Replacing vertical actions by mouse movements: a web-suited paradigm for investigating vertical spatial associations.

The number of web-based studies in experimental psychology has been growing tremendously throughout the last few years. However, a straightforward web-based implementation does not exist for all types of experimental paradigms. In the current paper, we focus on how vertical response movements-which play a crucial role in spatial cognition and language research-can be translated into a web-based setup. Specifically, we introduce a web-suited counterpart of the vertical Stroop task (e.g., Fox & Shor, in Bull Psychon Soc 7:187-189, 1976; Lachmair et al., in Psychon Bull Rev 18:1180-1188, 2011; Thornton et al., in J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 39:964-973, 2013). We employed nouns referring to entities typically located in lower or upper vertical space (e.g., "worm" and "bird", respectively) in Experiments 1 and 2, and emotional valence words associated with a crouched or an upward bodily posture (e.g., "sadness" and "excitement", respectively) in Experiment 3. Depending on the font color, our participants used their mouse to drag the words to the lower or upper screen location. Across all experiments, we consistently observed congruency effects analogous to those obtained with the lab paradigm using actual vertical arm movements. Consequently, we conclude that our web-suited paradigm establishes a reliable approach to examining vertical spatial associations.

Sentence-based mental simulations: Evidence from behavioral experiments using garden-path sentences.

Language comprehenders activate mental representations of sensorimotor experiences related to the content of utterances they process. However, it is still unclear whether these sensorimotor simulations are driven by associations with words or by a more complex process of meaning composition into larger linguistic expressions, such as sentences. In two experiments, we investigated whether comprehenders indeed create sentence-based simulations. Materials were constructed such that simulation effects could only emerge from sentence meaning and not from word-based associations alone. We additionally asked when during sentence processing these simulations are constructed, using a garden-path paradigm. Participants read either a garden-path sentence (e.g., "As Mary ate the egg was in the fridge") or a corresponding unambiguous control with the same meaning and words (e.g., "The egg was in the fridge as Mary ate"). Participants then judged whether a depicted entity was mentioned in the sentence or not. In both experiments, picture response times were faster when the picture was compatible (vs. incompatible) with the sentence-based interpretation of the target entity (e.g., both for garden-path and control sentence: an unpeeled egg), suggesting that participants created simulations based on the sentence content and only operating over the sentence as a whole.

Multimodal aspects of sentence comprehension: Do facial and color cues interact with processing negated and affirmative sentences?

Negation is usually considered as a linguistic operator reversing the truth value of a proposition. However, there are various ways to express negation in a multimodal manner. It still remains an unresolved issue whether nonverbal expressions of negation can influence linguistic negation comprehension. Based on extensive evidence demonstrating that language comprehenders are able to instantly integrate extralinguistic information such as a speaker's identity, we expected that nonverbal cues of negation and affirmation might similarly affect sentence comprehension. In three preregistered experiments, we examined how far nonverbal markers of negation and affirmation-specifically, the so-called "not face" (see Benitez-Quiroz et al., 2016) and red or green color (see Dudschig et al., 2023)-interact with comprehending negation and affirmation at the sentential level. Participants were presented with photos ("not face" vs. positive control; Experiments 1 and 2) or color patches (red vs. green; Experiment 3). They then read negated and affirmative sentences in a self-paced manner or judged the sensibility of negated and affirmative sentences (e.g., "No, I do not want to sing" vs. "Yes, I would like to buy a sofa"). Both frequentist statistics and Bayes factors resulting from linear mixed-effects analyses showed that processing times for negated and affirmative sentences were not significantly modulated by the nonverbal features under investigation. This indicates that their influence might not extend to sentential negation or affirmation comprehension. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Stimulus expectation prolongs rather than shortens perceived duration: Evidence from self-generated expectations.

Previous studies have suggested that unexpected stimuli are perceived as being longer than expected ones (e.g., the temporal oddball effect). These studies manipulated stimulus expectation mostly via stimulus repetitions and stimulus probabilities. However, these manipulations might affect duration judgments not only through the modulation of stimulus expectation. Therefore, the present study introduces a novel paradigm to isolate the effect of stimulus expectation on perceived duration from repetition and probability effects. In 2 experiments, participants vocalized which of 2 possible stimuli they expected in each trial immediately before stimulus presentation (self-generated expectations). Following stimulus presentation, participants performed a temporal bisection task on the duration of the presented stimuli. For both color (Experiment 1) and shape stimuli (Experiment 2), longer perceived durations were observed when stimulus expectations were fulfilled rather than violated. These results contrast with previous studies from which it has been concluded that stimulus expectation shortens perceived duration. Instead, the findings are rather in line with the idea that higher level stimulus expectation enhances stimulus processing and thus prolongs subjective duration (Matthews & Gheorghiu, 2016). Importantly, this also challenges the assumption that higher level stimulus expectation is a key mechanism driving the temporal oddball effect. (PsycINFO Database Record