher rotation angles led to higher body sway. The results of both experiments suggest a differential impact of type of mental rotation (egocentric vs. object-based) on postural stability and for egocentric MRTs also a different impact of embodied stimuli. Nevertheless, the supposed effects of embodiment are critically discussed against the background of task difficulty. In general, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between mental rotation and basic motor processes.

Many human behaviors can be construed as nested multitasking, with a motor control task performed in the context of value-based decision making. For example, a child playing soccer may decide whether to pass an opponent to their left or right side while dribbling the ball. For such behaviors, it has been shown that movement influences value-based decisions due to the action costs resulting from the dynamically varying body state, leading to a bias for choices affording lower action costs. We show that the action cost effect found in previous studies might include cognitive crosstalk, that is, a bias due to a dimensional overlap between motor control and decision making. In our paradigm, participants controlled a cursor moving across one of three horizontal lanes. In each trial, the cursor was perturbed either upward or downward requiring a continuously performed mouse wheel movement counteracting the perturbation. When rewards on the upper and lower lane appeared, participants were required to make a value-based decision by moving the whole computer mouse forward or backward to jump to the upper or lower lane. We manipulated the dependency of decision movement lengths on the cursor state to disentangle action costs from the cursor state. It showed that the cursor state influenced decisions independent from action costs, with participants preferring jumps that dimensionally overlapped with the performed scrolling movement. This cognitive crosstalk was attenuated when participants had more time to decide and act. Our results complement the embodied choice framework in that not only action costs, but also further dimensional action features bias value-based decisions in nested multitasking.

There is a bulk of studies supporting the idea that language prompts reenactments of sensorimotor experience. In particular, the reading of words with an implicit association to vertical space such as 'sun' (up) or 'grass' (down) was shown to influence subsequent responses to symbols presented in the upper vs. lower part of the screen. However, little is known about whether relevant sensorimotor experiences can influence language processing. Here, we investigated whether a memorized spatial location would affect lexical decision times for words such as 'sun' or 'grass'. In Experiment 1, participants memorized the exact position of a dot presented in the upper or lower part of the screen. During the retention interval, they then performed a lexical decision task on words such as 'sun' or 'grass'. Participants were significantly slower in the match condition (e.g., upper dot and 'up word' words) than in the mismatch condition (e.g., upper dot and 'down word'). As a control experiment, we had participants memorize shapes rather than locations (Experiment 2). As expected, the results did not reveal any influence of shape position on lexical decision times. Finally, we ran Experiment 3, which was the same as Experiment 1, but the dots were replaced with the shapes from Experiment 2. Surprisingly, no mismatch advantage emerged. These ambiguous results cannot be interpreted without replicating Experiment 1, which is currently underway. The results will allow us to shed light on whether and to what extent maintenance of location information in visuospatial working memory affects the processing of words with an implicit spatial association. Generally speaking, the results will help us expand our knowledge of how experiential traces affect language understanding.

People can learn about categories by sampling their members, but determinants of sampling behavior are not yet well understood. In the current project, we investigate how learning about categories changes with the relation of between- to within-category variance. Specifically, we assume that successful categorization hinges on two subprocesses: identification and discrimination. A low within-category variance of the experienced exemplars should support identifying the category, whereas a high between-category variance should facilitate discrimination. To investigate this, we conduct a first experiment, in which we separately manipulate within-category variance for two categories on three levels, low, medium, and high in a dot-pattern prototype distortion task. In the task, participants can learn about the two categories by sampling as many exemplars as they want from each of the categories. After this learning phase, participants are tested on exemplars of all three variance levels as well as the respective category prototypes and have to indicate the likelihood with which an exemplar belongs to either category. We expect that higher category variance leads to longer sampling in the category learning phase. Further, we expect that within-category variance differences and the total variance influence sampling. In regard to categorization decisions, we expect that prototypes are more likely assigned to their respective categories. Participants will perceive test exemplars with a lower variance than the variance of the category they were trained in as more likely belonging to this category than exemplars with equal or higher variance. In sum, using a self-regulated category learning paradigm will provide us with new insights on category learning processes

The Continued Influence Effect (CIE) refers to the phenomenon that retracted information often continues to influence people's judgments and inferences. The CIE can be rational if the source that retracts the information (the retractor) is less credible than the source that originally presented the retracted information (the informant; Connor Desai et al., 2020). Conversely, people should show no CIE if the retractor is more credible than the informant. Thus, a rational CIE should depend on the relative source credibility of informant and retractor. Past research showed that retractor credibility influences the CIE. However, neither the influence of informant credibility nor that of relative source credibility has yet been investigated experimentally. To create groups with varying relative source credibility, we simultaneously and independently manipulated informant credibility and retractor credibility in two experiments (\(N = 151\) and \(N = 146\)). Participants read a fictitious news report in which to-be-retracted information and a retraction were each presented either by a reputable journalist (high-credibility source) or by a discredited blogger (low-credibility source). As expected, the relative source credibility of informant and retractor affected the CIE. When the informant was at least as credible as the retractor, participants showed a CIE compared to control participants who saw neither the information nor the retraction. The CIE was strongest when the informant was more credible than the retractor. When the informant was less credible than the retractor, participants showed no CIE compared to control participants. These findings are in line with a rational account of the CIE.

Semantic space models are powerful tools in semantic memory research, which use the distributional structure of words in large natural language datasets to derive high dimensional vector representations for the words or concepts in a semantic space. In a recent line of research, these word vectors have been used to predict judgments of similarity, of probability, or of other quantities. If these spaces capture the structure of human conceptual representations, it should also be possible to predict comparative judgments of concepts on nonsensical attributes as long as the concepts are spatially arranged at sufficiently distinct locations along the attribute dimension. In a first experiment, we presented \(n = 30\) participants with \(k = 60\) nonsensical comparisons, in order to investigate the ability of the semantic space model to predict the response of participants. Overall, the analysis using a Bayesian logistic hierarchical regression model showed that the model could predict the responses of participants above chance level, with a accordance rate of model predicted and observed responses of \(\theta\) = 57%. However, the results also showed that while there were only small difference between participants (\(\theta\) ranging from 53% to 56%), there were large differences between items in how good the model predicted the actual judgment of participants, with accordance rates ranging from \(\theta\) = 36% to \(\theta\) = 89%. Given that the observed responses of participants are similar and as predicted by the semantic space model, at least for some items, might indicate that the derived high dimensional vector representation of the semantic space to some extent incorporates some shared aspect of people's semantic memory.

Episodic future thinking (EFT) denotes humans' ability to mentally project one's self into a specific future situation. It has been suggested that EFT has tremendous adaptive value, e.g. by facilitating the preparation for challenges and opportunities that will only occur in the future (proactive behavior). Some evidence in adults supports this assumption and suggests that anticipated affect plays a crucial role for this relationship (Kotabe et al., 2019). Respective research with children is still missing. We want to close this gap by investigating whether guided EFT about anticipated affect fosters proactive behavior in 5-year old children. We aim to examine a total of \(N = 90\) children (age in months: \(60-71\)) in an interactive online experiment until March 2022. Children are randomly assigned to one of three EFT conditions (no guided EFT, guided EFT about positive affect, guided EFT about negative affect). Children visit two rooms. In the first room, the experimenter presents three games. The experimenter announces that children will come back to the room later and that they will have the opportunity to win stickers when mastering a test in one of the games then. In a second room, EFT about the upcoming test is manipulated depending on condition. Afterwards, children have the opportunity to play one of the three games including the test game. We hypothesize that children in both guided EFT conditions choose the test game more often in preparation for the test compared to children in the control group (proactive behavior). In addition, we explore possible differences between the guided EFT conditions about positive vs. negative affect. Data collection is still ongoing and we will present preliminary results for a subsample.

Often, decision-makers base their decision upon a pre-selected set of information. For instance, to reduce information overload, leaders often ask their employees to seek and filter information for them. But how do people decide what information to present to decision-makers? We predicted that decision-makers receive information in line with the attitude they initially display about the topic at hand. Thus, people may neglect to include opposing information, undermining decision-making quality. Across three studies (total \(N = 614\)) using different decision scenarios, we did not find the hypothesized biased information selection in line with the decision-maker's attitude. However, regardless of decision-maker attitude, participants consistently showed significantly greater intent to provide positive over negative additional information to the decision-maker. This suggests a positivity bias in selecting information for a decision-maker. As this bias could also undermine decision-making quality, it is important to be aware of it in the decision-making process in order to counteract potential negative consequences.

The integrated coherence-based decision and search model (iCodes; Jekel et al., 2018) assumes that decision-makers strive for a coherent representation of the current decision situation. It predicts that information search is influenced not only by the validity of information but also by the coherence of the available information as well as the attractiveness of the options. In two pre-registered experiments (total \(N = 107\)), we tested qualitative predictions of iCodes for attention allocation in a multi-cue decision task. Framed as a hypothetical stock-market game, participants were asked to repeatedly choose the likely more successful stock based on stepwise available (Experiment 1) or fully available information (Experiment 2). The results showed that the previously observed attraction search effect generalizes from active, deliberate information search to automatic attention allocation in visual search: Participants were more likely to fixate new information on the currently attractive option first. In addition, participants showed a tendency to fixate coherent information relatively more often than incoherent information. There was no evidence, however, for the predicted late coherence effect, as we did not observe an increase of the coherence influence on attention allocation over the course of a trial. These results highlight the relevance of coherence of information and option attractiveness for predicting visual information search and, thereby, provide support for coherence-based models of decision making such as iCodes.

People distort information about options in the direction of their emerging preference when information about options is presented sequentially one at a time (Russo, 2015). The robust finding is that information about the preferred option is evaluated more positively whereas information about the non-preferred option is evaluated more negatively. In the standard statistical analysis of information distortion (ID) researchers have typically related the extent of ID on currently presented information to the strength of participants' previously indicated preference for decision options. We argue that this analysis implies a serial cognitive process of ID. This, however, does not align well with the assumption of a parallel cognitive process that is at the heart of the coherence-based model that has been proposed for explaining ID (DeKay, 2014). The model implies that a change of preferences for options runs in parallel to the evaluation of current information, and that both processes affect each other. In a study with 210 participants, we tested the implications of such a parallel process on ID for decisions between two options in health and consumer-related domains. We find for the current round of information presentation that (1) a positive change in preferences leads to stronger ID (push effect), (2) a negative change in preferences leads to weaker ID (pull effect), (3) preference reversals change the direction of ID (reversal effect), (4) and information in accordance with the current preference is distorted more strongly and processed faster (coherence effects). Implications of the results for the literature are discussed such as the benefit of theory informing the statistical analysis for advancing our understanding of ID.

Showing or telling others that we are committed to cooperate with them can boost social cooperation. But what makes us willing to signal our cooperativeness, when it is costly to do so? In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that agents engage in social commitments if their subjective confidence in predicting the interaction partner's behavior is low. In Experiment 1 (preregistered), 48 participants played an iterative version of the prisoner's dilemma game where they could signal their intentions to their co-player either for one or for two rounds by enduring a monetary cost. As hypothesized, low confidence in one's prediction of the co-player's intentions was associated with a higher willingness to engage in costly commitment. In Experiment 2, 31 participants had the option to signal their intention to cooperate for the current round but received feedback on the other's decisions according to three conditions: 100%, 50% or 25% of the time. Here, we replicate our previous findings and moreover provide causal evidence that experimentally lowering the predictability of others' actions (and thereby confidence in these predictions) motivates commitment decisions. Finally, across both experiments we show that metacognitive accuracy in mentalizing predicts the degree to which agents benefit from commitment devices. Taken together, our findings shed light on the importance of confidence representations and metacognitive processes in social interactions.

People's probability judgments often appear to be probabilistically incoherent. The most prominent example of this is the conjunction fallacy (Kahneman & Tversky, 1983). Recently, a sampling-based model, the Probability Theory plus Noise (PT+N) model (Costello & Watts, 2014; Howe & Costello, 2020), has been proposed to account for biased probability judgments. One limitation with testing this model is that it has only been investigated in the probability estimation tasks. In the current study, a ranking task is used to study people's probability judgments, and more importantly, to test the PT+N model. In the ranking task, participants are asked to provide a ranking for the event set consisting of four events, A, not-A, B, and not-B, in terms of their subjective probabilities. We formally derive the predictions for rankings from the PT+N model. Our predictions suggest that (1) people will sometimes violate the complement rule by providing logically impossible rankings, and (2) specific qualitative patterns should appear in rankings. In an online experiment, we asked participants (\(N = 177\)) to rank 12 different event sets and found evidence for rankings in line with the predictions from the PT+N model.

Reinforcement learning has proven to be an invaluable framework when it comes to understanding value-based decision making and learning. However, the behavioral phenomenon of choice variability defies standard reinforcement learning models and still lacks a mechanistic explanation. In a recent study, Findling et al. (2019) show that this seemingly suboptimal and irrational behavior in humans is best accounted for by a novel reinforcement learning model which incorporates computational noise as an additional source of choice variability. The idea of computational noise states that learning from experience is only precise to a certain degree, i.e. there is trial-to-trial noise corrupting the updating of expectations. Moreover, this research suggests, that the modulation of this computational noise (or precision) is governed by the level of noradrenergic (NE) activity in the brain. In the current study, we investigate both proposals by combining a pharmacological manipulation of NE (atomoxetine) with electrophysiological recordings in an established variant of the two-armed bandit task. We hypothesize that increased NE levels are associated with increased computational noise and that this relation is reflected on the behavioral and neural level. We replicate previous findings and establish clear connections between model variables (e.g., reward prediction error and trial-to-trial computational noise) and EEG. However, contrary to our expectations, we do no find evidence for a modulation of these effects by noradrenaline. Taken together, these findings support the conceptualization of reinforcement learning as a noisy process, calling for further research on its biological implementation.

