Perceiving personality in simple motion cues

People often ascribe intentions and personalities to simple motion cues. Two experiments were conducted to examine how variations in motion quality, such as amplitude and frequency, influence a simple stimulus’ ratings on different aspects of personality. In experiment one participants were asked to adjust the motion behavior of a computer animated ball according to different items, which were based on the five factor model of personality. In experiment two participants had to assign the ‘correct’ personality to stimuli that were based on data of experiment one. Recognition rate was high for most personality traits, but there were also some misidentifications. Results suggest that simple features of motion partly influence social perception and human communication.     

Literal, fictive and metaphorical motion sentences preserve the motion component of the verb: a TMS study

We used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to assess whether reading literal, non-literal (i.e., metaphorical, idiomatic) and fictive motion sentences modulates the activity of the motor system. Sentences were divided into three segments visually presented one at a time: the noun phrase, the verb and the final part of the sentence. Single pulse-TMS was delivered at the end of the sentence over the leg motor area in the left hemisphere and motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the right gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior muscles. MEPs were larger when participants were presented with literal, fictive and metaphorical motion sentences than with idiomatic motion or mental sentences. These results suggest that the excitability of the motor system is modulated by the motor component of the verb, which is preserved in fictive and metaphorical motion sentences.     

Representational momentum in children born preterm and at term

The term representational momentum (RM) refers to the idea that our memory representations for moving objects incorporate information about movement – a fact that can lead us to make errors when judging an object’s location (the RM effect). In this study, we explored the RM effect in a sample of children born very prematurely and a sample born at term. Because preterm children are known to be at risk for problems with motion perception, we anticipated that they would show a weaker or absent RM effect. This prediction was confirmed. In addition, we found that, in both samples of children, 5–6 year olds showed a reduced RM effect compared to 7–9 year olds. These results demonstrate that the ability to represent motion information in memory shows continued development over this age range, and may help to elucidate factors contributing to problems with fine and gross motor planning and execution that have been observed in the preterm population. We propose that problems affecting the formation, maintenance, or use of predictive models, or motion extrapolation skills, may have cascading effects on the development of other abilities.     

The effect of using paddles on hand propulsive forces and Froude efficiency in arm-stroke-only front-crawl swimming at various velocities

Through pressure measurement and underwater motion capture analysis, this study aimed to elucidate the effects of hand paddles on hand propulsive forces, mechanical power, and Froude efficiency in arm-stroke-only front-crawl swimming at various velocities. Eight male swimmers swam under two conditions in randomized order, once using only their hands and once aided by hand paddles on both hands. Each participant swam 10 times a distance of 16 m in each condition, for a total of 20 trials. To elucidate the relationship between propulsive forces and swimming velocity, each participant was instructed to swim each of the two sets of 10 trials at an arbitrarily different swimming velocity. During the trials, pressure sensors and underwater motion capture cameras were used together to analyze the pressure forces acting on the hand and hand kinematics, respectively. Six pressure sensors were attached to the right hand, and pressure forces acting on the right hand were estimated by multiplying the areas with the pressure differences between the palm and dorsal side of the hand. Acting directions of pressure forces were analyzed using a normal vector perpendicular to the hand or hand paddle, calculated from coordinates obtained using underwater motion capture analysis. As a result, there were no differences in propulsive forces and mechanical power to overcome water resistance (P_D) with or without hand paddles at the same swimming velocities. However, the use of hand paddles decreased stroke rate and hand velocities, so mechanical power to push the water at the hand (P_K) decreased. Using hand paddles thus increased Froude efficiency (η_F). These results suggest that training load decreases when swimmers swim at the same velocities while using hand paddles. This insight could prove useful for coaches and swimmers when using hand paddles for training to help ensure that they are used in accordance with their intended training purpose. If swimmers use hand paddles increasing propulsive force or P_K, they should swim at a higher swimming velocity with hand paddles than without.     

