Instrument specificity in experienced musicians

Previous studies have shown that experienced pianists have acquired integrated action-effect (A-E) associations. In the present study, we were interested in how specific these associations are for the own instrument by investigating pianists and guitarists. A-E associations were examined by testing whether the perception of a “potential” action-effect has an influence on actions. Participants played chords on their instrument in response to visual stimuli, while they were presented task-irrelevant auditory distractors (congruent or incongruent) in varying instrument timbre. In Experiment 1, pianists exhibited an interference effect with timbres of their own instrument category (keyboard instruments: piano and organ). In Experiment 2 guitarists showed an interference effect only with guitar timbre. Thus, integrated A-E associations primarily seem to consist of a specific component on a sensory-motor level involving the own instrument. Additionally, categorical knowledge about how an instrument is played seems to be involved.     

Instrument specificity in experienced musicians

Previous studies have shown that experienced pianists have acquired integrated action–effect (A–E) associations. In the present study, we were interested in how specific these associations are for the own instrument by investigating pianists and guitarists. A–E associations were examined by testing whether the perception of a “potential” action–effect has an influence on actions. Participants played chords on their instrument in response to visual stimuli, while they were presented task-irrelevant auditory distractors (congruent or incongruent) in varying instrument timbre. In Experiment 1, pianists exhibited an interference effect with timbres of their own instrument category (keyboard instruments: piano and organ). In Experiment 2 guitarists showed an interference effect only with guitar timbre. Thus, integrated A–E associations primarily seem to consist of a specific component on a sensory-motor level involving the own instrument. Additionally, categorical knowledge about how an instrument is played seems to be involved.     

Action-effect coupling in pianists

Recent theories have stressed the role of effect anticipation in action control. Such a mechanism requires the prior acquisition of integrated action-effect associations. The strength of such associations should directly depend on the amount of learning, and therefore be most pronounced in motor experts. Using an interference paradigm, we investigated whether evidence of such representations can be demonstrated in expert pianists. Participants were required to play chords on a keyboard in response to imperative visual stimuli. Concurrently, task-irrelevant auditory stimuli (potential action effects) were presented that were congruent or incongruent with the chords to be played. In Experiment 1 we found evidence that expert pianists, compared with non-musicians, have acquired such action-effects representations. Response times were slower when the auditory stimulus was incongruent with the required response. In order to ascertain the locus of interference, we varied imperative stimuli and responses in Experiments 2 and 3. The results indicate that, for the most part, interference occurs on the response level rather than on an abstract level. However, the perception of action effects also evokes processing of abstract features, like the concept of major–minor mode.     

Action–perception coupling in pianists: Learned mappings or spatial musical association of response codes (SMARC) effect?

The principle of common coding suggests that a joint representation is formed when actions are repeatedly paired with a specific perceptual event. Musicians are occupationally specialized with regard to the coupling between actions and their auditory effects. In the present study, we employed a novel paradigm to demonstrate automatic action–effect associations in pianists. Pianists and nonmusicians pressed keys according to aurally presented number sequences. Numbers were presented at pitches that were neutral, congruent, or incongruent with respect to pitches that would normally be produced by such actions. Response time differences were seen between congruent and incongruent sequences in pianists alone. A second experiment was conducted to determine whether these effects could be attributed to the existence of previously documented spatial/pitch compatibility effects. In a “stretched” version of the task, the pitch distance over which the numbers were presented was enlarged to a range that could not be produced by the hand span used in Experiment 1. The finding of a larger response time difference between congruent and incongruent trials in the original, standard, version compared with the stretched version, in pianists, but not in nonmusicians, indicates that the effects obtained are, at least partially, attributable to learned action effects.     

