Exploring the effects of ownership and choice on self-memory biases

Objects encoded in the context of temporary ownership by self enjoy a memorial advantage over objects owned by other people. This memory effect has been linked to self-referential encoding processes. The current inquiry explored the extent to which the effects of ownership are influenced by the degree of personal choice involved in assigning ownership. In three experiments pairs of participants chose objects to keep for ownership by self, and rejected objects that were given to the other participant to own. Recognition memory for the objects was then assessed. Experiment 1 showed that participants recognised more items encoded as "self-owned" than "other-owned", but only when they had been chosen by self. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern when participants' sense of choice was illusory. A source memory test in Experiment 3 showed that self-chosen items were most likely to be correctly attributed to ownership by self. These findings are discussed with reference to the link between owned objects and the self, and the routes through which self-referential operations can impact on cognition.     

Influence of Gun Ownership on Social Inferences About Women and Men1

In the past gun ownership was primarily a male-only phenomenon. There has been, however, an increase among American women in gun purchasing largely for purposes of self-defense. In the first study we examined the consequences of women and men owning handguns, versus not doing so, for social perception. Given that gun ownership is stereotype inconsistent for women but not for men, such a violation of expectancies was expected to have a greater impact on inferences about women than men. Subjects believed that women who owned handguns would possess masculine physical characteristics, although they were not perceived as losing feminine body attributes per se. Women who owned guns tended to be perceived as less likely to occupy female stereotypic social roles, while men who owned a weapon were perceived as more likely to do so. Men who owned a handgun were perceived as less likely to possess socially desirable male stereotypic traits, although women with a handgun gained in this respect. In the second study where a community sample was employed, the main pattern of outcomes was replicated. Affective reactions toward male and female gun owners were similar, and less positive than for persons who do not own guns. Individuals with both positive and negative attitudes toward guns displayed the same pattern of inferences based on gun ownership and target gender. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for social judgment and stereotype use.     

Target-directed visual attention is a prerequisite for action-specific perception

Witt et al. (2008) have recently shown that golfers who putt with more success perceive the hole to be bigger than golfers who putt with less success. In three experiments, we systematically examined whether this phenomenon, labelled action-specific perception, depends on directing visual attention towards the action target. In Experiment 1 we replicated previously reported action-specific effects on perception in golf putting. In 3 and 4 we directly assessed whether action-specific effects on perception in golf putting are dependent on focusing visual attention on the target. To this end, the participants performed the putting task while visual attention towards the target was either completely withheld (Experiment 2) or divided over the target and other task-relevant objects (Experiment 3). No action-specific effects were found when visual attention towards the action target was occluded or partially diverted from the target. Together, our results provide evidence to suggest that focusing visual attention on the target while performing the action is a prerequisite for the emergence of action-specific perception.     

Grasping the concept of personal property

The concept of property is integral to personal and societal development, yet understanding of the cognitive basis of ownership is limited. Objects are the most basic form of property, so our physical interactions with owned objects may elucidate nuanced aspects of ownership. We gave participants a coffee mug to decorate, use and keep. The experimenter also designed a mug of her own. In Experiment 1, participants performed natural lifting actions with each mug. Participants lifted the Experimenter’s mug with greater care, and moved it slightly more towards the Experimenter, while they lifted their own mug more forcefully and drew it closer to their own body. In Experiment 2, participants responded to stimuli presented on the mug handles in a computer-based stimulus–response compatibility task. Overall, participants were faster to respond in trials in which the handles were facing in the same direction as the response location compared to when the handles were facing away. The compatibility effect was abolished, however, for the Experimenter’s mug – as if the action system is blind to the potential for action towards another person’s property. These findings demonstrate that knowledge of the ownership status of objects influences visuomotor processing in subtle and revealing ways.     

Deciphering the enigmatic face: the importance of facial dynamics in interpreting subtle facial expressions

Most studies investigating the recognition of facial expressions have focused on static displays of intense expressions. Consequently, researchers may have underestimated the importance of motion in deciphering the subtle expressions that permeate real-life situations. In two experiments, we examined the effect of motion on perception of subtle facial expressions and tested the hypotheses that motion improves affect judgment by (a) providing denser sampling of expressions, (b) providing dynamic information, (c) facilitating configural processing, and (d) enhancing the perception of change. Participants viewed faces depicting subtle facial expressions in four modes (single-static, multi-static, dynamic, and first-last). Experiment 1 demonstrated a robust effect of motion and suggested that this effect was due to the dynamic property of the expression. Experiment 2 showed that the beneficial effect of motion may be due more specifically to its role in perception of change. Together, these experiments demonstrated the importance of motion in identifying subtle facial expressions.     

