Research

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  Reis, M., Pfister, R., & Kunde, W. (2024). The action-dynamics of dark creativity. Personality and Individual Differences, 221, 112564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2024.112564
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  Reis, M., & Kunde, W. (2024). How to overcome biases against creativity: The role of familiarity with and confidence in original solutions. Cognition, 245, 105741. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105741
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  Raßbach, P., Grießbach, E., Cañal-Bruland, R., & Herbort, O. (2024). State anticipation and task serialization attenuate embodied decision biases when deciding while moving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0001208
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  Schreiner, M. R., Bröder, A., & Meiser, T. (2024). Agency effects on the binding of event elements in episodic memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77(6), 1201-1220. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231203951
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  Frings, C., Beste, C., Benini, E., Möller, M., Dignath, D., Giesen, C. G., Hommel, B., Kiesel, A., Koch, I., Kunde, W., Mayr, S., Mocke, V., Moeller, B., Münchau, A., Parmar, J., Pastötter, B., Pfister, R., Philipp, A. M., Qiu, R., … Schmalbrock, P. (2024). Consensus definitions of perception-action-integration in action control. Communications Psychology, 2, 7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00050-9
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  The literature on action control is rife with differences in terminology. This consensus statement contributes shared definitions for perception-action integration concepts as informed by the framework of event coding.
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  Klaffehn, A. L., Herbort, O., & Pfister, R. (2024). The fusion point of temporal binding: Promises and perils of multisensory accounts. Cognitive Psychology, 151, 101662. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101662
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  Reis, M., Foerster, A., Zettler, I., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2024). Sticky tradition impedes selection of creative ideas. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(1), 268–273. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001490
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  Grießbach, E., Raßbach, P., Herbort, O., & Ca~n}}al-Bruland, R. (2024). Dual-tasking modulates movement speed but not value-based choices during walking. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 6342. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-56937-y
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  Value-based decision-making often occurs in multitasking scenarios relying on both cognitive and motor processes. Yet, laboratory experiments often isolate these processes, thereby neglecting potential interactions. This isolated approach reveals a dichotomy: the cognitive process by which reward influences decision-making is capacity-limited, whereas the influence of motor cost is free of such constraints. If true, dual-tasking should predominantly impair reward processing but not affect the impact of motor costs. To test this hypothesis, we designed a decision-making task in which participants made choices to walk toward targets for rewards while navigating past an obstacle. The motor cost to reach these rewards varied in real-time. Participants either solely performed the decision-making task, or additionally performed a secondary pitch-recall task. Results revealed that while both reward and motor costs influenced decision-making, the secondary task did not affect these factors. Instead, dual-tasking slowed down participants' walking, thereby reducing the overall reward rate. Hence, contrary to the prediction that the added cognitive demand would affect the weighing of reward or motor cost differentially, these processes seem to be maintained at the expense of slowing down the motor system. This slowdown may be indicative of interference at the locomotor level, thereby underpinning motor-cognitive interactions during decision-making.
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  Vogel-Blaschka, D., Kunde, W., Herbort, O., & Scherbaum, S. (2024). Ideonamic: An integrative computational dynamic model of ideomotor learning and effect-based action control. Psychological Review, 131(1), 79–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000460
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  Herbort, O., Raßbach, P., & Kunde, W. (2024). Where scrollbars are clicked, and why. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 9(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-024-00551-z
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  Herbort, O., Raßbach, P., & Kunde, W. (2024). Where scrollbars are clicked, and why. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 9, 23. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-024-00551-z
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  Scrolling is a widely used mean to interact with visual displays, usually to move content to a certain target location on the display. Understanding how user scroll might identify potentially suboptimal use and allows to infer users'intentions. In the present study, we examined where users click on a scrollbar depending on the intended scrolling action. In two online experiments, click positions were systematically adapted to the intended scrolling action. Click position selection could not be explained as strict optimization of the distance traveled with the cursor, memory load, or motor-cognitive factors. By contrast, for identical scrolling actions click positions strongly depended on the context and on previous scrolls. The behavior of our participants closely resembled behavior observed for manipulation of other physical devices and suggested a simple heuristic of movement planning. The results have implications for modeling human--computer interaction and may contribute to predicting user behavior.
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  Grießbach, E., Raßbach, P., Herbort, O., & Cañal-Bruland, R. (2024). Dual-tasking modulates movement speed but not value-based choices during walking. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 6342-6342. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-56937-y
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  Value-based decision-making often occurs in multitasking scenarios relying on both cognitive and motor processes. Yet, laboratory experiments often isolate these processes, thereby neglecting potential interactions. This isolated approach reveals a dichotomy: the cognitive process by which reward influences decision-making is capacity-limited, whereas the influence of motor cost is free of such constraints. If true, dual-tasking should predominantly impair reward processing but not affect the impact of motor costs. To test this hypothesis, we designed a decision-making task in which participants made choices to walk toward targets for rewards while navigating past an obstacle. The motor cost to reach these rewards varied in real-time. Participants either solely performed the decision-making task, or additionally performed a secondary pitch-recall task. Results revealed that while both reward and motor costs influenced decision-making, the secondary task did not affect these factors. Instead, dual-tasking slowed down participants' walking, thereby reducing the overall reward rate. Hence, contrary to the prediction that the added cognitive demand would affect the weighing of reward or motor cost differentially, these processes seem to be maintained at the expense of slowing down the motor system. This slowdown may be indicative of interference at the locomotor level, thereby underpinning motor-cognitive interactions during decision-making.
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  Arunkumar, M., Rothermund, K., Kunde, W., Mocke, V., & Giesen, C. G. (2024). Cling together, swing together? Assessing indirect retrieval of stimulus-response bindings for associated stimuli. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02525-0
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  When a stimulus is paired with a response, a stimulus-response (SR) binding (or event file) is formed. Subsequent stimulus repetition retrieves the SR binding from memory, which facilitates (impedes) performance when the same (a different) response is required. We aimed to explore whether indirect retrieval of SR bindings by a newly learnt associated stimulus is possible. Participants first went through a learning task to acquire novel stimulus-stimulus associations. The same stimulus pairs were then presented in a prime-probe task to assess direct and indirect retrieval effects. Participants responded by classifying word color in prime and probe trials. Probe words were either identical to prime words (test for direct retrieval) or corresponded to the associated stimulus (test for indirect retrieval) or were unrelated words (baseline). Independently of word relation, response relation (repetition vs. change) across prime and probe trials was manipulated. In two highly powered preregistered studies (total N = 260) using different types of stimulus associations, we obtained evidence for direct retrieval due to identical word repetition in the probe. Crucially, evidence for indirect retrieval upon presentation of an associated probe word was absent. Controlling for memory of each stimulus-stimulus association did not alter the findings. Our results show that indirect retrieval through newly acquired associations does not occur at the level of SR bindings, at least not for recently acquired stimulus-stimulus associations. Our study illustrates the scope of binding principles and highlights boundary conditions for the stimulus properties that can elicit automatic response retrieval.

