You do you: susceptibility of temporal binding to self-relevance.

The self-prioritization effect suggests that self-relevant information has a processing advantage over information that is not directly associated with the self. In consequence, reaction times are faster and accuracy rates higher when reacting to self-associated stimuli rather than to other-related stimuli (Sui et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 38:1105-1117, 2012). This spurs the assumption that self-associated action-effects should also be perceived earlier than other-related outcomes. One way to measure this is temporal binding. Previous research indeed showed that the perceived temporal interval between actions and self-associated outcomes was reduced compared to friend- and other-associated outcomes. However, the employed method (interval estimations) and several experimental design choices make it impossible to discern whether the perceived shortening of the interval between a keypress and a self-relevant outcome is due to a perceptual shift of the action or of the action-effect or both. Thus, we conducted four experiments to assess whether temporal binding can indeed be modulated by self-relevance and if so where this perceptual bias is located. The results did not support stronger temporal binding for self- vs other-related action-effects. We discuss these results against the backdrop of the attentional basis of self-prioritization and propose directions for future research.

Context-specific adaptation for head fakes in basketball: a study on player-specific fake-frequency schedules.

In basketball, an attacking player often plays a pass to one side while looking to the other side. This head fake provokes a conflict in the observing opponent, as the processing of the head orientation interferes with the processing of the pass direction. Accordingly, responses to passes with head fakes are slower and result in more errors than responses to passes without head fakes (head-fake effect). The head-fake effect and structurally similar interference effects (e.g., Stroop effect) are modulated by the frequency of conflicting trials. Previous studies mostly applied a block-wise manipulation of proportion congruency. However, in basketball (and also in other team sports), where different individual opponents can be encountered, it might be important to take the individual frequency (e.g., 20% vs. 80%) of these opponents into account. Therefore, the present study investigates the possibility to quickly (i.e., on a trial-by-trial basis) reconfigure the response behavior to different proportions of incongruent trials, which are contingent on different basketball players. Results point out that participants indeed adapted to the fake-frequency of different basketball players, which could be the result of strategic adaptation processes. Multi-level analyses, however, indicate that a substantial portion of the player-specific adaptation to fake frequencies is accounted by episodic retrieval processes, suggesting that item-specific proportion congruency effects can be explained in terms of stimulus-response binding and retrieval: The head orientation (e.g., to the right) of a current stimulus retrieves the last episode with the same head orientation including the response that was part of this last episode. Thus, from a theoretical perspective, an attacking player would provoke the strongest detrimental effect on an opponent if s/he repeats the same head movement but changes the direction of the pass. Whether it is at all possible to strategically apply this recommendation in practice needs still to be answered.

Perseveration on cognitive strategies.

To acquire and process information, performers can frequently rely on both internal and extended cognitive strategies. However, after becoming acquainted with two strategies, performers in previous studies exhibited a pronounced behavioral preference for just one strategy, which we refer to as perseveration. What is the origin of such perseveration? Previous research suggests that a prime reason for cognitive strategy choice is performance: Perseveration could reflect the preference for a superior strategy as determined by accurately monitoring each strategy's performance. However, following our preregistered hypotheses, we conjectured that perseveration persisted even if the available strategies featured similar performances. Such persisting perseveration could be reasonable if costs related to decision making, performance monitoring, and strategy switching would be additionally taken into account on top of isolated strategy performances. Here, we used a calibration procedure to equalize performances of strategies as far as possible and tested whether perseveration persisted. In Experiment 1, performance adjustment of strategies succeeded in equating accuracy but not speed. Many participants perseverated on the faster strategy. In Experiment 2, calibration succeeded regarding both accuracy and speed. No substantial perseveration was detected, and residual perseveration was conceivably related to metacognitive performance evaluations. We conclude that perseveration on cognitive strategies is frequently rooted in performance: Performers willingly use multiple strategies for the same task if performance differences appear sufficiently small. Surprisingly, other possible reasons for perseveration like effort or switch cost avoidance, mental challenge seeking, satisficing, or episodic retrieval of previous stimulus-strategy-bindings, were less relevant in the present study.

Post-execution monitoring in dishonesty.

