How Body Orientation Affects Concepts of Space,Time and Valence: Functional Relevance of Integrating Sensorimotor Experiences during Word Processing

The aim of the present study was to test the functional relevance of the spatial concepts UP or DOWN for words that use these concepts either literally (space) or metaphorically (time, valence). A functional relevance would imply a symmetrical relationship between the spatial concepts and words related to these concepts, showing that processing words activate the related spatial concepts on one hand, but also that an activation of the concepts will ease the retrieval of a related word on the other. For the latter, the rotation angle of participant’s body position was manipulated either to an upright or a head-down tilted body position to activate the related spatial concept. Afterwards participants produced in a within-subject design previously memorized words of the concepts space, time and valence according to the pace of a metronome. All words were related either to the spatial concept UP or DOWN. The results including Bayesian analyses show (1) a significant interaction between body position and words using the concepts UP and DOWN literally, (2) a marginal significant interaction between body position and temporal words and (3) no effect between body position and valence words. However, post-hoc analyses suggest no difference between experiments. Thus, the authors concluded that integrating sensorimotor experiences is indeed of functional relevance for all three concepts of space, time and valence. However, the strength of this functional relevance depends on how close words are linked to mental concepts representing vertical space.     

"Good Is Up” Is Not Always Better: A Memory Advantage for Words in Metaphor-Incompatible Locations

Four experiments examined whether memory for positive and negative words depended on word location and vertical hand movements. Cognitive processing is known to be facilitated when valenced stimuli are presented in locations that are congruent with the GOOD is UP conceptual metaphor, relative to when they are presented in incongruent locations. In both free recall and recognition tasks, we find a memory advantage for words that had been studied in metaphor incongruent locations (positive down, negative up). This incongruity advantage depends on the location of words during encoding, but no evidence was found to suggest that other spatial associations, such as the vertical position of the hand at encoding or word location during retrieval, affect memory. The results indicate that metaphors, like schemas, categories, and stereotypes, can influence cognition in complex ways, producing variable outcomes across different tasks.     

What We Observe Is Biased by What Other People Tell Us: Beliefs about the Reliability of Gaze Behavior Modulate Attentional Orienting to Gaze Cues

For effective social interactions with other people, information about the physical environment must be integrated with information about the interaction partner. In order to achieve this, processing of social information is guided by two components: a bottom-up mechanism reflexively triggered by stimulus-related information in the social scene and a top-down mechanism activated by task-related context information. In the present study, we investigated whether these components interact during attentional orienting to gaze direction. In particular, we examined whether the spatial specificity of gaze cueing is modulated by expectations about the reliability of gaze behavior. Expectations were either induced by instruction or could be derived from experience with displayed gaze behavior. Spatially specific cueing effects were observed with highly predictive gaze cues, but also when participants merely believed that actually non-predictive cues were highly predictive. Conversely, cueing effects for the whole gazed-at hemifield were observed with non-predictive gaze cues, and spatially specific cueing effects were attenuated when actually predictive gaze cues were believed to be non-predictive. This pattern indicates that (i) information about cue predictivity gained from sampling gaze behavior across social episodes can be incorporated in the attentional orienting to social cues, and that (ii) beliefs about gaze behavior modulate attentional orienting to gaze direction even when they contradict information available from social episodes.     

What Happens in Between? Human Oscillatory Brain Activity Related to Crossmodal Spatial Cueing