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  Krause, L.-M., & Herbort, O. (2023). Just visual context or part of the gesture? The role of arm orientation in bent pointing interpretation. Acta Psychologica, 241, 104062. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.104062
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  Pointing gestures can take on different shapes. For example, people often point with a bent wrist at a referent that is occluded by another object. We hypothesized that while the extrapolation of the index finger is the most important visual cue in such bent pointing gestures, arm orientation is affecting interpretations as well. We tested two competing hypotheses. First, the arm could be processed as a less reliable but additional direction cue also indicating the referent. Consequently, the index finger extrapolation would be biased towards the arm direction (assimilation effect). Second, the arm could be perceived as visual context of the index finger, leading to an interpretation that is repulsed from the arm direction (contrast effect). To differentiate between both, we conducted two experiments in which arm and finger orientation of a virtual pointer were independently manipulated. Participants were asked to determine the pointed-at location. As expected, participants based their interpretations on the extrapolation of the index finger. In line with the second hypothesis, the more the arm was oriented upwards, the lower the point was interpreted and vice versa. Thus, interpretation pattern indicated a contrast effect. Unexpectedly, gestures with aligned arm and index finger deviated from the general contrast effect and were interpreted linearly compared to bent gestures. In sum, the experiments show that interpretations of bent pointing gestures are not only based on the direction of the index finger but also depend on the arm orientation and its relationship to the index finger orientation.
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  Mocke, V., Benini, E., Parmar, J., Schiltenwolf, M., & Kunde, W. (2023). What is behind partial repetition costs? Event-files do not fully occupy bound feature codes. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30, 1463–1474. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02253-x
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  Feature binding accounts state that features of perceived and produced events are bound into event-files. Performance while responding to an event is impaired when some, as opposed to all or none, of this event's features already belong to a previous event-file. While these partial repetition costs are generally considered to be indicators of feature binding, their cause is still unclear. Possibly, features are fully occupied when bound in an event-file and must be unbound in a time-consuming process before they can enter a novel event-file. In this study, we tested this code occupation account. Participants responded to the font color (target) of a word (distractor) by pressing one of three keys (response) while ignoring the word meaning. We measured partial repetition costs from prime to probe while introducing an intermediate trial. We compared sequences in which this intermediate trial did not repeat any prime features and sequences in which it repeated either the prime response or distractor. Partial repetition costs occurred in the probe, even when one (vs. none) of the prime features repeated in the intermediate trial, although significantly reduced. Thus, single bindings do not fully occupy feature codes. By ruling out a possible mechanism behind partial repetition costs, the present study contributes to the further specification of feature binding accounts.
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  Pfister, R., Schwarz, K. A., Holzmann, P., Reis, M., Yogeeswaran, K., & Kunde, W. (2023). Headlines win elections: Mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior. PLOS ONE, 18(8), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289341
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  Repeatedly encountering a stimulus biases the observer’s affective response and evaluation of the stimuli. Here we provide evidence for a causal link between mere exposure to fictitious news reports and subsequent voting behavior. In four pre-registered online experiments, participants browsed through newspaper webpages and were tacitly exposed to names of fictitious politicians. Exposure predicted voting behavior in a subsequent mock election, with a consistent preference for frequent over infrequent names, except when news items were decidedly negative. Follow-up analyses indicated that mere media presence fuels implicit personality theories regarding a candidate’s vigor in political contexts. News outlets should therefore be mindful to cover political candidates as evenly as possible.
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  Hoogeveen, S., Sarafoglou, A., Aczel, B., Aditya, Y., Alayan, A. J., Allen, P. J., Altay, S., Alzahawi, S., Amir, Y., Anthony, F.-V., Appiah, O. K., Atkinson, Q. D., Baimel, A., Balkaya-Ince, M., Balsamo, M., Banker, S., Bartoš, F., Becerra, M., Beffara, B., … Dean, K. K. (2023). A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 13(3), 237-283. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599x.2022.2070255
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  Abubshait, A., Weis, P. P., Momen, A., & Wiese, E. (2023). Perceptual discrimination in the face perception of robots is attenuated compared to humans. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 16708. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42510-6
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  When interacting with groups of robots, we tend to perceive them as a homogenous group where all group members have similar capabilities. This overgeneralization of capabilities is potentially due to a lack of perceptual experience with robots or a lack of motivation to see them as individuals (i.e., individuation). This can undermine trust and performance in human--robot teams. One way to overcome this issue is by designing robots that can be individuated such that each team member can be provided tasks based on its actual skills. In two experiments, we examine if humans can effectively individuate robots: Experiment 1 (n{\thinspace}={\thinspace}225) investigates how individuation performance of robot stimuli compares to that of human stimuli that either belong to a social ingroup or outgroup. Experiment 2 (n{\thinspace}={\thinspace}177) examines to what extent robots' physical human-likeness (high versus low) affects individuation performance. Results show that although humans are able to individuate robots, they seem to individuate them to a lesser extent than both ingroup and outgroup human stimuli (Experiment 1). Furthermore, robots that are physically more humanlike are initially individuated better compared to robots that are physically less humanlike; this effect, however, diminishes over the course of the experiment, suggesting that the individuation of robots can be learned quite quickly (Experiment 2). Whether differences in individuation performance with robot versus human stimuli is primarily due to a reduced perceptual experience with robot stimuli or due to motivational aspects (i.e., robots as potential social outgroup) should be examined in future studies.
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  Reis, M., Pfister, R., & Foerster, A. (2023). Cognitive load promotes honesty. Psychological Research, 87(3), 826-844. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-022-01686-8
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  In three experiments, we examined the cognitive underpinnings of self-serving dishonesty by manipulating cognitive load under different incentive structures. Participants could increase a financial bonus by misreporting outcomes of private die rolls without any risk of detection. At the same time, they had to remember letter strings of varying length. If honesty is the automatic response tendency and dishonesty is cognitively demanding, lying behavior should be less evident under high cognitive load. This hypothesis was supported by the outcome of two out of three experiments. We further manipulated whether all trials or only one random trial determined payoff to modulate reward adaptation over time (Experiment 2) and whether payoff was framed as a financial gain or loss (Experiment 3). The payoff scheme of one random or all trials did not affect lying behavior and, discordant to earlier research, facing losses instead of gains did not increase lying behavior. Finally, cognitive load and incentive frame interacted significantly, but contrary to our assumption gains increased lying under low cognitive load. While the impact of cognitive load on dishonesty appears to be comparably robust, motivational influences seem to be more elusive than commonly assumed in current theorizing.
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  Herbort, O., & Krause, L.-M. (2023). The efficiency of augmented pointing with and without speech in a collaborative virtual environment. In V. G. Duffy (Ed.), Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics and Risk Management. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, (Vols. 14028). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35741-1_37
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  Pointing is a ubiquitous part of human communication. However, pointing gestures to distal referents are often misunderstood systematically, which may limit the usefulness of pointing.We examined pointing-based communication in a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) to address three questions. First, we wanted to evaluate the potential of apparently natural but technically augmented pointing in CVEs, such as presenting a warped pointer for increased legibility or the ability to assume the pointer’s perspective. Second, we wanted to test whether technical improvements in pointing accuracy also facilitate communication if pointing is accompanied by speech. Third, we wanted to check whether pointing accuracy is correlated with the efficiency of communication involving pointing and speech. An experiment revealed that pointing-based communication has considerable potential to be enhanced in CVEs, albeit the specific augmentation procedure we employed did not improve pointing-based communication. Importantly, improvements in pointing accuracy also facilitated communication when speech was allowed. Thereby, speech reduced but could not rule out misunderstandings. Finally, even a small gain in pointing accuracy allowed participants to agree on a referent faster. In summary, the experiment suggests that augmented pointing may considerably improve interactions in CVEs. Moreover, speech cannot fully compensate misunderstandings of pointing gestures and relatively small differences in pointing accuracy affect the efficiency of communication of speech is allowed.
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  Reis, M., Pfister, R., Kunde, W., & Foerster, A. (2023). Creative thinking does not promote dishonesty. Royal Society Open Science, 10(12), Article 12. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230879
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  Reis, M., Pfister, R., & Schwarz, K. A. (2023). The value of control. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 36(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2325
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  Schaaf, M., Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2023). Time expectancies in dual tasking: Evidence for proactive resource sharing?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(8), 1123-1131. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0001141
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  The present study explored whether dual-task performance is affected by deviations from the expected time point of a secondary task. In two psychological refractory period experiments, participants responded to two tasks, separated by either a short or long delay. In contrast to traditional dual-tasking studies, however, the identity of Task 1 probabilistically predicted the delay after which Task 2 would occur. Violations of these expectations impaired performance in both Task 2 and Task 1. For Task 2, this effect was more pronounced when Task 2 occurred unexpectedly early, while for Task 1, it was more pronounced when Task 2 occurred unexpectedly late. The results are consistent with the notion that processing resources can be shared, and that even in the absence of Task 2, some resources are withheld from Task 1, based on early available Task 1 features.
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  Schreiner, M. R., Meiser, T., & Bröder, A. (2023). The binding structure of event elements in episodic memory and the role of animacy. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76(4), 705-730. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221096148
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  Schreiner, M. R., & Hütter, M. (2023). The influence of social status on memory: No evidence for effects of social status on event element binding. Social Cognition, 41(5), 447–466. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2023.41.5.447
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  Schreiner, M. R., & Meiser, T. (2023). Measuring binding effects in event-based episodic representations. Behavior Research Methods, 55, 981-996. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01769-1
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  Schreiner, M. R., Mercier, B., Frick, S., Wiwad, D., Schmitt, M. C., Kelly, J. M., & Quevedo Pütter, J. (2023). Measurement issues in the many analysts religion project. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 13(3), 339-341. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2070260
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  Schroeder, P. A., Mayer, K., Wirth, R., & Svaldi, J. (2023). Playing with temptation: Stopping abilities to chocolate are superior, but also more extensive. Appetite, 181, 106383. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106383
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  Cue-specific inhibitory control is assumed to support balanced food intake, but previous studies with established measures showed inconsistent results. We developed a novel kinematic stop task in virtual reality (VR) and report results from trajectory recordings. The primary objective of this explorative study was to assess the interrelationships between validated measures of food-related inhibitory control and novel measures from the VR task. We hypothesized that healthy female participants show worse inhibitory control when grasping attractive virtual chocolate, compared to non-edible color-and-shape matched objects. We further aimed to quantify the construct validity of kinematic measures (e.g., reaching extent/spatial displacement, movement time after stop-signal, velocity) with established measures of inhibitory control in a keyboard-based adaptive stop-signal task (SST). In total, 79 females with varying levels of chocolate craving participated in an experimental study consisting of self-report questionnaires, subjective chocolate craving, the conventional SST and the kinematic task in VR. Results showed superior stopping ability to chocolate in both tasks. In VR, participants successfully interrupted an initiated approach trajectory but terminated slightly closer to chocolate targets. Stop-signal delay (SSD) was adapted relative to movement onset and appeared later in chocolate trials, during which participants still stopped faster, as was also confirmed by shorter stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) in the conventional task. Yet, SSRT did not correlate with stopping in VR. Moreover, SSRT was related to depressive symptoms whereas measures from VR were related to chocolate craving and subjective hunger. Thus, VR stopping can provide deeper insights into healthy weight individuals’ capacity to inhibit cue-specific approach behavior towards appetitive stimuli in simulated interactions. Furthermore, the results support a multi-faceted view of food-specific inhibitory control and behavioral impulsivity.
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  Weis, P. P., & Kunde, W. (2023). Primacy Effects in Extended Cognitive Strategy Choice: Initial Speed Benefits Outweigh Later Speed Benefits. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187208231195747
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  Weis, P. P., & Kunde, W. (2023). Overreliance on inefficient computer-mediated information retrieval is countermanded by strategy advice that promotes memory-mediated retrieval. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 8(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-023-00526-6
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  Wirth, R., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2023). Following affirmative and negated rules. Cognitive Science, 47(11), e13378. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13378
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  Rules are often stated in a negated manner (“no trespassing”) rather than in an affirmative manner (“stay in your lane”). Here, we build on classic research on negation processing and, using a finger-tracking design on a touchscreen, we show that following negated rather than affirmative rules is harder as indicated by multiple performance measures. Moreover, our results indicate that practice has a surprisingly limited effect on negated rules, which are implemented more quickly with training, but this effect comes at the expense of reduced efficiency. Only affirmative rules are thus put into action efficiently, highlighting the importance of tailoring how rules are communicated to the peculiarities of the human mind.
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  Herbort, O., & Krause, L.-M. (2023). The Efficiency of Augmented Pointing with and Without Speech in a Collaborative Virtual Environment (V. G. Duffy, Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35741-1_37
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  Wirth, R., Tonn, S., Schaaf, M., Koch, I., & Kunde, W. (2023). Sequential adaptation to modality incompatibility. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(10), 1360–1376. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0001149
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  Modality-compatible stimulus–response mappings (e.g., responding vocally to an auditory stimulus and manually to a visual stimulus) are often easier to perform than modality-incompatible sets (reversed modality mappings). Here, we investigate sequential, trial-to-trial, modulations of modality compatibility effects. By reanalyzing a previous experiment and conducting two specifically tailored, new experiments, we demonstrate robust within-task sequential modulations. Furthermore, we test for between-task adaptations by intermixing the modality switching task with a Simon task. Results show reliable sequential adaptations within the modality switching task, but no transfer of adaptation between tasks in either direction. We discuss how a combination of prominent theoretical accounts such as conflict adaptation and episodic binding can serve as the cognitive underpinnings of the observed sequential adaptations.
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  Ellinghaus, R., Janczyk, M., Wirth, R., Kunde, W., Fischer, R., & Liepelt, R. (2023). Opposing influences of global and local stimulus-hand proximity on crosstalk interference in dual tasks. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76(11), 2461-2478. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231157548
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  In contrast to traditional dualistic views of cognition, visual stimulus processing appears not independent of bodily factors such as hand positioning. For example, reduced crosstalk between two temporally overlapping tasks has been observed when the hands are moved into the attentional window alongside their respective stimuli (i.e., establishing global stimulus-hand proximity). This result indicates that hand-specific attentional processing enhancements support a more serial rather than parallel processing of the two tasks. To further elucidate the nature of these processing modulations and their effect on multitasking performance, the present study consisted of three interrelated crosstalk experiments. Experiment 1 manipulated global stimulus-hand proximity and stimulus-effect proximity orthogonally, with results demonstrating that hand proximity rather than effect proximity drives the crosstalk reduction. Experiment 2 manipulated the physical distance between both hands (i.e., varying local stimulus-hand proximity), with results showing weak evidence of increased crosstalk when both hands are close to each other. Experiment 3 tested opposing influences of global and local stimulus-hand proximity as observed in Experiment 1 and 2 rigorously within one experiment, by employing an orthogonal manipulation of these two proximity measures. Again, we observed slightly increased crosstalk for hands close to each other (replicating Experiment 2); however, in contrast to Experiment 1, the effect of global stimulus-hand proximity on the observed crosstalk was not significant this time. Taken together, the experiments support the notion of hand-specific modulations of perception-action coupling, which can either lead to more or less interference in multitasking, depending on the exact arrangement of hands and stimuli.
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  Daria Dołżycka, J., Nikadon, J., Weis, P. P., Herbert, C., & Formanowicz, M. (2023). Linguistic and emotional responses evoked by pseudoword presentation: An EEG and behavioral study. Brain and Cognition, 168, 105973. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2023.105973
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  Gregori, A., Amici, F., Brilmayer, I., Ćwiek, A., Fritzsche, L., Fuchs, S., Henlein, A., Herbort, O., Kügler, F., Lemanski, J., Liebal, K., Lücking, A., Mehler, A., Nguyen, K. T., Pouw, W., Prieto, P., Rohrer, P. L., Sánchez-Ramón, P. G., Schulte-Rüther, M., … von Eiff, C. I. (2023). A Roadmap for Technological Innovation in Multimodal Communication Research. In V. G. Duffy (Ed.), Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics and Risk Management. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vols. 14029, pp. 402-438). Springer. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35748-0_30
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  Grießbach, E., Raßbach, P., Herbort, O., & Ca~n}}al-Bruland, R. (2023). Embodied decision biases: individually stable across different tasks?. Experimental Brain Research, 241(4), 1053-1064. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-023-06591-z
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  In everyday life, action and decision-making often run in parallel. Action-based models argue that action and decision-making strongly interact and, more specifically, that action can bias decision-making. This embodied decision bias is thought to originate from changes in motor costs and/or cognitive crosstalk. Recent research confirmed embodied decision biases for different tasks including walking and manual movements. Yet, whether such biases generalize within individuals across different tasks remains to be determined. To test this, we used two different decision-making tasks that have independently been shown to reliably produce embodied decision biases. In a within-participant design, participants performed two tasks in a counterbalanced fashion: (i) a walking paradigm for which it is known that motor costs systematically influence reward decisions, and (ii) a manual movement task in which motor costs and cognitive crosstalk have been shown to impact reward decisions. In both tasks, we successfully replicated the predicted embodied decision biases. However, there was no evidence that the strength of the biases correlated between tasks. Hence, our findings do not confirm that embodied decision biases transfer between tasks. Future research is needed to examine whether this lack of transfer may be due to different causes underlying the impact of motor costs on decisions and the impact of cognitive crosstalk or task-specific differences.
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  Foerster, A., Pfister, R., Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2023). Post-execution monitoring in dishonesty. Psychological Research, 87(3), 845-861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-022-01691-x
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  When telling a lie, humans might engage in stronger monitoring of their behavior than when telling the truth. Initial evidence has indeed pointed towards a stronger recruitment of capacity-limited monitoring processes in dishonest than honest responding, conceivably resulting from the necessity to overcome automatic tendencies to respond honestly. Previous results suggested monitoring to be confined to response execution, however, whereas the current study goes beyond these findings by specifically probing for post-execution monitoring. Participants responded (dis)honestly to simple yes/no questions in a first task and switched to an unrelated second task after a response--stimulus interval of 0 ms or 1000 ms. Dishonest responses did not only prolong response times in Task 1, but also in Task 2 with a short response--stimulus interval. These findings support the assumption that increased monitoring for dishonest responses extends beyond mere response execution, a mechanism that is possibly tuned to assess the successful completion of a dishonest act.