Action effects in saccade control

According to the ideomotor principle, action preparation involves the activation of associations between actions and their effects. However, there is only sparse research on the role of action effects in saccade control. Here, participants responded to lateralized auditory stimuli with spatially compatible saccades toward peripheral targets (e.g., a rhombus in the left hemifield and a square in the right hemifield). Prior to the imperative auditory stimulus (e.g., a left tone), an irrelevant central visual stimulus was presented that was congruent (e.g., a rhombus), incongruent (e.g., a square), or unrelated (e.g., a circle) to the peripheral saccade target (i.e., the visual effect of the saccade). Saccade targets were present throughout a trial (Experiment 1) or appeared after saccade initiation (Experiment 2). Results showed shorter response times and fewer errors in congruent (vs. incongruent) conditions, suggesting that associations between oculomotor actions and their visual effects play an important role in saccade control.     

Coloring an action: Intending to produce color events eliminates the Stroop effect

The implications of an ideomotor approach to action control were investigated. In Experiment 1, participants made manual responses to letter stimuli and they were presented with response-contingent color patches, i.e., colored action effects. This rendered stimuli of the same color as an action's effect effective primes of that action, suggesting that bilateral associations were created between actions and the effects they produced. Experiment 2 combined this set-up with a manual Stroop task, i.e., participants responded to congruent, neutral, or incongruent color-word compounds. Standard Stroop effects were observed in a control group without action effects and in a group with target-incompatible action effects, but the reaction time Stroop effect was eliminated if actions produced target-compatible color effects (e.g., blue word --> left key --> blue patch). Experiment 3 did not replicate this interaction between target-effect compatibility and color-word congruency with color words as action effects, which rules out semantically based accounts. Theoretical implications for both action-effect acquisition and the Stroop effect are discussed. It is suggested that learning action effects, the features of which overlap with the target, allows and motivates people to recode their actions in ways that make them more stimulus-compatible. This provides a processing shortcut for translating the relevant stimulus into the correct response and, thus, shields processing from the impact of competing word distractors.     

Performed or observed keyboard actions affect pianists' judgements of relative pitch

Action can affect visual perception if the action's expected sensory effects resemble a concurrent unstable or deviant event. To determine whether action can also change auditory perception, participants were required to play pairs of octave-ambiguous tones by pressing successive keys on a piano or computer keyboard and to judge whether each pitch interval was rising or falling. Both pianists and nonpianist musicians gave significantly more “rising” responses when the order of key presses was left-to-right than when it was right-to-left, in accord with the pitch mapping of the piano. However, the effect was much larger in pianists. Pianists showed a similarly large effect when they passively observed the experimenter pressing keys on a piano keyboard, as long as the keyboard faced the participant. The results suggest that acquired action–effect associations can affect auditory perceptual judgement.     

The temporal dynamics of the perceptual consequences of action-effect prediction

An essential aspect of voluntary action control is the ability to predict the perceptual effects of our actions. Although the influence of action-effect prediction on humans’ behavior and perception is unequivocal, it remains unclear when action-effect prediction is generated by the brain. The present study investigates the dynamics of action effect anticipation by tracing the time course of its perceptual consequences. Participants completed an acquisition phase during which specific actions (left and right key-presses) were associated with specific visual effects (upward and downward dots motion). In the test phase they performed a 2 AFC identification task in which they were required to indicate whether the dots moved upward or downward. To isolate any effects of action-effect prediction on perception, participants were presented with congruent and incongruent dot motion in which the association participants learned in the previous acquisition phase was respected and violated, respectively. Crucially, to assess the temporal dynamics of action prediction, congruent and incongruent stimuli were presented at different intervals before or after action execution. We observed higher sensitivity (d′) to motion discrimination in congruent vs. incongruent trials only when stimuli were presented from about 220 ms before the action to 280 ms after the action. The temporal dynamics of our effect suggest that action-effect prediction modulates perception at later stages of motor preparation.     