Previous studies investigated the effects of crossmodal spatial attention by comparing the responses to validly versus invalidly cued target stimuli. Dynamics of cortical rhythms in the time interval between cue and target might contribute to cue effects on performance. Here, we studied the influence of spatial attention on ongoing oscillatory brain activity in the interval between cue and target onset. In a first experiment, subjects underwent periods of tactile stimulation (cue) followed by visual stimulation (target) in a spatial cueing task as well as tactile stimulation as a control. In a second experiment, cue validity was modified to be 50%, 75%, or else 25%, to separate effects of exogenous shifts of attention caused by tactile stimuli from that of endogenous shifts. Tactile stimuli produced: 1) a stronger lateralization of the sensorimotor beta-rhythm rebound (15-22 Hz) after tactile stimuli serving as cues versus not serving as cues; 2) a suppression of the occipital alpha-rhythm (7-13 Hz) appearing only in the cueing task (this suppression was stronger contralateral to the endogenously attended side and was predictive of behavioral success); 3) an increase of prefrontal gamma-activity (25-35 Hz) specifically in the cueing task. We measured cue-related modulations of cortical rhythms which may accompany crossmodal spatial attention, expectation or decision, and therefore contribute to cue validity effects. The clearly lateralized alpha suppression after tactile cues in our data indicates its dependence on endogenous rather than exogenous shifts of visuo-spatial attention following a cue independent of its modality.     

Behavioural dissociation between exogenous and endogenous temporal orienting of attention

BACKGROUND: In the current study we compared the effects of temporal orienting of attention based on predictions carried by the intrinsic temporal structure of events (rhythm) and by instructive symbolic cues; and tested the degree of cognitive, strategic control that could be exerted over each type of temporal expectation. The experiments tested whether the distinction between exogenous and endogenous orienting made in spatial attention may extend to the temporal domain. TASK DESIGN AND MAIN RESULTS: In this task, a ball moved across the screen in discrete steps and disappeared temporarily under an occluding band. Participants were required to make a perceptual discrimination on the target upon its reappearance. The regularity of the speed (rhythmic cue) or colour (symbolic cue) of the moving stimulus could predict the exact time at which a target would reappear after a brief occlusion (valid trials) or provide no temporal information (neutral trials). The predictive nature of rhythmic and symbolic cues was manipulated factorially in a symmetrical and orthogonal fashion. To test for the effects of strategic control over temporal orienting based on rhythmic or symbolic cues, participants were instructed either to "attend-to-speed" (rhythm) or "attend-to-colour". Our results indicated that both rhythmic and symbolic (colour) cues speeded reaction times in an independent fashion. However, whilst the rhythmic cueing effects were impervious to instruction, the effects of symbolic cues were contingent on the instruction to attend to colour. FINAL CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our results provide evidence for the existence of qualitatively separable types of temporal orienting of attention, akin to exogenous and endogenous mechanisms.     

线索有效性对社会性注意和外源性注意的影响

目的 眼睛注视、头朝向和生物运动方向等社会性线索,对人类的生存和社会交互极为重要.由于社会性线索和外周线索都具有反射性注意定向这一特点,社会性注意往往也被认为属于外源性注意.但是,外源性注意并不能完全解释所有的社会性注意现象.因此,两者是否具有相同的加工机制,尚存在争论.方法 本研究使用空间线索范式,系统考察了线索有效...     

Arbitrary symbolism in natural language revisited: when word forms carry meaning

Cognitive science has a rich history of interest in the ways that languages represent abstract and concrete concepts (e.g., idea vs. dog). Until recently, this focus has centered largely on aspects of word meaning and semantic representation. However, recent corpora analyses have demonstrated that abstract and concrete words are also marked by phonological, orthographic, and morphological differences. These regularities in sound-meaning correspondence potentially allow listeners to infer certain aspects of semantics directly from word form. We investigated this relationship between form and meaning in a series of four experiments. In Experiments 1-2 we examined the role of metalinguistic knowledge in semantic decision by asking participants to make semantic judgments for aurally presented nonwords selectively varied by specific acoustic and phonetic parameters. Participants consistently associated increased word length and diminished wordlikeness with abstract concepts. In Experiment 3, participants completed a semantic decision task (i.e., abstract or concrete) for real words varied by length and concreteness. Participants were more likely to misclassify longer, inflected words (e.g., "apartment") as abstract and shorter uninflected abstract words (e.g., "fate") as concrete. In Experiment 4, we used a multiple regression to predict trial level naming data from a large corpus of nouns which revealed significant interaction effects between concreteness and word form. Together these results provide converging evidence for the hypothesis that listeners map sound to meaning through a non-arbitrary process using prior knowledge about statistical regularities in the surface forms of words.     

