Modal and amodal cognition: an overarching principle in various domains of psychology.

Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlie processing in specific domains of cognition (e.g., perception, mental imagery, and language). However, in this paper, we suggest that both formats play a major role in most cognitive domains. We believe that a comprehensive theory of cognition requires a solid understanding of these representational formats and their functional roles within and across different domains of cognition, the developmental trajectory of these representational formats, and their role in dysfunctional behavior. Here we sketch such an overarching perspective that brings together research from diverse subdisciplines of psychology on modal and amodal representational formats so as to unravel their functional principles and their interactions.

The role of task-relevant and task-irrelevant information in congruency sequence effects: Applying the diffusion model for conflict tasks.

In conflict tasks, such as the Simon, Eriksen flanker, or Stroop task, the congruency effect is often reduced after an incongruent compared to a congruent trial: the congruency sequence effect (CSE). It was suggested that the CSE may reflect increased processing of task-relevant information and/or suppression of task-irrelevant information after experiencing an incongruent relative to a congruent trial. In the present study, we contribute to this discussion by applying the Diffusion Model for Conflict tasks (DMC) framework in the context of CSEs to flanker and Simon tasks. We argue that DMC independently models the task-relevant and task-irrelevant information and thus is a first good candidate for disentangling their unique contributions. As a first approach, we fitted DMC conjointly or separately to previously congruent or incongruent trials, using four empirical flanker and two Simon data sets. For the flanker task, we fitted the classical DMC version. For the Simon task, we fitted a generalized DMC version which allows the task-irrelevant information to undershoot when swinging back to zero. After considering the model fits, we present a second approach, where we implemented a cognitive control mechanism to simulate the influence of increased processing of task-relevant information or increased suppression of task-irrelevant information. Both approaches demonstrate that the suppression of task-irrelevant information is essential to create the typical CSE pattern. Increased processing of task-relevant information, however, could rarely describe the CSE accurately.

Compatibility effects with touchless gestures.

Human actions are suspect to various compatibility phenomena. For example, responding is faster to the side where a stimulus appears than to the opposite side, referred to as stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility. This is even true, if the response is given to a different stimulus feature, while location itself is irrelevant (Simon compatibility). In addition, responses typically produce perceivable effects on the environment. If they do so in a predictable way, responses are faster if they produce a (e.g., spatially) compatible effect on the same side than on the other side. That it, a left response is produced faster if it results predictably in a left effect than in a right effect. This effect is called response-effect (R-E) compatibility. Finally, compatibility could also exist between stimuli and the effects, which is accordingly called stimulus-effect (S-E) compatibility. Such compatibility phenomena are also relevant for applied purposes, be it in laparoscopic surgery or aviation. The present study investigates Simon and R-E compatibility for touchless gesture interactions. In line with a recent study, no effect of R-E compatibility was observed, yet irrelevant stimulus location yielded a large Simon effect. Touchless gestures thus seem to behave differently with regard to compatibility phenomena than interactions via (other) tools such as levers.

Is there hierarchical generalization in response-effect learning?

Ideomotor theory is an influential approach to understand goal-directed behavior. In this framework, response-effect (R-E) learning is assumed as a prerequisite for voluntary action: Once associations between motor actions and their effects in the environment have been formed, the anticipation of these effects will automatically activate the associated motor pattern. R-E learning is typically investigated with (induction) experiments that comprise an acquisition phase, where R-E associations are presumably learned, and a subsequent test phase, where the previous effects serve as stimuli for a response. While most studies used stimuli in the test phase that were identical to the effects in the acquisition phase, one study reported generalization from exemplars to their superordinate category (Hommel et al., Vis Cogn 10:965-986, 2003, Exp. 1). However, studies on so-called R-E compatibility did not report such generalization. We aimed to conceptually replicate Experiment 1 of Hommel et al. (Vis Cogn 10:965-986, 2003) with a free-choice test phase. While we did observe effects consistent with R-E learning when the effects in the acquisition phase were identical to the stimuli in the test phase, we did not observe evidence for generalization. We discuss this with regard to recent studies suggesting that individual response biases might rather reflect rapidly inferred propositional knowledge instead of learned R-E associations.

Perception and action as viewed from the Theory of Event Coding: a multi-lab replication and effect size estimation of common experimental designs.

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) has influenced research on action and perception across the past two decades. It integrates several seminal empirical phenomena and it has continued to stimulate novel experimental approaches on the representational foundations of action control and perceptual experience. Yet, many of the most notable results surrounding TEC originate from an era of psychological research that relied on rather small sample sizes as judged by today's standards. This state hampers future research aiming to build on previous phenomena. We, therefore, provide a multi-lab re-assessment of the following six classical observations: response-effect compatibility, action-induced blindness, response-effect learning, stimulus-response binding, code occupation, and short-term response-effect binding. Our major goal is to provide precise estimates of corresponding effect sizes to facilitate future scientific endeavors. These effect sizes turned out to be considerably smaller than in the original reports, thus allowing for informed decisions on how to address each phenomenon in future work. Of note, the most relevant results of the original observations were consistently obtained in the present experiments as well.

