The representation of pitch in auditory imagery: Evidence from S-R compatibility and distance effects

In three experiments we explored the nature of representations constructed during the perception and imagination of pitch. We employed a same–different task to eliminate the influence of nonauditory information and to minimise use of cognitive strategies on auditory imagery. A reference tone of frequency 1000, 1500, or 2000 Hz, or an imagined tone of a pitch indicated by a visual cue, was followed by a comparison tone (1000, 1500, or 2000 Hz) to which either a speeded same or different response was required. In separate experiments, same–different judgements were mapped to vertically (Experiments 1 and 2) and horizontally arranged responses (Experiment 3). Judgements of tones closer in pitch yielded longer reaction times and higher error rates than more distant tones, indicating a pitch distance effect for perceptual and imagery tasks alike. In addition, in the imagery task, same–different responses were faster when low-pitched tones demanded a bottom or left key response and high-pitched tones a top or right response than vice versa, suggesting that pitch is coded spatially. Together, these behavioural effects support the assumption that both perceived and imagined pitch are translated into an analogical representation in the spatial domain.     

On the influence of causal beliefs on the feeling of agency

The sense of agency is the experience of being the origin of a sensory consequence. This study investigates whether contextual beliefs modulate low-level sensorimotor processes which contribute to the emergence of the sense of agency. We looked at the influence of causal beliefs on ‘intentional binding’, a phenomenon which accompanies self-agency. Participants judged the onset-time of either an action or a sound which followed the action. They were induced to believe that the tone was either triggered by themselves or by somebody else, although, in reality, the sound was always triggered by the participants. We found that intentional binding was stronger when participants believed that they triggered the tone, compared to when they believed that another person triggered the tone. These results suggest that high-level contextual information influences sensorimotor processes responsible for generating intentional binding.     

The life instinct

In psychoanalytic writing an oversimplified interpretation of Freud's concept of the life and death instincts sometimes colours the presentation. Roughly, there is an implication that the life instinct is 'good' and the death instinct 'bad'. Freud however is clear that: "Neither of these instincts is any less essential than the other; the phenomena of life arise from the concurrent or mutually opposing action of both"(1933b, p. 209). In this paper I look in detail at the characteristics of the life instinct as conceptualized by Freud, and draw on Bion's work 'on linking' to elaborate Freud's view that binding is the life instinct's key characteristic. I suggest that there are pathological forms of both the life and death instinct if defused (separated off) from the other, and I explore a pathological variation of the life instinct in which binding is without the negation, rest, limit or end provided by the 'opposing action' of the death instinct. I consider an instance of the kind that any analyst might meet clinically, in which an inhibited patient experiences severe anxiety that life-giving connections threaten to proliferate indiscriminately and to an overwhelming intensity and size.     

The enhanced Simon effect for older adults is reduced when the irrelevant location information is conveyed by an accessory stimulus

The Simon effect, better performance when irrelevant stimulus location corresponds with the response location than when it does not, typically is larger for older than younger adults. However, Simon and Pouraghabagher [Simon, R. J., & Pouraghabagher, A. R. (1978). The effect of aging on the stages of processing in a choice reaction time task. Journal of Gerontology, 33, 553-561] found no age difference using an accessory-stimulus Simon task in which the relevant dimension was the color of a visual stimulus and the irrelevant dimension the location of a tone. Experiment 1 confirmed that older adults show a larger Simon effect than younger adults for the visual Simon task and that this age-related deficit is reduced or eliminated for the auditory-accessory task. Experiment 2 provided evidence suggesting that a small part of the age-related deficit in the visual Simon task is due to having to code the location of the relevant stimulus, but Experiment 3 showed that the majority of the deficit is due to the relevant and irrelevant information being conveyed by the same stimulus. Reaction-time distribution analyses show similar functions for younger and older adults, suggesting that the time course of activation is similar for both age groups.     