Deceptive Body Movements Reverse Spatial Cueing in Soccer

The purpose of the experiments was to analyse the spatial cueing effects of the movements of soccer players executing normal and deceptive (step-over) turns with the ball. Stimuli comprised normal resolution or point-light video clips of soccer players dribbling a football towards the observer then turning right or left with the ball. Clips were curtailed before or on the turn (−160, −80, 0 or +80 ms) to examine the time course of direction prediction and spatial cueing effects. Participants were divided into higher-skilled (HS) and lower-skilled (LS) groups according to soccer experience. In experiment 1, accuracy on full video clips was higher than on point-light but results followed the same overall pattern. Both HS and LS groups correctly identified direction on normal moves at all occlusion levels. For deceptive moves, LS participants were significantly worse than chance and HS participants were somewhat more accurate but nevertheless substantially impaired. In experiment 2, point-light clips were used to cue a lateral target. HS and LS groups showed faster reaction times to targets that were congruent with the direction of normal turns, and to targets incongruent with the direction of deceptive turns. The reversed cueing by deceptive moves coincided with earlier kinematic events than cueing by normal moves. It is concluded that the body kinematics of soccer players generate spatial cueing effects when viewed from an opponent''s perspective. This could create a reaction time advantage when anticipating the direction of a normal move. A deceptive move is designed to turn this cueing advantage into a disadvantage. Acting on the basis of advance information, the presence of deceptive moves primes responses in the wrong direction, which may be only partly mitigated by delaying a response until veridical cues emerge.     

Negotiating a noisy, information-rich environment in search of cryptic prey: olfactory predators need patchiness in prey cues

1. Olfactory predator search processes differ fundamentally to those based on vision, particularly when odour cues are deposited rather than airborne or emanating from a point source. When searching for visually cryptic prey that may have moved some distance from a deposited odour cue, cue context and spatial variability are the most likely sources of information about prey location available to an olfactory predator. 2. We tested whether the house mouse (Mus domesticus), a model olfactory predator, would use cue context and spatial variability when searching for buried food items; specifically, we tested the effect of varying cue patchiness, odour strength, and cue-prey association on mouse foraging success. 3. Within mouse- and predator-proof enclosures, we created grids of 100 sand-filled Petri dishes and buried peanut pieces in a set number of these patches to represent visually cryptic 'prey'. By adding peanut oil to selected dishes, we varied the spatial distribution of prey odour relative to the distribution of prey patches in each grid, to reflect different levels of cue patchiness (Experiment 1), odour strength (Experiment 2) and cue-prey association (Experiment 3). We measured the overnight foraging success of individual mice (percentage of searched patches containing prey), as well as their foraging activity (percentage of patches searched), and prey survival (percentage of unsearched prey patches). 4. Mouse foraging success was highest where odour cues were patchy rather than uniform (Experiment 1), and where cues were tightly associated with prey location, rather than randomly or uniformly distributed (Experiment 3). However, when cues at prey patches were ten times stronger than a uniformly distributed weak background odour, mice did not improve their foraging success over that experienced when cues were of uniform strength and distribution (Experiment 2). 5. These results suggest that spatial variability and cue context are important means by which olfactory predators can use deposited odour cues to locate visually cryptic prey. They also indicate that chemical crypsis can disrupt these search processes as effectively as background matching in visually based predator-prey systems.     

Congruent embodied representations for visually presented actions and linguistic phrases describing actions

The thesis of embodied semantics holds that conceptual representations accessed during linguistic processing are, in part, equivalent to the sensory-motor representations required for the enactment of the concepts described . Here, using fMRI, we tested the hypothesis that areas in human premotor cortex that respond both to the execution and observation of actions-mirror neuron areas -are key neural structures in these processes. Participants observed actions and read phrases relating to foot, hand, or mouth actions. In the premotor cortex of the left hemisphere, a clear congruence was found between effector-specific activations of visually presented actions and of actions described by literal phrases. These results suggest a key role of mirror neuron areas in the re-enactment of sensory-motor representations during conceptual processing of actions invoked by linguistic stimuli.     