Tau and Kappa effects in physical space: the case of audition

The organization of spatio-temporal information in an auditory memory task was studied in two experiments. Stimuli consisted of four different configurations of eight sequentially presented beeps. In two configurations, the stimuli were space-time congruent, with (constant or variable) inter-stimulus distances corresponding to (constant or variable) inter-stimulus time intervals. In the other two configurations, the stimuli were space-time incongruent, with (constant or variable) inter-stimulus distances not corresponding to (variable or constant) inter-stimulus time intervals. After a learning phase consisting of 20 presentations of the target configuration, participants reproduced the spatial (Experiment 1) or temporal (Experiment 2) characteristics of the target 60 times in succession without re-examining the target configuration. Accuracy (with respect to the target) and variability (between responses) were found to evolve independently. In the incongruent space-time conditions, effects of variable inter-stimulus time intervals or distances on the reproduction of, respectively, constant distances (Tau effect) or constant time intervals (Kappa effect) were observed, while the reverse was not the case. Thus, dimensional interference occurred when the dimension to be ignored was variable. The results are discussed in the light of the distinction between properties of the stabilized mental image and the process of stabilization.     

Visual pattern recognition: Size preprocessing re-examined

Template theories of visual pattern recognition assume the operation of preprocessing routines to deal with irrelevancies such as discrepancies in stimulus size. In three experiments where size was an irrelevant dimension, observers classified pairs of forms as either “same” or “different”. In Experiment I, the classification “different” was required when the stimuli shared the same form but a different orientation, and “same” when the stimuli shared the same form and orientation. Under these conditions RT was an increasing function of the magnitude of the size disparity between stimuli with equal slopes for “same” and “different” judgements. In Experiment II, “different” classifications were made to stimuli that had different forms, and “same” to figures with the same form. This stimulus set produced a size disparity function that interacted with response type; “different” responses had a shallower slope. Experiment III consisted of a mixed stimulus set drawn from both Experiment I and II. Stimuli that produced additive effects of size disparity and response type in Experiment I now produced an interaction between these two factors similar to the one observed in Experiment II. The results of these experiments are interpreted as evidence that previous contradictory results reported in the literature stem from differences in the way the stimulus set is constructed, and that size transformations can not be a necessary operation, at least when “different” judgements are made. The results are problematic for the view that size disparity effects in matching tasks are easily interpretable in terms of a primitive size normalization stage that precedes any comparison operations.     

A study of the effect of structural information and familiarity in form perception

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of structural information and familiarity on the processing of visual forms. Pairs of “well” structured and nameable and “poorly” structured and non-nameable fragmented forms were employed as stimuli. The effects of structure and familiarity were assessed by manipulating the visual hemifield of presentation and the task. In Experiment 1 stimuli were judged as being either in the same orientation or mirror-reversed, a task that does not require high-level semantic information to be processed. Experiment 2 required physically identical forms to be matched, which may use either physical or name information. In Experiment 1 “same” judgements were equivalent for both types of stimuli, and “different' judgements were longer for the “poorly” structured (non-nameable) forms. In Experiment 2 there was little overall difference between “well” and “poorly” structured forms, though response times to “well” structured (nameable) forms were slowed for right-visual-field presentations. It is suggested that familiarity may not be sufficient to provide a perceptual advantage for nameable forms, as the advantage for nameable stimuli was confined to “same” judgements in Experiment 1 and response times were shorter for non-nameable stimuli in Experiment 2. Rather, performance depends upon factors such as the computation of global shape (due to structural properties of collinearity and closure) and on the use of different kinds or representations (physical versus name) in matching.     

Sensitivity to auditory‐tactile colocation in early infancy

An ability to detect the common location of multisensory stimulation is essential for us to perceive a coherent environment, to represent the interface between the body and the external world, and to act on sensory information. Regarding the tactile environment “at hand”, we need to represent somatosensory stimuli impinging on the skin surface in the same spatial reference frame as distal stimuli, such as those transduced by vision and audition. Across two experiments we investigated whether 6‐ (n = 14; Experiment 1) and 4‐month‐old (n = 14; Experiment 2) infants were sensitive to the colocation of tactile and auditory signals delivered to the hands. We recorded infants’ visual preferences for spatially congruent and incongruent auditory‐tactile events delivered to their hands. At 6 months, infants looked longer toward incongruent stimuli, whilst at 4 months infants looked longer toward congruent stimuli. Thus, even from 4 months of age, infants are sensitive to the colocation of simultaneously presented auditory and tactile stimuli. We conclude that 4‐ and 6‐month‐old infants can represent auditory and tactile stimuli in a common spatial frame of reference. We explain the age‐wise shift in infants’ preferences from congruent to incongruent in terms of an increased preference for novel crossmodal spatial relations based on the accumulation of experience. A comparison of looking preferences across the congruent and incongruent conditions with a unisensory control condition indicates that the ability to perceive auditory‐tactile colocation is based on a crossmodal rather than a supramodal spatial code by 6 months of age at least.     