When My Object Becomes Me: The Mere Ownership of an Object Elevates Domain‐Specific Self‐Efficacy

Past research on the mere ownership effect has shown that when people own an object, they perceive the owned objects more favorably than the comparable non‐owned objects. The present research extends this idea, showing that when people own an object functional to the self, they perceive an increase in their self‐efficacy. Three studies were conducted to demonstrate this new form of the mere ownership effect. In Study 1, participants reported an increase in their knowledge level by the mere ownership of reading materials (a reading package in Study 1a, and lecture notes in Study 1b). In Study 2, participants reported an increase in their resilience to sleepiness by merely owning a piece of chocolate that purportedly had a sleepiness‐combating function. In Study 3, participants who merely owned a flower essence that is claimed to boost creativity reported having higher creativity efficacy. The findings provided insights on how associations with objects alter one's self‐perception.     

Influence of simple action on subsequent manual and ocular responses

Recent investigations into how action affects perception have revealed an interesting “action effect”—that is, simply acting upon an object enhances its processing in subsequent tasks. The previous studies, however, relied only on manual responses, allowing an alternative stimulus-response binding account of the effect. The current study examined whether the action effect occurs in the presence of changes in response modalities. In Experiment 1, participants completed a modified action effect paradigm, in which they first produced an arbitrary manual response to a shape and then performed a visual search task in which the previous shape was either a valid or invalid cue—responding with a manual or saccadic response. In line with previous studies, the visual search was faster when the shape was a valid cue but only if the shape had been acted upon. Critically, this action effect emerged similarly in both the manual and ocular response conditions. This cross-modality action effect was successfully replicated in Experiment 2, and analysis of eye movement trajectories further revealed similar action effect patterns on direction and numerosity. These results rule out the stimulus-response binding account of the action effect and suggest that it indeed occurs at an attentional level.     

Time perception and the experience of agency

In the current study, we investigate whether sense of agency over an effect coincides with the perceived time of the effect that occurs either at its usual time or earlier or later than usual. One group of participants usually perceived an action effect immediately after the action, another group delayed by 250 ms. In test blocks the effect stimulus was sometimes presented earlier or later than usual. Participants judged either the degree of experienced agency over the effect or whether the effect had appeared at its usual time, or earlier or later than usual. In both groups experienced agency and the perception of the effect’s time ‘as usual’ were highly correlated. To rule out that time judgments influenced sense of agency, we replicated the pattern of agency judgments in Experiment 2 in which participants only judged agency. Taken together, we demonstrated that agency and time judgments vary similarly across temporal deviations of effects irrespective of to which delay participants were adapted to. The high correlation of judgment types indicates that perceiving an effect at its usual time and sensing to have caused the effect are closely related. In contrast, physical temporal proximity of actions and effects has only a minor impact on experienced agency.     

Bidirectional semantic interference between action and speech

Research on embodied cognition assumes that language processing involves modal simulations that recruit the same neural systems that are usually used for action execution. If this is true, one should find evidence for bidirectional crosstalk between action and language. Using a direct matching paradigm, this study tested if action-languages interactions are bidirectional (Experiments 1 and 2), and whether the effect of crosstalk between action perception and language production is due to facilitation or interference (Experiment 3). Replicating previous findings, we found evidence for crosstalk when manual actions had to be performed simultaneously to action-word perception (Experiment 1) and also when language had to be produced during simultaneous perception of hand actions (Experiment 2). These findings suggest a clear bidirectional relationship between action and language. The latter crosstalk effect was due to interference between action and language (Experiment 3). By extending previous research of embodied cognition, the present findings provide novel evidence suggesting that bidirectional functional relations between action and language are based on similar conceptual-semantic representations.     