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  Grießbach, E., Raßbach, P., Herbort, O., & Cañal-Bruland, R. (2022). Embodied decisions during walking. Journal of Neurophysiology, 128(5), 1207–1223. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00149.2022
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  Mocke, V., Holzmann, P., Hommel, B., & Kunde, W. (2022). Beyond Left and Right: Binding and Retrieval of Spatial and Temporal Features of Planned Actions. Journal of Cognition, 5(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.197
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  There is evidence that planning an action relies on binding codes of the relevant features of that action into an action plan. Such binding is indicated by the observation that planning a novel action is impaired if it shares some but not all features with another action that is held in memory for later execution. Most previous studies have focused on the binding of the spatial features left and right, which are particularly salient but not the only features of intentional body movements. In a series of four online experiments, we tested whether evidence for the binding of other (non)spatial features could also be found. Taken together, we indeed obtained evidence for the binding of temporal (short and long) and vertical (top and bottom) features, in addition to the commonly studied horizontal features (left and right). Yet, clear binding effects were mainly restricted to action features that remained uncertain up to the point the respective action had to be planned. These observations have important theoretical and methodical implications for the future studies of feature binding in action planning.
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  Muth, F. V., Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2022). Temporal Binding in Multi-Step Action-Event Sequences is Driven by Altered Effect Perception. Consciousness and Cognition, 99, 103299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2022.103299
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  The perceived compression of the interval between a voluntary action and a subsequent consequence is termed temporal binding and serves as an implicit measure for sense of agency. In everyday life, oftentimes multiple actions are required for goal attainment, i.e., a multi-step sequence of actions has to be performed to evoke the desired effect. However, present-day research mainly assesses the sense of agency for single actions and effects. Preliminary research on the sense of agency in longer action-event sequences is inconclusive. To fill this gap, we studied temporal binding in multi-step action-event sequences. In two experiments (free and forced choice), we employed a temporal binding paradigm in which participants had to press two keys to evoke the corresponding effects. Overall compression of the interval between actions and effects was driven by strong effect binding for both effects, while there was no significant action binding in either of the experiments.
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  Reis, M., & Pfister, R. (2022). Being Observed Does Not Boost Rule Retrieval. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 18(3), 173–178. https://doi.org/10.5709/acp-0359-8
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  Reis, M., Weller, L., & Muth, F. V. (2022). To follow or not to follow: Influence of valence and consensus on the sense of agency. Consciousness and Cognition, 102, 103347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2022.103347
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  Schaaf, M., Kunde, W., & Wirth, R. (2022). Monitoring goal-irrelevant effects interferes with concurrent tasks. Acta Psychologica, 224, 103522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103522
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  Our actions cause manifold environmental changes. Monitoring these action effects serves at least two vital functions: While the validation of currently relevant effects assesses goal-achievement, screening for currently irrelevant effects accumulates knowledge about potential action-effect relationships. However, monitoring the perceptual consequences of our actions presumably impairs performance in concurrent tasks. Here, we investigated how effect relevance modulates monitoring costs by manipulating instructions in three dual-task experiments. We found performance decreases not only after validation of goal-relevant action effects but to a smaller extent also after screening of goal-irrelevant action effects. These results suggest that effect monitoring is a rather fundamental limitation of dual tasking.
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  Schaaf, M., Kunde, W., & Wirth, R. (2022). Evidence for initially independent monitoring of responses and response effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 48(2), 128-138. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000979
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  To act successfully, agents must monitor whether their behavior reached predicted effects. As deviations from predicted effects can result from own behavior (response-errors) or from circumstantial unreliabil- ity (effect-errors), both the own efferent activities and the accomplished environmental outcomes must be monitored. In three experiments, we examined response monitoring and effect monitoring using a dual-task setup. Task 1 consisted of a three-choice flanker task and effects were displayed after the response. Crucially, in some of the trials, an incorrect effect was displayed after a correct response, whereas in other trials, a correct effect was displayed after an incorrect response. This disentangled response-errors and effect-errors. Task 2 was a simple discrimination task and served to measure the monitoring process. Task 2 responses slowed down after both response-errors and effect-errors in Task 1. These influences were additive, suggesting two independent monitoring processes: one for responses, capturing errors in efferent activities, and one for response effects, checking for environment-related irregularities.
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  Grießbach, E., Herbort, O., & Cañal-Bruland, R. (2022). Wechselwirkung von motorischen und kognitiven Prozessen in hierarchisch organisiertem Verhalten: Vol. Kognition und Motorik – Sportpsychologische Grundlagen und Anwendungen im Sport (S. Klatt & B. Strauß, Eds.; pp. 46-58). Hogrefe Verlag.
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  Schwarz, K. A., Klaffehn, A. L., Hauke-Forman, N., Muth, F. V., & Pfister, R. (2022). Never run a changing system: Action-effect contingency shapes prospective agency. Cognition, 229, 105250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105250
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  Weis, P. P., & Herbert, C. (2022). Do I still like myself? Human-robot collaboration entails emotional consequences. Computers in Human Behavior, 127, 107060. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.107060
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  Weis, P. P., Nikadon, J., Herbert, C., & Formanowicz, M. (2022). The verb--self link: An implicit association test study. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29(5), 1946-1959. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02105-0
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  Agency is defined as the ability to assign and pursue goals. Given people's focus on achieving their own goals, agency has been found to be strongly linked to the self. In two studies (N = 168), we examined whether this self--agency link is visible from a linguistic perspective. As the preferred grammatical category to convey agency is verbs, we hypothesize that, in the Implicit Association Test (IAT), verbs (vs. nouns) would be associated more strongly with the self (vs. others). Our results confirmed this hypothesis. Participants exhibited particularly fast responses when reading self-related stimuli (e.g., ``me'' or ``my'') and verb stimuli (e.g., ``deflect'' or ``contemplate'') both necessitated pressing an identical rather than different response keys in the IAT (d = .25). The finding connects two streams of literature---on the link between agency and verbs and on the link between self and agency---suggesting a triad between self, agency, and verbs. We argue that this verb--self link (1) opens up new perspectives for understanding linguistic expressions of agency and (2) expands our understanding of how word choice impacts socio-cognitive processing.
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  Wiese, E., Weis, P. P., Bigman, Y., Kapsaskis, K., & Gray, K. (2022). It’s a Match: Task Assignment in Human--Robot Collaboration Depends on Mind Perception. International Journal of Social Robotics, 14(1), 141-148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-021-00771-z
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  Robots are becoming more available for workplace collaboration, but many questions remain. Are people actually willing to assign collaborative tasks to robots? And if so, exactly which tasks will they assign to what kinds of robots? Here we leverage psychological theories on person-job fit and mind perception to investigate task assignment in human--robot collaborative work. We propose that people will assign robots to jobs based on their ``perceived mind,'' and also that people will show predictable social biases in their collaboration decisions. In this study, participants performed an arithmetic (i.e., calculating differences) and a social (i.e., judging emotional states) task, either alone or by collaborating with one of two robots: an emotionally capable robot or an emotionally incapable robot. Decisions to collaborate (i.e., to assign the robots to generate the answer) rates were high across all trials, especially for tasks that participants found challenging (i.e., the arithmetic task). Collaboration was predicted by perceived robot-task fit, such that the emotional robot was assigned the social task. Interestingly, the arithmetic task was assigned more to the emotionally incapable robot, despite the emotionally capable robot being equally capable of computation. This is consistent with social biases (e.g., gender bias) in mind perception and person-job fit. The theoretical and practical implications of this work for HRI are being discussed.

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  Raßbach, P., Grießbach, E., Cañal-Bruland, R., & Herbort, O. (2021). Deciding while moving: Cognitive interference biases value-based decisions. Acta Psychologica, 221, 103449. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103449
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  Klaffehn, A. L., Sellmann, F. B., Kirsch, W., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2021). Temporal binding as multisensory integration: Manipulating perceptual certainty of actions and their effects. Attention, Perception, {\&}amp\($\mathsemicolon$\) Psychophysics, 83(8), 3135-3145. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-021-02314-0
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  Grießbach, E., Incagli, F., Herbort, O., & Ca~n}}al-Bruland, R. (2021). Body dynamics of gait affect value-based decisions. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 11894. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91285-1
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  Choosing among different options typically entails weighing their anticipated costs and benefits. Previous research has predominantly focused on situations, where the costs and benefits of choices are known before an action is effectuated. Yet many decisions in daily life are made on the fly, for instance, making a snack choice while walking through the grocery store. Notably, the costs of actions change dynamically while moving. Therefore, in this study we examined whether the concurrent action dynamics of gait form part of and affect value-based decisions. In three experiments, participants had to decide which lateral (left vs. right) target (associated with different rewards) they would go to, while they were already walking. Results showed that the target choice was biased by the alternating stepping behavior, even at the expense of receiving less reward. These findings provide evidence that whole-body action dynamics affect value-based decisions.
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  Abubshait, A., Weis, P. P., & Wiese, E. (2021). Does Context Matter? Effects of Robot Appearance and Reliability on Social Attention Differs Based on Lifelikeness of Gaze Task. International Journal of Social Robotics, 13(5), 863-876. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00675-4
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  Social signals, such as changes in gaze direction, are essential cues to predict others' mental states and behaviors (i.e., mentalizing). Studies show that humans can mentalize with nonhuman agents when they perceive a mind in them (i.e., mind perception). Robots that physically and/or behaviorally resemble humans likely trigger mind perception, which enhances the relevance of social cues and improves social-cognitive performance. The current experiments examine whether the effect of physical and behavioral influencers of mind perception on social-cognitive processing is modulated by the lifelikeness of a social interaction. Participants interacted with robots of varying degrees of physical (humanlike vs. robot-like) and behavioral (reliable vs. random) human-likeness while the lifelikeness of a social attention task was manipulated across five experiments. The first four experiments manipulated lifelikeness via the physical realism of the robot images (Study 1 and 2), the biological plausibility of the social signals (Study 3), and the plausibility of the social context (Study 4). They showed that humanlike behavior affected social attention whereas appearance affected mind perception ratings. However, when the lifelikeness of the interaction was increased by using videos of a human and a robot sending the social cues in a realistic environment (Study 5), social attention mechanisms were affected both by physical appearance and behavioral features, while mind perception ratings were mainly affected by physical appearance. This indicates that in order to understand the effect of physical and behavioral features on social cognition, paradigms should be used that adequately simulate the lifelikeness of social interactions.
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  Krause, L.-M., & Herbort, O. (2021). The observer’s perspective determines which cues are used when interpreting pointing gestures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 47(9), 1209–1225. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000937
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  Krasich, K., Kim, J., Huffman, G., Klaffehn, A. L., & Brockmole, J. R. (2021). Does task-irrelevant music affect gaze allocation during real-world scene viewing?. Psychonomic Bulletin {\&}amp\($\mathsemicolon$\) Review, 28(6), 1944-1960. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01947-4
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  Herbort, O., Krause, L.-M., & Kunde, W. (2021). Perspective determines the production and interpretation of pointing gestures. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28(2), 641-648. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01823-7
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  Pointing is a ubiquitous means of communication. Nevertheless, observers systematically misinterpret the location indicated by pointers. We examined whether these misunderstandings result from the typically different viewpoints of pointers and observers. Participants either pointed themselves or interpreted points while assuming the pointer's or a typical observer perspective in a virtual reality environment. The perspective had a strong effect on the relationship between pointing gestures and referents, whereas the task had only a minor influence. This suggests that misunderstandings between pointers and observers primarily result from their typically different viewpoints.
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  Halicki, K. T., Ingendahl, M., Mayer, M., John, M., Schreiner, M. R., & Wänke, M. (2021). From which direction does the empire strike (back)?. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 625554. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.625554
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  Kirsch, W., Kunde, W., & Herbort, O. (2021). Impact of proprioception on the perceived size and distance of external objects in a virtual action task. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28(4), 1191-1201. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01915-y
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  Previous research has revealed changes in the perception of objects due to changes of object-oriented actions. In present study, we varied the arm and finger postures in the context of a virtual reaching and grasping task and tested whether this manipulation can simultaneously affect the perceived size and distance of external objects. Participants manually controlled visual cursors, aiming at reaching and enclosing a distant target object, and judged the size and distance of this object. We observed that a visual--proprioceptive discrepancy introduced during the reaching part of the action simultaneously affected the judgments of target distance and of target size (Experiment 1). A related variation applied to the grasping part of the action affected the judgments of size, but not of distance of the target (Experiment 2). These results indicate that perceptual effects observed in the context of actions can directly arise through sensory integration of multimodal redundant signals and indirectly through perceptual constancy mechanisms.
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  Tonn, S., Pfister, R., Klaffehn, A., Weller, L., & Schwarz, K. (2021). Two faces of temporal binding: Action- and effect-binding are not correlated. Consciousness and Cognition, 96, 103219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2021.103219
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  Weis, P. P., & Wiese, E. (2020). Investing in brain-based memory leads to decreased use of technology-based memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 26(3), 465–479. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000259
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  Dignath, D., Wirth, R., Kühnhausen, J., Gawrilow, C., Kunde, W., & Kiesel, A. (2020). Motivation drives conflict adaptation. Motivation Science, 6(1), 84-89. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000136
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  The notion that impaired performance in the past increases motivational vigor in the future is central to many modern theories. The conflict monitoring model predicts that conflict between incompatible responses reduces susceptibility to upcoming conflict. Recently, this conflict-adaptation effect has been reframed in terms of motivational control: Conflict in the past elicits negative affect, which can be reduced by increasing control, thereby alleviating future conflict and associated negative affect. While evidence supports that conflict adaptation serves a motivational purpose (e.g., affect regulation), it remains unclear whether conflict adaptation is actually triggered by motivational mechanisms. The present research tested this hypothesis of a motivational conflict-adaptation effect. We recorded contin- uous finger movements toward target stimuli and away from distractor stimuli. Motivational conflict was instigated by assigning reward and penalty to stimuli that functioned either as targets or distractors. To index motivational vigor and increased precision due to motivation, we measured initiation times and spatial deviation from the shortest path to the target. Both a reanalysis of published data and data from a new replication study established a motivational conflict-adaptation effect. Together, the results extend a motivational control framework, showing that motivational dynamics (i.e., motivational conflicts) can be the driving force of control.
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  Muth, F. V., Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2020). Temporal binding past the Libet clock: testing design factors for an auditory timer. Behavior Research Methods, 53(3), 1322–1341. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01474-5
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  Voluntary actions and causally linked sensory stimuli are perceived to be shifted towards each other in time. This so-called temporal binding is commonly assessed in paradigms using the Libet Clock. In such experiments, participants have to estimate the timing of actions performed or ensuing sensory stimuli (usually tones) by means of a rotating clock hand presented on a screen. The aforementioned task setup is however ill-suited for many conceivable setups, especially when they involve visual effects. To address this shortcoming, the line of research presented here establishes an alternative measure for temporal binding by using a sequence of timed sounds. This method uses an auditory timer, a sequence of letters presented during task execution, which serve as anchors for temporal judgments. In four experiments, we manipulated four design factors of this auditory timer, namely interval length, interval filling, sequence predictability, and sequence length, to determine the most effective and economic method for measuring temporal binding with an auditory timer.
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  Mocke, V., Weller, L., Frings, C., Rothermund, K., & Kunde, W. (2020). Task relevance determines binding of effect features in action planning. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82, 3811-3831. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02123-x
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  Action planning can be construed as the temporary binding of features of perceptual action effects. While previous research demonstrated binding for task-relevant, body-related effect features, the role of task-irrelevant or environment-related effect features in action planning is less clear. Here, we studied whether task-relevance or body-relatedness determines feature binding in action planning. Participants planned an action A, but before executing it initiated an intermediate action B. Each action relied on a body-related effect feature (index vs. middle finger movement) and an environment-related effect feature (cursor movement towards vs. away from a reference object). In Experiments 1 and 2, both effects were task-relevant. Performance in action B suffered from partial feature overlap with action A compared to full feature repetition or alternation, which is in line with binding of both features while planning action A. Importantly, this cost disappeared when all features were available but only body-related features were task-relevant (Experiment 3). When only the environment-related effect of action A was known in advance, action B benefitted when it aimed at the same (vs. a different) environment-related effect (Experiment 4). Consequently, the present results support the idea that task relevance determines whether binding of body-related and environment-related effect features takes place while the pre-activation of environment-related features without binding them primes feature-overlapping actions.
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  Weis, P. P., & Wiese, E. (2020). Know Your Cognitive Environment! Mental Models as Crucial Determinant of Offloading Preferences. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 64(3), 499–513. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720820956861
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  Wirth, R., Foerster, A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2020). Design choices: Empirical recommendations for designing two-dimensional finger-tracking experiments. Behavior Research Methods, 52, 2394-2416. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01409-0
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  The continuous tracking of mouse or finger movements has become an increasingly popular research method for investigating cognitive and motivational processes such as decision-making, action-planning, and executive functions. In the present paper, we evaluate and discuss how apparently trivial design choices of researchers may impact participants’ behavior and, consequently, a study’s results. We first provide a thorough comparison of mouse- and finger-tracking setups on the basis of a Simon task. We then vary a comprehensive set of design factors, including spatial layout, movement extent, time of stimulus onset, size of the target areas, and hit detection in a finger-tracking variant of this task. We explore the impact of these variations on a broad spectrum of movement parameters that are typically used to describe movement trajectories. Based on our findings, we suggest several recommendations for best practice that avoid some of the pitfalls of the methodology. Keeping these recommendations in mind will allow for informed decisions when planning and conducting future tracking experiments.
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  Wirth, R., Koch, I., & Kunde, W. (2020). Localizing modality compatibility effects: Evidence from dual-task interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 46(12), 1527-1537. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000873
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  Performance is typically superior with modality-compatible stimulus–response sets (e.g., responding vocally to auditory stimuli and manually to visual stimuli) than with modality-incompatible sets (e.g., responding vocally to visual stimuli and manually to auditory stimuli). Here we studied the information-processing stage at which these modality compatibility effects arise. In three experiments using a dual-task setup, we demonstrated that these compatibility effects arose (at least partly) prior to a capacity-limited central stage that is commonly believed to be the origin of dual-task costs. We suggest that demands to employ a specific effector system bias perceptual processing toward effector-compatible stimulus modalities.
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  Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2020). Feature~binding contributions to effect monitoring. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82(6), 3144-3157. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02036-9
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  Monitoring the perceptual effects of body movements is supposed to be a capacity-limited process that can interfere with processing of a concurrent task. Here we studied the contribution of feature binding to such effect monitoring interference. In three experiments, we varied the possibility of feature overlap between responses and effects in a primary task and responses in a secondary task. We show that responses in a secondary task are delayed when they partially, rather than completely, alternate or repeat features of responses/effects of a primary task. Yet, these partial feature repetition/alternation costs are small, and they occur on top of other factors that lengthen the critical effect monitoring process, such as the spatial compatibility of responses and effects in the primary task. The results thus show that feature binding contributes to, but cannot fully account for, delays in a secondary task caused by monitoring effects of a primary task.
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  Wiese, E., & Weis, P. P. (2020). It matters to me if you are human - Examining categorical perception in human and nonhuman agents. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 133, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.08.002
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  Pfister, R., Klaffehn, A. L., Kalckert, A., Kunde, W., & Dignath, D. (2020). How to lose a hand: Sensory updating drives disembodiment. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28(3), 827-833. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01854-0
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  Herbort, O., Krause, L.-M., & Kunde, W. (2020). Perspective determines the production and interpretation of pointing gestures. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28(2), 641–648. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01823-7
  • [ DOI ]
  • [ Download ]