Grounding word learning in space

Humans and objects, and thus social interactions about objects, exist within space. Words direct listeners' attention to specific regions of space. Thus, a strong correspondence exists between where one looks, one's bodily orientation, and what one sees. This leads to further correspondence with what one remembers. Here, we present data suggesting that children use associations between space and objects and space and words to link words and objects--space binds labels to their referents. We tested this claim in four experiments, showing that the spatial consistency of where objects are presented affects children's word learning. Next, we demonstrate that a process model that grounds word learning in the known neural dynamics of spatial attention, spatial memory, and associative learning can capture the suite of results reported here. This model also predicts that space is special, a prediction supported in a fifth experiment that shows children do not use color as a cue to bind words and objects. In a final experiment, we ask whether spatial consistency affects word learning in naturalistic word learning contexts. Children of parents who spontaneously keep objects in a consistent spatial location during naming interactions learn words more effectively. Together, the model and data show that space is a powerful tool that can effectively ground word learning in social contexts.     

Assessing implicit odor localization in humans using a cross-modal spatial cueing paradigm

Background

Navigation based on chemosensory information is one of the most important skills in the animal kingdom. Studies on odor localization suggest that humans have lost this ability. However, the experimental approaches used so far were limited to explicit judgements, which might ignore a residual ability for directional smelling on an implicit level without conscious appraisal.

Methods

A novel cueing paradigm was developed in order to determine whether an implicit ability for directional smelling exists. Participants performed a visual two-alternative forced choice task in which the target was preceded either by a side-congruent or a side-incongruent olfactory spatial cue. An explicit odor localization task was implemented in a second experiment.

Results

No effect of cue congruency on mean reaction times could be found. However, a time by condition interaction emerged, with significantly slower responses to congruently compared to incongruently cued targets at the beginning of the experiment. This cueing effect gradually disappeared throughout the course of the experiment. In addition, participants performed at chance level in the explicit odor localization task, thus confirming the results of previous research.

Conclusion

The implicit cueing task suggests the existence of spatial information processing in the olfactory system. Response slowing after a side-congruent olfactory cue is interpreted as a cross-modal attentional interference effect. In addition, habituation might have led to a gradual disappearance of the cueing effect. It is concluded that under immobile conditions with passive monorhinal stimulation, humans are unable to explicitly determine the location of a pure odorant. Implicitly, however, odor localization seems to exert an influence on human behaviour. To our knowledge, these data are the first to show implicit effects of odor localization on overt human behaviour and thus support the hypothesis of residual directional smelling in humans.     

Cueing of object orientation facilitates attentional selection of relevant objects

Three experiments investigated the effects of advance information about orientation on the processing of relevant and irrelevant objects, as indicated by Stroop effects from color words located in either object. Four results were obtained. First, participants showed the expected modulation of the Stroop effect: words in the relevant object produced much larger Stroop effects than words in the irrelevant object or words in the background. Second, blocking of object orientation had no effects. Third, informative orientation cues facilitated processing of the relevant object, but cueing did not affect processing of the irrelevant object. Fourth, effects of informative orientation cues were restricted to the first part of each experiment. Results suggest that observers can use advance information about object orientation for improving attentional selection of a visual object. In addition, the results revealed some constraints for the effective use of orientation cues, and discard possible explanations for the observed modulation of Stroop effects.     

Spatial cueing,sensory gating and selective response preparation: an ERP study on visuo-spatial orienting

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in a visuo-spatial attention task where the position of an imperative stimulus was indicated either validly or invalidly by a central arrow (trial-by-trial cueing). Subjects had to perform choice RT tasks with the response being dependent either on the identity of the target stimulus or on its position. When target identity was relevant for response selection, validly cued stimuli elicited amplitude enhancements of the early, sensory-evoked P1 and N1 components at lateral posterior sites. The N1 validity effect was limited to scalp sites ipsilateral to the visual field of stimulus presentation. Although these effects were found only when the sensory discrimination task was considerably difficult, they are in line with models assuming that modulations of sensory-perceptual processing (“sensory gating”) are induced by spatial cueing. However, when target location was response-relevant, N1 amplitude enhancements were consistently elicited by invalidly cued letters.CNV and LRP measures indicated that the arrow elicited response-related processing in the cue-target interval. Such processes occurred even when the cue contained no information about an upcoming response. Two consecutive lateralization phases were distinguishable in the LRP, with experimentally induced response assignments becoming effective only during the second phase.     