Same same but different: Subtle but consequential differences between two measures to linearly integrate speed and accuracy (LISAS vs. BIS).

Condition-specific speed-accuracy trade-offs (SATs) are a pervasive issue in experimental psychology, because they sometimes render impossible an unambiguous interpretation of experimental effects on either mean response times (mean RT) or percentage of correct responses (PC). For between-participants designs, we have recently validated a measure (Balanced Integration Score, BIS) that integrates standardized mean RT and standardized PC and thereby controls for cross-group variation in SAT. Another related measure (Linear Integrated Speed-Accuracy Score, LISAS) did not fulfill this specific purpose in our previous simulation study. Given the widespread and seemingly interchangeable use of the two measures, we here illustrate the crucial differences between LISAS and BIS related to their respective choice of standardization variance. We also disconfirm the recently articulated hypothesis that the differences in the behavior of the two combined performance measures observed in our previous simulation study were due to our choice of a between-participants design and we demonstrate why a previous attempt to validate BIS (and LISAS) for within-participants designs has failed, pointing out several consequential issues in the respective simulations and analyses. In sum, the present study clarifies the differences between LISAS and BIS, demonstrates that the choice of the variance used for standardization is crucial, provides further guidance on the calculation and use of BIS, and refutes the claim that BIS is not useful for attenuating condition-specific SATs in within-participants designs.

A tutorial on using the paired t test for power calculations in repeated measures ANOVA with interactions.

The a priori calculation of statistical power has become common practice in behavioral and social sciences to calculate the necessary sample size for detecting an expected effect size with a certain probability (i.e., power). In multi-factorial repeated measures ANOVA, these calculations can sometimes be cumbersome, especially for higher-order interactions. For designs that only involve factors with two levels each, the paired t test can be used for power calculations, but some pitfalls need to be avoided. In this tutorial, we provide practical advice on how to express main and interaction effects in repeated measures ANOVA as single difference variables. In particular, we demonstrate how to calculate the effect size Cohen's d of this difference variable either based on means, variances, and covariances of conditions or by transforming [Formula: see text] or [Formula: see text] from the ANOVA framework into d. With the effect size correctly specified, we then show how to use the t test for sample size considerations by means of an empirical example. The relevant R code is provided in an online repository for all example calculations covered in this article.

What matters in making demand-based decisions: Time alone or difficulty too?

Which task is easier, doing arithmetic problems of specified form for some specified duration, or carrying a bucket of specified weight over some specified distance? If it is possible to choose between the "more cognitive" task and the "more physical" task, how are the difficulty levels of the tasks compared? We conducted two experiments in which participants chose the easier of two tasks, one that involved solving addition or multiplication problems (Experiment 1) or addition problems with different numbers of addends (Experiment 2) for varying amounts of time (in both experiments), and one that involved carrying a bucket of different weights over a fixed distance (in both experiments). We found that the probability of choosing to do the bucket task was higher when the bucket was empty than when it was weighted, and increased when the cognitive task was harder and its duration grew. We could account for the choice probabilities by mapping the independent variables onto one abstract variable, Φ. The functional identity of Φ remains to be determined. It could be interpreted as an inferred effort variable, subjective duration, or an abstract, amodal common code for difficulty.

Introspection about backward crosstalk in dual-task performance.

The present study investigated participants' ability to introspect about the effect of between-task crosstalk in dual tasks. In two experiments, participants performed a compatibility-based backward crosstalk dual task, and additionally provided estimates of their RTs (introspective reaction times, IRTs) after each trial (Experiment 1) or after each pair of prime and test trials (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the objective performance showed the typical backward crosstalk effect and its sequential modulation depending on compatibility in the previous trial. Very similar patterns were observed in IRTs, despite the typical unawareness of the PRP effect. In sum, these results demonstrate the reliability of between-task crosstalk in dual tasks and that people's introspection about the temporal processing demands in this complex dual-task situation is intriguingly accurate and severely limited at the same time.

Presuppositions of determiners are immediately used to disambiguate utterance meaning: A mouse-tracking study on the German language.

The present study investigated how listeners understand and process the definite and the indefinite determiner. While the definite determiner clearly conveys a uniqueness presupposition, the status of the anti-uniqueness inference associated with the indefinite determiner is less clear. In a forced choice production task, we observed that participants make use of the information about number usually associated with the two determiners to convey a message. In a subsequent mouse-tracking task, participants had to select one of two potential referents presented on screen according to an auditorily presented stimulus sentence. The data revealed that participants use the information about uniqueness or anti-uniqueness encoded in determiners to disambiguate sentence meaning as early as possible, but only when they are exclusively faced with felicitous uses of determiners.