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  Herbort, O., & Kunde, W. (2019). Precise movements in awkward postures: A direct test of the precision hypothesis of the end-state comfort effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(5), 681–696. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000639
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  Schwarz, K., Weller, L., Klaffehn, A., & Pfister, R. (2019). The effects of action choice on temporal binding, agency ratings, and their correlation. Consciousness and Cognition, 75, 102807. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2019.102807
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  Kirsch, W., Kunde, W., & Herbort, O. (2019). Intentional binding is unrelated to action intention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(3), 378–385. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000612
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  Weis, P. P., & Wiese, E. (2019). Problem Solvers Adjust Cognitive Offloading Based on Performance Goals. Cognitive Science, 43(12), Article 12. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12802
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  Klaffehn, A. L., Baess, P., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2019). Sensory attenuation prevails when controlling for temporal predictability of self- and externally generated tones. Neuropsychologia, 132, 107145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107145
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  Herbort, O., & Kunde, W. (2019). Emergence of anticipatory actions in a novel task. Experimental Brain Research, 237(6), 1421-1430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-019-05516-z
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  Humans normally adapt earlier segments of multistep motor actions in such a way that the execution of later segments is facilitated. For example, the kinematics of grasping movements are adapted to the requirements of the intended subsequent object manipulations. Here we studied which factors foster adaptation of earlier action segments to later ones in a novel task for which no prior experience existed. Participants executed a two-step isometric force production task, in which the force produced in the first segment determined the difficulty of the second segment. Adaptation of the first segment to the second one benefited from explicit knowledge of the dependency between both segments but not from extensive prior experience with the second segment. These observations show that adaptation of motor actions to subsequent actions demands the construction of a task representation that allows to plan the first action segment with respect to its successor. How specifically the first segment is tailored to the second one does not depend on prior experience with the second segment but depends on experience from performing the interdependent two-step action sequence.
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  Foerster, A., Wirth, R., Berghoefer, F. L., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2019). Capacity limitations of dishonesty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(6), 943-961. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000510
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  Cognitive theories of dishonesty revolve around an automatic activation of honest response tendencies, which is assumed to impair response selection for the intended dishonest response. Clear-cut evidence for the claim is still limited, however. We therefore present a novel approach to dishonest responding that takes advantage of psychological refractory period methodology. Four experiments yielded evidence supporting the assumption of prolonged response selection during dishonest responding. Moreover, they also showed differences in early response activation and they revealed additional downstream conse- quences of this behavior that are currently not sufficiently covered by common theoretical models. Notably, these downstream consequences included increased monitoring relative to honest behavior. Our results thus provide an extensive coverage of the cognitive architecture of dishonest responses, informing current theorizing while simultaneously grounding the assumed processes in the framework of sensori- motor stage models of information processing.
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  Huestegge, L., Herbort, O., Gosch, N., Kunde, W., & Pieczykolan, A. (2019). Free-choice saccades and their underlying determinants: Explorations of high-level voluntary oculomotor control. Journal of Vision, 19(3), 14. https://doi.org/10.1167/19.3.14
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  Herbort, O., Kirsch, W., & Kunde, W. (2019). Grasp planning for object manipulation without simulation of the object manipulation action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(2), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000602
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  Dignath, D., Herbort, O., Pieczykolan, A., Huestegge, L., & Kiesel, A. (2019). Flexible coupling of covert spatial attention and motor planning based on learned spatial contingencies. Psychological Research, 83(3), 476-484. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1134-0
  • [ Abstract ]
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  The present study tested whether the coupling of covert attentional shifts and motor planning of pointing movements can be modulated by learning. Participants performed two tasks. As a primary movement task, they executed a pointing movement to a movement target (MT) location. As a secondary visual attention task, they identified a discrimination target (DT) that was presented shortly before initiation of the pointing movement. These DTs either occurred at the same or at different locations with the MT. A common finding in such and similar settings is the enhanced visual target identification when locations of MT and DT coincide. However, it is not known which factors govern the flexibility of spatial attention--action coupling. Here, we tested the influence of previously learned spatial contingencies between MT and DT on the coupling of covert attention and motor planning. These contingencies were manipulated in three groups (always same locations, always opposite locations, non-contingent locations) in a training session. Results indicated that in a subsequent test phase, previously learned contingencies enhanced visual identification accordingly, even when targets for the movement task and the visual task were presented at opposite sides. These results corroborate previous findings of a rather flexible interaction of attention and motor planning, and demonstrate how one can learn to control attention by means of motor planning.
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  Wirth, R., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2019). How not to fall for the white bear: Combined frequency and recency manipulations diminish negation effects on overt behavior. Journal of Cognition, 2(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.62
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  Processing negated mental representations comes with a price: Not only are negations harder to resolve than affirmative statements, but they may even invoke ironic effects, producing the exact opposite of the intended outcome. Negation effects also behave ironically when subjected to high-frequency training; when they are confronted often, the difficulty to process ­ negations strangely increases. Here we show that negation effects can be mitigated under certain circumstances. Based on models of cognitive control and conflict adaptation, we hypothesized that negation effects diminish when two criteria are met: negations have to be resolved not only frequently, but also just recently. We confirmed this prediction in two experiments by using an innovative, two dimensional finger tracking design, in which we measured the influence of the original semantic content during negation processing via temporal and spatial measures. Negation effects were present throughout the experiment, but were reduced after recent negations, particularly during or after a high-frequency negation context. The combined influence of frequency and recency thus seems to be the most successful and promising attempt to mitigate ironic negation effects on overt behavior.
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  Pfister, R., Wirth, R., Weller, L., Foerster, A., & Schwarz, K. A. (2019). Taking shortcuts: Cognitive conflict during motivated rule-breaking. Journal of Economic Psychology, 71, 138-147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2018.06.005
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  Deliberate rule violations have typically been addressed from a motivational perspective that asked whether or not agents decide to violate rules based on contextual factors and moral con- siderations. Here we complement motivational approaches by providing a cognitive perspective on the processes that operate during the act of committing an unsolicited rule violation. Participants were tested in a task that allowed for violating traffic rules by exploiting forbidden shortcuts in a virtual city maze. Results yielded evidence for sustained cognitive conflict that affected performance from right before a violation throughout actually committing the violation. These findings open up a new theoretical perspective on violation behavior that focuses on processes occurring right at the moment a rule violation takes place.

