Perception and Action - University Bielefeld · Emergence of perception-action couplings and...

Organizers:

Herbert Heuer • Wolfgang Prinz • Peter Wolff Miriam Beisert • Arvid Herwig

A Conference / Summer School at ZiF, Bielefeld, Germany

June 23–26, 2010

Perception and Action

Perception and Action

A Conference / Summer School at ZiF, Bielefeld, Germany

June 23–26, 2010

5

Sponsored by

Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, BielefeldCenter for Interdisciplinary Research

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft German Research Foundation

Max Planck Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, LeipzigMax Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Leibniz-Institut für Arbeitsforschung, TU DortmundLeibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors

Organizers

Herbert Heuer Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund

Wolfgang Prinz Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig

Peter Wolff University of Osnabrück

Miriam BeisertMax Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig

Arvid Herwig Bielefeld University

7

Program

Tuesday, June 22

Wednesday,June 23

Thursday, June 24

Friday, June 25

Saturday, June 26

8:45–

9:00

Welcome Address

9:00–

10:30

Tutorial 1L. W. Barsalou

M. Kiefer

Tutorial 4M. T. Turvey

Tutorial 7Y. Rossetti

Tutorial 10G. Rizzolatti

10:30–

11:00Coffee Break Coffee Break Coffee Break Coffee Break

11:00–

12:30

Tutorial 2C. M. Heyes

Tutorial 5D. R. Proffitt

Tutorial 8P. Haggard

Tutorial 11T. Goschke

12:30–

14:00Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch

14:00–

15:30

Poster Session I

Poster Session II

Poster Session III

Tutorial 12B. Hommel

15:30–


16:00–

17:30

Tutorial 3C. von Hofsten

Tutorial 6D. Rosenbaum

Tutorial 9G. Humphreys

Concluding Discussion

16:00 – 17:00

17:30–

19:00

Research Seminar

W. ShebilskeDinner (ZiF)

Research Seminar

D. A. Owens

19:00Welcome

Buffet(Hotel)

19:30Public Lecture

G. Rizzolatti

19:30Conference

Dinner(ZiF)

9

Tutorials

Wednesday Morning, 9:00–10:30

Grounded cognition: The foundation of concepts in perception, action, and introspection

Lawrence W. Barsalou1 & Markus Kiefer2

1 Department of Psychology, Emory University2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Ulm

Increasing empirical research supports grounded theories of the human con-ceptual system, which assume that concepts are represented within the brain’s modality-specific systems for perception, action, and introspection. In this tuto-rial, we present an overview of the latest developments in this rapidly develop-ing research area. Specifically, we review behavioral and neuroimaging studies showing that conceptual and modality-specific processing exhibit similarities at functional and neuroanatomical levels. For example, these studies demonstrate that visual, auditory, and motor features in object concepts are represented by cortical cell assemblies in sensory and motor areas established during concept acquisition. Hence, access to object concepts involves a partial reinstatement of the brain activity that occurs during perception and action. Recent evidence further suggests that abstract concepts are similarly grounded in various modal systems, demonstrating the generality of the grounded cognition framework across diverse types of concepts.

10

Tutorials

Wednesday Morning, 11:00–12:30

Automatic imitation?

Cecilia M. Heyes

All Souls College & Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford

In the 1990s evidence began to emerge that task-irrelevant body movement stimuli can facilitate topographically similar, and interfere with topographically dissimilar, responses. Subsequent research, comprising some 70 experiments, suggests that this phenomenon constitutes a new class of stimulus-response compatibility effect, comparable to the Stroop and Simon effects, and described by some authors as ‘automatic imitation’. Drawing on all aspects of this literature, the present review asks whether ‘automatic imitation’ is automatic, and whether it is imitation. The first question concerns the dependence of ‘automatic imita-tion’ on an actor’s intentions, and the routes through which intentional variables modulate performance. The second asks whether ‘automatic imitation’ depends specifically on topographical relations, and the role of learning in establishing these relations. If ‘automatic imitation’ is aptly named, it allows the core mecha-nisms of imitation to be investigated in healthy adult humans, offering a bridge between the bench neuroscience of the mirror neuron system, and the real world relevance of unconscious behavioural mimicry.

11

Tutorials

Wednesday Afternoon, 16:00–17:30

Emergence of perception-action couplings and goal-directed action in early infancy

Claes von Hofsten

Department of Psychology, Uppsala University

It is argued that action constitutes the foundation for cognitive development. Action is a principal component of all aspects of cognition. It reflects the motives of the child, the problems to be solved, the goals to be attained, and the con-straints and possibilities of the child’s body and sensory-motor system. Actions are directed into the future and their control is based on knowledge of what is going to happen next. The child’s perception-action system is especially designed to facilitate the extraction of this knowledge. In addition, the infant is endowed with motives that ensure that these innate predispositions are transformed into a system of knowledge for guiding actions.