Recent research revealed that predicting one's memory performance during learning (judgments of learning, JOLs) often has reactive effects on memory performance. In paired-associates and list learning tasks, making JOLs has been found to elevate cued recall for related word pairs and recognition memory for single words (positive reactivity), but to reduce cued recall for unrelated word pairs (negative reactivity). However, little research has examined whether JOL reactivity generalizes to educationally relevant study materials and tests. It therefore is an open question whether making JOLs would affect memory performance in multiple-choice tests and short-answer tests on general-knowledge information. We compared groups of participants who did vs. did not make JOLs in order to examine the effects of making JOLs on memory performance for easy and medium-difficult general-knowledge information in Experiment 1 (\(N = 99\)) and on memory performance for medium-difficult and difficult general-knowledge information in Experiment 2 (\(N = 95\)). Making JOLs did not affect memory performance in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, there was a tendency for negative reactivity in the short-answer test but no evidence for reactivity in the multiple-choice test. We conclude that further research is needed to identify conditions under which predicting one's memory during learning might have consequences for test performance in educational settings.

Event-based prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to carry out a previously planned action when a specific event occurs in the future. PM consists of two components: the prospective component (remembering that something has to be done) and the retrospective component (remembering what has to be done and when). As basic emotions (e.g., sadness) can influence PM we were interested in investigating the effects of complex emotions on PM. In previous experiments, we found that induced shame led to impairments in the prospective component. Another and similar emotion is guilt. The goal of the current experiment was to investigate the influence of both emotions. We manipulated the mood of 162 participants (shame vs. guilt vs. neutral) during a standard event-based PM task. Participants had to press a special key whenever they encountered one of several previously studied target words during an ongoing color-matching task. Emotions were induced via an autobiographical writing procedure. To obtain unconfounded estimates for the prospective and retrospective components, we used the multinomial processing-tree model of event-based PM (Smith & Bayen, 2004). Both complex emotions, shame and guilt, led to impairments in the prospective component in comparison to the neutral group. There was no significant difference between both complex emotions. Thus, it seems that shame and guilt have similar effects on PM.

Prospective memory (PM) refers to carrying out intended actions in the future. PM tasks can be event-based (e.g., remembering to buy medication when you pass a pharmacy) or time-based (e.g., remembering to take medication at 7pm). In studies on event-based PM, younger adults often show higher PM than older adults. However, motivation can be an important moderator of age-related differences in PM performance: Whereas younger adults tend to be more motivated by gains, older adults focus more on preventing losses. Consistent with this, Horn and Freund (2021) found larger age-related differences in event-based PM in a gain condition than a loss condition. However, the effects of gain/loss incentives on time-based PM are currently unknown. Since time-based PM places greater demands on monitoring the environment than event-based PM, motivational effects could be even more pronounced in time-based tasks. In the present research, participants performed a computerized ongoing task and received an additional PM task, to be performed in regular time intervals. Moreover, participants could request a virtual clock during the tasks. Gain and loss conditions were manipulated by instructing participants that correct PM responses during target times lead to small monetary gains (gain-frame) or to losses from an initial endowment (loss-frame) if PM target times are missed. We anticipate higher PM performance in younger than older adults and an Age \(\times\) Incentive interaction. Moreover, clock checking should correlate positively with PM performance. Our findings will add to the understanding of how motivational framing can affect PM across the adult lifespan.

The Proust effect describes the phenomenon that odor associated memories are older, more emotional, more vivid and rarer than memories associated with other modalities (for a comprehensive review see Hackländer et al. 2019). While the reason behind odor-cued memories' higher emotionality is yet to be determined, a promising explanation might be the special way odors are processed. Yeshurun and Sobel (2010) found that odors are generally processed in terms of emotionality. This emotionality might be ascribed to the whole event, if the odor is not the center of attention. In a series of studies we want to assess this explanatory approach by focusing on whether odors are the center of attention in autobiographical memories cued by odors. In an voluntary-retrieval paradigm, we will have participants retrieve autobiographical memories cued by odors, pictures, or words and rate the centrality of the cue to the memory. Participants will then be presented with their memories a week later to assess their memory of the original cue modality. Participants will also rate the memories for other variables, such as age of memory, pleasantness, frequency of rehearsal, and other variables often associated with the Proust phenomenon. We hypothesize that, when a stimulus triggers an autobiographical memory, the cue will be rated as less central to the memory, and the cue itself will be forgotten more often, if the cue was an odor than if it came from a different modality.

The current study assessed whether the word frequency mirror effect in recognition memory changes across time. In an online study, we presented 192 M-Turk participants with a study list consisting of high- and low-frequency words and we tested recognition memory either immediately, after one day, after three days, or after one week. The result showed that the word frequency mirror effect is stable over time despite the general memory decline. These results indicate that the word frequency mirror effect is based on stable differences between representational features of high versus low frequency words rather than due to a temporary activation triggered by the study experience.

Forgetting is an adaptive social feature. For successful navigation in the social world, it is crucial to remember relevant and to forget irrelevant information. Whereas the directed forgetting literature speaks for human’s fundamental ability to intentionally forget irrelevant information, the reported research explores potential boundaries of successful forgetting in social contexts. Building upon research that points towards a memory advantage for social exchange relevant information, we addressed the question of whether social relevance impairs intentional forgetting of task-irrelevant information.In two preregistered online experiments, we used the item-method directed forgetting paradigm to investigate our prediction that humans are less able to intentionally forget social information compared to non-social information. First, we tested our prediction in an impression formation context. Participants learned a set of behavioral descriptions about a fictional person that varied in their social-exchange relevance. In a fully crossed within-subjects design, we instructed participants to remember only half of the behavioral descriptions of each information category and to forget the other half. In a follow-up experiment, we tested our hypothesis in a less social learning context in which participants learned both social and non-social information about an apartment building. In both experiments, recognition memory for both the to be remembered and to be forgotten information was assessed in an old-new recognition test. Although we found a directed forgetting effect in both experiments, we found no evidence for reduced forgetting of social compared to non-social information. We discuss possible explanations for our findings and outline potential future directions.

In larger German cities, police vehicles are more and more often target of vandalism. In order to protect police officers on patrol, law enforcement agencies equip their vehicle fleet with a light armour, for instance bulletproof windows or doors. In a first baseline study, German police officers from tactical units and personal security participated in a focus group discussion and elaborated use cases (such as damaged police cars at demonstrations or responding to terrorist attacks) for the deployment of light armoured vehicles in non-military use. The experts were also questioned concerning their visual and cognitive stress and strain while driving a police vehicle with bulletproof windows. Most of them reported related symptoms (such as loss of concentration and vertigo) when being exposed to bulletproof windows for a longer time. A second baseline study aims to experimentally assess the visual and cognitive stress and strain under exposure to three different types of bulletproof windows. To determine the level of stress, German police officers will be asked to perform tasks from the Test of Attentional Performance while either ordinary, polycarbonate reinforced or armoured glass is fixed in their field of vision. Group differences in reaction time and accuracy are expected to be marginal. The level of strain will be assessed with the NASA Task Load Index. Group differences are again expected to be negligible while time of exposure might be correlated with strain. Both the findings of the first baseline study and the expected results of the second baseline study will enable law enforcement agencies to choose the best equipment for their vehicle fleet and will provide recommendations concerning the occupational well-being of police officers on patrol.

Highly automated vehicles (HAVs) bear the potential to make mobility safer, eco-friendlier, and more inclusive. Across Germany, a plethora of real-world laboratories with HAVs providing novel mobility solutions in real-world settings has been implemented recently. Due to technological and legal restraints, a steward is required on board of the HAV in all of them. This on-board operator's task is overseeing driving operations and intervening if necessary, i.e., when the automation's capability does not suffice to maintain safe driving operations. Three major HAV projects are presented as case studies with a focus on the on-board operators' workplaces, their tasks, scenarios they are exposed to, and interactions with the driving automation to resolve these scenarios. After analyzing the projects' communalities and idiosyncrasies, structured interviews with on-board operators were conducted. The interviews focused on the operators' working environments, their tasks, and scenarios they were exposed to. Additionally, observations of HAV operations in the shuttles they supervise were carried out. The observations examined situations in which operators intervened, their frequency, and the ratio of automated versus manual driving periods. Results showed a highly similar task structure of on-board operators across the three investigated projects despite considerable differences regarding the HAVs' capabilities of automation, frequency of manual interventions, and the operational contexts. In addition, the set-ups of workplaces vary substantially, particularly regarding the transparency of the automation's decision-making process and ways to interact with the automation. Implications for psychologically grounded workplace design and further research will be discussed.

In nowadays traffic, most encounters of road users are highly regulated. Nevertheless, traffic situations arise that are not explicitly regulated and therefore require communication and cooperation. This will also be true if self-driving vehicles enter our traffic system. It is therefore of great importance that self-driving vehicles are able to react to and show cooperative behavior. Exactly how humans cooperate in traffic is not fully understood yet. The systematic study of cooperative behavior requires appropriate tools and measures. We contribute to the development of tools by developing a questionnaire that assesses the subjective evaluation of cooperation in a traffic encounter. In this work, we present a first version of this questionnaire, which is divided into two parts: The first part of the questionnaire is intended to measure whether a given encounter between road users could be considered cooperation, and the second part of the questionnaire is intended to evaluate the encounter. Based on a literature survey, 39 items, which cover different aspects of cooperation, like altruism, interference, costs and benefits, were formulated for the first part of the questionnaire, i.e. for assessing the occurrence of cooperation. For the second part, i.e., for the evaluation of a given encounter, 40 pairs of adjectives were created based on typical motives in road traffic, e.g. safety and efficiency. In an online survey, 123 participants then rated seven videos of drivers encountering a narrow passage with varying degrees of interaction. Based on factor analysis and descriptive statistics, ten items and 22 pairs of adjectives were selected for a final version. The final version will be tested in future studies to assess the questionnaire's reliability.

In the last decade, the number of road traffic fatalities in Germany tend to stagnate. To get closer to vision zero, new approaches such as the early detection or the prediction of hazardous road traffic situations will provide a more effective guidance towards safer road traffic measures than the retrospective analyses of road traffic crash data used so far. The project Early Detection of Dangerous Areas in road traffic using smart data (EDDA+) collects, in accordance with Hydén's Safety Pyramid, not only conventional crash data but also movement data and user reports, meaning that near misses and minor crashes are also considered. Based on these three data sources, a Germany-wide hazard map is created. To validate the EDDA+ hazard assessments, focus group discussions were conducted with over 200 police officers. The participants brainstormed about dangerous situations for bicyclists, pedestrians, or motorists and rated the perceived dangerousness on a five-point scale. A selection of participants presented their output to give an overview of the situations in place. Finally, the participants discussed their dangerousness ratings within focus groups. Afterwards, a content analysis was conducted. For each road user group, a hazard category catalogue was derived, with superordinate categories such as road condition, road user characteristics and environmental influences. By comparing the hazard assessments determined by EDDA+ with the results of the focus group discussions, the EDDA+ methodology can thus be validated or, if necessary, further improved. In this way, police forces, municipalities or citizens can be provided with a valuable tool to mitigate danger spots at an early stage or to adapt their behaviour in road traffic accordingly.

Saccades are important for the visual perception of our environment and for the interaction with the objects within it. They precede our actions and are therefore modulated by current action goals. The accuracy of saccadic eye movements required to align the fovea with objects of interest is ensured by saccade adaptation, a recalibration process that is thought to be based on an implicit comparison between the expected and actual position of the target on the retina after the saccade. However, there is increasing evidence that task demands modulate eye movements and that task errors can evoke changes in saccade behavior. In our current study, we investigated whether human participants are able to flexibly use the different sources of information included in the post-saccadic visual image to adapt their saccade amplitude to a task. We instructed our participants to saccade towards a target object within an object array that was either defined by its color or by its position within the array. During the saccade, object positions and colour of the objects were manipulated such that participants were confronted either with congruent post-saccadic information, unambiguously defining the target, or with incongruent post-saccadic information, evoking a conflict between two possible target objects. We found that participants succeeded in decreasing saccade gain or maintaining it, depending on what was necessary to directly look at the defined target object, irrespective of whether the post-saccadic image provided congruent or incongruent information. Participants thus use post-saccadic information sources flexibly, depending on their intentions and pending actions.

In the last decade, the dense sampling technique, a psychophysical approach to test rhythmicities in perceptual and cognitive functions, has gained in popularity. Typically, a reset event such as a visual cue is presented at the beginning of each trial to reset the rhythm of interest, thereby aligning oscillations across trials. This enables the experimenter to sample behavioral performance at different phases of the oscillation by presenting target stimuli at various intervals after the reset event. Thus, the time course of behavioral performance is expected to reflect the rhythmicity of the tested perceptual function. However, testing behavioral data for rhythmicities requires numerous decisions about various signal processing and spectral analysis parameters, amounting to a virtually infinite number of potential plausible analysis pipelines. Unfortunately, while the field of dense sampling shows great variability of analytic decisions, the impact of these choices on results is unknown. Therefore, we conducted a simulation study to compare common analysis pipelines found in the literature. To this end, we created surrogate data mimicking prototypical dense sampling studies by simulating single trial data with or without an underlying oscillation of varying amplitude. Using these data, we tested the performance of various analysis pipelines, i.e. combinations of preprocessing, frequency decomposition and multiple comparison correction methods. Critically, we found that pipelines differed in their signal detection properties as measured by the sensitivity index d'. For example, second-order detrending was the most robust detrending method for all simulated trends. Based on these findings, we provide best practice recommendations for future dense sampling studies.

Perceiving other people's direct gaze is important for many areas of everyday living (Argyle et al., 1974). For horizontal and vertical eye movements the area of being looked at, also known as the cone of gaze, has been well explored. Previous research has shown a fairly large range of eye positions (about 4° to 9°) that people accept as being looked at (Gamer & Hecht, 2007). Although vergence is an important cue for perceiving the depth of fixation (Nguyen et al., 2018), it has not received much attention in the gaze research. This study investigates whether – comparable to horizontal and vertical eye positions – there is a range of different vergences that lead to the perception of being looked at. To this end, observers adjusted the degree of vergence of the lookers' eyes until they felt just looked at or until they felt just not looked at (factor 1). Additionally, the direction of adjustment (ascending, descending) was manipulated (factor 2). The results suggest that observers accept vergences of lookers focusing within an area of 7° in front of and 7° behind the observer.