情绪效价可预测性对时间捆绑效应的影响

时间捆绑效应指的是主观上主动动作和动作结果的时间点相互靠近的现象。其中, 时间捆绑效应可分为动作捆绑和结果捆绑, 分别对应主动动作和动作结果的时间点变化。本研究通过一个混合设计实验考察了情绪效价可预测性对时间捆绑效应的影响。情绪效价可预测性(可预测、不可预测)为被试内因素, 刺激模态(听觉刺激、视觉刺激)为被试间因素。结果发现, 情绪效价为可预测时, 结果捆绑在主动按键后产生听觉刺激或视觉刺激都出现了增强, 而动作捆绑仅在产生视觉刺激时才出现增强。结果表明, 情绪效价为可预测时会增强时间捆绑效应, 但该作用在动作捆绑和结果捆绑中存在差异。由于时间捆绑效应是反映主动控制感的主要指标, 本研究结果对先进驾驶辅助系统的交互设计具有一定的参考意义。     

连绵词语音类似的启动效应

研究采用快速启动范型考察了视觉连绵词加工中语音的自动激活.两个实验发现,无论是首字同音还是尾字同音启动都可以促进对连绵词的命名反应,且基本不受目标词熟悉性(词频高低)及真假词的影响.可以推断,至少在连绵词--这种单词素词的词汇通达中存在语音的自动激活,这种语音的激活可以说是前词的装配与词水平上的改变.     

Do changes in threat salience predict the moral content of sermons? The case of Friday Khutbas in Turkey

We analyzed the content of “Friday Khutbas” delivered in Turkish mosques between January 2001 and December 2018 to test the prediction of moral foundations theory (MFT) literature that threat salience would lead to an increased endorsement of binding moral foundations. As societal-level indicators of threat, we examined (a) historical data on the proportion of terrorism-related news published in a Turkish newspaper, (b) the geopolitical risk score of Turkey as measured by Geopolitical Risk Index, and (c) Google Trends data on the search frequency of words “terror”, “terrorism”, or “terrorist”. To measure the endorsement of moral foundations, we built a Turkish Moral Foundations Dictionary and counted the relative frequency of morality-related words in the khutbas delivered in Istanbul, Turkey. Time series analyses showed that risk salience in a certain month was positively related to endorsement of the loyalty/betrayal foundation in that month’s Friday Khutbas. There were mixed results for the other moral foundations.     

The evolving sense of agency: Context recency and quality modulate the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes

Humans acquire a sense of agency through their interactions with the world and their sensory consequences. Previous studies have highlighted stable agency-related phenomena like intentional binding, which depend on both prospective, context-dependent and retrospective, outcome-dependent processes. In the current study, we investigated the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes underlying the adaptation of an ongoing sense of agency. The results showed that prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window of up to 20 prior events was independent of the nature of the ongoing event. By contrast, the characteristics of the ongoing event retrospectively influenced prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window narrower than 6 prior events. These findings characterize the interaction between prospective and retrospective mechanisms as a fundamental process to continuously update the sense of agency through sensorimotor learning. High psychosis-like experience traits weakened this interaction, suggesting that reduced adaption to the context contributes to altered self-experience.     

Sense of agency: Sensorimotor signals and social context are differentially weighed at implicit and explicit levels

Sense of agency (SoA) describes the experience of being the author of an action. Cue integration approaches divide SoA into an implicit level, mostly relying on prospective sensorimotor signals, and an explicit level, resulting from an integration of sensorimotor and contextual cues based on their reliability. Integration mechanisms at each level and the contribution of implicit to explicit SoA remain underspecified. In a task of movements with visual outcomes, we tested the effect of social context (contextual cue) and sensory prediction congruency (retrospective sensorimotor cue) over implicit (intentional binding) and explicit (verbal judgments) SoA. Our results suggest that prospective sensorimotor cues determine implicit SoA. At the explicit level, retrospective sensorimotor cues and contextual cues are partly integrated in an additive way, but contextual cues can also act as a heuristic if sensorimotor cues are highly unreliable. We also found no significant association between implicit and explicit SoA.     

Perception in action: multiple roles of sensory information in action control

Perceptual processes play a central role in the planning and control of human voluntary action. Indeed, planning an action is a sensorimotor process operating on sensorimotor units, a process that is based on anticipations of perceptual action effects. I discuss how the underlying sensorimotor units emerge, and how they can be employed to tailor action plans to the goals at hand. I also discuss how even a single action can induce sensorimotor binding, how intentionally implemented short-term associations between stimuli and responses become autonomous, how feature overlap between stimulus events and actions makes them compatible, and why action plans are necessarily incomplete.