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  Foerster, A., Pfister, R., Schmidts, C., Dignath, D., Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2018). Focused cognitive control in dishonesty: Evidence for predominantly transient conflict adaptation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44(4), 578-602. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000480
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  Giving a dishonest response to a question entails cognitive conflict due to an initial activation of the truthful response. Following conflict monitoring theory, dishonest responding could therefore elicit transient and sustained control adaptation processes to mitigate such conflict, and the current experiments take on the scope and specificity of such conflict adaptation in dishonesty. Transient adaptation reduces differences between honest and dishonest responding following a recent dishonest response. Sustained adaptation has a similar behavioral signature but is driven by the overall frequency of dishonest responding. Both types of adaptation to recent and frequent dishonest responses have been separately documented, leaving open whether control processes in dishonest responding can flexibly adapt to transient and sustained conflict signals of dishonest and other actions. This was the goal of the present experiments which studied (dis) honest responding to autobiographical yes/no questions. Experiment 1 showed robust transient adaptation to recent dishonest responses whereas sustained control adaptation failed to exert an influence on behavior. It further revealed that transient effects may create a spurious impression of sustained adaptation in typical experimental settings. Experiments 2 and 3 examined whether dishonest responding can profit from transient and sustained adaption processes triggered by other behavioral conflicts. This was clearly not the case: Dishonest responding adapted markedly to recent (dis) honest responses but not to any context of other conflicts. These findings indicate that control adaptation in dishonest responding is strong but surprisingly focused and they point to a potential trade-off between transient and sustained adaptation. Public Significance Statement When asked a simple yes/no question, humans automatically retrieve the correct response from memory. Automatic retrieval renders honest responding smooth and efficient-but it triggers cognitive conflict whenever 1 intends to give a dishonest response. This study explored whether cognitive conflict during dishonesty can be mitigated by experimental manipulations that have been demonstrated to boost cognitive control in general. Our results highlight 1 of these manipulations to be particularly efficient: Having responded dishonestly in the immediate past helps to counter conflict. By contrast, all remaining manipulations-frequent dishonest responding or overcoming cognitive conflicts that are unrelated to dishonesty-did not make any unique contributions to the resolution of conflict during dishonesty. Countering the automatic retrieval of honest responses is only possible if recent experiences have just paved the way for giving a dishonest response.
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  Herbort, O., & Kunde, W. (2018). How to point and to interpret pointing gestures? Instructions can reduce pointer--observer misunderstandings. Psychological Research, 82(2), 395-406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0824-8
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  In everyday communication, people often point. However, a pointing act is often misinterpreted as indicating a different spatial referent position than intended by the pointer. It has been suggested that this happens because pointers put the tip of the index finger close to the line joining the eye to the referent. However, the person interpreting the pointing act extrapolates the vector defined by the arm and index finger. As this line crosses the eye-referent line, it suggests a different referent position than the one that was meant. In this paper, we test this hypothesis by manipulating the geometry underlying the production and interpretation of pointing gestures. In Experiment 1, we compared naïve pointer-observed dyads with dyads in which the discrepancy between the vectors defining the production and interpretation of pointing acts has been reduced. As predicted, this reduced pointer--observer misunderstandings compared to the naïve control group. In Experiment 2, we tested whether pointers elevate their arms steeper than necessary to orient it toward the referent, because they visually steer their index finger tips onto the referents in their visual field. Misunderstandings between pointers and observers were smaller when pointers pointed without visual feedback. In sum, the results support the hypothesis that misunderstandings between (na{ï}ve) pointers and observers result from different spatial rules describing the production and interpretation of pointing gestures. Furthermore, we suggest that instructions that reduce the discrepancy between these spatial rules can improve communicating with pointing gestures.
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  Herbort, O., Büschelberger, J., & Janczyk, M. (2018). Preschool children adapt grasping movements to upcoming object manipulations: Evidence from a dial rotation task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 167, 62–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.09.025
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  Weis, P. P., & Wiese, E. (2018). Using Tools to Help Us Think: Actual but Also Believed Reliability Modulates Cognitive Offloading. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 61(2), 243–254. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720818797553
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  Wirth, R., Janczyk, M., & Kunde, W. (2018). Effect monitoring in dual-task performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(4), 553-571. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000474
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  Actions aim to produce effects in the environment. To accomplish this properly, we not only have to recruit the appropriate motor patterns, but also we must be able to monitor whether an intended effect has ultimately been realized. Here, we investigated the impact of such effect monitoring on performance in multitasking situations: Multitasking basically means to produce and monitor multiple actions and effects in fast succession. We show that effect monitoring cannot run in parallel, without causing processing decrements, with a second task. Also, monitoring of effects that are spatially incompatible to a response seems to take longer than the monitoring of spatially compatible action effects (Experiments 1 through 4). We further argue that effect monitoring is essential toward learning of response-effect associations, as it captures not only anticipated action effects, but also unpredictable occurrences in the environment (Experiments 5a and 5b).
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  Steinhauser, R., Wirth, R., Kunde, W., Janczyk, M., & Steinhauser, M. (2018). Common mechanisms in error monitoring and action effect monitoring. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 18, 1159–1171. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-018-0628-y
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  In the present study, we considered error-related brain activity in event-related potentials, to investigate the relationship between error monitoring—that is, the detection and evaluation of erroneous responses—and action effect monitoring—that is, monitoring of the sensory consequences of behavior. To this end, participants worked on a task-switching paradigm that consisted of a free- choice task, in which a puzzle piece had to be attached to an existing one (the prime task), and a subsequent color flanker task (the probe task). We examined whether unexpected action effects in the prime task would affect the subsequent error monitoring in the probe task. We found the neural correlates of error monitoring during the probe task, the error-related negativity as well as the error positivity, to be increased after unexpected action effects in the prime task. In contrast, the neural correlates of visual attention were decreased after unexpected action effects, in line with recent findings on an attenuation of sensory processing after errors. Our results demonstrate a direct link between monitoring processes in the two tasks. We propose that both error monitoring and action effect monitoring rely on a common generic monitoring system related to novelty detection or affective processing. Preactivating this system by means of unexpected action effects increases the sensitivity for detecting an error in the subsequent task.
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  Kunde, W., Wirth, R., & Janczyk, M. (2018). The role of feedback delay in dual-task performance. Psychological Research, 82(1), 157-166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0874-6
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  Doing two things at once is hard, and it is probably hard for various reasons. Here we aim to demonstrate that one so far barely considered reason is the monitoring of sensory action feedback, which detracts from processing of other concurrent tasks. To demonstrate this, we engaged participants in a psychological refractory period paradigm. The responses in the two tasks produced visual action effects. These effects occurred either immediately or they were delayed for the first of the two responses. We assumed that delaying these effects would engage a process of monitoring visual feedback longer, and delay a concurrent task more, as compared to immediate effects. This prediction was confirmed in two experiments. We discuss the reasons for feedback monitoring and its possible contribution to dual tasking.
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  Wirth, R., Foerster, A., Rendel, H., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2018). Rule-violations sensitise towards negative and authority-related stimuli. Cognition and Emotion, 32(3), 480-493. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2017.1316706
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  Rule violations have usually been studied from a third-person perspective, identifying situational factors that render violations more or less likely. A first-person perspective of the agent that actively violates the rules, on the other hand, is only just beginning to emerge. Here we show that committing a rule violation sensitises towards subsequent negative stimuli as well as subsequent authority-related stimuli. In a Prime-Probe design, we used an instructed rule-violation task as the Prime and a word categorisation task as the Probe. Also, we employed a control condition that used a rule inversion task as the Prime (instead of rule violations). Probe targets were categorised faster after a violation relative to after a rule-based response if they related to either, negative valence or authority. Inversions, however, primed only negative stimuli and did not accelerate the categorisation of authority-related stimuli. A heightened sensitivity towards authority-related targets thus seems to be specific to rule violations. A control experiment showed that these effects cannot be explained in terms of semantic priming. Therefore, we propose that rule violations necessarily activate authority-related representations that make rule violations qualitatively different from simple rule inversions.
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  Wirth, R., Foerster, A., Herbort, O., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2018). This Is How To Be a Rule Breaker. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 14(1), 21-37. https://doi.org/10.5709/acp-0235-2
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  Violating rules comes with cognitive conflict for the rule-breaker. Here, we probed for means to reduce the behavioral effects of this conflict by studying the combined impact of recency and frequency of rule violations. We found that violating a rule facilitated the initiation of a subsequent rule violation, while notable costs relative to rule-based responding remained in measures of re- sponse execution. Such costs during response execution vanished, however, when frequency and recency of rule violation worked in concert. That is, it is possible to overcome the costs of rule viola- tion when (a) having violated this particular rule frequently and (b) having violated this particular rule very recently. Moreover, we demonstrated that recent rule violations reduce the costs of cogni- tive conflict in an unrelated interference task (Simon task). Based on these findings, we present a revised model of the cognitive processes underlying deliberate rule violations.
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  Wiese, E., Weis, P. P., & Lofaro, D. M. (2018). Embodied social robots trigger gaze following in real-time HRI. 2018 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 477-482. https://doi.org/10.1109/URAI.2018.8441825
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  When interacting with others, we use information from gestures, facial expressions and gaze direction to make inferences about what others think, feel or intend to do. Gaze direction also triggers shifts of attention to gazed-at locations and establishes joint attention between gazer and observer. The ability to follow gaze develops early in life and is a prerequisite for more complex social-cognitive processes like action perception, mentalizing and language acquisition. It has been shown that robot gaze induces similar gaze following effects in observers as human gaze, with positive effects on attitudes and performance in human-robot interaction. However, so far most studies have used images or videos in controlled laboratory settings to investigate gaze following in human-robot interaction rather than realistic social embodied robot platforms. The current experiment shows that gaze following can be observed in real-time interactions with embodied social robot platforms. The implications of this finding for human-robot interaction are discussed.
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  Wirth, R., Steinhauser, R., Janczyk, M., Steinhauser, M., & Kunde, W. (2018). Long-term and short-term action-effect links and their impact on effect monitoring. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44(8), 1186-1198. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000524
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  People aim to produce effects in the environment, and according to ideomotor theory, actions are selected and executed via anticipations of their effects. Further, to ensure that an action has been successful and an effect has been realized, we must be able to monitor the consequences of our actions. However, action-effect links might vary between situations, some might apply for a majority of situations, while others might only apply to special occasions. With a combination of behavioral and electrophysiological markers, we show that monitoring of self-produced action effects interferes with other tasks, and that the length of effect monitoring is determined by both, long-term action-effect links that hold for most situations, and short-term action-effect links that emerge from a current setting. Effect monitoring is fast and frugal when these action-effect links allow for valid anticipation of action effects, but otherwise effect monitoring takes longer and delays a subsequent task. Specific influences of long-term and short-term links on the P1/N1 and P3a further allow to dissect the temporal dynamics of when these links interact for the purpose of effect monitoring.
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  Klaffehn, A. L., Schwarz, K. A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2018). Similar Task-Switching Performance of Real-Time Strategy and First-Person Shooter Players: Implications for Cognitive Training. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 2(3), 240-258. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-018-0066-3
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  Schwarz, K. A., Pfister, R., Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2018). Dissociating action-effect activation and effect-based response selection. Acta Psychologica, 188, 16-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.05.007
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  Anticipated action effects have been shown to govern action selection and initiation, as described in ideomotor theory, and they have also been demonstrated to determine crosstalk between different tasks in multitasking studies. Such effect-based crosstalk was observed not only in a forward manner (with a first task influencing performance in a following second task) but also in a backward manner (the second task influencing the pre- ceding first task), suggesting that action effect codes can become activated prior to a capacity-limited processing stage often denoted as response selection. The process of effect-based response production, by contrast, has been proposed to be capacity-limited. These observations jointly suggest that effect code activation can occur in- dependently of effect-based response production, though this theoretical implication has not been tested directly at present. We tested this hypothesis by employing a dual-task set-up in which we manipulated the ease of effect- based response production (via response-effect compatibility) in an experimental design that allows for obser- ving forward and backward crosstalk. We observed robust crosstalk effects and response-effect compatibility effects alike, but no interaction between both effects. These results indicate that effect activation can occur in parallel for several tasks, independently of effect-based response production, which is confined to one task at a time.

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  Kirsch, W., Herbort, O., Ullrich, B., & Kunde, W. (2017). On the origin of body-related influences on visual perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(6), 1222–1237. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000358
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  Weis, P. P., & Herbert, C. (2017). Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People’s Emotions. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(1277), Article 1277. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01277
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  According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person (“my,” “his”) or the non-referential negation term (“no”) as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions (M. Zygomaticus, M. Corrugator), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader’s self (e.g., “my happiness,” “my joy”) than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., “his happiness,” “his joy”), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real communication partner is present. Taken together, the present results confirm and extend the embodiment hypothesis of language by showing that bodily signals can be differently pronounced during emotional evaluation of self- and other-related emotional words.
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  Robert Wirth, W. K. (2017). Consequences of bending and breaking the rules (p. Online-Ressource) [Universität Würzburg]. https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/15507
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  Social life is organized around rules and norms. The present experiments investigate the cognitive architecture of rule violations. To do so, a setting with arbitrary rules that had to be followed or broken was developed, and breaking these rules did not have any negative consequences. Removed from any social influences that might further encourage or hinder the rule breaker, results suggest that simply labeling a behavior as a rule violation comes with specific costs: They are more difficult to plan and come with specific behavioral markers during execution. In essence, rule violations resemble rule negations, but they also trigger additional processes. The question of what makes rule violations more difficult than rule inversions is the major focus of the remaining experiments. These experiments revealed negative affective consequences of rule violation and rule inversions alike, while rule violations additionally prime authority-related concepts, thus sensitizing towards authority related stimuli. Next, the question how these burdens of non-conformity can be mitigated was investigated, and the influence of having executed the behavior in question frequently and recently was tested in both negations and rule violations. The burdens of non-conformity can best be reduced by a combination of having violated/negated a rule very frequently and very recently. Transfer from another task, however, could not be identified. To conclude, a model that accounts for the data that is currently presented is proposed. As a variant of a task switching model, it describes the cognitive processes that were investigated and highlights unique processing steps that rule violations seem to require.
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  Weis, P. P., & Wiese, E. (2017). Cognitive Conflict as Possible Origin of the Uncanny Valley. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 61(1), 1599–1603. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541931213601763
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  Foerster, A., Wirth, R., Herbort, O., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2017). Lying upside-down: Alibis reverse cognitive burdens of dishonesty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 23(3), 301-319. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000129
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  The cognitive processes underlying dishonesty, especially the inhibition of automatic honest response tendencies, are reflected in response times and other behavioral measures. Here we suggest that explicit false alibis might have a considerable impact on these cognitive operations. We tested this hypothesis in a controlled experimental setup. Participants first performed several tasks in a preexperimental mission (akin to common mock crime procedures) and received a false alibi afterward. The false alibi stated alternative actions that the participants had to pretend to have performed instead of the actually performed actions. In a computer-based inquiry, the false alibi did not only reduce, but it even reversed the typical behavioral effects of dishonesty on response initiation (Experiment1) and response execution (Experiment 2). Follow-up investigations of response activation via distractor stimuli suggest that false alibis automatize either dishonest response retrieval, the inhibition of the honest response, or both (Experiments 3 and 4). This profound impact suggests that false alibis can override actually performed activities entirely and, thus, documents a severe limitation for cognitive approaches to lie detection.
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  Herbort, O., Mathew, H., & Kunde, W. (2017). Habit outweighs planning in grasp selection for object manipulation. Cognitive Psychology, 92, 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2016.11.008
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  Jusyte, A., Pfister, R., Mayer, S. V., Schwarz, K. A., Wirth, R., Kunde, W., & Schönenberg, M. (2017). Smooth criminal: convicted rule-breakers show reduced cognitive conflict during deliberate rule violations. Psychological Research, 81(5), 939-946. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0798-6
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  Classic findings on conformity and obedience document a strong and automatic drive of human agents to follow any type of rule or social norm. At the same time, most individuals tend to violate rules on occasion, and such deliberate rule violations have recently been shown to yield cognitive conflict for the rule-breaker. These findings indicate persistent difficulty to suppress the rule representation, even though rule violations were studied in a controlled experimental setting with neither gains nor possible sanctions for violators. In the current study, we validate these findings by showing that convicted criminals, i.e., individuals with a history of habitual and severe forms of rule violations, can free themselves from such cognitive conflict in a similarly controlled laboratory task. These findings support an emerging view that aims at understanding rule violations from the perspective of the violating agent rather than from the perspective of outside observer.
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  Pfister, R., Schwarz, K. A., Wirth, R., & Lindner, I. (2017). My Command, My Act: Observation Inflation in Face-To-Face Interactions. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 13(2), 166-176. https://doi.org/10.5709/acp-0217-8
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  When observing another agent performing simple actions, these actions are systematically remembered as one’s own after a brief period of time. Such observation inflation has been documented as a robust phenomenon in studies in which participants passively observed videotaped actions. Whether observation inflation also holds for direct, face-to-face interactions is an open question that we addressed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants commanded the experimenter to carry out certain actions, and they indeed reported false memories of self-performance in a later memory test. The effect size of this inflation effect was similar to passive observation as confirmed by Experiment 2. These findings suggest that observation inflation might affect action memory in a broad range of real-world interactions.
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  Foerster, A., Wirth, R., Herbort, O., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2017). Lying Upside-Down: Alibis Reverse Cognitive Burdens of Dishonesty. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-APPLIED, 23(3), 301-319.
  • [ Abstract ]
  The cognitive processes underlying dishonesty, especially the inhibition of automatic honest response tendencies, are reflected in response times and other behavioral measures. Here we suggest that explicit false alibis might have a considerable impact on these cognitive operations. We tested this hypothesis in a controlled experimental setup. Participants first performed several tasks in a preexperimental mission (akin to common mock crime procedures) and received a false alibi afterward. The false alibi stated alternative actions that the participants had to pretend to have performed instead of the actually performed actions. In a computer-based inquiry, the false alibi did not only reduce, but it even reversed the typical behavioral effects of dishonesty on response initiation (Experiment1) and response execution (Experiment 2). Follow-up investigations of response activation via distractor stimuli suggest that false alibis automatize either dishonest response retrieval, the inhibition of the honest response, or both (Experiments 3 and 4). This profound impact suggests that false alibis can override actually performed activities entirely and, thus, documents a severe limitation for cognitive approaches to lie detection.
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  Janczyk, M., Büschelberger, J., & Herbort, O. (2017). Larger between-task crosstalk in children than in adults: Behavioral results from the backward crosstalk paradigm and a diffusion model analysis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 155, 95–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2016.11.007
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  Kunde, W., Schmidts, C., Wirth, R., & Herbort, O. (2017). Action effects are coded as transitions from current to future stimulation: Evidence from compatibility effects in tracking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(3), 477-486. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000311
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  There is ample evidence that motor actions are stored in terms of, and controlled by, the sensory effects that these actions produce. At present it is unclear, though, whether action control is governed by intended sensory changes (e.g., the transition from darkness to brightness when switching on a light) or only by intended sensory end states (e.g., the light being on). The present study explored the role of sensory changes for action control. To address this issue, participants engaged in a spatial tracking task. We show that performance is determined by the compatibility between motor patterns and subsequent changes of a controlled stimulus, while the intended end state of the stimulus remains constant. Spatial compatibility increases performance even when perceptual changes of spatial features are not the primary target of control. These results suggest that intended transitions of stimulation have the potential to bias motor actions. We consider these results as an important step toward integrating closed-loop regulation approaches and ideomotor approaches of action control.
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  Kunde, W., Schmidts, C., Wirth, R., & Herbort, O. (2017). Action effects are coded as transitions from current to future stimulation: Evidence from compatibility effects in tracking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(3), 477–486. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000311
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  Mathew, H., Kunde, W., & Herbort, O. (2017). Inverting the planning gradient: adjustment of grasps to late segments of multi-step object manipulations. Experimental Brain Research, 235(5), 1397-1409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4892-9
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  When someone grasps an object, the grasp depends on the intended object manipulation and usually facilitates it. If several object manipulation steps are planned, the first step has been reported to primarily determine the grasp selection. We address whether the grasp can be aligned to the second step, if the second step's requirements exceed those of the first step. Participants grasped and rotated a dial first by a small extent and then by various extents in the opposite direction, without releasing the dial. On average, when the requirements of the first and the second step were similar, participants mostly aligned the grasp to the first step. When the requirements of the second step were considerably higher, participants aligned the grasp to the second step, even though the first step still had a considerable impact. Participants employed two different strategies. One subgroup initially aligned the grasp to the first step and then ceased adjusting the grasp to either step. Another group also initially aligned the grasp to the first step and then switched to aligning it primarily to the second step. The data suggest that participants are more likely to switch to the latter strategy when they experienced more awkward arm postures. In summary, grasp selections for multi-step object manipulations can be aligned to the second object manipulation step, if the requirements of this step clearly exceed those of the first step and if participants have some experience with the task.
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  Foerster, A., Wirth, R., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2017). The dishonest mind set in sequence. Psychological Research, 81(4), 878-899. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0780-3
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  Dishonest responding is an important part of the behavioral repertoire and perfectly integrated in communication and daily actions. Thus, previous research aimed at uncovering the cognitive mechanisms underlying dishonest responding by studying its immediate behavioral effects. A comprehensive account of the aftereffects of this type of behavior has not been presented to date, however. Based on the methods and theories from research on task switching, we, therefore, explored the notion of honest and dishonest responding as two distinct intentional sets. In four experiments, participants responded either honestly or dishonestly to simple yes/no questions. Crucially, robust switch costs were found between honest and dishonest responding when questions succeeded promptly (Exp. 1) but also when an unrelated task intervened between questions (Exp. 2). Surprisingly, responding dishonestly to a question also affected responses in the subsequent intervening task in terms of a more liberal response criterion. Time to prepare for the upcoming intentional set further induced asymmetrical switch costs (Exp. 3). Finally, a novel control condition (Exp. 4) allowed us to pinpoint most of the observed effects to negation processing as an inherent mechanism of dishonesty. The experiments shed new light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying dishonesty by providing strong support for the concept of distinct mental sets for honest and dishonest responding. The experiments further reveal that these mental sets are notably stable and are not disturbed by intervening task performance. The observed aftereffects of dishonest responding might also provide a potent extension to applied protocols for lie detection.

