Cognitive Processing

Numbers in the eye of the beholder: What do eye movements reveal about numerical cognition? Abstract The eyes, often called the window to our minds, reveal the focus of spatial attention and are therefore a powerful research tool for the study of spatial processing and spatially related higher cognitive functions. The aim of this paper is to highlight the potential of eye movement analysis in the domain of numerical cognition, to review several relevant findings, and to provide an outlook for future research.

Modulation of working memory updating: Does long-term memory lexical association matter? Abstract The aim of the present study was to investigate how working memory updating for verbal material is modulated by enduring properties of long-term memory. Two coexisting perspectives that account for the relation between long-term representation and short-term performance were addressed. First, evidence suggests that performance is more closely linked to lexical properties, that is, co-occurrences within the language. Conversely, other evidence suggests that performance is linked more to long-term representations which do not entail lexical/linguistic representations. Our aim was to investigate how these two kinds of long-term memory associations (i.e., lexical or nonlexical) modulate ongoing working memory activity. Therefore, we manipulated (between participants) the strength of the association in letters based on either frequency of co-occurrences (lexical) or contiguity along the sequence of the alphabet (nonlexical). Results showed a cost in working memory updating for strongly lexically associated stimuli only. Our findings advance knowledge of how lexical long-term memory associations between consonants affect working memory updating and, in turn, contribute to the study of factors which impact the updating process across memory systems.

Thoughts in space: the impact of environmental surround on cognitive processing Abstract The embodied cognition perspective has provided a formalization of the idea that the motor state is a characteristic of being that permeates all of human processing. We review this perspective and experimental evidence supporting its claim. It is further considered that the motor behaving human moves within various spaces, each affording different actions. To this end, it is proposed that the environmental surround is a critical variable in the embodied cognition perspective. Thoughts, inasmuch as they may be grounded in simulation of motor-behavioural responses, require time but also space. We suggest that these time–space considerations occur within a proposed concept of the potentiated state.

Dynamic competition and binding of concepts through time and space Abstract Models of implicit stereotypes (e.g., association of male with math or female with language) usually explain the faster responses observed for stereotype-congruent trials in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) by requiring a fundamental opposition between the male and female concepts (or math–language), limiting the decision-making dynamics to abstract dimensions. This paper introduces alternate models exploiting the sensorimotor dimensions of the IAT, which naturally account for the opposition between concepts, because typically mapped on opposite corners of the screen space and on different response actions. In addition to the emergence of the IAT effect, dynamic characteristics of the decision-making process within these models are tested against human data, obtained with a mouse-tracking adapted IAT procedure.

Planning grasps for object manipulation: integrating internal preferences and external constraints Abstract Grasp selection for object manipulation depend on a person’s preferences (e.g., comfortable grasp) and the object’s shape (i.e., how the object can be grasped). Both have to be matched when planning to grasp an object. According to the simulation hypothesis, humans simulate the action outcome for each of the grasp options to select the best grasp. However, if an object offers many different grasp options, further processing is necessary to reduce the number of possibilities. According to the preference hypothesis, a preferred grasp is first computed and then adjusted to comply with the objects’ shape, if necessary. To test the hypotheses, we asked participants to grasp knobs that could be grasped with two, four, or an unconstrained range of grasps. When participants chose among two or four options, planning time increased with the number of possible grasps which is in line with the simulation hypothesis. However, when grasps were unconstrained, planning times were as short as in the two-grasp condition, suggesting another—possibly preference-based—selection process in this case. In contrast to planning time, grasp choices were comparable regardless of the knob’s shape. This suggests a common criterion most likely determined grasp selection in all conditions.