Stay Tuned: What Is Special About Not Shifting Attention?

Background

When studying attentional orienting processes, brain activity elicited by symbolic cue is usually compared to a neutral condition in which no information is provided about the upcoming target location. It is generally assumed that when a neutral cue is provided, participants do not shift their attention. The present study sought to validate this assumption. We further investigated whether anticipated task demands had an impact on brain activity related to processing symbolic cues.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Two experiments were conducted, during which event-related potentials were elicited by symbolic cues that instructed participants to shift their attention to a particular location on a computer screen. In Experiment 1, attention shift-inducing cues were compared to non-informative cues, while in both conditions participants were required to detect target stimuli that were subsequently presented at peripheral locations. In Experiment 2, a non-ambiguous “stay-central” cue that explicitly required participants not to shift their attention was used instead. In the latter case, target stimuli that followed a stay-central cue were also presented at a central location. Both experiments revealed enlarged early latency contralateral ERP components to shift-inducing cues compared to those elicited by either non-informative (exp. 1) or stay-central cues (exp. 2). In addition, cueing effects were modulated by the anticipated difficulty of the upcoming target, particularly so in Experiment 2. A positive difference, predominantly over the posterior contralateral scalp areas, could be observed for stay-central cues, especially for those predicting that the upcoming target would be easy. This effect was not present for non-informative cues.

Conclusions/Significance

We interpret our result in terms of a more rapid engagement of attention occurring in the presence of a more predictive instruction (i.e. stay-central easy target). Our results indicate that the human brain is capable of very rapidly identifying the difference between different types of instructions.     

Attention without awareness in blindsight.

The act of attending has frequently been equated with visual awareness. We examined this relationship in 'blindsight'--a condition in which the latter is absent or diminished as a result of damage to the primary visual cortex. Spatially selective visual attention is demonstrated when information that stimuli are likely to appear at a specific location enhances the speed or accuracy of detection of stimuli subsequently presented at that location. In a blindsight subject, we showed that attention can confer an advantage in processing stimuli presented at an attended location, without those stimuli entering consciousness. Attention could be directed both by symbolic cues in the subject's spared field of vision or cues presented in his blind field. Cues in his blind field were even effective in directing his attention to a second location remote from that at which the cue was presented. These indirect cues were effective whether or not they themselves elicited non-visual awareness. We concluded that the spatial selection of information by an attentional mechanism and its entry into conscious experience cannot be one and the same process.     

Interpreting local visual features as a global shape requires awareness

How the brain constructs a coherent representation of the environment from noisy visual input remains poorly understood. Here, we explored whether awareness of the stimulus plays a role in the integration of local features into a representation of global shape. Participants were primed with a shape defined either by position or orientation cues, and performed a shape-discrimination task on a subsequently presented probe shape. Crucially, the probe could either be defined by the same or different cues as the prime, which allowed us to distinguish the effect of priming by local features and global shape. We found a robust priming benefit for visible primes, with response times being faster when the probe and prime were the same shape, regardless of the defining cue. However, rendering the prime invisible uncovered a dissociation: position-defined primes produced behavioural benefit only for probes of the same cue type. Surprisingly, orientation-defined primes afforded an enhancement only for probes of the opposite cue. In further experiments, we showed that the effect of priming was confined to retinotopic coordinates and that there was no priming effect by invisible orientation cues in an orientation-discrimination task. This explains the absence of priming by the same cue in our shape-discrimination task. In summary, our findings show that while in the absence of awareness orientation signals can recruit retinotopic circuits (e.g. intrinsic lateral connections), conscious processing is necessary to interpret local features as global shape.     

