The addition of a spatial auditory cue improves spatial updating in a virtual reality navigation task.

Auditory cues are integrated with vision and body-based self-motion cues for motion perception, balance, and gait, though limited research has evaluated their effectiveness for navigation. Here, we tested whether an auditory cue co-localized with a visual target could improve spatial updating in a virtual reality homing task. Participants navigated a triangular homing task with and without an easily localizable spatial audio signal co-located with the home location. The main outcome was unsigned angular error, defined as the absolute value of the difference between the participant's turning response and the correct response towards the home location. Angular error was significantly reduced in the presence of spatial sound compared to a head-fixed identical auditory signal. Participants' angular error was 22.79° in the presence of spatial audio and 30.09° in its absence. Those with the worst performance in the absence of spatial sound demonstrated the greatest improvement with the added sound cue. These results suggest that auditory cues may benefit navigation, particularly for those who demonstrated the highest level of spatial updating error in the absence of spatial sound.

Increased Pain Variability in Patients With Chronic Pain: A Role for Pain Catastrophizing.

Pain is an inherently negative perceptual and affective experience that acts as a warning system to protect the body from injury and illness. Pain unfolds over time and is influenced by myriad factors, making it highly dynamic. Despite this, statistical measures often treat any intraindividual variability in pain ratings as noise or error. This is consequential, especially for research on chronic pain, because pain variability is associated with greater pain severity and depression. Yet, differences in pain variability between patients with chronic pain and controls in response to acute pain has not been fully examined-and it is unknown if dispositional factors such as pain catastrophizing (negative cognitive-affective response to potential or actual pain in which attention cannot be diverted away from pain) relate to pain variability. In the current study, we recruited chronic-pain patients (N = 30) and pain-free controls (N = 22) to complete a 30-second thermal pain task where they continually rated a painful thermal stimulus. To quantify pain variability and capture potential dynamics, we used both a traditional intraindividual standard deviation (iSD) metric of variability and a novel derivatives approach. For both metrics, patients with chronic pain had higher variability in their pain ratings over time, and pain catastrophizing significantly mediated this relationship. This suggests patients with chronic pain experience pain stimuli differently over time, and pain catastrophizing may account for this differential experience. PERSPECTIVE: The present study demonstrates (using multiple variability metrics) that chronic pain patients show more variability when rating experimental pain stimuli, and that pain catastrophizing helps explain this differential experience. These results provide preliminary evidence that short-term pain variability could have utility as a clinical marker in pain assessment and treatment.

The perceived duration of vast spaces is mediated by awe.

Looking out over the Pacific Ocean or the Grand Canyon can lead to a sense of vastness. As a perceptual phenomenon, vastness poses a unique challenge because traditional measures of distance are not capable of explaining such large spatial extents. Vastness, however, may lead to a sense of awe, and awe, in turn, can dilate one's experience of time. Time, then, may be a meaningful proxy measure of vastness. Whether vastness is related to the perception of time and if the emotional experience of awe plays a role in that relation was explored herein. Across three experiments, we examined the relation between vastness, awe, and perceived time. In Experiment 1, participants reproduced the perceived duration of images varying in vastness and rated them in terms of the awe experienced as if they were in the spaces. Greater vastness led to higher awe scores and longer duration estimates, with awe mediating the relation between vastness and time. Experiment 2 assessed if the average brightness of images, absent of scene structure, explained changes in perceived duration. Brightness did not explain variance in perceived duration; thus, the scene structure of vast scenes may play a role in altering perceived time. Experiment 3 examined if scene semantics could explain changes in perceived duration. Whereas the relation between vastness and perceived duration vanished, a weak, mediated effect still occurred. Ultimately, time may not be a proxy measure of vastness, but we find evidence that emotion can link the relation between spatial and temporal perception.

The relationship between space and time perception: A registered replication of Casasanto and Boroditsky (2008).

Everything in our environment moves through both space and time, and to effectively act we must be aware of both spatial and temporal elements in relation to our own body. Thus, perception of space and time have an intimate relationship. Walsh's a theory of magnitude (ATOM) suggests that space and time perception rely on a general magnitude system and their relationship should be roughly symmetrical. Alternatively, metaphor theory, which is based on the philosophical work of Lakoff and Johnson, argues that we represent time using spatial metaphor and thus the relationship should be asymmetrical (with space influencing time more than time influences space). A compelling line of evidence for metaphor theory comes from the work of Casasanto and Boroditsky who experimentally demonstrated this asymmetric effect. However, in our previous unpublished online replication attempt of this work, we found a roughly symmetrical relationship between space and time, more in line with the theoretical predictions of ATOM. Given this, we performed a registered replication of Casasanto and Boroditsky (2008) in both an online and laboratory environment.

Expertise effects on the perceptual and cognitive tasks of indoor rock climbing.

Experts' cognitive abilities adapt in response to the challenges they face in order to produce elite-level performance. Expert athletes, in particular, must integrate their motor capabilities with their cognitive and perceptual processes. Indoor rock climbers are particularly unique athletes in that much of the challenge they face is to accurately perceive and consolidate multiple movements into manageable action plans. In the current study, we investigated how climbers' level of expertise influenced their perception of action capabilities, visual memory of holds, and memory of planned and performed motor sequences. In Experiment 1, climbers judged their perceived capability to perform single climbing moves and then attempted each movement. Skilled climbers were less confident, but perceived their action capabilities more accurately than less skilled climbers. In Experiment 2, climbers recalled holds on a route, as well as predicted and recalled move sequences before and after climbing, respectively. Expertise was positively associated with visual memory performance as well as planned and recalled motor sequence accuracy. Together, these findings contribute to our knowledge of motor expertise and suggest that motor expert's ability to accurately estimate their action capabilities may underlie complex cognitive processes in their domain of expertise.