Each saccade that we make results in high-velocity image shifts on the retina, inducing large-field motion blur, which is rarely perceived during natural vision (a phenomenon known as saccadic omission). In a unique setup, in which they illuminated a room strictly during saccades, Campbell & Wurtz (1978) showed not only that such intra-saccadic smear can be perceived, but also that stable pre- and post-saccadic retinal images suffice to eliminate the percept. Despite the impact of this finding, still little is known about the time course and extent of post-saccadic masking when induced by a larger variety of natural scenes. In this study, we tachistoscopically flashed natural-scene stimuli of different categories (e.g., indoor scenes, residential areas, woodlands) upon the onset of saccades. We presented scenes in color or grayscale and systematically varied their durations ranging between 33.3 and 58.3ms, leading to either strictly intra-saccadic or post-saccadic presentation offsets. After an inter-stimulus interval of 500ms, we presented a second scene, prompting observers to determine whether it was the same or a different one. Performance in this same-different task was low (yet clearly above chance) for purely intra-saccadic presentations but strongly depended on scene features, such as color and scene category, as well as spatial-frequency and orientation content. Only 10-20ms of post-saccadic presentation sufficed to achieve near-ceiling performance, irrespective of scene features. This time course suggests that the post-saccadic masking of the extensive motion smear induced during saccades is akin to bandwidth-specific backward masking (Stromeyer & Julesz, 1972) and may be a parsimonious visual mechanism for saccadic omission.

When a rapidly rotating ring of points (inducer) is followed by a stationary ring of points (test ring) participants frequently perceive a short rotation in the stationary ring in the direction of the inducer. This illusory motion has been termed Motion Bridging Effect (MBE). The MBE occurs even if the inducer rotates at very high velocities so that the inducer appears to be a continuous outline of a stationary circle and participants cannot distinguish its direction of motion. The frequency of participants' reports of the illusory motion in the direction of the rapidly rotating inducer increases when the interstimulus-interval (ISI) between the two rings increases up to 90ms and decreases with longer ISIs. Ratings of the clarity of the illusory motion revealed a similar inverted u-shaped effect of ISI. Here we present a psychophysical measure to estimate the duration of the illusory motion. In two experiments, we employed a temporal-order judgment task in which participants rated whether the illusory motion ended before or after the occurrence of another (visual or auditive) stimulus. A double staircase procedure was used to determine the moment of perceived simultaneity as an estimate for the perceived duration of the illusory motion. We found that the duration of the illusory motion decreases monotonically with increasing ISI with a unit slope. The double dissociation of the direction and the duration of the illusory motion over ISI is new evidence for multiple processes that contribute to the illusory motion in the case of the MBE.

Scene-centred theories of fast scene categorization propose that the ability to quickly and accurately categorize our environment into meaningful scene categories can be explained by the fast processing of global scene properties. We causally tested this claim by reducing scene images to different sets of global scene properties with varying degrees of local information. In Experiment 1, human observers reached above-chance categorization accuracy for most stimulus conditions, indicating that images reduced to global scene properties indeed allow for correct categorization. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that these features can be extracted from only 30ms of stimulus presentation. However, accuracy in both experiments was far below performance on unmanipulated images and differed strongly between conditions. Images preserving local information yielded better performance than those with less or no local information. In Experiment 3, we related this performance advantage to the identification of single objects in stimuli containing local information which supports the notion that object information is used for scene categorization. Taken together, we show that global scene properties are useful but not sufficient for fast scene categorization. Instead, local information is crucial in this process, presumably because it conveys object identities.

The arrangement of objects in the environment follows certain rules which we have termed "scene grammar" that we exploit to perceive and interact with objects in an efficient way. Recently, it has been proposed that scene grammar is hierarchically organized: scenes are divided into meaningful spatial clusters of objects ("phrases", e.g. the sink phrase); within every phrase, one object ("anchor", e.g. the sink) holds strong predictions about the identity and position of other objects ("local objects", e.g. a toothbrush). To investigate if this hierarchy is reflected in the mental representations of objects, we collected pairwise similarity judgments for triplets of everyday object pictures, as well as for their corresponding German written words, using an odd-one-out task. Then, we estimated behavioral effects of different predictors reflecting three levels of the hierarchy: scene, phrase, and object type ("anchor" or "local"). Results show that similarity judgments are stronger for object pairs that appear in the same as opposed to a different scene. In addition, object pairs that belong to the same spatial cluster ("phrase") are judged to be more similar than objects from different clusters within the same scene. Finally, object pairs that have the same status in the scenes (i.e., they are both anchors or both local objects) are perceived as more similar than pairs of different status. When comparing these effects between stimulus modalities (pictures vs. words), we found even stronger effect of scene level of the hierarchy for pictures compared to words, and vice versa for the phrase level effect. Overall, we found a similar and significant impact of scene hierarchy on the organization of abstract mental representation of objects, independent of stimulus modality.

In recent years, deep-learning research has produced a range of neural networks that are able to classify and generate images from a variety of stimulus domains. At the same time, advances in cross-domain analysis methods (e.g., representational similarity analysis, RSA) have allowed us to make inferences about the human visual system based on the representational spaces of these networks. State-of-the-art generative networks provide a useful testbed for probing and manipulating representations at different stages of scene generation which could help us better understand "what makes a scene?". To investigate how well a generative network (PROGGAN) captures real-world scene gist and whether the information content of generated scenes is rich enough to trick human observers we conducted an online experiment. Participants had to detect real from generated images of scenes for varying presentation-times (50 vs. 500ms) and rate the degree of realism for each generated scene. We found that for short presentation times participants performed only slightly above chance, while for longer presentation times sensitivity (d') increased significantly and response bias became more conservative. Interestingly, realism ratings correlated with the false alarm rate of generated images in both conditions. Our results imply that the information contained in generated scenes triggers similar processes in the visual system during a first glimpse, but that generated scene information is perceived as less realistic with time. Based on these explicit and implicit measures of realism, we can use network dissection on the generator at different representational stages to better understand the content and structure of real-world scene representations in the human visual system.

The world we live in is not one we perceive passively; instead, we actively interact with our surroundings, performing actions on and with objects. Research shows that anchor objects play an important role in visual search and scene understanding (Võ, 2021), but the influence of anchors on the perceived functionality of a scene remains unexplored. In the current study, we investigated the influence that different action related and unrelated anchors have on the perception of scene affordances (i.e., the action possibilities in a scene). Participants rated the fit between an action (e.g., "brushing teeth") and an indoor scene (e.g., an image of a bathroom) in which either an action related (e.g., a sink) or an action unrelated anchor (e.g., a shower) was masked. Compared to the control condition, in which a random non-anchor object (e.g., a window) was masked, participants rated the scenes lacking the action related anchor as less fitting to the presented action. A weaker, but robust effect was found when the action unrelated anchor was masked, demonstrating that the perceived functionality of a scene is strongly linked to the presence of specific anchors. The second experiment included a speeded two-alternative forced-choice task to measure scene perception and affordance more implicitly. Participants reacted slower and less accurate when the action related anchor was masked. Here, the masking of action unrelated anchors resulted in similar effects as the masking of random objects. We conclude that anchors contribute to the holistic understanding of scene affordances, but that action related anchors are of most importance. In an upcoming, third experiment, we seek to replicate these results while additionally manipulating presentation times.

How does emotion influence attention? Based on findings that valence and arousal of target stimuli and distractors have an influence on the probability of occurrence of the attentional blink (AB), we investigated the influence of affective priming on the probability of occurrence of the AB. The AB is a phenomenon of temporal visual attention, which describes that a second target stimulus (T2) is often missed if it follows within 500ms of the first target stimulus (T1). We hypothesized that emotionally T1 would lead to a reduction of the AB, and that congruency of affective valence would lead to a further reduction. To test this prediction, positive, negative, and neutral T2 were presented after positive or negative T1 in an RSVP stream with pseudoword distractors. T1 and T2 were either 3 items apart, with T2 in the AB, or 8 items apart, with T2 outside the typical AB window. Results show that negative words caused a reduction of the AB for emotional T2—independent of valence—already at lag 3, whereas a valence congruency priming effect was limited to lag 8. Thus, valence priming takes longer to develop and seems to depend on attentional resources, whereas negative arousal can be evaluated quickly and does not seem to depend on attentional resources. This result is compatible with EEG studies suggesting different time courses of emotional arousal and valence. We speculate that higher-level semantic evaluation is necessary for valence congruency priming, whereas unspecific arousal evoked by negative stimuli is sufficient for arousal priming.

In previous studies on the distractor-induced blindness/deafness paradigm, an inhibitory process of selective attention was found. This effect always occurred when distractors had the same characteristics as the following target, leading to a reduced detection rate. Caffeine is known as a psychostimulant capable of enhancing attentional performance as well as producing inhibitory processes via various pathways in the basal ganglia. In the present study, the effect of caffeine on detection in the distractor-induced deafness was investigated. Each subject was tested for a caffeine and placebo condition. As expected, results show an effect of the number of distractors on target detection. Preliminary results suggest that caffeine leads to strengthened attention toward targets in trials without distractors as well as a stronger inhibitory effect in trials with distractors, resulting in a lowered detection rate.

Music can evoke emotions through various processes (Juslin & Laukka, 2004). One way is that music related autobiographical memories (MEAMs, Krumhansl & Zupnick, 2013) influence mood and arousal according to the memory's valence. MEAMs could also influence cognitive processes. As positive mood widens the attentional focus (Fredrickson, 2013), this might result from mood changes following MEAMs. Hypothesis 1: MEAMs influence mood: Mood after remembering is influenced by the valence of MEAMs, independent of pre-test mood. Hypothesis 2: Memorizing positive MEAMs widens the attentional focus. Using an online experimental setting, 226 participants (Age: \(M = 54.4\), \(\mathit{SD} = 12.78\)) were randomly distributed to three groups. After assessing pre-test mood, participants were instructed to write down either a positive, negative, or neutral music-related memory. Afterwards, post-test mood was assessed. Attentional focus was measured using the cross-task to assess inattentional blindness (Mack & Rock, 1998). Participants of all groups had comparable mood at baseline. After memorizing the music-related event, participants in the positive group reported of higher positive mood, than those in the negative group, \(F(2,223) = 6.17\), \(p < .01\), \(\eta^2 = .05\). MEAM's valence did not influence arousal, \(F(2,223) = 1.63\), \(p > .05\), \(\eta^2 = .01\). Only 3.5% of the participants recognized the unexpected stimulus, the valence of MEAMs did not affect attentional focus, \(\chi^2(2, N = 226) = .18\), \(p > .05\). The valence of MEAMs has a clear influence on post-test mood. This does not appear to affect one's attentional focus which might be due to the low number of participants who recognized the unexpected stimulus altogether. The results are discussed regarding their relevance for emotion regulation processes.

Mismatch negativity (MMN) and the corresponding component, mismatch negativity magnetic (MMNm) in Magnetoencephalography (MEG) could be elicited in a passive Oddball paradigm, in which the brain automatically reacts to the deviant stimuli without demanding attention. Previous studies with various paradigms show that there is a hemispheric asymmetry in the distribution and characteristics of the MMN signal. However, in current literature, there is rare research focusing on MMN itself as a deviant-detecting function to study its hemispheric asymmetry, and the relationship between the dominant hemisphere in audition and the hemispheric laterality in MMN is neglected. So, this study applied monotonic auditory Oddball paradigm, in which subjects were asked to watch a silent movie and not to respond to the sound. We recorded the evoked MMNm with MEG. The results show that, in temporal lobe area, the MMNm elicited by left-ear sound have a stronger amplitude, including both peak and local averaged amplitude on the right hemisphere, while there is no between hemispheric difference by right-ear sound. We postulate that the hemispheric laterality of MMNm is independent of the auditory dominant hemisphere, contributing to further understanding of the neural mechanisms of the oddball detection in attention.

In previous studies on the distractor-induced blindness/deafness paradigm, an inhibitory process of selective attention was found. This effect always occurred when distractors had the same characteristics as the following target, leading to a reduced detection rate. Frontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is known as being capable of enhancing attentional performance as well as producing inhibitory processes in various experimental settings. In the present study, the effect of tDCS in the distractor-induced deafness was investigated. Each participant was tested for anodal, cathodal and sham stimulation. Expected results should show an effect of the number of distractors on target detection in all experimental conditions. Furthermore, the two stimulation conditions could lead to increased attention to targets in trials without distractors and/or to a stronger inhibitory effect in trials with distractors compared to sham stimulation.

Despite a growing body of evidence that illustrates the multitude of cross-modal interactions that can affect sensory-specific processes in a spatially specific manner, our understanding of how the brain allocates spatial attention in multisensory environments remains elusive. In this pre-registered study (https://osf.io/vh38g), we investigated the interplay and the temporal dynamics of unisensory attention mechanisms in an audiovisual search paradigm. Subjects (\(N = 36\)) were presented with two concurrent, lateralized sounds. In three separate task blocks, the auditory speech stimuli were presented together with congruent visual speech (Avc), unspecific visual speech (Avu), or without visual speech (Aonly). Subjects were asked to determine the lateral position (left vs. right) of a pre-defined target word. While accuracy in the task was close to ceiling in all conditions, response times showed a typical multisensory facilitation effect, with fastest responses for Avc stimuli compared to Avu and Aonly. Responses were slowest for Aonly stimulation. In addition to behavioral responses, we recorded the EEG. Contrary to our pre-registered hypotheses, we found no modulation of N2ac or N2pc amplitude and onset latency between conditions. However, a late sustained contralateral negativity emerges over anterior (i.e. SACN) and posterior sites (i.e. SPCN) following the N2ac and N2pc, respectively. Both SACN and SPCN were most pronounced in the Avu condition (compared to Avc), suggesting that conflicting auditory and visual information requires sustained processing (in the focus of attention). The results shed light on the interplay of audition and vision when allocating attention in multisensory environments.