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  Herbort, O., & Kunde, W. (2016). Spatial (mis-)interpretation of pointing gestures to distal referents. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42(1), 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000126
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  Wirth, R., Dignath, D., Pfister, R., Kunde, W., & Eder, A. B. (2016). Attracted by rewards: Disentangling the motivational influence of rewarding and punishing targets and distractors. Motivation Science, 2(3), 143-156. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000037
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  Traditional research on action control focuses on the outcome of a decision process and neglects the way by which these decisions are put into action. Here, we provide direct evidence for ongoing control of motivational impulses during postdecision action execution. Using a movement task in which gain/loss stimuli either functioned as targets or distractors, we show that different phases of a movement are distinctly shaped by motivational impulses. Response initiation times revealed control costs for loss targets and distractors, and control benefits for gain targets. However, movement trajectories revealed strong attraction toward the gain distractor, in line with a hypothesized pull of approach-related stimuli, while targets and distractors associated with losses had no repulsive avoidance-related effect on movement trajectories. These results show that motivational processing of goal-relevant stimuli influences the way in which goal-directed actions are executed and highlight a prominent role of reward-related distractors in shaping movement execution.
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  Wirth, R., Pfister, R., & Kunde, W. (2016). Asymmetric transfer effects between cognitive and affective task disturbances. Cognition and Emotion, 30(3), 399-416. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1009002
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  Task-irrelevant features of a stimulus can disturb performance on a given task, and this can occur for cognitive reasons such as irrelevant stimulus position, and affective reasons such as high stimulus valence. The human brain adapts to such disturbances in order to ensure successful task performance. Adaptations can occur in a transient manner in response to recent events, and they can also be sustained to account for overall probabilities of disturbances. Here, we study the mutual interplay between affective and cognitive task disturbances under conditions of sustained conflict adaptation. More precisely, we examined the trajectory of finger movements in a speeded classification task and investigated whether adaptation to a high probability of spatial disturbances transfers to the impact of affective disturbances (Experiment 1) and whether adaptation to a high probability of affective disturbances transfers to the impact of spatial disturbances (Experiment 2). Our observations point towards an asymmetric transfer from adaptation to affective onto the processing of cognitive disturbances, but not the other way around.
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  Pfister, R., Wirth, R., Schwarz, K. A., Steinhauser, M., & Kunde, W. (2016). Burdens of non-conformity: Motor execution reveals cognitive conflict during deliberate rule violations. Cognition, 147, 93-99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.11.009
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  Rule compliance is pivotal for the regulation of social behavior. Still, humans deliberately violate rules at times - be it for personal reasons or for a higher good. Whereas previous research has studied the preconditions and consequences of rule violations, essentially nothing is known about the cognitive processes right at the moment a rule violation takes place. Here we show that merely labeling an action as rule violation induces substantial conflict between rule violation and compliance, as revealed by participants' bias towards rule -complying motor actions. Moreover, conflict that comes with violating a rule was much stronger than conflict that comes with following an alternative rule, even if both decisions result in the same observable behavior. These observations open a new theoretical perspective on rule violation behavior, shifting the focus toward the cognitive processes operating during the very act of rule violation.
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  Wirth, R., Pfister, R., Brandes, J., & Kunde, W. (2016). Stroking me softly: Body-related effects in effect-based action control. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78(6), 1755-1770. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-016-1151-2
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  Empirical investigations of ideomotor effect anticipations have mainly focused on action effects in the environment. By contrast, action effects that apply to the agent's body have rarely been put to the test in corresponding experimental paradigms. We present a series of experiments using the response-effect compatibility paradigm, in which we studied the impacts of to-be-produced tactile action effects on action selection, initiation, and execution. The results showed a robust and reliable impact if these tactile action effects were rendered task-relevant (Exp. 1), but not when they were task-irrelevant (Exps. 2a and 2b). We further showed that anticipations of tactile action effects follow the same time course as anticipations of environment-related effects (Exps. 3 and 4). These findings demonstrate that body-related action effects affect action control much as environment-related effects do, and therefore support the theoretical assumption of the functional equivalence of all types of action effects.
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  Wirth, R., Pfister, R., Foerster, A., Huestegge, L., & Kunde, W. (2016). Pushing the rules: effects and aftereffects of deliberate rule violations. Psychological Research, 80(5), 838-852. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-015-0690-9
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  Most of our daily life is organized around rules and social norms. But what makes rules so special? And what if one were to break a rule intentionally? Can we simply free us from the present set of rules or do we automatically adhere to them? How do rule violations influence subsequent behavior? To investigate the effects and aftereffects of violating simple S-R rule, we conducted three experiments that investigated continuous finger-tracking responses on an iPad. Our experiments show that rule violations are distinct from rule-based actions in both response times and movement trajectories, they take longer to initiate and execute, and their movement trajectory is heavily contorted. Data not only show differences between the two types of response (rule-based vs. violation), but also yielded a characteristic pattern of aftereffects in case of rule violations: rule violations do not trigger adaptation effects that render further rule violations less difficult, but every rule violation poses repeated effort on the agent. The study represents a first step towards understanding the signature and underlying mechanisms of deliberate rule violations, they cannot be acted out by themselves, but require the activation of the original rule first. Consequently, they are best understood as reformulations of existing rules that are not accessible on their own, but need to be constantly derived from the original rule, with an add-on that might entail an active tendency to steer away from mental representations that reflect (socially) unwanted behavior.
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  Pfister, R., Wirth, R., Schwarz, K. A., Foerster, A., Steinhauser, M., & Kunde, W. (2016). The electrophysiological signature of deliberate rule violations. Psychophysiology, 53(12), 1870-1877. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12771
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  Humans follow rules by default, and violating even simple rules induces cognitive conflict for the rule breaker. Previous studies revealed this conflict in various behavioral measures, including response times and movement trajectories. Based on these experiments, we investigated the electrophysiological signature of deliberately violating a simple stimulus-response mapping rule. Such rule violations were characterized by a delayed and attenuated P300 component when evaluating a rule-relevant stimulus, most likely reflecting increased response complexity. This parietal attenuation was followed by a frontal positivity for rule violations relative to correct response trials. Together, these results reinforce previous findings on the need to inhibit automatic S-R translation when committing a rule violation, and they point toward additional factors involved in rule violation. Candidate processes such as negative emotional responses and increased monitoring should be targeted by future investigations.
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  Feld, G. B., Weis, P. P., & Born, J. (2016). The Limited Capacity of Sleep-Dependent Memory Consolidation. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(1368), Article 1368. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01368
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  Sleep supports memory consolidation. However, the conceptually important influence of the amount of items encoded in a memory test on this effect has not been investigated. In two experiments, participants (n = 101) learned lists of word-pairs varying in length (40, 160, 320 word-pairs) in the evening before a night of sleep (sleep group) or of sleep deprivation (wake group). After 36 h (including a night allowing recovery sleep) retrieval was tested. Compared with wakefulness, post-learning sleep enhanced retention for the 160 word-pair condition (p < 0.01), importantly, this effect completely vanished for the 320 word-pair condition. This result indicates a limited capacity for sleep-dependent memory consolidation, which is consistent with an active system consolidation view on sleep’s role for memory, if it is complemented by processes of active forgetting and/or gist abstraction. Whereas the absolute benefit from sleep should have increased with increasing amounts of successfully encoded items, if sleep only passively protected memory from interference. Moreover, the finding that retention performance was significantly diminished for the 320 word-pair condition compared to the 160 word-pair condition in the sleep group, makes it tempting to speculate that with increasing loads of information encoded during wakefulness, sleep might favor processes of forgetting over consolidation.