Body part representations in verbal semantics

Embodied theories of language propose that word meaning is inextricably tied to—grounded in—mental representations of perceptual, motor, and affective experiences of the world. The four experiments described in this article demonstrate that accessing the meanings of action verbs like smile, punch, and kick requires language understanders to activate modality-specific cognitive representations responsible for performing and perceiving those same actions. The main task used is a word-image matching task, where participants see an action verb and an image depicting an action. Their task is to decide as quickly as possible whether the verb and the image depict the same action. Of critical interest is participants’ behavior when the verb and image do not match, in which case the two actions can use the same effector or different effectors. In Experiment 1, we found that participants took significantly longer to reject a verb-image pair when the actions depicted by the image and denoted by the verb used the same effector than when they used different effectors. Experiment 2 yielded the same result when the order of presentation was reversed, replicating the effect in Cantonese. Experiment 3 replicated the effect in English with a verb-verb near-synonym task, and in Experiment 4, we once again replicated the effect with learners of English as a second language. This robust interference effect, whereby a shared effector slows discrimination, shows that language understanders activate effector-specific neurocognitive representations during both picture perception and action word understanding.     

Poor shape perception is the reason reaches-to-grasp are visually guided online

Both judgment studies and studies of feedforward reaching have shown that the visual perception of object distance, size, and shape are inaccurate. However, feedback has been shown to calibrate feedfoward reaches-to-grasp to make them accurate with respect to object distance and size. We now investigate whether shape perception (in particular, the aspect ratio of object depth to width) can be calibrated in the context of reaches-to-grasp. We used cylindrical objects with elliptical cross-sections of varying eccentricity. Our participants reached to grasp the width or the depth of these objects with the index finger and thumb. The maximum grasp aperture and the terminal grasp aperture were used to evaluate perception. Both occur before the hand has contacted an object. In Experiments 1 and 2, we investigated whether perceived shape is recalibrated by distorted haptic feedback. Although somewhat equivocal, the results suggest that it is not. In Experiment 3, we tested the accuracy of feedforward grasping with respect to shape with haptic feedback to allow calibration. Grasping was inaccurate in ways comparable to findings in shape perception judgment studies. In Experiment 4, we hypothesized that online guidance is needed for accurate grasping. Participants reached to grasp either with or without vision of the hand. The result was that the former was accurate, whereas the latter was not. We conclude that shape perception is not calibrated by feedback from reaches-to-grasp and that online visual guidance is required for accurate grasping because shape perception is poor.     

In search of a surrogate for touch: The effect of haptic imagery on perceived ownership

Previous research has shown that individuals value objects more highly if they own them, a finding commonly known as the endowment effect. In fact, simply touching an object can create a perception of ownership that produces the endowment effect. In this paper, we extend this line of research in several ways. First, we show that haptic imagery, or imagining touching an object, can have the same effect on perceived ownership as physical touch. We then demonstrate that haptic imagery can lead to perceptions of physical control, which in turn increase feelings of ownership. Moreover, the more vivid the haptic imagery, the greater the perception of control and the feeling of ownership. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Self-referential memory in autism spectrum disorder and typical development: Exploring the ownership effect

Owned objects occupy a privileged cognitive processing status and are viewed almost as extensions of the self. It has been demonstrated that items over which a sense of ownership is felt will be better remembered than other items (an example of the “self-reference effect”). As autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterised by an a typical self-concept, people with ASD may not demonstrate this “ownership effect”. Two experiments were conducted which replicate and extend Cunningham, Turk, MacDonald, and Macrae (2008). In Experiment 1, neurotypical adults completed a card sorting task and cards belonging to the ‘self’ were better remembered than cards belonging to another person. In Experiment 2, adults with ASD recalled self- and other owned items equally well. These results shed light both on the relation between sense of self and the ownership effect, and the nature of the self-concept in ASD.     

Large continuous perspective transformations are necessary and sufficient for accurate perception of metric shape

We investigated the ability to perceive the metric shape of elliptical cylinders. A large number of previous studies have shown that small perspective variations (< or =10 degrees) afforded by stereovision and by head movements fail to allow accurate perception of metric shape. If space perception is affine (Koenderink & van Doom, 1991), observers are unable to compare or relate lengths in depth to frontoparallel lengths (i.e., widths). Frontoparallel lengths can be perceived correctly, whereas lengths in depth generally are not. We measured reaches to evaluate shape perception and investigated whether larger perspective variations would allow accurate perception of shape. In Experiment 1, we replicated previous results showing poor perception with small perspective variations. In Experiment 2, we found that a 90 degrees continuous change in perspective, which swapped depth and width, allowed accurate perception of the depth/width aspect ratio. In Experiment 3, we found that discrete views differing by 90 degrees were insufficient to allow accurate perception of metric shape and that perception of a continuous perspective change was required. In Experiment 4, we investigated continuous perspective changes of 30 degrees, 45 degrees, 60 degrees, and 90 degrees and discovered that a 45 degrees change or greater allowed accurate perception of the aspect ratio and that less than this did not. In conclusion, we found that perception of metric shape is possible with continuous perspective transformations somewhat larger than those investigated in the substantial number of previous studies.     