Perceiving speech in a cocktail-party environment requires the listener to successfully segregate and select relevant, and to ignore irrelevant information. Older adults tend to have more difficulties in such situations. However, processing audio-visual instead of auditory-only speech is beneficial and can compensate for age-related decline. During audio-visual perception, beta-band oscillations are likely linked to (error) monitoring processes. Stronger suppression in the beta band has been shown for incongruent stimuli and in multitalker environments. In the present EEG study, we investigated the role of beta band oscillations in younger (\(N = 21\), \(20-34\) years) and older participants (\(N = 18\), \(60-70\) years) in a multitalker scenario. On a horizontal array, we presented audio-visual recordings of two speakers simultaneously uttering either a target (yes/no) or a distractor word (1–10). The targets always appeared at a pre-defined, fixated position to the left or right of the listener, who had to discriminate the two target words by button press. The presented information was either valid (AV_cong) in both modalities or only valid in the auditory (A_val) or visual (V_val) modality, respectively. Response times indicate, that even though older participants were slower, both groups showed faster responses with AV_cong compared to A_val information. There were age differences in beta power, with larger suppression in older participants. Furthermore, larger beta suppression was observed in V_val compared to AV_cong. Although we observed age-related differences, we did not find clear evidence for a benefit of congruent audio-visual information in either group. However, the stronger suppression with V_val information is in line with a connection to error monitoring.

The magnitude of masked and unmasked priming effects vary considerably across individuals. Interindividual differences in priming at least partly depend on prefrontal functioning and are associated with working memory processes. Striatal dopamine activity, which is coupled with the prefrontal dopamine system, has been shown to be associated with working memory capacity and impulsivity. Dopamine exerts its effect by binding to various dopamine receptors, for instance, the dopamine D2 receptor (D2R), predominantly expressed in the striatum. The gene coding for the D2R (DRD2) comprises several polymorphisms. We investigated the association between a cumulative genetic score (CGS) comprising six DRD2 polymorphisms and semantic priming. We analyzed genetic and behavioral data from a masked and an unmasked priming paradigm of \(N = 151\) healthy participants. We found a significant effect of the DRD2 CGS on reaction times (RT) of the masked semantic priming paradigm: Individuals carrying a higher number of genetic variants impairing DRD2 density and dopamine binding potential showed reduced RT priming. These results are in line with findings of exaggerated priming in patients suffering from schizophrenia who exhibited a hyperactive dopaminergic transmission at the D2R. The D2R could be an important factor contributing to the interindividual variability of priming effects.

The present study investigated the impact of light intensity and sleep restriction on mental effort. We predicted a main effect of light intensity – stronger effort under dim light – and a main effect of sleep duration – stronger effort after sleep loss. In two sessions (one for each sleep duration condition (5 vs. 8 hours), within-subject), we tested 39 participants, who, after an 8min baseline, spent 15min in dim or bright light (1 lx vs. 100 lx at eye level, between-subject) and then performed a 5min auditory 2-back task. During all sessions, we assessed cardiovascular correlates of mental effort. For cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP), the main effect for sleep duration yielded significance during the light exposure period (\(p = .033\)), but not during the task period. In line with our expectations, PEP was higher in the non-sleep restricted condition, reflecting a lower mobilization of effort, compared to the sleep-restricted condition. During task performance, heart rate was significantly higher in the sleep-restricted than non-sleep-restricted condition (\(p = .047\)), but was significantly reduced by bright light in the sleep-restricted condition only, as indexed by a significant interaction term (light intensity \(\times\) sleep duration: \(p = .007\)). This indicates, that light intensity might not affect cardiovascular scores in well-rested individuals. We did not observe significant effects on blood pressure. Although our results are not univocal, they suggest that sleep loss might lead to higher effort, and that light might affect effort-related cardiovascular response in sleep-restricted conditions. Sleep restriction is rather common in our society. Thus, bright light could be a potential countermeasure to alleviate sleep-loss related changes in mental effort.

When participants predict the upcoming stimulus and their prediction is correct, they are faster compared to when they see a cue for the upcoming stimulus. This effect is both present, when the most likely stimulus has to be predicted as well as when the least likely stimulus has to be predicted. A dominant explanation is that the increased response speed is caused by activation of the predicted stimulus and not a direct result from the expectation. However, in the previous experiments, all stimuli were presented with equal chance. Thus, in those experiments participants were unable to predict the stimulus, and therefore may not believe in the validity of their predictions. We conducted an experiment in which the predictions itself influenced the upcoming stimulus. Depending on the color of a cue, participants either had to predict the stimulus that would appear with 75%, 50%, or with 25% probability. Predictions were either self-generated or cued in different trials. Because, there are only two stimuli to classify, a 25% chance of match would suggest that the participant have to prepare for the stimulus they did not predict. In a control condition, we also attempt to conceptually replicate the original findings by Hacker and Hinrichs (1979). In this condition, participants are asked to predict which stimulus they find most likely, least likely or just select any of the two possible stimuli. In this control condition, the upcoming stimulus is then always selected with 50% probability and participants are made aware of this in the instructions.

When pursuing an important goal, people typically develop a plan for how to proceed. However, given the uncertainty whether the plan might succeed, people frequently develop a backup plan as a "safety net." Backup plans are defined as alternative means that people develop but then hold in reserve while pursuing a goal with "Plan A." Research suggests that investing in a backup plan indirectly reduces goal performance, through the effect of increased backup plan use. However, no study to date has examined whether variations in the way backup plans are specified may impact this association. For example, contingent backup plans are specified to be used if a person's performance falls below a certain standard, whereas redundant backup plans are used whenever a person believes the backup plan is more instrumental for goal achievement. The current study sought to explore whether backup plan investment, use, and goal performance varied by backup plan type. We used a lab-based experiment in which participants threw a ball into a bucket. Participants (\(N = 301\) adults, 52.8% female) were randomly assigned to one of two groups: (1) a contingent backup plan group (e.g., "If I don't score enough points by throw 5, I will switch to Plan B") or a redundant backup plan group (e.g., "If Plan B seems better than Plan A, I will switch to it"). As Plan A, we assigned a table tennis ball, Plan B was a tennis ball. We operationalized backup plan investment as the number of practice throws, of a possible 10, where participants chose to use the tennis ball. Initial results suggest that while backup plan investment did not substantially vary between groups, switching to a backup plan did predict a decrease in overall performance in the contingent group.

Pain is a multidimensional phenomenon and can be modulated by psychosocial factors like social support and empathy. The present study investigated the influence of social support and empathy on pain in a standardized way with virtual humans. In a mixed design, healthy participants were immersed in a virtual lab and underwent three within conditions. In two conditions, a virtual experimenter led the participants through the study and provided verbal support immediately before pain stimulation. At the beginning of one condition, the virtual experimenter was presented as empathic. In another condition, another virtual experimenter acted non-empathically. In a third condition, no virtual human was present and no verbal support given. Agency of the virtual experimenters served as between-subjects factor. In the avatar group, participants were led to believe that the virtual character was controlled by an employee next door. In the agent group, participants were told that they interacted with a computer. In both cases, the virtual human was controlled by computer scripts. In each condition, six heat pain stimuli were applied. Pain ratings and psychophysiological measurements were recorded. Preliminary data (\(n = 34\)) show a successful manipulation of empathy, \(t(32) = 4.32\), \(p < .001\), \(d = .75\). Post-study ratings concerning the perceived empathy were higher in the empathic (\(M = 7.9\), \(\mathit{SD} = 2.2\)) than in the non-empathic condition (\(M = 3.78\), \(\mathit{SD} = 2.65\)). Descriptively, pain ratings were highest in the non-empathic condition and lowest in the control condition. Agency did not affect pain ratings. The current study contributes to understanding virtual social support and its modulation of pain. This research also contributes to understanding how humans respond to virtual characters.

Shared automated mobility on-demand (SAMOD) is considered as a convenient mobility solution in the future. Once the user books a fare via smartphone, the DRT service algorithms set up a pick-up location spontaneously. The user then walks to the flexible meeting point and waits for the shuttle. Here, the users' main challenge is to navigate and to identify effortlessly the virtual pick-up location, which has no references in the real world. To achieve high user acceptance of new automated mobility services, providing customers with an intuitive information system is essential. Especially, when navigating to flexible pick-up locations users must be provided with high user experience. Our developed human-machine interface (HMI) prototype addresses this challenge by using means of augmented reality (AR). It provides users with information in reference to the street environment. This should ensure users' high rates of pragmatic quality and low rates of cognitive workload when solving the task. A naturalistic real-life exposure study was conducted with 23 young adults. Almost everybody experienced smartphone navigation for pedestrians (e.g., Google Maps) before and more than half of the participants experienced AR before. Participants were asked to navigate to a pick-up location in unfamiliar territory. Participants were guided by the AR-HMI prototype through an urban setting and a building. They had to solve the task within a given time frame. Cognitive workload and UX of the prototype were captured. The VRAP prototype provided positive UX especially in terms of high pragmatic quality to the participants. Furthermore, cognitive workload was low. Results showed the positive perception of AR-navigation. Implications for application and further research will be discussed.

Currently, technical control systems often consist of many variables and their interactions that must constantly be monitored and adjusted. Thus, operators' processing capacity can be exceeded, which might result in errors. Therefore, strategies to enhance working memories efficiency, such as conceptual chunking (i.e., the storage of smaller units of information and their relations into larger units), are needed (Halford et. al 1998). Graphs might intensify conceptual chunking, because they employ general perceptual cognitive mechanisms effectively. The present study aimed to investigate if it is possible to make complex machining tasks more efficient by using representations that should induce conceptual chunking compared to ones that should constrain conceptual chunking. For this, an experimental online study was conducted using simplified versions of real thermal spraying displays. Eighty-three participants (mainly students) were randomly assigned to one of two test conditions in which the relevant information was presented using visual representations that should induce or constrain conceptual chunking (i.e., coordinate systems versus bar graphs). We found a significant difference between the test conditions regarding reaction time, indicating that the interpretation of graphs that should induce conceptual chunking was faster than the interpretation of the unchunked versions. However, test material had some limitations (e.g., regarding difficulty) and the online format proved to be unfavourable. Therefore, improvements regarding further research are proposed.

"Chunking" (i.e., storing related information into complex structures) is an effective strategy to increase processing capacity when understanding novel information. In order to not only store, but also use this information in an applied context, the relations and interactions between different elements need to be integrated as well. This so called "conceptual chunking" (Halford et al., 1998) is highly dependent on prior knowledge and can be either induced or constrained by the sensory input. Hence, if new information is organized in order to enhance the understanding of relations (e.g., by using coordinate systems) rather than actively suppressing it (e.g., by using bar graphs; see Pinker, 1990), related tasks should be solved faster and with improved accuracy. This experiment replicates results from an experimental online study using the context of complex machining processes in a controlled laboratory setting. Moreover, underlying cognitive mechanisms were investigated via eye tracking. During an extensive instruction phase, participants received information about relevant variables of a machining process through different graph types (i.e., coordinate systems versus bar graphs). Then, participants had to solve ten complex tasks. Performance measures and gaze behaviour indicate differences in processing and the formation of a mental representation depending on graph type. The present findings are discussed in light of their implications regarding the design of cognition based assistant systems in machining processes.

Introduction: Smartphones have a lot of functions that can replace most of our devices. Today's smart device dependency can lead to that many people saying they can't put down their smart device. The most vulnerable are the young adults, who are the fastest to become professional users of the devices. This age group is the most anxious about missing out on information, or simply not having someone respond to their messages. This can cause anxiety and distress, lead to individuals paying too much attention to their phone. Aims: The aim of the present research is to investigate the effect of the presence of a smartphone in a deprived setting in a simple attentional test measuring attention wandering and reaction time while the participants have their smartphone on the desk next to them. Method: The sample comprised 47 participants (20 men; \(M = 23.5\) years). The participants had to take part in a psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) while their smartphones were placed next to them, with or without available Internet. At the end of the session each participants had to fill out questionnaires to assess problematic internet use, smartphone addiction, fear of missing out. Results: We found no significant differences between the study and control groups in the terms of their performance on the PVT. However, the statistical analysis showed a moderately strong correlation between the results of the questionnaires examining smartphone use and their performance. Conclusion: Although the statistical analysis did not support our hypothesis, we can draw some important conclusions. Based on the questionnaires we can assume that there is a potential connection between the smartphone usage and attention.

AI technology allows for mimicking social interactions which already has been used for subtle manipulations of the recipients. In this project, we present first evidence that averaged and adapted features of artificial voices also involve the risk of subtle manipulations. We trained a deep neural net on a speaker recognition task. The AI embedded voice samples in a 256-dimensional space, so that voice similarity could be calculated based on the cosine similarity of their feature vectors. In a series of five experiments, we established a set of findings addressing research methods as well as the impact of voice similarity on cognitive processes. Regarding research methods, we show that there is a quadratic relationship between AI ratings and human (dis)similarity ratings (conditional \(R^2 = 0.27\), Mdn \(r_s = 0.37\)). This relationship also held true when the (dis)similarity rating involved the own voice of the participants (conditional \(R^2 = 0.21\), Mdn corrected \(r_s = 0.15\)). This shows that the AI is capable of predicting human similarity judgments. Regarding cognitive processing, we observed that average voices are judged to be more trustworthy (conditional \(R^2 = 0.21\), Mdn \(r_s = 0.04\)). Further, we observed that the similarity of a voice to the own voice increased trustworthiness ratings (conditional \(R^2 = 0.19\), Mdn \(r_s = 0.15\)), as well as the likability ratings (conditional \(R^2 = 0.19\), Mdn \(r_s = 0.15\)). As human (dis)similarity ratings revealed rather moderate test-retest reliability (\(r_s = 0.57\)), all true relationships are probably larger. In sum, our set of experiments shows that caution is necessary when interacting with artificial voices as they might imply rather subtle manipulations which potentially might bias subsequent decisions.