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.

Primacy Effects in Extended Cognitive Strategy Choice: Initial Speed Benefits Outweigh Later Speed Benefits.

BACKGROUND: Human performers often recruit environment-based assistance to acquire or process information, such as relying on a smartphone app, a search engine, or a conversational agent. To make informed choices between several of such extended cognitive strategies, performers need to monitor the performance of these options. OBJECTIVE: In the present study, we investigated whether participants monitor an extended cognitive strategy's performance-here, speed-more closely during initial as compared to later encounters. METHODS: In three experiments, 737 participants were asked to first observe speed differences between two competing cognitive strategies-here, two competing algorithms that can obtain answers to trivia questions-and eventually choose between both strategies based on the observations. RESULTS: Participants were sensitive to subtle speed differences and selected strategies accordingly. Most remarkably, even when participants performed identically with both strategies across all encounters, the strategy with superior speed in the initial encounters was preferred. Worded differently, participants exhibited a technology-use primacy effect. Contrarily, evidence for a recency effect was weak at best. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that great care is required when performers are first acquainted with novel ways to acquire or process information. Superior initial performance has the potential to desensitize the performer for inferior later performance and thus prohibit optimal choice. APPLICATION: Awareness of primacy enables users and designers of extended cognitive strategies to actively remediate suboptimal behavior originating in early monitoring episodes.

Limitations of cognitive control on emotional distraction - Congruency in the Color Stroop task does not modulate the Emotional Stroop effect.

Emotional information receives prioritized processing over concurrent cognitive processes. This can lead to distraction if emotional information has to be ignored. In the cognitive domain, mechanisms have been described that allow control of (cognitive) distractions. However, whether similar cognitive control mechanisms also can attenuate emotional distraction is an active area of research. This study asked whether cognitive control (triggered in the Color Stroop task) attenuates emotional distraction in the Emotional Stroop task. Theoretical accounts of cognitive control, and the Emotional Stroop task alike, predict such an interaction for tasks that employ the same relevant (e.g., color-naming) and irrelevant (e.g., word-reading) dimension. In an alternating-runs design with Color and Emotional Stroop tasks changing from trial to trial, we analyzed the impact of proactive and reactive cognitive control on Emotional Stroop effects. Four experiments manipulated predictability of congruency and emotional stimuli. Overall, results showed congruency effects in Color Stroop tasks and Emotional Stroop effects. Moreover, we found a spillover of congruency effects and emotional distraction to the other task, indicating that processes specific to one task impacted to the other task. However, Bayesian analyses and a mini-meta-analysis across experiments weigh against the predicted interaction between cognitive control and emotional distraction. The results point out limitations of cognitive control to block off emotional distraction, questioning views that assume a close interaction between cognitive control and emotional processing.

Temporal Binding in Multi-Step Action-Event Sequences is Driven by Altered Effect Perception.

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.

Why motor imagery is not really motoric: towards a re-conceptualization in terms of effect-based action control.

Overt and imagined action seem inextricably linked. Both have similar timing, activate shared brain circuits, and motor imagery influences overt action and vice versa. Motor imagery is, therefore, often assumed to recruit the same motor processes that govern action execution, and which allow one to play through or simulate actions offline. Here, we advance a very different conceptualization. Accordingly, the links between imagery and overt action do not arise because action imagery is intrinsically motoric, but because action planning is intrinsically imaginistic and occurs in terms of the perceptual effects one want to achieve. Seen like this, the term 'motor imagery' is a misnomer of what is more appropriately portrayed as 'effect imagery'. In this article, we review the long-standing arguments for effect-based accounts of action, which are often ignored in motor imagery research. We show that such views provide a straightforward account of motor imagery. We review the evidence for imagery-execution overlaps through this new lens and argue that they indeed emerge because every action we execute is planned, initiated and controlled through an imagery-like process. We highlight findings that this new view can now explain and point out open questions.

Temporal binding past the Libet clock: testing design factors for an auditory timer.

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.

Rapid and Accumulated Modulation of Action-Effects on Action.