Is Immediate Processing of Presupposition Triggers Automatic or Capacity-Limited? A Combination of the PRP Approach with a Self-Paced Reading Task.

Informally speaking, presuppositions are meaning components which are part of the common ground for speakers in a conversation, that is, background information which is taken for granted by interlocutors. The current literature suggests an immediate processing of presuppositions, starting directly on the word triggering the presupposition. In the present paper, we focused on two presupposition triggers in German, the definite determiner the (German der) and the iterative particle again (German wieder). Experiment 1 replicates the immediate effects which were previously observed in a self-paced reading study. Experiment 2 then investigates whether this immediate processing of presuppositions is automatic or capacity-limited by employing the psychological refractory period approach and the locus of slack-logic, which have been successfully employed for this reason in various fields of cognitive psychology. The results argue against automatic processing, but rather suggest that the immediate processing of presuppositions is capacity-limited. This potentially helps specifying the nature of the involved processes; for example, a memory search for a potential referent.

Stimulus-Response and Response-Effect Compatibility With Touchless Gestures and Moving Action Effects.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether response-effect (R-E) compatibility or stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility is more critical for touchless gesture responses. BACKGROUND: Content on displays can be moved in the same direction (S-R incompatible but R-E compatible) or opposite direction (S-R compatible but R-E incompatible) as the touchless gesture that produces the movement. Previous studies suggested that it is easier to produce a button-press response when it is R-E compatible (and S-R incompatible). However, whether this R-E compatibility effect also occurs for touchless gesture responses is unknown. METHOD: Experiments 1 and 2 employed an R-E compatibility manipulation in which participants made responses with an upward or downward touchless gesture that resulted in the display content moving in the same (compatible) or opposite (incompatible) direction. Experiment 3 employed an S-R compatibility manipulation in which the stimulus occurred at the upper or lower location on the screen. RESULTS: Overall, only negligible influences of R-E compatibility on performing the touchless gestures were observed (in contrast to button-press responses), whereas S-R compatibility heavily affected the gestural responses. CONCLUSION: The R-E compatibility obtained in many previous studies with various types of responses appears not to hold for touchless gestures as responses. APPLICATION: The results suggest that in the design of touchless interfaces, unique factors may contribute to determining which mappings of gesture and display movements are preferred by users.

Smaller backward crosstalk effects for free choice tasks are not the result of immediate conflict adaptation.

In dual-task situations, mutual interference phenomena are often observed. One particularly interesting example of such phenomena is that even Task 1 performance is improved if Task 2 requires a compatible (e.g., both responses are given on the left side) instead of an incompatible response (e.g., one response is given on the right side, and the other on the left side). This is called the compatibility-based backward crosstalk effect (BCE). In a previous paper, we observed support for a critical role of stimulus-response (S-R) links in causing this effect: The BCE was smaller when one of the two tasks was a free choice task. However, an alternative explanation for this observation is that free choice tasks lead to immediate conflict adaptation, thereby reducing the interference from the other task. In the present two experiments, we tested this explanation by varying the amount of conflict assumed to be induced by a free choice task either sequentially (Exp. 1) or block-wise (Exp. 2). While we replicated a sequential modulation of the BCE with two forced choice tasks, we observed (1) no reduction of the BCE induced by (compatible) free choice trials nor (2) an effect of block-wise manipulations of the frequency of free choice trials on the size of the BCE. Thus, while the BCE is sensitive to sequential modulations induced by the (in)compatibility of two forced choice responses, which might point to conflict adaptation, the reduced BCE in dual-task situations involving a free choice task is likely due to its weaker S-R links.

Combining speed and accuracy to control for speed-accuracy trade-offs(?).

In psychological experiments, participants are typically instructed to respond as fast as possible without sacrificing accuracy. How they interpret this instruction and, consequently, which speed-accuracy trade-off they choose might vary between experiments, between participants, and between conditions. Consequently, experimental effects can appear unpredictably in either RTs or error rates (i.e., accuracy). Even more problematic, spurious effects might emerge that are actually due only to differential speed-accuracy trade-offs. An often-suggested solution is the inverse efficiency score (IES; Townsend & Ashby, 1983), which combines speed and accuracy into a single score. Alternatives are the rate-correct score (RCS; Woltz & Was, 2006) and the linear-integrated speed-accuracy score (LISAS; Vandierendonck, 2017, 2018). We report analyses on simulated data generated with the standard diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978) showing that IES, RCS, and LISAS put unequal weights on speed and accuracy, depending on the accuracy level, and that these measures are actually very sensitive to speed-accuracy trade-offs. These findings stand in contrast to a fourth alternative, the balanced integration score (BIS; Liesefeld, Fu, & Zimmer, 2015), which was devised to integrate speed and accuracy with equal weights. Although all of the measures maintain "real" effects, only BIS is relatively insensitive to speed-accuracy trade-offs.