A comparison of visual and auditory short-term memory in monkeys (Cebus apella)

Using a visual and an acoustic sample set that appeared to favour the auditory modality of the monkey subjects, in Experiment 1 retention gradients generated in closely comparable visual and auditory matching (go/no-go) tasks revealed a more durable short-term memory (STM) for the visual modality. In Experiment 2, potentially interfering visual and acoustic stimuli were introduced during the retention intervals of the auditory matching task. Unlike the case of visual STM, delay-interval visual stimulation did not affect auditory STM. On the other hand, delay-interval music decreased auditory STM, confirming that the monkeys maintained an auditory trace during the retention intervals. Surprisingly, monkey vocalizations injected during the retention intervals caused much less interference than music. This finding, which was confirmed by the results of Experiments 3 and 4, may be due to differential processing of “arbitrary” (the acoustic samples) and species-specific (monkey vocalizations) sounds by the subjects. Although less robust than visual STM, auditory STM was nevertheless substantial, even with retention intervals as long as 32 sec.     

视听刺激突显性对视觉主导效应的影响

本研究使用空间任务-转换范式,控制视、听刺激的突显性,探讨自下而上注意对视觉主导效应的影响。结果表明视、听刺激突显性显著地影响视觉主导效应,实验一中当听觉刺激为高突显性时,视觉主导效应显著减弱。实验二中当听觉刺激为高突显性并且视觉刺激为低突显性时,视觉主导效应进一步减弱但依然存在。结果支持偏向竞争理论,在跨通道视听交互过程中视觉刺激更具突显性,在多感觉整合过程中更具加工优势。     

Observing repetitive finger movements modulates response times of auditorily cued finger movements

Our motor and perceptual representations of actions seem to be intimately linked and the human mirror neuron system (MNS) has been proposed as the mediator. In two experiments, we presented biological or non-biological movement stimuli that were either congruent or incongruent to a required response prompted by a tone. When the tone occurred with the onset of the last movement in a series, i.e., it was perceived during the movement presentation, congruent biological stimuli resulted in faster reaction times than congruent non-biological stimuli. The opposite was observed for incongruent stimuli. When the tone was presented after visual movement stimulation, however, no such interaction was present. This implies that biological movement stimuli only affect motor behaviour during visual processing but not thereafter. These data suggest that the MNS is an "online" system; longstanding repetitive visual stimulation (Experiment 1) has no benefit in comparison to only one or two repetitions (Experiment 2).     

Naming and equivalence: Response latencies for emergent relations

In an attempt to distinguish between associative network and verbal mediation accounts of equivalence formation, three experiments were carried out in which conditional stimulus relations were established and response latencies assessed during tests for emergent relations. In Experiment 1, three groups of adults were trained with six three-member classes of visual stimuli, using different kinds of stimuli for each group: readily nameable pictograms, which were “preassociated” (Group 1); equally nameable but “non-associated” pictograms (Group 2); or non-associated “abstract” stimuli, designed to discourage the use of verbal mediators (Group 3). For those trained with pictograms, equal response latencies were observed on all tested relations, viz. trained associations, symmetry, transitivity, and transitivity with symmetry, but for subjects given abstract stimuli response latencies were greater on tests requiring transitivity. In Experiment 2 this result was replicated with methodological refinements, using only groups trained with preassociated pictograms or abstract stimuli. In Experiment 3 subjects were pretrained to label abstract stimuli with either individual names or class names. Latencies were longer for tests involving transitivity in the case of those subjects using individual names, but equal response latencies were observed on all four types of test for those using class names. The results suggest that equivalence classesMaybe supported by either an associative network or by verbal mediation, depending on stimulus conditions and the subsequent strategies employed by subjects.     