Delinquent Development in Dutch Childhood Arrestees: Developmental Trajectories,Risk Factors and Co-morbidity with Adverse Outcomes during Adolescence

Heterogeneity of re-offending patterns was studied in a group of 287 male early onset offenders who were first arrested before age 12. By combining data on the frequency and severity of offending as registered by the police over a 5-year follow-up period, three delinquent trajectories were identified; low, escalating, and high level re-offenders. Predicting group membership by individual and environmental characteristics known to the police at the time of the first arrest proved difficult. Compared to low level re-offenders, escalators were older and more often came from disadvantaged neighborhoods. High level re-offenders were also older at onset, more often had a non-Western ethnic background, and initially committed more vandalism. Furthermore, at the first police encounter, the police reacted more severely towards those who later became high level re-offenders. Finally, high and escalating re-offenders more often had other adverse outcomes, such as criminal victimization and Child Welfare Agency involvement.

Perception of Happening: How the Brain Deals with the No-History Problem

In physics, the temporal dimension has units of infinitesimally brief duration. Given this, how is it possible to perceive things, such as motion, music, and vibrotactile stimulation, that involve extension across many units of time? To address this problem, it is proposed that there is what is termed an “information construct of happening” (ICOH), a simultaneous representation of recent, temporally differentiated perceptual information on the millisecond time scale. The main features of the ICOH are (i) time marking, semantic labeling of all information in the ICOH with ordinal temporal information and distance from what is informationally identified as the present moment, (ii) vector informational features that specify kind, direction, and rate of change for every feature in a percept, and (iii) connectives, information relating vector informational features at adjacent temporal locations in the ICOH. The ICOH integrates products of perceptual processing with recent historical information in sensory memory on the subsecond time scale. Perceptual information about happening in informational sensory memory is encoded in semantic form that preserves connected semantic trails of vector and timing information. The basic properties of the ICOH must be supported by a general and widespread timing mechanism that generates ordinal and interval timing information and it is suggested that state-dependent networks may suffice for that purpose. Happening, therefore, is perceived at a moment and is constituted by an information structure of connected recent historical information.     

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.     

A two-year follow-up investigation of parenting and peer influences on tobacco use onset among Italian early adolescents

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of peer and family influences on tobacco use onset among Italian early adolescents at two-year follow-up. Participants were 161 adolescents aged 11 to 12 (M = 11.14, SD = 0.39; 49% female) living in the northwest of Italy. Multiple logistic regressions were used. Results indicated that increases in positive family climate were negatively associated with lifetime smoking among non-smokers at two-year follow-up. Additionally, parental knowledge of child daily activities decreased lifetime smoking at two-year follow-up. Moderation analyses revealed that parental knowledge reduced the effect of peers' influence on youth smoking onset at two-year follow-up. This study underlined the influence of parenting practices in preventing early smoking initiation in Italy.     

Does temporal contiguity moderate contingency learning in a speeded performance task?

In four experiments, we varied the time between the onset of distracting nonwords and target colour words in a word–word version of the colour–word contingency learning paradigm. Contingencies were created by pairing a distractor nonword more often with one target colour word than with other colour words. A contingency effect corresponds to faster responses to the target colour word on high-contingency trials (i.e., distractor nonword followed by the target colour word with which it appears most often) than on low-contingency trials (i.e., distractor nonword followed by a target colour word with which it appears only occasionally). Roughly equivalent-sized contingency effects were found at stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 50, 250, and 450 ms in Experiment 1, and 50, 500, and 1,000 ms in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, a contingency effect was observed at SOAs of –50, –200, and –350 ms. In Experiment 4, interstimulus interval (ISI) was varied along with SOA, and learning was equivalent for 200-, 700-, and 1,200-ms SOAs. Together, these experiments suggest that the distracting stimulus does not need to be presented in close temporal contiguity with the response to induce learning. Relations to past research on causal judgement and implications for further contingency learning research are discussed.     

Relative contributions of face and body configurations: Perceiving emotional state and motion intention

This study addressed the relative reliance on face and body configurations for different types of emotion-related judgements: emotional state and motion intention. Participants viewed images of people with either emotionally congruent (both angry or fearful) or incongruent (angry/fearful; fearful/angry) faces and bodies. Congruent conditions provided baseline responses. Incongruent conditions revealed relative reliance on face and body information for different judgements. Body configurations influenced motion-intention judgements more than facial configurations: incongruent pairs with angry bodies were more frequently perceived as moving forward than those with fearful bodies; pairs with fearful bodies were more frequently perceived as moving away. In contrast, faces influenced emotional-state judgements more, but bodies moderated ratings of face emotion. Thus, both face and body configurations influence emotion perception, but the type of evaluation required influences their relative contributions. These findings highlight the importance of considering both the face and body as important sources of emotion information.