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  Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2015). Planning grasps for object manipulation: integrating internal preferences and external constraints. Cognitive Processing, 16(1), 249-253. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0703-z
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  Grasp selection for object manipulation depend on a person's preferences (e.g., comfortable grasp) and the object's shape (i.e., how the object can be grasped). Both have to be matched when planning to grasp an object. According to the simulation hypothesis, humans simulate the action outcome for each of the grasp options to select the best grasp. However, if an object offers many different grasp options, further processing is necessary to reduce the number of possibilities. According to the preference hypothesis, a preferred grasp is first computed and then adjusted to comply with the objects' shape, if necessary. To test the hypotheses, we asked participants to grasp knobs that could be grasped with two, four, or an unconstrained range of grasps. When participants chose among two or four options, planning time increased with the number of possible grasps which is in line with the simulation hypothesis. However, when grasps were unconstrained, planning times were as short as in the two-grasp condition, suggesting another---possibly preference-based---selection process in this case. In contrast to planning time, grasp choices were comparable regardless of the knob's shape. This suggests a common criterion most likely determined grasp selection in all conditions.
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  Wirth, R., Pfister, R., Janczyk, M., & Kunde, W. (2015). Through the portal: Effect anticipation in the central bottleneck. Acta Psychologica, 160, 141-151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.07.007
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  Ample evidence suggests that motor actions are generated by mentally recollecting their sensory consequences, i.e., via effect anticipations. There is less evidence, though, on the capacity limitations that such effect anticipations suffer from. In the present paper we aim to overcome shortcomings of previous research on this issue by extending the set of empirical indicators of effect anticipations and by using trial-wise instead of block-wise manipulations. In four experiments using the locus of slack- and the effect propagation-logic, we found conclusive evidence for effect anticipation taking place in the capacity-limited central bottleneck. These findings extend previous research suggesting an overlap of a "response selection" process as assumed in traditional stage theory and effect anticipation processes as assumed in effect-based ideomotor models of action control.
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  Belardinelli, A., Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2015). Goal-oriented gaze strategies afforded by object interaction. Vision Research, 106, 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2014.11.003
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  Herbort, O. (2015). Too much anticipation? Large anticipatory adjustments of grasping movements to minimal object manipulations. Human Movement Science, 42, 100–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2015.05.002
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  Herbort, O., & Rosenbaum, D. A. (2014). What is chosen first, the hand used for reaching or the target that is reached?. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(1), 170-177. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0488-y
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  Models of information processing generally assume that stimuli are processed before actions are selected, at least in typical laboratory experiments where stimuli are presented and responses follow. In everyday life, however, there are generally fewer constraints on the ordering of decisions pertaining to stimuli and actions. This raises the question of which sorts of decisions normally precede which others. To address this question, we asked participants to aim for either of two targets with either hand on the basis of whichever combination seemed easiest. We analyzed the choices made in this free condition with choices made when the hand was specified or when the target was specified. We found that a model assuming similar selection processes in the hand-specified condition and the free condition provided the best account for the data. The data accord with the hypothesis that hand was generally chosen first in the free-choice condition.
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  Herbort, O., Butz, M. V., & Kunde, W. (2014). The contribution of cognitive, kinematic, and dynamic factors to anticipatory grasp selection. Experimental Brain Research, 232(6), 1677-1688. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-3849-5
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  Object-directed grasping movements are usually adjusted in anticipation of the direction and extent of a subsequent object rotation. Such anticipatory grasp selections have been mostly explained in terms of the kinematics of the arm movement. However, object rotations of different directions and extents also differ in their dynamics and in how the tasks are represented. Here, we examined how the dynamics, the kinematics, and the cognitive representation of an object manipulation affect anticipatory grasp selections. We asked participants to grasp an object and rotate it by different angles and in different directions. To examine the influence of dynamic factors, we varied the object's weight. To examine the influence of the cognitive task representation, we instructed identical object rotations as either toward-top or away-from-top rotations. While instructed object rotation and cognitive task representation did affect grasp selection over the entire course of the experiment, a rather small effect of object weight only appeared late in the experiment. We suggest that grasp selections are determined on different levels. The representation of the kinematics of the object movement determines grasp selection on a trial-by-trial basis. The effect of object weight affects grasp selection by a slower adaptation process. This result implies that even simple motor acts, such as grasping, can only be understood when cognitive factors, such as the task representation, are taken into account.
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  Herbort, O. (2014). Intelligente Bewegungen: Wie vorausschauendes Verhalten alltägliche Bewegungen einfacher macht. The Inquisitive Mind, 2. https://de.in-mind.org/article/intelligente-bewegungen-wie-vorausschauendes-verhalten-alltaegliche-bewegungen-einfacher
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  Schwanebeck, W., Wierschem, M., Spieler, S., Pfister, R., Foerster, A., Schwarz, K., Wirth, R., Stopczynski, L., Veelen, S., Herrmann, A., Lempp, F., Funk, J., Thede, S., Stricker, B., & Prorombka, S. (2014). Über Hochstapelei. Perspektiven auf eine kulturelle Praxis. In W. Schwanebeck (Ed.), Über Hochstapelei. Perspektiven auf eine kulturelle Praxis (p. 226). Neofelis. https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/wissenschaft/kultur-sozialwissenschaften/911/ueber-hochstapelei
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  Nicht nur Feuilletons und populärwissenschaftliche Traktate scheinen sich einig darin, dass wir im Zeichen des Hochstaplers leben. Vom Fall Bernie Madoff über Fälschungsskandale in der Kunstszene bis hin zu den zahlreichen im Internet aufgedeckten wissenschaftlichen Plagiatsfällen wird jede neue Schwindelei als Beleg dafür zitiert, dass die Hochstapelei in der Mitte der Gesellschaft angekommen ist. Das zur Regel gewordene Aufhübschen des eigenen Profils in sozialen Netzwerken und das Beschönigen des Lebenslaufs gelten gleichsam als Symptome für den Zeitgeist. Der These von der Omnipräsenz der Hochstapelei in der Gegenwartskultur gründlich auf den Zahn zu fühlen, ist das Anliegen des vorliegenden Bandes. Über Hochstapelei versammelt die Erträge einer im Juni 2013 an der TU Dresden veranstalteten interdisziplinären wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchstagung. In drei thematischen Blöcken erschließt der Sammelband die Topographie der Hochstapelei als kulturelle Praxis, die sich durch alle gesellschaftlichen Bereiche und quer durch die Epochen verfolgen lässt. Einblicke in aktuelle Forschungsprojekte werden dabei durch kulturjournalistische Beiträge sowie künstlerische Vorstöße ergänzt.
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  Pfister, R., Foerster, A., Schwarz, K., & Wirth, R. (2014). Lässt sich ein guter Hochstapler als solcher entlarven? Wenn ja: Wie? (W. Schwanebeck, Ed.; pp. 63-72). Neofelis. https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/wissenschaft/kultur-sozialwissenschaften/911/ueber-hochstapelei
  • [ Abstract ]
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  Nicht nur Feuilletons und populärwissenschaftliche Traktate scheinen sich einig darin, dass wir im Zeichen des Hochstaplers leben. Vom Fall Bernie Madoff über Fälschungsskandale in der Kunstszene bis hin zu den zahlreichen im Internet aufgedeckten wissenschaftlichen Plagiatsfällen wird jede neue Schwindelei als Beleg dafür zitiert, dass die Hochstapelei in der Mitte der Gesellschaft angekommen ist. Das zur Regel gewordene Aufhübschen des eigenen Profils in sozialen Netzwerken und das Beschönigen des Lebenslaufs gelten gleichsam als Symptome für den Zeitgeist.
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  Pfister, R., Janczyk, M., Wirth, R., Dignath, D., & Kunde, W. (2014). Thinking with portals: Revisiting kinematic cues to intention. Cognition, 133(2), 464-473. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.07.012
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  What we intend to achieve with our actions affects the way we move our body. This has been repeatedly shown for both, movement-related intentions such as grasping and turn- ing an object, and relatively high-level intentions such as the intention to collaborate or to compete with a social partner. The impact of an intermediate level of intentions – referring to action-contingent changes in the physical environment – is far less clear, however. We present three experiments that aim at scrutinizing this level of analysis by showing how such anticipated consequences affect movement trajectories. Participants steered a virtual avatar toward portals that displaced the avatar to a different but predictable location. Even though this displacement occurred only after the movement was completed, hand move- ments were clearly torn toward the anticipated final location of the avatar. These results show that properties of anticipated action consequences leave a fingerprint on movement trajectories and provide an opportunity to unite previous accounts on the relation of inten- tions and movements with general frameworks of action planning.
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  Herbort, O., Rosenbaum, D., van der Wel, R., & Weiss, D. (2014). What’s in a Grasp?. American Scientist, 102(5), 366. https://doi.org/10.1511/2014.110.366
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  Ehrenfeld, S., Herbort, O., & Butz, M. (2013). Modular neuron-based body estimation: maintaining consistency over different limbs, modalities, and frames of reference. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2013.00148
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  This paper addresses the question of how the brain maintains a probabilistic body state estimate over time from a modeling perspective. The neural Modular Modality Frame (nMMF) model simulates such a body state estimation process by continuously integrating redundant, multimodal body state information sources. The body state estimate itself is distributed over separate, but bidirectionally interacting modules. nMMF compares the incoming sensory and present body state information across the interacting modules and fuses the information sources accordingly. At the same time, nMMF enforces body state estimation consistency across the modules. nMMF is able to detect conflicting sensory information and to consequently decrease the influence of implausible sensor sources on the fly. In contrast to the previously published Modular Modality Frame (MMF) model, nMMF offers a biologically plausible neural implementation based on distributed, probabilistic population codes. Besides its neural plausibility, the neural encoding has the advantage of enabling (a) additional probabilistic information flow across the separate body state estimation modules and (b) the representation of arbitrary probability distributions of a body state. The results show that the neural estimates can detect and decrease the impact of false sensory information, can propagate conflicting information across modules, and can improve overall estimation accuracy due to additional module interactions. Even bodily illusions, such as the rubber hand illusion, can be simulated with nMMF. We conclude with an outlook on the potential of modeling human data and of invoking goal-directed behavioral control.
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  Herbort, O. (2013). Optimal versus heuristic planning of object manipulations: A review and a computational model of the continuous end-state comfort effect. New Ideas in Psychology, 31(3), 291-301. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2013.01.003
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  Human beings select actions that facilitate the execution of later actions. For example, humans tend to select grasps that ensure that forthcoming object manipulations end in a comfortable posture (“end-state comfort effect”). Basic experimental results and their explanation within the optimal control framework are reviewed. I conclude that the discrete grasp selection tasks, which are commonly used to study anticipatory planning, leave room for alternative explanations. Moreover, the results of seven experiments employing a continuous grasp selection task seem incompatible with the optimal control (of end-state comfort) account. I introduce the weighted integration of multiple biases (WIMB) model, which accounts for many aspects of the selection of human grasp orientations in continuous tasks. Additionally, it accounts for the precision effect and hysteresis effect. The model shows that the brain may rely on a simple heuristic and does not actually has to anticipate the end-state of a movement to select effective grasps for object manipulations.
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  Ehrenfeld, S., Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2013). Modular, Multimodal Arm Control Models. In G. Baldassarre & M. Mirolli (Eds.), Computational and Robotic Models of the Hierarchical Organization of Behavior (pp. 129-154). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39875-9_7
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  Human and animal behavior can be amazingly flexible and adaptive. Even when only considering the dexterity of human arm movements, a rather complex control architecture appears necessary. This control architecture faces three particular challenges, which we discuss in detail. First, sensory redundancy requires the flexible consideration, combination, and integration of different sources of information about the state of the arm and the surrounding environment. Second, motor redundancy requires the flexible consideration and resolution of behavioral alternatives. Third, the continuous uncertainty about body and environment requires flexible control strategies that take these uncertainties into account. Research in cognitive modeling as well as in psychology and neuroscience suggests that the human control system effectively solves and even partially exploits these challenges to generate the observable dexterity. Besides theoretical considerations from control and cognitive modeling perspectives, we survey the capabilities and current drawbacks of the sensorimotor redundancy resolving architecture (SURE{\_}REACH) of human arm reaching. Moreover, we consider an even more modular model of human motor control, which is currently being developed. Both architectures can yield the dexterous behavioral control observable in humans, but only the latter scales to many degrees of freedom. Thus, the architectures may provide insights on how dexterous motor control is realized in humans and on how more adaptive and flexible robot control systems may be developed in the future.
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  Lohmann, J., Herbort, O., & Butz, M. (2013). Modeling the temporal dynamics of visual working memory. Cognitive Systems Research, 24, 80–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2012.12.009
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  Sigaud, O., Butz, M., Pezzulo, G., & Herbort, O. (2013). The anticipatory construction of reality as a central concern for psychology and robotics. New Ideas in Psychology, 31(3), 217–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2012.12.004
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  Kirsch, W., Herbort, O., Butz, M. V., & Kunde, W. (2012). Influence of Motor Planning on Distance Perception within the Peripersonal Space. PLOS ONE, 7(4), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034880
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  We examined whether movement costs as defined by movement magnitude have an impact on distance perception in near space. In Experiment 1, participants were given a numerical cue regarding the amplitude of a hand movement to be carried out. Before the movement execution, the length of a visual distance had to be judged. These visual distances were judged to be larger, the larger the amplitude of the concurrently prepared hand movement was. In Experiment 2, in which numerical cues were merely memorized without concurrent movement planning, this general increase of distance with cue size was not observed. The results of these experiments indicate that visual perception of near space is specifically affected by the costs of planned hand movements.
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  Herbort, O. (2012). Where to Grasp a Tool? Task-Dependent Adjustments of Tool Transformations by Tool Users. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 220(1), 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000089
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  Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2012). Too Good to be True? Ideomotor Theory from a Computational Perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00494
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  In recent years, Ideomotor Theory has regained widespread attention and sparked the development of a number of theories on goal-directed behavior and learning. However, there are two issues with previous studies’ use of Ideomotor Theory. Although Ideomotor Theory is seen as very general, it is often studied in settings that are considerably more simplistic than most natural situations. Moreover, Ideomotor Theory’s claim that effect anticipations directly trigger actions and that action-effect learning is based on the formation of direct action-effect associations is hard to address empirically. We address these points from a computational perspective. A simple computational model of Ideomotor Theory was tested in tasks with different degrees of complexity. The model evaluation showed that Ideomotor Theory is a computationally feasible approach for understanding efficient action-effect learning for goal-directed behavior if the following preconditions are met: (1) The range of potential actions and effects has to be restricted. (2) Effects have to follow actions within a short time window. (3) Actions have to be simple and may not require sequencing. The first two preconditions also limit human performance and thus support Ideomotor Theory. The last precondition can be circumvented by extending the model with more complex, indirect action generation processes. In conclusion, we suggest that Ideomotor Theory offers a comprehensive framework to understand action-effect learning. However, we also suggest that additional processes may mediate the conversion of effect anticipations into actions in many situations.
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  Herbort, O., Koning, A., van Uem, J., & G. J. Meulenbroek, R. (2012). The end-state comfort effect facilitates joint action. Acta Psychologica, 139(3), 404–416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.01.001
  • [ DOI ]
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  Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2012). The continuous end-state comfort effect: weighted integration of multiple biases. Psychological Research, 76(3), 345-363. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-011-0334-7
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  The grasp orientation when grasping an object is frequently aligned in anticipation of the intended rotation of the object (end-state comfort effect). We analyzed grasp orientation selection in a continuous task to determine the mechanisms underlying the end-state comfort effect. Participants had to grasp a box by a circular handle---which allowed for arbitrary grasp orientations---and then had to rotate the box by various angles. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed both that the rotation's direction considerably determined grasp orientations and that end-postures varied considerably. Experiments 3 and 4 further showed that visual stimuli and initial arm postures biased grasp orientations if the intended rotation could be easily achieved. The data show that end-state comfort but also other factors determine grasp orientation selection. A simple mechanism that integrates multiple weighted biases can account for the data.