Auditory feedback to a keypress is used in many devices to facilitate the motor output. The timing of auditory feedback is known to have an impact on the motor output, yet it is not known if a keypress action can be modulated on-line by an auditory feedback or how quick an auditory feedback can influence an ongoing keypress. Furthermore, it is not clear if the prediction of auditory feedback already changes the early phase of a keypress action independent of sensory feedback, which would suggest that such prediction changes the motor plan. In the current study, participants pressed a touch-sensitive device with auditory feedback in a self-paced manner. The auditory feedback was given either after a short (60 msec) or long (160 msec) delay, and the delay was either predictable or not. Our results showed that the keypress peak force was modulated by the amount of auditory feedback delay even when the delay was unpredictable, thus demonstrating an on-line modulation effect. The latency of the on-line modulation was suggested to be as low as 70 msec, indicating a very fast sensory to motor mapping circuit in the brain. When the auditory feedback delay was predictable, a change in the very early phase of keypress motor output was found, suggesting that the prediction of sensory feedback is crucial to motor control. Therefore, even a simple keypress action contains rich motor dynamics, which depend on expected as well as on-line perceived sensory feedback.

On Why Objects Appear Smaller in the Visual Periphery.

An object appears smaller in the periphery than in the center of the visual field. In two experiments (N = 24), we demonstrated that visuospatial attention contributes substantially to this perceptual distortion. Participants judged the size of central and peripheral target objects after a transient, exogenous cue directed their attention to either the central or the peripheral location. Peripheral target objects were judged to be smaller following a central cue, whereas this effect disappeared completely when the peripheral target was cued. This outcome suggests that objects appear smaller in the visual periphery not only because of the structural properties of the visual system but also because of a lack of spatial attention.

Action force modulates action binding: evidence for a multisensory information integration explanation.

Action binding refers to the observation that the perceived time of an action (e.g., a keypress) is shifted towards the distal sensory feedback (usually a sound) triggered by that action. Surprisingly, the role of somatosensory feedback for this phenomenon has been largely ignored. We fill this gap by showing that the somatosensory feedback, indexed by keypress peak force, is functional in judging keypress time. Specifically, the strength of somatosensory feedback is positively correlated with reported keypress time when the keypress is not associated with an auditory feedback and negatively correlated when the keypress triggers an auditory feedback. The result is consistent with the view that the reported keypress time is shaped by sensory information from different modalities. Moreover, individual differences in action binding can be explained by a sensory information weighting between somatosensory and auditory feedback. At the group level, increasing the strength of somatosensory feedback can decrease action binding to a level not being detected statistically. Therefore, a multisensory information integration account (between somatosensory and auditory inputs) explains action binding at both a group level and an individual level.

The interplay of predictive and postdictive components of experienced selfhood.

Objects that we affect by our body movements can be experienced as being controlled by (agency) and belonging to the own body (ownership). Such impressions of minimal selfhood arise when objects move as predicted prior to the action (predictive component). But they can also arise when otherwise unpredictable object movements turn out to be consistent with (e.g. spatially compatible to) preceding actions (postdictive component). Here we studied how the impact of postdictive components of inferred minimal selfhood in terms of action-object compatibility is shaped by different levels of predictability of these object movements. We found that compatibility between actions and object movements, and to a lesser extent predictability of object movements, affected reported agency while only compatibility affected reported ownership. Importantly, predictive and postdictive factors influenced these measures in an independent manner. We discuss these results against the background of models that assume multiple components of experienced minimal selfhood.

Is the head-fake effect in basketball robust against practice? Analyses of trial-by-trial adaptations, frequency distributions, and mixture effects to evaluate effects of practice.