Many unaccompanied minors have migrated to Germany in the past years. A presumably high proportion suffers from psychological stress caused by traumatic experiences before and/or during the flight. The traumas often remain unrecognized which is why innovative, low-threshold ways of support should be created. To improve the deficient care situation of refugee minors, an easily accessible smartphone app is being developed. The app offers, inter alia, exchange opportunities with peers who also have a migration background via an online (video) chat. Since peer counseling concepts are generally discussed controversially and underage refugees are a particularly sensitive group of people, an evaluative online survey was conducted. Professionals were asked to evaluate peer counseling concepts in general and the proposed concept in particular. Thirty-four individuals (29 female, 5 male; age in years: \(M = 36.9\), \(\mathit{SD} = 10.8\)) who are either volunteers or full-time refugee workers participated in the survey. The descriptive values show a generally positive evaluation of the proposed peer counseling concept and a high interest in having the own organization participate. The personal interest to participate however was rather low, likely because most of the respondents do not have a refugee background. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed a significant influence of the participants' age and gender, but not their education, status, length of working in the psychosocial sector, evaluation of peer counseling concepts in general, and privacy risk beliefs. Men evaluated the concept more positively than women and with increasing age the concept was evaluated more negative. The age effect may be explainable a by an increase in experience and thus stronger focus on the critical aspects.

Humans can intentionally forget previously-learned information (directed forgetting, DF). Whereas many studies have demonstrated DF for lists of items (e.g., words), where memory for to-be-remembered (TBR) items is typically better than for to-be-forgotten (TBF) ones, the role of intentional forgetting in action control is less clear. Here, we investigated whether the instruction to remember or forget a stimulus affected the formation and/or retrieval of corresponding stimulus-response (S-R) associations. To do so, we combined the DF item-method with item-specific priming: By categorizing stimuli (Exp. 1-3: images, Exp. 4: words) in a prime phase, participants formed S-R associations. Directly after participants' responses, a memory cue indicated whether to remember or forget the stimulus for a later memory test. In the following probe phase, participants responded to the same stimuli, but the required response item-specifically repeated or switched. Typically, probe responses are faster for item-specific response repetitions rather than switches (S-R effect). In four experiments, these S-R effects did not differ between TBR and TBF stimuli. This was the case when S-R associations already existed before the memory instruction was given (Exp. 1), when stimulus, response, and memory cue were paired multiple times (Exp. 2), when learning new S-R associations (Exp. 3), and when using a different categorization task and word stimuli (Exp. 4). Thus, up- or downregulating the memory strength of a stimulus representation by the intent to remember or forget it does not inevitably affect the corresponding S-R association. This suggests that top-down memory control selectively operates on certain but not all representations associated with a learning episode (event file).

Applying a newly designed variant of a three-list approach to selective directed forgetting of motor sequences, we were able to distinguish between the prominent accounts of selective directed forgetting. Participants consecutively studied three lists (L1, L2, and L3) of four sequential four-finger movements each. After studying L2, participants in the forget group were instructed to selectively forget the just now studied four items of L2 but to retain the previously studied four items of L1, whereas the remember group participants did not receive any forget instruction for L2 but were encouraged to retain all items of both lists. In addition, we switched (switch groups) or repeated the items-enacting hand (no-switch groups) between L2 and L3 for a manipulation of post-forget-cue material competition (i.e., interference) for L2. A final memory test assessed recall performance for all three lists irrespective of preceding instructions. Selective directed forgetting (lower L2 recall in the forget group as compared to the remember group and higher L1 than L2 recall in the forget group) only occurred if the same hand was used for L2 and L3 (high interference between L2 and L3 encoding) whereas no selective directed forgetting occurred if the hand switched between L2 and L3 (low interference between L2 and L3 encoding). These results suggest that an inhibitory mechanism caused (selective) directed-forgetting costs that was triggered when items studied after the forget instruction had the potential to interfere with already stored items (i.e., were to be enacted by the same hand). When subsequently studied items pertained to the other hand no directed-forgetting costs occurred.

Recent studies showed an influence of the vestibular system on various aspects of cognition ranging from visuospatial abilities and attention to executive functions (e.g. Bigelow & Agrawal, 2014). The vestibular system is particularly important in order to detect the position of one's own body in relation to other objects. Studies directly addressing the vestibular system are quite rare. Thus, in a first step, we manipulated the body position (e.g. sitting or standing) to investigate its influence on the Simon Task. Participants were asked to respond to the color of stimuli presented on the left or right side of the screen's center, yet the stimulus location was task-irrelevant. The stimuli occurred on three different eccentricities along the horizontal plane on either side of the screen's center in order to examine the spatial distribution of the stimuli on the screen (Hommel, 1993). Participants performed the Simon task twice, once while standing and once while sitting. Thus, the study comprised a 2 (compatibility: stimulus-response (SR) compatible vs. SR incompatible) \(\times\) 2 (body position: sitting vs. standing) \(\times\) 3 (eccentricity: low vs. medium vs. high) within-subject factors design. We conducted two experiments (one online, one in the laboratory). Both experiments showed a significant Simon effect, while the effect was seemingly unaffected by the other factors. Results are discussed regarding the role of the vestibular system for spatial representation and cognitive inhibition.

In many situations multiple correlated features can be used to select a response (e.g. color or position of traffic light, red is always at top position). In an online experiment (\(N = 147\)), we combined a variant of the Stroop task with the option for a covariaton-based shortcut to investigate whether adopting a shortcut strategy after practice depends on the extent to which the initially instructed strategy demands controlled processing. Participants were instructed to press an upper key [Q] whenever word color was blue or yellow and press a lower key [Y] in case of a green or brown word. The color words were presented at a high vs. low position on the screen. During practice, two of the colors (blue and green; measurement colors) were 100% congruent with the word. Importantly, their screen position was assigned in a consistent manner (blue always top; green always bottom) such that participants could use color, word and/or position to select a response. The likelihood of strategy change was targeted by a between-groups variation of color-word-congruency and position-consistency (in the inducer colors, yellow and brown). In the low-control demand condition, brown and yellow where 100% congruent and their position was 100% correlated with the required response. In contrast, in the two high control demand conditions only 50% of the trials were color-word congruent. One still allowed for a position-shortcut, whereas the other did not. Error rates and RTs in a transfer block without feature covariation and congruency suggest that the key factor determining strategy change was whether the position shortcut could be applied to all colors.

To study the time courses of the global precedence, global-to-local interference, and local-to-global interference effects in a global/local matching task, we analyzed the RT and accuracy distributions using discrete-time event history analysis and conditional accuracy analysis, respectively. In each trial two hierarchical/compound stimuli appeared, one on each side of fixation. For example, a large (global) circle made out of smaller (local) triangles on the left, and a global circle made out of local circles on the right. Participants were asked to indicate whether the shapes were the same or different on the global ("same" in the example) or the local ("different" in the example) level. We also manipulated whether the ignored level would require the same ("match") or opposite response ("no-match"). The global precedence effect (faster response times in the global task) was found to occur in the hazard of response occurrence between 300 and 800ms after stimulus onset. Local-to-global interference was present in same responses between 400 and 700ms. Global-to-local interference was evident by early errors in the no-match conditions, and by a decreased hazard probability of response occurrence between 400 and 800ms. These results suggest that performance depends on the dynamic interplay between three types of shape comparisons or response tendencies: between two local shapes of the same global stimulus (triggering always the "same" response), between two global shapes ("same" or "different"), and between two local shapes on the left and right of fixation ("same" or "different").

Das Ziel des Forschungsvorhabens besteht darin, die Zusammenhänge zwischen User Experience (UX) und Angebotsakzeptanz holistisch zu untersuchen. Die UX und deren Bestandteile sollen dabei möglichst ganzheitlich und die Angebotsakzeptanz sowohl hinsichtlich Einstellungs- als auch Verhaltensakzeptanz betrachtet werden. Unter dem UX-Begriff werden in der Praxis sowie Wissenschaft neue Ansätze geschaffen, um interaktive Produkte aus einer erlebnisbezogenen Perspektive zu betrachten, anstelle alleinig funktionelle Produktqualitäten zu berücksichtigen. Investitionen von Unternehmen in positive UX unterliegt die Annahme, dass eine Verbesserung derselben eine gesteigerte Angebotsakzeptanz und damit ein gewünschtes Verhalten (z. B. gesteigerte Nutzungshäufigkeit/-intention oder Kauf) mit sich bringt. Modelle der UX-Forschung (z. B. Hassenzahl, 2001; Thüring & Mahlke, 2007) stützen die Auffassung, dass sich die UX positiv auf das Verhalten der Nutzenden auswirkt. Der Fokus empirischer Untersuchungen lag bislang zumeist auf der Untersuchung einzelner UX-Bestandteile sowie auf Zusammenhängen zwischen UX und einstellungsbezogener Akzeptanz. Auf Basis bestehender Modelle der UX- und Akzeptanzforschung wird aktuell ein Forschungsmodell erarbeitet, das die Zusammenhänge zwischen UX und einstellungs- sowie verhaltensbezogener Akzeptanz hypothetisch abbildet. Diese Zusammenhänge sollen in einer Metaanalyse überprüft werden. Die Ergebnisse der Metaanalyse werden den Ausgangspunkt für die weitere Hypothesenbildung darstellen, um diese in späteren experimentellen Versuchen, u. a. im Kontext automatisierten Fahrens, zu überprüfen. Im Beitrag werden das erarbeitete Forschungsmodell, ggf. erste Ergebnisse der Metaanalyse und die geplante Methodik zur Untersuchung der Zusammenhänge vorgestellt.

Developing interventions to retain memory functions in older age is essential in view of increasing older populations worldwide. As age-associated memory decline has been associated with brain network dysfunctions, transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) applied to two network hubs (dual-site tACS) provides a promising tool to improve memory in older adults by reinstating long-range connections. So far, this approach has not been investigated in hippocampus-dependent memory. In frontal and parietal cortical regions of the hippocampal memory network, synchronicity of phases in the theta band has been associated with memory performance, and this synchronicity is disturbed in older adults. Therefore, we will target the hippocampal memory network with fronto-parietal dual-site theta-tACS in healthy older adults (\(60-80\) years; \(N = 54\)) and investigate its effect on memory performance. A pilot study in 32 older adults determined (1) left frontal and parietal stimulation targets of the hippocampal memory network using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, (2) electrode setup using electric field modelling, and (3) 6 Hz as the stimulation frequency, based on the EEG data. Stimulation will be applied either synchronously (0° phase shift) or desynchronously (180° phase shift) during a sequence memory task, and compared to sham stimulation in a crossover design. We will record resting-state EEG pre- and post-stimulation. This study will advance knowledge on tACS as a possible intervention against age-related decline of hippocampus-dependent memory and its behavioural and electrophysiological effects and mechanisms.

Emotion is a complex interplay of subjectivity, physiological response, and behavioural expression which is critical to everyday cognition and life. Research has supported the facilitative role of emotion in the encoding and retrieval processes that can enhance or impair the recall of memory. The quality of affective experience deeply influences the memory encoding process of transforming information into neural codes. However, the effects of emotion on individual differences have been underexplored. It is observed that people with higher anxiety traits are prone to generalise fear by reactivating the fear episode. This could be due to increased sensitivity towards fear-relevant versus fear-irrelevant stimuli. We will examine the effect of emotional arousal on memory. The effect of stimulus nature that is fear-relevant or -irrelevant (neutral), level of anxiety trait (high/low) and gender (male/female) on memory encoding. The multivariate analysis would be performed using data from subjective scales, behavioural measures, and physiological responses. We will use the episodic memory encoding paradigm where the subject would be presented with an encoding task and retrieval task. Physiological and subjective measures will be recorded from all participants throughout the experiment. We expect to find a significant effect of emotion-provoking stimuli on memory encoding from the study, which should be higher for fear-relevant stimuli. Registration of physiological changes in the body when facing emotional stimuli would be prominent in people with higher trait anxiety.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has previously been shown to enhance vocabulary learning. However, this evidence comes from associative learning paradigms, that mimic rote learning of new vocabularies. Moreover, little is known about the regional specificity and optimal timing of tDCS or the mechanisms underlying inter-individual variability of the stimulation response. In the present study, we are investigating tDCS effects during contextual word learning, which closely resembles natural word learning in childhood and also later in life. In a placebo-tDCS controlled, between-subjects design, focal tDCS is administered either (a) to the left middle temporal or inferior frontal cortex (MTC/IFC), and (b) during acquisition or retrieval of the novel vocabulary. Because MTC and IFC are specifically involved in meaning integration or retrieval, this design allows investigating both regional and temporal specificity of tDCS effects. We also aim to scrutinize potential predictors of the stimulation response. To this end, structural magnetic resonance imaging data is acquired prior to the experimental phase, to quantify the variability of current flow to the target region(s) across participants. Diffusion-weighted imaging and resting-state functional MRI serve to investigate the impact of baseline structural and functional brain properties on stimulation outcome. Besides the investigation of regional and temporal specificity of the tDCS effects, this study will help to elucidate the role of MTC and IFC during contextual language learning.

Extinction training and imagery-rescripting reduce threat-based conditioned fear responses through contingency-based expectancy evaluation and re-evaluation of the cognitive representation of the unconditioned stimulus. The effects of these interventions may be modulated by Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which targets cortical excitability and impacts fear learning. This study investigates the effects of tDCS on imagery rescripting and extinction of generalized fear responses to establish a drug-free paradigm for reducing fear responses. In the fear generalization paradigm, ten rings of gradually increasing size will be considered, with the largest and the smallest rings as the CS+ and CS- and the intermediate rings as generalization stimuli (GS). An aversive picture will be used as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS). The participants will be recruited after G*Power analysis and will be randomly assigned into three groups, immediate-extinction, imagery-rescripting, and extinction, and delayed extinction (conducted 24 hours after acquisition), and will be further divided into three groups: cathodal, anodal, or sham and 1.5mA tDCS at the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex will be applied during the generalization or acquisition phase for 12 minutes. After 24-hours, return-of-fear will be tested through a generalization test. Standardized questionnaires, self-report rating scales, and physiological measures will be implemented to measure fear learning and extinction. We expect that tDCS may modulate the efficacy of the imagery rescripting and extinction processes and impact the generalization of threat-based fear responses.