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  Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2011). Habitual and goal-directed factors in (everyday) object handling. Experimental Brain Research, 213(4), 371-382. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2787-8
  • [ Abstract ]
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  A habitual and a goal-directed system contribute to action selection in the human CNS. We examined to which extent both systems interact when selecting grasps for handling everyday objects. In Experiment 1, an upright or inverted cup had to be rotated or moved. To-be-rotated upright cups were more frequently grasped with a thumb-up grasp, which is habitually used to hold an upright cup, than inverted cups, which are not associated with a specific grasp. Additionally, grasp selection depended on the overarching goal of the movement sequence (rotation vs. transport) according to the end-state comfort principle. This shows that the habitual system and the goal-directed system both contribute to grasp selection. Experiment 2 revealed that this object-orientation-dependent grasp selection was present for movements of the dominant- and non-dominant hand. In Experiment 3, different everyday objects had to be moved or rotated. Only if different orientations of an object were associated with different habitual grasps, the grasp selection depended on the object orientation. Additionally, grasp selection was affected by the horizontal direction of the forthcoming movement. In sum, the experiments provide evidence that the interaction between the habitual and the goal-directed system determines grasp selection for the interaction with every-day objects.

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  Herbort, O., Butz, M. V., & Pedersen, G. (2010). The SURE_REACH Model for Motor Learning and Control of a Redundant Arm: From Modeling Human Behavior to Applications in Robotics. In O. Sigaud & J. Peters (Eds.), From Motor Learning to Interaction Learning in Robots (pp. 85-106). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05181-4_5
  • [ Abstract ]
  • [ DOI ]
  The recently introduced neural network SURE_REACH (sensorimotor unsupervised redundancy resolving control architecture) models motor cortical learning and control of human reaching movements. The model learns redundant, internal body models that are highly suitable to flexibly invoke effective motor commands. The encoded redundancy is used to adapt behavior flexible to situational constraints without the need for further learning. These adaptations to specific tasks or situations are realized by a neurally generated movement plan that adheres to various end-state or trajectory-related constraints. The movement plan can be implemented by proprioceptive or visual closed-loop control. This chapter briefly reviews the literature on computational models of motor learning and control and gives a description of SURE_REACH and its neural network implementation. Furthermore, we relate the model to human motor learning and performance and discuss its neural foundations. Finally, we apply the model to the control of a dynamic robot platform. In sum, SURE_REACH grounds highly flexible task-dependent behavior on a neural network framework for unsupervised learning. It accounts for the neural processes that underlie fundamental aspects of human behavior and is well applicable to the control of robots.
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  Butz, M. V., Thomaschke, R., Linhardt, M. J., & Herbort, O. (2010). Remapping motion across modalities: tactile rotations influence visual motion judgments. Experimental Brain Research, 207(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2420-2
  • [ Abstract ]
  • [ DOI ]
  Multisensory interactions between haptics and vision remain poorly understood. Previous studies have shown that shapes, such as letters of the alphabet, when drawn on the skin, are differently perceived dependent upon which body part is stimulated and on how the stimulated body part, such as the hand, is positioned. Another line of research within this area has investigated multisensory interactions. Tactile perceptions, for example, have the potential to disambiguate visually perceived information. While the former studies focused on explicit reports about tactile perception, the latter studies relied on fully aligned multisensory stimulus dimensions. In this study, we investigated to what extent rotating tactile stimulations on the hand affect directional visual motion judgments implicitly and without any spatial stimulus alignment. We show that directional tactile cues and ambiguous visual motion cues are integrated, thus biasing the judgment of visually perceived motion. We further show that the direction of the tactile influence depends on the position and orientation of the stimulated part of the hand relative to a head-centered frame of reference. Finally, we also show that the time course of the cue integration is very versatile. Overall, the results imply immediate directional cue integration within a head-centered frame of reference.
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  Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2010). Planning and control of hand orientation in grasping movements. Experimental Brain Research, 202(4), 867-878. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2191-9
  • [ Abstract ]
  • [ DOI ]
  Humans grasp objects in a way that facilitates the intended use of the object. We examined how humans grasp a circular control knob in order to turn it in different directions and by different extents. To examine the processes involved in anticipatory planning of grasps, we manipulated advance information about the location of the control knob and the target of the knob-turn. The forearm orientation at the time of grasping depended strongly on the knob-turn, with the direction of the knob-turn having a stronger effect than the extent of the knob-turn. However, the variability of the forearm orientations after the knob-turn remained considerable. Anticipatory forearm orientations began early during the grasping movement. Advance information had no influence on the trajectory of the grasp but affected reaction times and the duration of the grasp. From the results, we conclude that (1) grasps are selected in anticipation of the upcoming knob rotation, (2) the desired hand location and forearm orientation at the time of grasping are specified before the onset of the grasp, and (3) an online programming strategy is used to schedule the preparation of the knob-turn during the execution of the grasp.

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  Lohmann, J., Herbort, O., Wagener, A., & Kiesel, A. (2009). Anticipation of Time Spans: New Data from the Foreperiod Paradigm and the Adaptation of a Computational Model. In G. Pezzulo, M. V. Butz, O. Sigaud, & G. Baldassarre (Eds.), Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems (pp. 170-187). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
  • [ Abstract ]
  To act successfully, it is necessary to adjust the timing of one's behavior to events in the environment. One way to examine human timing is the foreperiod paradigm. It requires experimental participants to react to events that occur at more or less unpredictable time points after a warning stimulus (foreperiod). In the current article, we first review the empirical and theoretical literature on the foreperiod paradigm briefly. Second, we examine how behavior depends on either a uniform or peaked (at 500ms) probability distribution of many (15) possible foreperiods. We report adaptation to different probability distribution with a pronounced adaptation for the peaked (more predictable) distribution. Third, we show that Los and colleagues' [1] computational model accounts for our results. A discussion of specific findings and general implications concludes the paper.
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  Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2009). Anticipatory Planning of Sequential Hand and Finger Movements. Journal of Motor Behavior, 41(6), 561-569. https://doi.org/10.3200/35-09-003-RA
  • [ DOI ]

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  Butz, M. V., Reif, K. L., & Herbort, O. (2008). Bridging the Gap: Learning Sensorimotor-Linked Population Codes for Planning and Motor Control. Proceedings of the International Conference on Cognitive Systems 2008. https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:3964257
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  Herbort, O., Butz, M. V., & Hoffmann, J. (2008). Multimodal Goal Representations and Feedback in Hierarchical Motor Control. Proceedings of the International Conference on Cognitive Systems 2008.
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  Butz, M. V., Herbort, O., & Pezzulo, G. (2008). Anticipatory, Goal-Directed Behavior. In G. Pezzulo, M. V. Butz, C. Castelfranchi, & R. Falcone (Eds.), The Challenge of Anticipation: A Unifying Framework for the Analysis and Design of Artificial Cognitive Systems (pp. 85-113). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87702-8_5
  • [ Abstract ]
  • [ DOI ]
  David Hume may be one of the first who thought about the causes that actually enable us to act goal-directedly in our pursuit of happiness. Besides having usually an end, or goal, in mind, Hume realized that the end must elicit those means that were learned to correlate with the end. Such correlation knowledge, according to Hume (1748), was based on three types of connecting ``ideas'': resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and cause and effect. Knowledge of correlations and cause-effect relations alone, though, do not directly lead to effective behavior. Thus, not only the question how we learn correlations in the environment needs to be addressed, but also how we can exploit the obtained knowledge, if learned properly. While Hume did mainly address the former question, the latter question was acknowledged by Hume only in so far that the acquired knowledge may be used to pursue our goals.
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  Butz, M. V., & Herbort, O. (2008). Context-dependent predictions and cognitive arm control with XCSF. Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, 1357–1364. https://doi.org/10.1145/1389095.1389360
  • [ Abstract ]
  • [ DOI ]
  While John Holland has always envisioned learning classifier systems (LCSs) as cognitive systems, most work on LCSs has focused on classification, datamining, and function approximation. In this paper, we show that the XCSF classifier system can be very suitably modified to control a robot system with redundant degrees of freedom, such as a robot arm. Inspired by recent research insights that suggest that sensorimotor codes are nearly ubiquitous in the brain and an essential ingredient for cognition in general, the XCSF system is modified to learn classifiers that encode piecewise linear sensorimotor structures, which are conditioned on prediction-relevant contextual input. In the investigated robot arm problem, we show that XCSF partitions the (contextual) posture space of the arm in such a way that accurate hand movements can be predicted given particular motor commands. Furthermore, we show that the inversion of the sensorimotor predictive structures enables accurate goal-directed closed-loop control of arm reaching movements. Besides the robot arm application, we also investigate performance of the modified XCSF system on a set of artificial functions. All results point out that XCSF is a useful tool to evolve problem space partitions that are maximally effective for the encoding of sensorimotor dependencies. A final discussion elaborates on the relation of the taken approach to actual brain structures and cognitive psychology theories of learning and behavior.

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  Butz, M. V., Lenhard, A., & Herbort, O. (2007). Emergent Effector-Independent Internal Spaces: Adaptation and Intermanual Learning Transfer in Humans and Neural Networks. 2007 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, 1970-1975.
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  Butz, M. V., Herbort, O., & Hoffmann, J. (2007). Exploiting redundancy for flexible behavior: Unsupervised learning in a modular sensorimotor control architecture. Psychological Review, 114(4), 1015–1046. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.114.4.1015
  • [ DOI ]
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  Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2007). Encoding Complete Body Models Enables Task Dependent Optimal Behavior. 2007 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, 1639-1644. https://doi.org/10.1109/IJCNN.2007.4371203
  • [ Abstract ]
  • [ DOI ]
  Many neural network models of (human) motor learning focus on the acquisition of direct goal-to-action mappings, which results in rather inflexible motor control programs. We propose a neural network architecture (SURE_REACH) that acquires complete body models through unsupervised learning. It encodes redundancy on the kinematic and on the motor command level in order to exert highly flexible, task-dependent optimal control. This paper shows that our approach accounts for two forms of effective human behavior based on exploiting kinematic redundancy. First, depending on the starting posture, hand targets are pursued in different ways optimizing movement efficiency. Second, the arm posture at the end of a movement can be aligned anticipatorily to facilitate a subsequent movement. A discussion of computational implications and relations to behavioral and neurophysiological findings concludes the paper.
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  Herbort, O., Ognibene, D., Butz, M. V., & Baldassarre, G. (2007). Learning to select targets within targets in reaching tasks. 2007 IEEE 6th International Conference on Development and Learning, 7-12. https://doi.org/10.1109/DEVLRN.2007.4354040
  • [ Abstract ]
  • [ DOI ]
  We present a developmental neural network model of motor learning and control, called RL_SURE_REACH. In a childhood phase, a motor controller for goal directed reaching movements with a redundant arm develops unsupervised. In subsequent task-specific learning phases, the neural network acquires goal-modulation skills. These skills enable RL_SURE-REACH to master a task that was used in a psychological experiment by Trommershauser, Maloney, and Landy (2003). This task required participants to select aimpoints within targets that maximize the likelihood of hitting a rewarded target and minimizes the likelihood of accidentally hitting an adjacent penalty area. The neural network acquires the necessary skills by means of a reinforcement learning based modulation of the mapping from visual representations to the target representation of the motor controller. This mechanism enables the model to closely replicate the data from the original experiment. In conclusion, the effectiveness of learned actions can be significantly enhanced by fine-tuning action selection based on the combination of information about the statistical properties of the motor system with different environmental payoff scenarios.
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  Hoffmann, J., Butz, M. V., Herbort, O., Kiesel, A., & Lenhard, A. (2007). Spekulationen zur Strukturideo-motorischer Beziehungen. Zeitschrift für Sportpsychologie, 14(3), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1026/1612-5010.14.3.95
  • [ DOI ]

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  Herbort, O., Butz, M. V., & Hoffmann, J. (2005). Towards an Adaptive Hierarchical Anticipatory Behavior Control System. In C. Castelfranchi, C. Balkenius, M. V. Butz, & A. Ortony (Eds.), From reactive to anticipatory cognitive embodied systems: Papers from the AAAI fall symposium (pp. 83-90). AAAI Press.
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  Oertel, K., Schultz, R., Blech, M., Herbort, O., Voskamp, J., & Urban, B. (2005). EmoTetris for recognition of affective states. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International) 2005. https://publica.fraunhofer.de/handle/publica/349077
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  Herbort, O., Butz, M. V., & Hoffmann, J. (2005). Towards the Advantages of Hierarchical Anticipatory Behavioral Control. In K. Opwis & I.-K. Penner (Eds.), Proceedings of the KogWis05. The German Cognitive Science Conference (pp. 77-82). Schwabe.