Reactions to the pass of a basketball player performing a head fake are typically slower than reactions to a basketball player who passes without a head fake (i.e., head-fake effect). The present study shows that extensive practice reduces the head-fake effect in basketball. Additional analyses were conducted to explore the mechanism behind the reduced head-fake effect. First, we analyzed whether or not participants developed some control over the processing of irrelevant gaze direction, as indicated by specific trial-to-trial adaptations (i.e., congruency sequence effect). Second, we fitted the individual frequency distributions of RTs to ex-Gaussian distributions, to evaluate if practice specifically affects the Gaussian part of the distribution or the exponential part of the distribution. Third, we modeled individual RT distributions as the so-called mixture effects to examine whether the way irrelevant gaze direction impacts performance (either occasionally but massively or continuously but moderately) changes with practice. The analyses revealed that the effect of practice could not be explained with an increasing congruency-sequence effect. Also, it could not be found in the ex-Gaussian distributional analyses. The assumption that residual failure to inhibit the processing of the gaze direction in contrast to continuous failures to do so might favor mixed effects over uniform effects at later courses of practice could not be validated. The reduced head-fake effect thus is argued to source in participants' general increasing ability to inhibit the processing of the task-irrelevant gaze direction information and/or in a priority shift of gaze processing to a processing of the pass direction.

Situation selection and cognitive conflict: explicit knowledge is necessary for conflict avoidance.

Humans transform their environment in order to regulate their own affect. One way to do so is to avoid situations that come with negative rather than positive affect. This selection might not solely bear on expectations of full-blown emotions, but may also be invoked by anticipating the aversiveness of cognitive conflict, when a situation suggests competing behavioural responses. If cognitive conflict is indeed aversive, it may trigger affect regulation goals, which in turn influence choices of situations depending on the magnitude of conflict they contain. People should prefer actions that produce conflict-free situations to actions that produce conflicting situations. In three experiments, participants had to solve a Stroop task by freely choosing between response keys that were either associated with low-conflict or high-conflict in the subsequent trial. We find that people do not automatically prefer actions associated with conflict-free situations to actions that are associated with conflicting situations. They only do so, when they are explicitly informed about the contingency between action and congruency of an upcoming situation. This suggests that cognitive conflict, at least at the level of a standard conflict task as used here, is insufficient to invoke affect regulation processes.

Affective distraction along the flexibility-stability continuum.

This study explored whether conditions that promote flexibility in task processing enhance the detrimental impact of irrelevant negative stimulation on performance. We approached this flexibility from a transient and a sustained perspective, by manipulating whether participants repeated or switched between two tasks in consecutive trials and whether they performed the tasks in separate blocks or randomly mixed. Participants categorised either a letter or the colour of a bar, which were presented close to an irrelevant negative or neutral picture. Performance was worse in the presence of negative rather than neutral pictures. Repeating or switching tasks transiently did not modulate this detrimental impact of affective distraction in three experiments (nExp1 = 32, nExp2 = 32, nExp3 = 64). Attentional capture by negative content did decline in single compared to mixed task contexts, but only when these sustained task contexts also differed in the frequency of affective stimulation. When affective stimulation was the same in mixed and single task contexts, this modulation vanished. Overall, these results suggest that the influence of task-irrelevant negative stimulation on performance is surprisingly independent of cognitive states that favour either flexible or stable processing of task-relevant information.

Design choices: Empirical recommendations for designing two-dimensional finger-tracking experiments.

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.

Impact of action planning on visual and body perception in a virtual grasping task.

The present study examined mutual influences of visual and body-related signals during planning of an object-oriented action. Participants were to enclose a visual target object using two cursors controlled by the movements of their fingers. During movement preparation, they were asked to judge either the size of the object or a certain finger distance. Both types of judgments were systematically affected by the transformation of finger movements into the movements of visual cursors. We suggest that these biases are perceptual consequences of sensory integration of visual and body-related signals relating to the same external object.

Emergence of anticipatory actions in a novel task.

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.

Connecting action control and agency: Does action-effect binding affect temporal binding?

The sense of agency, i.e., the notion that we, as agents, are in control of our own actions and can affect our environment by acting, is an integral part of human volition. Recent work has attempted to ground agency in basic mechanisms of human action control. Along these lines, action-effect binding has been shown to affect explicit judgments of agency. Here, we investigate if such action-effect bindings are also related to temporal binding which is often used as an implicit measure of agency. In two experiments, we found evidence for the establishment of short-term action-effect bindings as well as temporal binding effects. However, the two phenomena were not associated with each other. This finding suggests that the relation of action control and agency is not a simple one, and it adds to the evidence in favor of a dissociation between subjective agency and perceptual biases such as temporal binding.