Stereotypes are generalized beliefs about a group that don't necessarily apply to every individual within the group and which are very resistant to change. In this project, we aim to explore how stereotypes can be deconstructed by testing the impact that repetition and contradiction may have in integrating counter-stereotypical information in people's mental schemes. There is a large body of evidence showing that people tend to believe repeated information more than information they receive for the first time – the illusion of truth effect. Furthermore, people reject information that contradicts previous information – an illusion of falseness effect. Using the illusion of truth paradigm, participants will judge for truth statements that reinforce or deny racial stereotypes. In some of these studies, statements will be thematically related to race (e.g., "Most people arrested due to drug possession are black vs. white"), and in other studies statements will address intrapersonal characteristics (e.g., "Person X is a short-tempered person", being X black vs. white). The statements may present stereotypical vs. counter-stereotypical information about the racial group that is being addressed, and they may be repetitions or contradictions of information presented before, or completely new. We want to test whether repeating counter-stereotypical information can lead to its acceptance as true and whether contradictions of counter-stereotypical information are judged false, as a way of changing race stereotypes. Additionally, in another set of studies, we want to explore whether race stereotypes associated with the sources presenting stereotypical and counter-stereotypical information moderate the effects of repetition and contradiction on truth judgments.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many aspects of people's lives worldwide have been moved to digitally supported environments, e.g. learning activities or everyday social interactions. While these alternatives have proven to be more or less useful on a technical level, their impact on individuals' emotional and interpersonal experiences remains unclear. As one important and prevalent emotional process in social interaction, Emotional Contagion (EC) comprises the mostly automatic and unconscious transmission of emotions between individuals. In previous research, EC has been studied in various interactive contexts, e.g. teachers and students or leaders and employees, and it has been found to be linked to important outcomes, e.g. cooperativeness or emotional understanding. To examine EC in dyadic online video conferences, we developed a new methodological approach involving two individuals interacting with each other via synchronized computers. Within this approach, the participants are each being filmed by a webcam in combination with a Lavalier microphone for better audio quality. Participants' heart rate and galvanic skin response are measured using BIOPAC sensor systems (www.biopac.com), their facial expressions are analyzed using the facial expression analysis engine Affectiva (www.affectiva.com), and they retrospectively report on their subjective experience of joy, anger and sadness. All data is collected and integrated within the iMotions software package installed on both computers (www.imotions.com). According to the results of a first pilot study (\(N = 18\)), our approach seems to be highly feasible and a promising foundation for future research on emotional experiences in different socially interactive situations online, e.g. psychotherapy or counseling services.

Odors are often considered to be powerful cues of memory. However, early olfactory paired-associates studies showed that odors are not particularly effective associative cues, or only for the first associated target. This led to the belief that proactive interference is particularly strong in odor-associative memory. Further, memory research with other modalities pointed out that semantic similarity between stimuli in a paired-associate caused retroactive interference. Thus, in the current project, we explore the efficiency of odors as cues in a paired-associates paradigm in comparison to stimuli from other modalities when they are semantically congruent vs incongruent with the target. To do that we conduct two within-subjects studies in which participants learn different pairs of associations (audio-visual, verbal-visual, or olfactory-visual in experiment 1, and audio-verbal, visual-verbal, and olfactory-verbal in experiment 2). In the testing phase, they should recognize the second part of the pairs as a target (visual in Exp. 1 or verbal in Exp. 2) while being presented with the first part of the pairs as a cue (audio or verbal or olfactory). We predict that semantically congruent cues are more efficient than semantically incongruent cues, across all modalities. We also explore proactive and retroactive interference by presenting the cue with different targets across two sessions. In opposition to previous findings, we hypothesize that the strength of proactive (or retroactive) interference will not differ as a function of modality if the cues are semantically congruent with the targets. For semantically incongruent cue-target pairs, we expect to replicate previous findings of stronger proactive interference for olfactory than other cues.

Recent research has suggested that number processing is embodied, that is, it involves the motor system. To test this assumption, we will employ a novel method of grip force measurement. Our predictions are based on two theoretical models: A Theory of Magnitude (ATOM) and the confidence model. ATOM postulates that magnitudes in various domains develop together and are linked to each other. According to this theory, larger magnitudes in one domain should correlate with larger magnitudes in the other domain. Therefore, larger numbers would evoke stronger force responses. In its turn, the confidence model predicts that the amount of evidence in favour of the given response correlates with the response magnitude. Here, high frequency numbers (small and round numbers) will evoke stronger force responses. In our experiment we will record continuous grip force production in high temporal and force resolution (ms/mN) across two tasks employing the Go/NoGo paradigm. In the first task (n-back-1) a stream of white (No-Go trials) and red (Go-trials, 16.7%) single digit numbers will be presented. Participants will have to verbally respond whether a red number is different by 1 or 2 compared to the previous number. In the second task (Single Digit Number), we will present correct (No-Go trials) and incorrect (Go-trials, 25.7%) addition/subtraction problems by their sequential elements (e.g., \(1 + 1 = 2\) vs. \(1 + 1 = 3\)). Participants will have to verbally respond when they see an incorrect answer. In this task, we will be able to measure force profiles of numbers in their relation to their position relative to the operand. Our findings will inform the theory of embodied cognition in general and, in particular, add to our understanding of number processing.

Haptic perception of object shape is a complex process that relies on bimanual exploratory movements (e.g., enclosure of hands around a whole object, tracing of vertices and edges). This exploration requires the coordination of both left and right hands. Although there is consensus on the pivotal role of active manual exploration for haptic shape perception, the potential attentional strains on this process are not yet understood. No studies before have evaluated the direct link between attentional control and haptic shape sensitivity. Our project aims to establish this link in typically developing young adults. We hypothesize that participants who are challenged by an increased attentional load will have reduced manual dexterity, and therefore reduced sensitivity to haptic shape. Manual exploration behavior will be affected by attentional load, (e.g., expected slowing, less exploratory actions and more repetitive explorations). Participants will perform a haptic shape discrimination task used in previous investigations (Norman et al., 2020) to obtain their measure of perceptual sensitivity (\(d'\)). On some blocks of trials, participants will also experience cognitive load during the discrimination task. At the beginning of these blocks, the participant will be given a number to memorize, and then will be required to recall that number at the end of the shape discrimination judgment. Over trials, the set size of numbers will adjust (i.e., increase or decrease) to obtain the participant's maximum cognitive load. In addition, we will assess individual executive function capacities and manual dexterity in order to evaluate functional modulators of the hypothesized link between haptic sensitivity and cognitive load.

Decision strategies related to the N-Cue heuristic define a spectrum between 1-Cue reasoning such as Take-The-Best (TTB) and all-Cue reasoning such as Weighted ADDitive (WADD). This study will investigate to which extent an Evidence Accumulation Model (EAM) can unify these strategies. We will use the framework of selective influence tasks to validate the so-called boundary-threshold parameter "a" of the Drift-Diffusion-Model (DDM) adaption. Here, we will selectively influence the information used in a decision. We will manipulate participants' (\(N = 60\)) perceived trust and distrust in an online between-subject designed experiment. Subjects will make 160 decisions with two options each. Participants have six binary attributes (expert recommendations) that differ in validity. The expert recommendations are provided with pictures of faces that look trustworthy or untrustworthy, depending on the condition (trust/distrust). When the perceived distrust is high, we expect participants to accumulate more information (higher boundary threshold) and rely more on compensatory strategies such as WADD. When the perceived trust is high in contrast, people tend to rely on less information (lower boundary threshold values) and on non-compensatory strategies such as TTB. This study is part of a research project to combine Adaptive Toolbox (AT) strategies with EAM. The Toolbox's well-formulated reasoning process of processing and sampling information is lacking in the EAM description, which is more general. However, EAM, in contrast to AT, precisely describe response times and responses. The greater goal is to combine both theories strengths by investigating to which extent these frameworks can be unified.

Creativity is a multi-staged cognitive process that is traditionally studied using divergent thinking tasks. One of the most widely used tasks to measure divergent thinking is the Alternate Uses task (AUT), that requires participants to think of unusual uses for daily objects, such as shoe or newspaper. One behavioral measurement of the AUT is fluency, which describes the number and the speed of participants to give (verbal) responses for the uses of each object. We aim to directly compare this behavioral measurement of the AUT by contrasting traditional reaction time (RT) analysis with discrete event-history analysis. The idea is to study the temporal course of behavior in more detail. Furthermore, over the last years, cognitive neuroscientists started investigating the neuronal activity of the divergent thinking process by using electroencephalography (EEG). To investigate the time course of EEG activity, many researchers use Fast Fourier Transform-based approaches. These approaches provide insight into the frequency domain but do not provide information about temporal changes. In contrast, time-frequency approaches provide frequency-specific and temporal information. In our view, they are therefore well suited to investigate time-related changes during divergent thinking. In our study, we aim to provide a direct comparison by using both approaches on the same dataset. With that, we hope to show the methodological advantages of each approach in order to improve future researchers' choice on the appropriate method (EEG and RT data) for divergent thinking tasks.

Cognitive control is the ability to act based on current goals and suppress actions triggered by the environment or habits. Here, we ask how the global state of arousal influences cognitive control. To address this question, we manipulate arousal using a progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) exercise and assess its effects on cognitive control. Cognitive control is measured with a variant of the Stroop task, the spatial Stroop. Furthermore, to measure the participants' subjective feeling of relaxation, a relaxation questionnaire (RSQ) is used. Participants perform a total of 4 sessions (and 1 training session). In 2 of the sessions, they perform a PMR exercise, in the other 2, a waiting control condition. Before and after the exercise/control condition, participants fill out the RSQ and perform the spatial Stroop task. The effects of PMR are assessed by comparing cognitive control between the PMR and control condition (corrected for performance before the exercise/control condition). If the modulation of cognitive control by a simple relaxation exercise (i.e., PMR) is possible, it could allow people to actively adjust their own cognitive control and thus improve in various domains such as decision making, problem solving, or driving.

The stimulus-response modality mapping (MM) plays a crucial role in task switching, with a decrease of performance when switching between incompatible MM (visual-vocal and auditory-manual) compared to switching between compatible MM (visual-manual and auditory-vocal). A recent study demonstrated that this "modality compatibility effect" decreases with a prolonged cue stimulus interval (CSI), thus with longer task preparation. So far, all studies that were conducted tested young participants. However, we know that ageing leads to general and specific cognitive impairments. For example, older adults have more difficulties with the processing of certain stimulus modalities and get less benefit from a longer task preparation. To our knowledge, no study has investigated the modulation of the modality compatibility effect by preparation in an old population. We aim to address this issue. In our experiment, we use central unimodal cues and lateralized bimodal stimuli combined with manual or vocal responses. Cue modality indicates the relevant stimulus modality, and the CSI will vary randomly. Modality compatibility will vary within subjects with condition order counterbalanced (i.e., participants will either first switch between compatible MM, or between incompatible MM). Regarding younger adults, we expect to replicate previous findings. For the older adults, we expect an overall larger modality compatibility effect. In addition, due to a weaker preparation benefit regarding the effectiveness of preparation, this performance difference between age groups should be even more increased with longer CSI. This data pattern would confirm the increased challenge older adults face when dealing with incompatible MM and high task-set competition, i.e., high working memory load.

Humans track regularities in the environment and thereby adapt their behavior to changes. Changes offer risk and/or opportunity, therefore mandating arousal, and require internal models of environmental regularities to be either updated or completely reset and replaced with newly learnt alternatives. The locus coeruleus and the norepinephrine system (LC-NE) are thought to regulate such arousal and model updating and replacement in the brain. LC-NE's effects on pupil dilation responses (PDRs) lead to the latter's use as biomarkers for arousal and model change. We will measure PDRs to investigate the relationship between uncertainty of auditory patterns, arousal and model change. Generalizing Zhao et al. (2019, Nature Communications), we will generate auditory patterns consisting of pairs of (a) random auditory sequences, (b) regular sequences composed of the same tones, (c) constant tones, and (d) white noise. This allows various environmental changes to be realized (e.g., a switch from a regular pattern to a random pattern for abrupt change, or a switch from a random pattern to a regular pattern for gradual change) so the role of LC-NE in model change can be studied. We will also manipulate the complexity of the auditory patterns by varying the number of tones per sequence to reveal the relationship between pupil-linked arousal and model complexity. So as to tap automatic processes, participants will not be instructed to pay attention to the regularity of the auditory patterns (instead they will be asked to detect a possible gap in the patterns).

Flight missions are highly complex and dynamically changing scenarios in which different tasks have to be executed in close temporal proximity. Hereby, superior executive functions are essential to successfully complete a flight mission. The following project aims at investigating the strategic use of cognitive flexibility, as part of executive functions, in a combat flight simulator. The chosen approach is inspired by the Metacontrol State Model (Hommel, 2015), describing that goal-directed behavior emerges from a balance between flexibility and persistence. It is hypothesized that serial task performance, related to the concept of persistence, aims at supporting focused decision-making by avoiding distraction from irrelevant task demands. Contrary, parallel task performance, relating to the concept of flexibility, is predicted to enhance time efficiency and reactivity to unpredictable changes as well as task-switching. However, it is yet unknown how these concepts relate to strategies and the performance level in a flight mission. A mixed method approach is expected to maximize the data output from a relatively small sample size. Quantitative analysis of eyetracking data will be used to reveal the underlying attentional processes and identify instances of task-switching. Behavioral data intends to unfold the actual task performance and individual performance styles. Finally, semi-structured interviews will gain in depth insights into the underlying decision-making processes and mental models of the subjects. Investigating the relationship between cognitive flexibility and multitasking behavior in the actual application of a flight mission is important for further development of adaptive cognitive assistance systems.