Processing abstract language modulates motor system activity

Embodiment theory proposes that neural systems for perception and action are also engaged during language comprehension. Previous neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have only been able to demonstrate modulation of action systems during comprehension of concrete language. We provide neurophysiological evidence for modulation of motor system activity during the comprehension of both concrete and abstract language. In Experiment 1, when the described direction of object transfer or information transfer (e.g., away from the reader to another) matched the literal direction of a hand movement used to make a response, speed of responding was faster than when the two directions mismatched (an action-sentence compatibility effect). In Experiment 2, we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to study changes in the corticospinal motor pathways to hand muscles while reading the same sentences. Relative to sentences that do not describe transfer, there is greater modulation of activity in the hand muscles when reading sentences describing transfer of both concrete objects and abstract information. These findings are discussed in relation to the human mirror neuron system.     

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.     

Congruency effects between auditory and tactile motion: Extending the phenomenon of cross-modal dynamic capture

Behavioral studies of multisensory integration in motion perception have focused on the particular case of visual and auditory signals. Here, we addressed a new case: audition and touch. In Experiment 1, we tested the effects of an apparent motion stream presented in an irrelevant modality (audition or touch) on the perception of apparent motion streams in the other modality (touch or audition, respectively). We found significant congruency effects (lower performance when the direction of motion in the irrelevant modality was incongruent with the direction of the target) for the two possible modality combinations. This congruency effect was asymmetrical, with tactile motion distractors having a stronger influence on auditory motion perception than vice versa. In Experiment 2, we used auditory motion targets and tactile motion distractors while participants adopted one of two possible postures: arms uncrossed or arms crossed. The effects of tactile motion on auditory motion judgments were replicated in the arms-uncrossed posture, but they dissipated in the arms-crossed posture. The implications of these results are discussed in light of current findings regarding the representation of tactile and auditory space.     

Seeing and doing: ability to act moderates orientation effects in object perception

We investigated whether the impact of an object's orientation on a perceiver's actions (an orientation effect) is moderated by the perceiver's ability to act on the object in question. To do this, we manipulated the physical location of presented objects (Experiment 1) and the perceiver's action capacity (Experiment 2). Regardless of the physical distance of the object, manual responses were sensitive to the object's orientation (the orientation effect) when the object was within the participant's action range but not when the object was outside of the action range. These results support an embodied view of object perception and shed light on peripersonal space representation.     

Effects of the orientation of moving objects on the perception of streaming/bouncing motion displays

In this study, we examined the contribution of the orientation of moving objects to perception of a streaming/bouncing motion display. In three experiments, participants reported which of the two types of motion, streaming or bouncing, they perceived. The following independent variables were used: orientation differences between Gabor micropatterns (Gabors) and their path of motion (all the experiments) and the presence/absence of a transient tone (Experiment 1), transient visual flash (Experiment 2), or concurrent secondary task (Experiment 3) at the coincidence of Gabors. The results showed that the events at coincidence generally biased responses toward the perception of bouncing. On the other hand, alignment of Gabors with their motion axes significantly reduced the frequency of bounce perception. The results also indicated that an object whose orientation was parallel to its motion path strengthened the spatiotemporal integration of local motion signals along a straight motion path, resulting in the perception of streaming. We suggest that the effect of collinearity between Gabors and their motion path is relatively free from the effect of attention distraction.     

Go/No-Go范式中非反应手状态对Simon效应性质的影响

为了探讨非反应手对标准Simon任务改装的go/no-go任务的影响,被试只对其中一种颜色进行按键反应,通过指导语来操控非反应手的状态,结果发现：(1)实验一中当不提醒非反应手如何放置时,不会产生Simon效应;(2) 实验二中要求非反应手放在固定的桌面位置上,产生了视觉运动Simon效应,其随反应时的增大而减小;(3) 实验三中要求非反应手放在固定的非反应键上,却产生了认知Simon效应,其随反应时的增大而增大。这说明非反应手的状态影响Simon效应的产生及其性质。