Predator–prey interactions between crayfish (Orconectes juvenilis) and snails (Physa gyrina) are affected by spatial scale and chemical cues

Abstract. We conducted two experiments to compare the behaviors of predatory crayfish ( Orconectes juvenilis ) and snail prey ( Physa gyrina ), with and without exposure to injured-snail cues, in seven different sizes of arena. Individuals in both O. juvenilis and P. gyrina are known to obtain information about predation events from chemical cues present in the water, but the effect of spatial scale on this information or the ensuing interaction has not been previously investigated. We found that crayfish were generally more active in larger arenas, but their response to injured-snail cues decreased as arena size increased. Snails responded to injured-snail cue by seeking refuge, but responded less strongly in larger arenas. Less time was required for crayfish to capture a snail in the presence of injured-snail cue, and there was an interaction between cue and arena size evident in middle-sized arenas. Consumption time was lower in the presence of injured-snail cue but was unaffected by arena size. Based on these results, we conclude that the effects of injured-snail cue are mediated by spatial scale, and this affects the outcome of this predator–prey interaction. Spatial scale should be considered in the design and interpretation of other predator–prey studies, particularly when sensory or motility differences exist between predators and prey that affect how each gathers information about the environment.     

Visual Benefits in Apparent Motion Displays: Automatically Driven Spatial and Temporal Anticipation Are Partially Dissociated

Many behaviourally relevant sensory events such as motion stimuli and speech have an intrinsic spatio-temporal structure. This will engage intentional and most likely unintentional (automatic) prediction mechanisms enhancing the perception of upcoming stimuli in the event stream. Here we sought to probe the anticipatory processes that are automatically driven by rhythmic input streams in terms of their spatial and temporal components. To this end, we employed an apparent visual motion paradigm testing the effects of pre-target motion on lateralized visual target discrimination. The motion stimuli either moved towards or away from peripheral target positions (valid vs. invalid spatial motion cueing) at a rhythmic or arrhythmic pace (valid vs. invalid temporal motion cueing). Crucially, we emphasized automatic motion-induced anticipatory processes by rendering the motion stimuli non-predictive of upcoming target position (by design) and task-irrelevant (by instruction), and by creating instead endogenous (orthogonal) expectations using symbolic cueing. Our data revealed that the apparent motion cues automatically engaged both spatial and temporal anticipatory processes, but that these processes were dissociated. We further found evidence for lateralisation of anticipatory temporal but not spatial processes. This indicates that distinct mechanisms may drive automatic spatial and temporal extrapolation of upcoming events from rhythmic event streams. This contrasts with previous findings that instead suggest an interaction between spatial and temporal attention processes when endogenously driven. Our results further highlight the need for isolating intentional from unintentional processes for better understanding the various anticipatory mechanisms engaged in processing behaviourally relevant stimuli with predictable spatio-temporal structure such as motion and speech.     

Making the Invisible Visible: Verbal but Not Visual Cues Enhance Visual Detection

Background

Can hearing a word change what one sees? Although visual sensitivity is known to be enhanced by attending to the location of the target, perceptual enhancements of following cues to the identity of an object have been difficult to find. Here, we show that perceptual sensitivity is enhanced by verbal, but not visual cues.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Participants completed an object detection task in which they made an object-presence or -absence decision to briefly-presented letters. Hearing the letter name prior to the detection task increased perceptual sensitivity (d′). A visual cue in the form of a preview of the to-be-detected letter did not. Follow-up experiments found that the auditory cuing effect was specific to validly cued stimuli. The magnitude of the cuing effect positively correlated with an individual measure of vividness of mental imagery; introducing uncertainty into the position of the stimulus did not reduce the magnitude of the cuing effect, but eliminated the correlation with mental imagery.

Conclusions/Significance

Hearing a word made otherwise invisible objects visible. Interestingly, seeing a preview of the target stimulus did not similarly enhance detection of the target. These results are compatible with an account in which auditory verbal labels modulate lower-level visual processing. The findings show that a verbal cue in the form of hearing a word can influence even the most elementary visual processing and inform our understanding of how language affects perception.