Common mechanisms in error monitoring and action effect monitoring.

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.

Free choice tasks as random generation tasks: an investigation through working memory manipulations.

Free choice tasks are tasks in which two or more equally valid response options per stimulus exist from which participants can choose. In investigations of the putative difference between self-generated and externally triggered actions, they are often contrasted with forced choice tasks, in which only one response option is considered correct. Usually, responses in free choice tasks are slower when compared with forced choice task responses, which may point to a qualitative difference in response selection. It was, however, also suggested that free choice tasks are in fact random generation tasks. Here, we tested the prediction that in this case, randomness of the free choice responses depends on working memory (WM) load. In Experiment 1, participants were provided with varying levels of external WM support in the form of displayed previous choices. In Experiment 2, WM load was induced via a concurrent n-back task. The data generally confirm the prediction: in Experiment 1, WM support improved both randomness and speed of responses. In Experiment 2, randomness decreased and responses slowed down with increasing WM load. These results suggest that free choice tasks have much in common with random generation tasks.

Preschool children adapt grasping movements to upcoming object manipulations: Evidence from a dial rotation task.

In adults, the motor plans for object-directed grasping movements reflects the anticipated requirements of intended future object manipulations. This prospective mode of planning has been termed second-order planning. Surprisingly, second-order planning is thought to be fully developed only by 10 years of age, when children master seemingly more complex motor skills. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that already 5- and 6-year-old children consistently use second-order planning but that this ability does not become apparent in tasks that are traditionally used to probe it. We asked 5- and 6-year-olds and adults to grasp and rotate a circular dial in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Although children's grasp selections were less consistent on an intra- and inter-individual level than adults' grasp selections, all children adjusted their grasps to the upcoming dial rotations. By contrast, in an also administered bar rotation task, only a subset of children adjusted their grasps to different bar rotations, thereby replicating previous results. The results indicate that 5- and 6-year-olds consistently use second-order planning in a dial rotation task, although this ability does not become apparent in bar rotation tasks.

Why free choices take longer than forced choices: evidence from response threshold manipulations.

Response times (RTs) for free choice tasks are usually longer than those for forced choice tasks. We examined the cause for this difference in a study with intermixed free and forced choice trials, and adopted the rationale of sequential sampling frameworks to test two alternative accounts: Longer RTs in free choices are caused (1) by lower rates of information accumulation, or (2) by additional cognitive processes that delay the start of information accumulation. In three experiments, we made these accounts empirically discriminable by manipulating decision thresholds via the frequency of catch trials (Exp. 1) or via inducing time pressure (Exp. 2 and 3). Our results supported the second account, suggesting a temporal delay of information accumulation in free choice tasks, while the accumulation rate remains comparable. We propose that response choice in both tasks relies on information accumulation towards a specific goal. While in forced choice tasks, this goal is externally determined by the stimulus, in free choice tasks, it needs to be generated internally, which requires additional time.

Author Correction: Why free choices take longer than forced choices: evidence from response threshold manipulations.

The authors regret that some errors that had been addressed during the proofing process were not corrected by the publisher. Most of these errors are of a stylistic nature and do not change the substance of the article. Please note, however, that the corresponding author's e-mail address is christoph.naefgen@uni-tuebingen.de. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this.

Action effect features, but not anatomical features, determine the Backward Crosstalk Effect: evidence from crossed-hands experiments.

The Backward Crosstalk Effect (BCE) indicates that response features of Task 2 in a dual-task paradigm influence even Task 1 performance. However, it can be assumed that responses are represented with multiple features in the cognitive system. In this regard, Ideomotor Theory suggests action effects as one central response feature in human action control and an earlier study by Janczyk, Pfister, Hommel, and Kunde (Cognition 132: 30-43, 2014) already provided some evidence that action effects are a crucial determinant of the BCE. The present study aimed to further investigate which response features are critical for the BCE. Therefore, a crossed-hands manipulation was implemented in two experiments to examine whether the spatial position of the actual response and thus its associated action effects or the body-side of the effectors' anatomical connection determine the BCE. Analyses revealed that even when participants press a left response key with the right hand and vice versa, the usual BCE occurs. These results indicate that the BCE depends on spatial features of the action effects rather than on anatomical features and thus provide additional support for the assumption that action effects have an important influence on the BCE and on action control in general.