Acquired equivalence and distinctiveness of cues: I. Exploring a neural network approach

Rats were placed in 4 contexts (A, B, C, D) where they received 2 auditory stimuli (X, Y); in A and B, presentations of X were paired with food and those of Y were not, and in C and D, Y was paired with food and X was not. Rats then received combinations of contexts that had provided congruent (AB, CD) or incongruent (AD, CB) information about X and Y's relationship to food. Responding was more variable during congruent than incongruent trials (Experiment 1) and was systematically increased and decreased during congruent (relative to incongruent) trials by the presentation of food or no food, respectively (Experiment 2). These results support a connectionist approach to acquired changes in stimulus distinctiveness.     

Eighteen-month-olds integrate verbal cues into their action processing: Evidence from ERPs and mu power

Behavioral research has shown that infants use both behavioral cues and verbal cues when processing the goals of others’ actions. For instance, 18-month-olds selectively imitate an observed goal-directed action depending on its (in)congruence with a model’s previous verbal announcement of a desired action goal. This EEG-study analyzed the electrophysiological underpinnings of these behavioral findings on the two functional levels of conceptual action processing and motor activation. Mid-latency mean negative ERP amplitude and mu-frequency band power were analyzed while 18-month-olds (N = 38) watched videos of an adult who performed one out of two potential actions on a novel object. In a within-subjects design, the action demonstration was preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent verbally announced action goal (e.g., “up” or “down” and upward movement). Overall, ERP negativity did not differ between conditions, but a closer inspection revealed that in two subgroups, about half of the infants showed a broadly distributed increased mid-latency ERP negativity (indicating enhanced conceptual action processing) for either the congruent or the incongruent stimuli, respectively. As expected, mu power at sensorimotor sites was reduced (indicating enhanced motor activation) for congruent relative to incongruent stimuli in the entire sample. Both EEG correlates were related to infants’ language skills. Hence, 18-month-olds integrate action-goal-related verbal cues into their processing of others’ actions, at the functional levels of both conceptual processing and motor activation. Further, cue integration when inferring others’ action goals is related to infants’ language proficiency.     

Stimulus-Response Compatibility for Vertically Oriented Stimuli and Horizontally Oriented Responses: Evidence for Spatial Coding

It has previously been shown that, when stimuli positioned above or below a central fixation point (“up” and “down” stimuli) are assigned to left and right responses, the stimulus-response mapping up-left/down-right is more compatible than the mapping up-right/down-left for responses executed by the left hand in the left hemispace, but this relation is reversed for responses executed by the right hand in the right hemispace. In Experiment 1, each hand responded at locations in both hemispaces to dissociate the influence of hand identity from response location, and response location was found to be the determinant of relative compatibility. In Experiment 2 responses were made at the sagittal midline, and an inactive response switch was placed to the left or right to induce coding of the active switch as right or left, respectively. This manipulation of relative location had an effect similar to, although of lesser magnitude than, that produced by physically changing location of the response switch in Experiment 1. It is argued that these results are counter to predictions of a movement-preference account and consistent with the view that spatial coding underlies compatibility effects for orthogonally oriented stimulus and response sets.     

Who's calling the shots? Intentional content and feelings of control

Based on Pacherie’s dynamic theory of intentions, this study investigated how the way an intention is formed and sustained affects action performance and the experience of control during acting. In Experiment 1, task-irrelevant verbal commands were given while participants responded to stimuli in a two-choice reaction time (RT) task. The commands referred to an action goal congruent or incongruent with the actor’s current intention, or ordered the initiation or abortion of the action. In Experiment 2, the same commands were given as participants freely chose between two actions. The distractors affected performance in the reactive task only. In both experiments, feelings of control were based on movement parameters as well as perceived (mis)matches between distractors and intended actions. These findings suggest that the way an intention is implemented affects how well it can be shielded against external perturbations and how much one feels in control.