Does the road go up the mountain? Fictive motion between linguistic conventions and cognitive motivations Abstract Fictive motion (FM) characterizes the use of dynamic expressions to describe static scenes. This phenomenon is crucial in terms of cognitive motivations for language use; several explanations have been proposed to account for it, among which mental simulation (Talmy in Toward a cognitive semantics, vol 1. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000) and visual scanning (Matlock in Studies in linguistic motivation. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, pp 221–248, 2004a). The aims of this paper were to test these competing explanations and identify language-specific constraints. To do this, we compared the linguistic strategies for expressing several types of static configurations in four languages, French, Italian, German and Serbian, with an experimental set-up (59 participants). The experiment yielded significant differences for motion-affordance versus no motion-affordance, for all four languages. Significant differences between languages included mean frequency of FM expressions. In order to refine the picture, and more specifically to disentangle the respective roles of language-specific conventions and language-independent (i.e. possibly cognitive) motivations, we completed our study with a corpus approach (besides the four initial languages, we added English and Polish). The corpus study showed low frequency of FM across languages, but a higher frequency and translation ratio for some FM types—among which those best accounted for by enactive perception. The importance of enactive perception could thus explain both the universality of FM and the fact that language-specific conventions appear mainly in very specific contexts—the ones furthest from enaction.

Automatic imitation of the arm kinematic profile in interacting partners Abstract Cognitive neuroscience, traditionally focused on individual brains, is just beginning to investigate social cognition through realistic interpersonal interaction. However, quantitative investigation of the dynamical sensorimotor communication among interacting individuals in goal-directed ecological tasks is particularly challenging. Here, we recorded upper-body motion capture of 23 dyads, alternating their leader/follower role, in a tower-building task. Either a strategy of joining efforts or a strategy of independent action could in principle be used. We found that arm reach velocity profiles of participants tended to converge across trials. Automatic imitation of low-level motor control parameters demonstrates that the task is achieved through continuous action coordination as opposed to independent action planning. Moreover, the leader produced more consistent and predictable velocity profiles, suggesting an implicit strategy of signaling to the follower. This study serves as a validation of our joint goal-directed non-verbal task for future applications. In fact, the quantification of human-to-human continuous sensorimotor interaction, in a way that can be predicted and controlled, is probably one of the greatest challenges for the future of human–robot interaction.

Does pointing facilitate the recall of serial positions in visuospatial working memory? Abstract The present study examined the question of whether pointing enhances the serial recall of visuospatial positions. Thirty-six participants were presented with 40 target arrays varying in length from five to eight items, with each position appearing sequentially in red for 1 s. The task was to reproduce the order of presentation of the positions on a blank matrix. Results showed that, for five-, six-, and seven-item arrays, order memory was significantly better in the passive view than in the pointing condition, and the serial position curves displayed both recency and priority effects. Interestingly, the advantage of the passive-view condition was more pronounced in the early than in the late positions. For eight-item arrays, no significant differences were found between the passive view and the pointing conditions. Overall, the present data provide no evidence in support of the view that pointing facilitates the recall of serial positions.

On the relevance of Gibson’s affordance concept for geographical information science (GISc) Abstract J. J. Gibson’s concept of affordances has provided a theoretical basis for various studies in geographical information science (GISc). This paper sets out to explain its popularity from a GISc perspective. Based on a short review of previous work, it will be argued that its main contributions to GISc are twofold, including an action-centered view of spatial entities and the notion of agent–environment mutuality. Using the practical example of pedestrian behavior simulation, new potentials for using and extending affordances are discussed.

Switching reference frame preferences during verbally assisted haptic graph comprehension Abstract Haptic–audio interfaces allow haptic exploration of statistical line graphs accompanied by sound or speech, thus providing access to exploration by visually impaired people. Verbally assisted haptic graph exploration can be seen as a task-oriented collaborative activity between two partners, a haptic explorer and an observing assistant, who are disposed to individual preferences for using reference frames. The experimental findings reveal that haptic explorers’ spatial reference frames are mostly induced by hand movements, leading to action perspective instead of conventionally left-to-right spatiotemporal perspective. Moreover, the communicational goal may result in a switch in perspective.