Evidence suggests that infant attention for and learning of speech stimuli is enhanced by infant-directed speech (IDS), characterized by a higher mean pitch and higher variability in prosody. Much less is known regarding a potential general effect of IDS on cognitive processes, such as attention and learning during the encoding and processing of visual or multimodal information. We plan to test 22 4-month-old infants in an EEG cueing paradigm to investigate the effect of IDS compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) on attention for visual stimuli. During the cueing phase, we will present visual objects (60 different exemplars, e.g., car, house, spoon...) for 1,500ms, accompanied by the prompt "Look here" ("Guck mal") spoken by 50 different speakers. The speech register (ID/AD) will vary across trials. The same object will be presented again for a 1,000ms test phase. During the cueing phase, we will measure frontal gamma activity indicative of attentional focus. We predict decreased gamma activity over frontal regions while listening to ID rather than AD speech. The Nc ERP component, associated with attention to visual stimuli, will serve as measure of attention during the test phase. We expect increased Nc amplitudes for stimuli cued by ADS, suggesting less comprehensive processing during the cueing phase. This investigation will provide evidence on early cognitive effects of speech registers, paving the way to a deeper understanding of early multimodal learning via attention. We are looking forward to receiving feedback and discuss the stimulation of ERP and oscillations analysis.

Visual dominance over auditory localization is a well-documented phenomenon, for example, in the ventriloquist effect – the illusion that sound is coming from the moving mouth of a puppet instead of the actual speaker. Typically, this effect is studied in laboratory experiments by simultaneously presenting auditory and visual stimuli but with spatial discrepancies between them. Generally, the audio-visual spatial conflict is resolved favouring vision. Additionally, in vision, stimulus saliency affects eye movements, attention allocations, and even later processing stages, such as visual working memory (Constant & Liesefeld, 2021; https://doi.org/gjk9jh). Taken together, it seems plausible that visual saliency biases sound localization. In a first step to test this novel hypothesis, we plan to investigate the effect of relative visual saliency on sound-source localization when the visual saliency of audio-visual objects is of relevance. A display is used inside a virtual reality setup consisting of vertical grey bars arranged in three semi-circular rings. Every alternate bar in the second ring is tilted 12˚ to the left, making them salient compared to the remaining vertical bars. In half of the trials, one of these bars is tilted 45º to the left – thus rendering it relatively more salient amongst the tilted bars. An auditory stimulus is presented at the beginning of each trial from the location of one of the tilted bars, and the task is to select the bar which is perceived as the sound source. We hypothesize that if visual saliency affects sound localization, there will be a significant selection bias towards the 45º tilted bar.

Repetition priming studies have investigated how a briefly presented stimulus (prime) facilitates visual processing of a subsequent stimulus (target). So far, indirect behavioral or electrophysiological measures have been of primary interest to reveal how the prime stimulus initiates visual processing. Here, we focus on participants' direct discrimination performance to quantify how visual processing unfolds over time. In each trial, we present a masked prime stimulus from one of two categories either once (single condition) or twice at different locations varying the SOA between these two displays (repeated condition). In each trial, participants discriminate the category of the displayed stimulus and report a confidence rating of their subjective probability to make a correct discrimination. We then apply a new methodology to investigate how the first stimulus facilitates processing of the second stimulus: In the single condition, we apply Information Theory to quantify the processed information (in bit) about the single stimulus (the average accuracy is insufficient for theoretical reasons). We then measure the information from the repeated condition and apply a Bayesian model to decompose information provided by the second, repeated stimulus. From repetition priming results (Holcomb & Grainger, 2007, Brain Research), we expect the second stimulus to contribute more information than the first stimulus because local (for short SOAs; 200ms) and global top-down processes (for long SOAs; 500ms) facilitate processing of the second stimulus. In summary, we contribute to the existing literature on repetition priming with a new methodology that uses metacognition to quantify the contribution of local vs. global feedback mechanisms over the course of visual perception.

Memories associated with adverse events have an everlasting negative imprint on a person’s mind. It can even result in severe psychological disorders like PTSD, panic attacks, depression, and phobias. Researchers suggest that maladaptive fear memories can be modulated using the reactivation-extinction technique. The benefit of using this technique is that it is a drug-free paradigm and updates the original memory traces; therefore, unlike extinction training, the chance of memory relapse is comparatively low. However, music engages people in a perceived safe and enjoyable context. It offers a means for traumatized people to relate to their healthy identity; therefore, this research tries to understand the effect of music intervention on the reactivation-extinction paradigm. The experiment comprises a 3-day fear learning paradigm. On Day 1, fear is acquired using geometrical figures as conditioned stimuli and an aversive sound as an unconditioned stimulus. On Day 2 (20-26 hrs later), the participants were assigned to three separate groups. In the first group, acquired fear memory will be reactivated using a single cue; 10 minutes after reactivation, a 6-minute music intervention will follow. The second group will receive no music intervention after reactivation. Both groups will undergo extinction training. In the control group, extinction training will occur without reactivation. On Day 3 (20-26 h later), all the three groups will undergo extinction training after reinstatement with 4 UCSs. The fear responses will be measured using expectancy ratings, standardized questionnaires, and physiological measures. We expect that reactivation followed by music intervention and extinction would rewrite the original fear memories and reduce the conditioned fear responses, compared to the reactivation-extinction and extinction-only groups. This study highlights the use of reconsolidation as an updated mechanism to alter fear-related emotional memory through music intervention.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders in childhood and adolescence. Core symptoms entail an intense fear of social situations, fear of negative evaluation by others and avoidance of social situations. Empirical models of the maintenance of SAD emphasize internal (cognitive and attentional) processes and external (situational) factors in social interactions. Aim of our study is to examine internal and external factors which influence SAD in children and their interaction using a multimethod setting. Children between 9 and 14 years with a diagnosis of SAD (\(n = 46\)) and a healthy comparison group (HC; \(n = 46\)) will perform two social stress tasks (speech tasks), each in one lab session. Questionnaires during and after the lab sessions indicate cognitive processes; measurements of gaze behavior indicate attentional processes; and measurements of electrodermal and cardiovascular activity during both sessions provide objective data. Session 1 additionally includes a reaction time paradigm to examine internal vs. external locus of attention: participants respond to external visual stimuli and internal tactile stimuli which are used to represent internal body sensations. Compared to the first session, which serves as a baseline, session 2 includes a brief intervention (external: social support vs. internal: self-efficacy instruction) in anticipation of the social stress task. This allows to investigate the influence of potential external and internal buffer effects. The project aims to gain a better understanding of cognitive and attentional foundations in children with SAD and could help to improve therapeutic interventions.

When participants react to tones with varying pitch, responses to high tones are faster when executed in the upper response side in comparison with responses executed in the lower response side and vice versa for low tones, the so-called SMARC effect (Spatial-Musical Association of Response Codes, Rusconi et al., 2006). A comparable effect can be found for the dimension loudness: Responses to loud tones are faster when executed in the upper side and responses to gentle tones are faster when executed in the lower side (Bruzzi et al., 2017). While the effect for loudness can be interpreted in terms of a generalized magnitude representation system with spatially represented magnitudes (e.g., A Theory of Magnitude, Walsh, 2003), this explanation does not hold for pitch due to its classification as qualitative dimension (Stevens, 1957). Therefore, the SMARC effect for pitch and loudness should occur independently of each other. To test this assumption, this study will investigate the simultaneous occurrence of the SMARC effect for pitch and loudness. In general, participants will hear one tone in each trial and either do a pitch discrimination task or a loudness discrimination task. In both tasks, the tones will vary independently in their pitch and loudness level resulting in tones with the same spatial association in both dimensions (e.g., a high, loud tone) or different spatial associations (e.g., a high, gentle tone). Response keys will be aligned along the vertical axis and mapping will be varied within participants, so that for each pitch-loudness combination an upper and lower side response will be collected. The poster will present the detailed experimental design with a focus on the conceptualization of the auditory material as well as the planned statistical analysis.

Smartphones are considered among the most widespread and popular communication devices. In this context, it can be seen that the smartphone medium has shaped and changed the existing communication and information landscape enormously. In addition, the smartphone also has an impact on an individual's workflow, as it provides constant distraction, interruption through notifications, calls, etc., and provides amusing entertainment. These distractions can lead to procrastination. That is, putting off tasks that the individual intends to do, despite negative consequences or risks (Steel, 2007). This can go so far as to result in problematic smartphone use that exhibits addiction-like tendencies, as the symptoms resemble those of addicted patients, such as loss of control, mood regulation, or loss of cognitive functioning. It is hypothesized that smartphone use has an impact on procrastination and that individuals who tend to have problematic smartphone use procrastinate more. For this purpose, a quasi-experiment with two measurement time points is conducted on students. First, a questionnaire consisting of the MPPUS (Mobile Phone Problematic USe Scale), the GPS (general procrastination scale) and the current screen time is to be completed and then the smartphone screen of the subjects is to be transferred to black and white mode with their consent. If possible, the smartphone screen should remain in this mode until the next examination time.At the second measurement time point (1 to 2 weeks later), a questionnaire consisting of the MPPUS, the GPS and the current screen time is filled out again and, in addition, questions are asked about the changes in usage behavior during the experiment.

We will examine the influence of semantic-syntactic features using classifier in a language-switching paradigm. Classifier (e.g., a group of, a bar of….) can activate nouns that are congruent in terms of semantic (i.e., a group of students vs. a group of soap) and syntactic features (i.e., a group of students vs. a group of student). Participants will name a picture in one of two languages (Chinese vs. English). Before the presentation of the picture, they will see a written classifier surrounded by the cue (red or blue frame indicating in which language to name the picture). We will first focus on the syntactic features (plural vs. singular of the nouns) in monolingual participants. In further experiments, we will introduce language switching either between trials (i.e. picture naming will switch between Chinese and English but classifier and picture naming are in the same language) and/or within trials (i.e. the written classifier is in a different language than the picture naming). We expect to observe a main effects of congruency (better performance in congruent than in incongruent classifier-noun combinations) and of between-trial language switching (worse performance in switch than in repetition trials). We further predict that a classifier can prime (i.e., activate) congruent nouns. This priming could help to overcome language inhibition in language-switch trials so that language-switch costs should be reduced in congruent classifier-noun combinations. This priming benefit, however, might be stronger for with-trial language repetitions than switches, indicating a stronger priming of semantic-syntactic features within than between languages. Taken together, we aim at contributing to a better understanding a grammatical features in language switching.

Visualization of data is a crucial part of data analysis and communication. The design of data graphs should support accurate perception. Nonlinear relationships between graphical elements and their perception, as past research with scatterplots has found, can threaten accuracy and give rise to design adjustments. In the present study (\(N = 90\)), we investigated psychophysical functions among two widespread data graphs representing quantity by line segments: confidence interval plots and boxplots. Regarding the confidence interval plots, the relationship between length of the interval and amount of perceived uncertainty was analyzed. Regarding the boxplots, the relationship between box-size and amount of perceived variability was analyzed. Additionally, in both data graphs, position (top, middle, bottom) and orientation (horizontal, vertical) were varied. The results are reassuring in that they showed relatively consistent linear relationships across both data graphs, positions and orientations.

Recent studies addressed the question how males and females differ with respect to the structural brain organization by employing a machine-learning (ML)-approach where neuroimaging datasets are used to train a classifier to predict the sex based on structural brain features also for unseen subjects. In this approach it must be ensured that classification is based on the underlying input of GMV and not only adapts to the total intracranial volume (TIV) which is the most prominent difference between male and female brains. Therefore, the present study aims to control for TIV in two different ways when examining to which level sex can be predicted from the grey matter volumes: As the first alternative, we employed a ML-classifier that we trained on the GMV-structure of a sample of males and females that were matched either for age (AM) or matched for age and TIV (ATM) to control for TIV. The second way to control for TIV was provided by removing this information as a confounding variable from the analysis. The resulting four trained models were applied on AM and ATM test samples. The results revealed an accurate sex classification that depended on the way TIV was controlled for: The training on the AM-sample led firstly to 96.58% accuracy, but removing TIV as a confound led to a decreased accuracy of 62.11%. However, training on the ATM-sample resulted in stable accuracies of 86.34% without and 85.09% with additional confound control in the ML-analysis. We can conclude that the matching approach for TIV is a more appropriate control of TIV than the confound removal, as the results display stable accuracies that do rely on the TIV indicating underlying sex differences in the grey matter brain structure that may also predict the sex of even unseen persons.

We present a simulation study, which aimed to compare different methods for excluding response time (RT) outliers. Therefore, two ex-Gaussian RT distributions with a given population difference were simulated in each iteration. RTs were replaced by outliers following two different approaches. The first approach generated outliers at the tails of the distribution, the second one inserted outliers overlapping with the genuine RT distribution. We applied ten different outlier exclusion methods and tested, how many pairs of distributions significantly differed. Outlier exclusion methods were compared in terms of bias. Bias was defined as the deviation of the proportion of significant differences after outlier exclusion from the proportion of significant differences in the uncontaminated samples (before introducing outliers). Our results showed large differences in bias between the exclusion methods. Some methods showed a high rate of Type-I errors and should therefore clearly not be used. Overall, our results showed that applying an exclusion method based on z-scores / standard deviations introduced only small biases, while the absence of outlier exclusion showed the largest absolute bias.

Conducting an experience sampling study on smartphones is a complex undertaking. We developed Samply software to help researchers set up and manage a study without having to program a mobile application (Shevchenko, Kuhlmann, & Reips, 2021). Samply consists of the website, which allows researchers to design studies, schedule notifications, and monitor participant responses, and the Samply Research mobile application, which is available to participants on Google Play or the App Store. The app provides interval- or signal-dependent types of scheduled notifications and allows randomization between participants. The content of the notifications is fully customizable and can include links to studies created with other services such as Qualtrics, Google forms, WEXTOR, or lab.js. Samply also supports event-based notifications triggered by participant geolocation or custom events specified by researchers. Potential applications for Samply include longitudinal studies, clinical trials, and human-computer interaction studies. The project has open source code and is available at https://samply.js.org.

In recent years, it became obvious that Open Science practices, like sharing research data are not a no-brainer. Instead, sharing research data in a way that actually allows other researchers to (re)use that data means additional effort. In particular, the quality-assured and sustainable provision of research data requires at least a minimum of data documentation. For optimal (re)use, typically three levels of data documentation or metadata are needed: (1) The basic resource description for collection management and resource discovery (Dublin Core); (2) the study-level documentation for research context and methods; and (3) the data-level documentation (codebooks or data dictionaries). In order to facilitate the laborious task of data documentation in psychology, a web-based tool – named DataWiz – was developed with usability as a central aspect (a rich web application in server‐side PHP that runs in a browser). The design goal was to provide a convenient tool for the documentation of the most common types of research data in psychology – especially those representing the long tail of science. Thus, the primary goal of the development project funded by the German Research Foundation is to lower the hurdle to do data documentation and to make it an integral part of common research practices in psychology. The main functions of DataWiz are to generate a research data object containing the data and the metadata in a non-proprietary format which can be uploaded to research data repositories. In this respect, DataWiz can help promote quality-assured sharing of psychological research data.

Sense of agency (SoA) is the sense of having control over one's own actions and their corresponding effects. SoA may be inferred by using different agency cues. In the present study, we investigated whether the use of temporal cues, that is temporal contiguity between action and effect (i.e., action and effect are close together in time) and temporal expectation (i.e., a match between the actual and expected timing of an effect), differs between Western (Austrians) and Eastern (Mongolians) cultures. Participants first performed adaption blocks in which their actions were followed either by immediate (immediate effect group) or by delayed (delayed effect group) effects. In subsequent test blocks the action-effect delay was varied and participants rated how much control they experienced over the effects. In Austrians, we observed higher control ratings for effects following short action-effect delays than for effects following long action-effect delays in the immediate effect group and a reverse data pattern in the delayed effect group. This indicates that temporal expectation and not temporal contiguity is used as predominant agency cue. In Mongolians, control ratings did not significantly differ depending on different action-effect delays in both groups, indicating that Mongolians do not rely on temporal agency cues. Due to linear time concepts in Western cultures, in Austrians the timing of events may be an important indicator to estimate SoA. However, due to more cyclical time concepts in Eastern cultures, which emphasize reoccurrence of events, in Mongolians it may be less important. Thus, the use of temporal agency cues is culture-dependent.

Joint action partners may experience a sense of shared control over the outcomes of their coordinated actions (i.e., a sense of joint agency). Although previous research has identified several factors that affect agentive experiences in joint action contexts, it is still unclear what specific mechanisms underly the generation of a sense of joint agency. Approaching this question, we investigated how varying coordination demands affect which cues joint action partners utilise to sense control over sensory events in their environment. In an experiment, pairs of participants jointly reproduced the tempo of an isochronous tone sequence by performing finger taps in alternation or sequentially (i.e., under high vs. low coordination demands). Afterwards, they judged whether tones heard during tapping had been jointly controlled by them or by an external source (a computer) instead. Furthermore, participants rated the quality of their agentive experience during each trial on a scale that ranged from shared to individual control. Results showed that participants reported stronger feelings of shared than individual control under both high and low coordination demands. Analysis of participants' tapping performance revealed that, across conditions, participants made use of both egocentric sensorimotor cues as well as commonly accessible perceptual cues to infer joint agency. Further analysis indicated an additional influence of cognitive expectations and motivational factors on participants' agency judgments. Overall, our results suggest that a sense of joint agency rests on the integration of multiple cues stemming from different hierarchical levels of joint action monitoring and control.

The self-prioritization effect suggests that self-relevant information is processed faster than other-related stimuli which results in faster reaction times and higher accuracy rates when reacting to self-associated stimuli compared to other-related stimuli (Sui et al., 2012). This spurs the assumption that self-associated action effects should cause stronger temporal binding than action effects which are not associated with the self. Makwana & Srinivasan (2019) indeed showed that temporal binding was increased for self-associated compared to friend- and other-associated effects. However, they used interval estimations making it impossible to discern whether the perceived shortening of the interval between a keypress and a self-relevant effect is due to a perceptual shift of the action or of the effect or both. Thus, we addressed the question of the source of this perceptual bias in three consecutive studies (total \(N = 88\)). The experiments comprised of two tasks, a matching task and temporal binding task. At the beginning of the experiment, participants were asked to assign one of two geometric shapes (Exp. 1 & 2) or sounds (Exp. 3) to themselves and the other to another person. In the matching task, participants indicated whether the shape/ sound presented matched the simultaneously presented pronoun. In the temporal binding task, participants' keypresses produced either of the two shapes/ sounds and they reported the position of the clock hand at either the time of the action or the effect. Even though we replicated the self-prioritization effect in all three experiments, we did not find an influence of the effect's self-relevance on temporal binding.

Many daily decisions are influenced by advice we receive from others. Irrespective of whether we follow such hints or not, we sometimes regret not having listened or blame the other for bad guidance. The resulting feelings seem to be dependent on outcome valence and consensus. This raises the question of how consensus and outcome valence influence a person's conceptions of the self as the origin of an action and subsequent events, i.e., a person's sense of agency. To address this question, we conducted two online experiments analyzing influences on explicit and implicit measures of the sense of agency. Participants played a digital thimblerig and received hints towards either of the cups by a fictitious co-actor. Correct decisions were rewarded and incorrect ones punished financially. Both positive action outcomes as well as dissent decisions significantly increased explicit ratings of responsibility and control (Experiment 1). In contrast, temporal binding as an implicit measure for the sense of agency was not affected by consensus and was significantly larger for negative outcomes (Experiment 2). We propose that consensus and outcome valence directly affect retrospective and reflective aspects of the sense of agency, whereas the influence on prospective aspects depends on situational characteristics.

Past studies on user-avatar interaction have demonstrated that users are able to take the perspective of an avatar and act as if they were in the avatar's place. As a result, the positions of objects are coded from the avatar's point of view and avatar-based compatibility effects can be observed that are based on the avatar's spatial reference frame. In the present study, we confronted participants with two different avatars at the same time that offered different and conflicting visual perspectives. We asked participants to take the perspective of one of them while performing a Simon task. In one half of the experiment, participants' actions controlled the hands of the instructed avatar and in the other half they controlled the non-instructed avatar. We observed a compatibility effect based on the position of the controlled avatar, even when the participants were instructed to take the perspective of the other avatar. This indicates that the stimuli were coded from the perspective of the controlled avatar, regardless of instruction. The bottom-up influence of action control overpowered the top-down influence of the instruction.

Mental imagery can have a powerful impact on emotions and motivation and has the potential to promote adaptive behaviors. Imagining the positive emotional impact of engaging in an activity may increase its positive value and thereby motivate behavioral engagement. Given these properties of mental imagery, it can be expected that positively imagined stimuli become salient and therefore capture visual attention. This study examined the effect of positive imagery on attention using a visual probe task with concurrent eye tracking (https://osf.io/x4wvk). We tested the hypothesis that positive relative to neutral imagery of everyday activities shifts attention toward objects involved in the imagined activity. We recruited 54 adult participants from the general population. They first performed a Positive Imagery Paradigm (PIP) during which they imagined performing activities involving objects presented on a computer screen in either a positive (focusing on the positive emotional impact of the activity) or neutral (focusing on a neutral circumstance of the activity) manner. Subsequently, participants completed a visual probe task using picture stimuli depicting pairs of objects (one per type of imagery) from the PIP. We provide evidence that positive compared to neutral imagery biases the direction, but not the duration, of gaze on objects associated with the imagined activities. This is in line with previous literature on motivated attention suggesting that positive stimuli attract attention rapidly during the early stages of attentional processing. A potential mechanism to explain our findings is evaluative conditioning. By coupling objects with positive emotions through positive imagery, they gain attentional priority due to their increase in positive value.

Previous studies have shown that emotional pictures catch and hold attention compared to neutral ones. Further, it has also been demonstrated that this effect is even more pronounced under high compared to low cognitive load. Yet, whether these bottom-up and top-down effects are uniform across all emotional valences has not been thoroughly investigated to date. Therefore, in this study, we tested how different task-irrelevant emotionally charged stimuli (negative, positive, and threatening) would impact the salience- and executive control of attention networks during low and high cognitive load situations. We used neutral and emotional pictures as task-irrelevant distractors in near (parafoveal) and far (peripheral) positions while participants performed on a visual search task. Our results showed that task-irrelevant threatening distractors had the most pronounced effect on behavioral measures. The distracting effect of threatening images initially slowed reaction times compared to other emotional and neutral stimuli. In contrast, the overall search performance on the whole task was better with threatening and, interestingly, positive distractors compared to negative and neutral ones. Our results suggest that there are differences between the effects of various emotions on the bottom-up and top-down components of visual attention. Threatening stimuli have the strongest attentional capture effect. Both threatening and positive stimuli can facilitate visual performance, however, possibly through different background mechanisms. While threatening stimuli might increase arousal level and, thus, the available cognitive capacity, positive stimuli could broaden the scope of attention.

Recent evidence suggests that the level of visual attention fluctuates rhythmically when we sample the environment. According to the common sampler hypothesis, there is a system-wide and potentially constant rhythm in the attentional system that determines sampling performance. Here, we tested the hypothesis that attention is rhythmic in a human psychophysics study: A display-wide flash served as a reset of attentional oscillations at the onset of every trial, and participants had to discriminate the orientation of a Landolt ring (the target) that was presented at varying and unpredictable intervals after the flash, either in the left or in the right visual hemifield. We performed Fourier transformations of the timecourses of reaction time and accuracy relative to the resetting event. We observed statistically significant (as assessed by permutation tests) spectral peaks indicating theta rhythmic attentional sampling. However, this effect was largely restricted to trials with targets in the right visual hemifield. For targets in the left visual hemifield, no compelling evidence of rhythmic sampling was found. Our results are in line with the hypothesis that brain rhythms influence perception and attention. However, because of the lateralisation of the effect, our data are at odds with the hypothesis that a common, system-wide rhythm determines attentional sampling. Instead, our findings are more consistent with the idea that multiple brain rhythms influence attentional sampling, depending on stimulus location and potentially task context.

When searching for something, we usually need to compare the visual inputs of our surroundings with our mental representation of the object of search. Prevailing theories propose that visual working memory (VWM) is involved in this process of comparison. If that were the case, loading VWM should interfere with our ability to efficiently perform a search. A recent study by Drew et al. (2016) investigated this theory by loading participants' VWM with a number of different tasks and found little to no effect on their search performance. The study at hand aimed at examining the influence of a loaded VWM on hybrid search tasks in a more realistic search setting, moving away from a strictly 2D search array. Participants looked for objects that appeared as framed pictures on the wall of a room and navigated left and right using the arrow keys. Target objects were memorized prior to search in two blocks of 2 and 16 items, respectively. Visual Set Size of the search environment varied between 8 and 16 stimuli per array. Surprisingly, our results showed that participants were not slowed in their search when we loaded their VWM. However, whenever the target was present, a loaded VWM did decrease participants' search efficiency, especially when the pool of possible targets was already big. These findings are partly in favor of theories proposing a role of VWM in the representation of objects and their comparison to our real-world surroundings. They stand in contrast to the results found by Drew et al. (2016), suggesting that the effect of VWM load was not traceable in a more superficial search setting.

The way in which individual features are bound into coherent objects in working memory remains an unsolved question. Currently there are two views in the field: 1) that features are bound via their shared location and 2) that all features are bound together directly. The current study evaluates the two claims and test bindings between multiple features of an object by investigating the conditional probabilities of retrieving one feature, given successful or unsuccessful retrieval of the other (i.e., stochastic dependence). Across two experiments, we used a cued-recall task in which participants memorized multiple objects which were random combinations of three features. Participants were then given one feature as a cue and prompted to report the other two features, one after the other. In Experiment 1, bindings between words, colors, and locations were tested. We obtained very strong evidence for stochastic dependence in retrieving every two features in all cue conditions. In Experiment 2, we assessed the bindings between colors, locations, and orientations. The results showed strong evidence for stochastic dependence only in the color-cue and orientation-cue conditions but weak evidence for this retrieval dependency in the location-cue condition. Taken together, the findings suggest that the strength of bindings between each pair of features varies, and that words and locations are relatively strong retrieval cues whereas colors and orientations are weaker ones. Therefore, when having location as one strong cue, we observed strong bindings between color-location and orientation-location and only weak orientation-color bindings which can cause a data pattern that looks approximately like no direct bindings between color and orientation.

The functional role of traveling waves remains elusive. Much attention has been devoted to its relationship to the progression direction of waves. Though previous studies have suggested that bottom-up information input induces forward waves, whereas backward waves convey top-down regulation, there is still a lack of evidence concerning changes of wave direction in various cognitive processes apart from visual stimulation. Here we reanalyzed a pre-existing EEG dataset recorded from 104 subjects and examined the power changes of waves propagating on posterior-anterior axes during a working memory task. Special interests were focused on alpha (\(8-12\) Hz) traveling waves. Our results generally reveal stronger alpha forward power in the midline and backward power in the lateral axes. Backward waves increased while more distractors were included in the memory display, and decreased in the contralateral axis relative to the target. Importantly, all these effects were observed during maintenance of visual stimuli and thus potentially reflect selective processing during working memory retention. Specifically, forward waves for active encoding of targets, while backward waves indicate a general suppression of irrelevant information. Our study provides further neural evidence regarding the cortical spatiotemporal dynamics in cognitive processing.