12

Tutorials

Thursday Morning, 9:00–10:30

Ecological approach to perception-action: Persistent challenges, current and emerging strategies

Michael T. Turvey

Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action, University of Connecticut,and Haskins Laboratories

The ecological approach to perception-action is unlike the standard approach in several respects. It takes the animal in its environment as the proper scale for theory and analysis, it pursues a law-based account, it promotes self-organization as the theory-constitutive metaphor, and it employs self-entailing definitions in its explanations. I will focus upon the whys and wherefores of the long-term chal-lenges of the ecological approach and the emerging conceptions and strategies that promise to address them.

13

Tutorials

Thursday Morning, 11:00–12:30

Perception viewed as a phenotypic expression

Dennis R. Proffitt

Department of Psychology, University of Virginia

Visual experience relates the optically-specified environment to people’s ever-changing phenotype, which consists of their morphology, physiology, and be-havior. Within near space, apparent distances are scaled with morphology, and in particular, to the extent of an actor’s reach. Across a range of distances, the height of appropriate objects can be scaled to the observer’s eye height. For large environments, such as fields and hills, spatial layout is scaled by changes in physi-ology – the bioenergetic costs of walking relative to the bioenergetic resources currently available. When appropriate, behavioral performance scales apparent size; for example, a golf hole looks bigger to golfers when they are putting well. Perceived spatial layout is scaled by that aspect of the individual’s phenotype that is relevant for the action opportunities that currently exist in the environment.

14

Tutorials

Thursday Afternoon, 16:00–17:30

Action planning and control: Cognitive foundations of action preparation and execution

David A. Rosenbaum

Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University

Through our physical actions we can express our thoughts and expand our per-ceptual horizons. Doing so requires effective use of our action capabilities. How do we manage to perform the physical actions we do? For cognitive scientists, this question boils down to four subordinate questions: (1) The degrees-of-freedom problem; (2) the serial order problem; (3) the perceptual-motor integration prob-lem; and (4) the learning problem. The degrees-of-freedom problem relates to the fact that for any given task there are generally an infinite number of possible solutions. How are the performed solutions selected? The serial order problem relates to the fact that successive behaviors must be appropriately sequenced and timed. How is such sequencing and timing achieved? The perceptual-motor integration problem relates to the fact that actions have perceptual consequences. How are actions chosen to yield desired perceptual consequences? The learning problem relates to the fact performance of tasks typically benefits from experi-ence. What mechanisms underlie such learning?

15

Tutorials

Friday Morning, 9:00–10:30

Perception, attention and action in the visual dorsal stream

Yves Rossetti

Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Claude Bernard University Lyon and Lyon Hospitals

A main issue in the debate centring on the relation between perception and action is: how much of our actions can be performed independently from perception? The main paradigms in the field have tried to investigate residual visuo-motor abilities in patients with visual deficits (e.g. blindsight or visual form agnosia), or to delineate specific visual deficits that would be specific to the action system (e.g. optic ataxia). This lecture will be aimed at reassessing the conclusions which can be drawn from the investigation of optic ataxia through a review of the recent developments made in relation to this neurological condition. It argues that a gen-eral oversimplification of the dual-visual systems hypothesis (Milner and Goodale 1995 ) has led to the popular interpretation that ‘dorsal = action’ and challenges the claims of a neat double dissociation between the conditions. The possibility of common grounds for the visuo-motor deficits of OA patients and their perceptual deficits and implications for the dual stream theory will be discussed.

16

Tutorials

Friday Morning, 11:00–12:30

Body ownership and action authorship

Patrick Haggard

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Department of Psychology, University College London

Many experiences have both an action-related and a body-related component. However, the experiences of action and sensation seem very different. Some studies have compared bodily sensations caused by one’s own actions with bodily sensations, such as passive movements, that are externally imposed. These studies show, first, that volition, rather than body, dominates action awareness. Second, the experience of the acting body is not merely the experience of the passive body plus some additional ‘volitional’ component, but rather depends on a quite distinct brain network. Third, the unity of self-consciousness appears to come from our actions, rather than our bodily sensations. Thus, action and body are indeed psychologically strikingly different.

17

Tutorials

Friday Afternoon, 16:00–17:30

Attention and action: Clinical and experimental evidence on mutual interactions between attention and action

Glyn Humphreys

Behavioural Brain Sciences Centre, University of Birmingham

I will review experiments from neuropsychological and experimental studies with normal individuals indicating that action can strongly modulate visual attention. In both patients and normal participants, attention is affected by showing objects in interaction together, with attention allocated across members of an interacting pair. Brain imaging evidence indicates that this effect of combining objects for ac-tion is mediated by activation within the ventral visual stream. In addition to this, there is evidence that action-based hand-object relations influence early visual processing and the intial allocation of attention in visual displays, and this effect is linked to both visual and motor-based responses to stimuli. Taken together the data highlight that attention and action are closely coupled in the human brain.

18

Tutorials

Saturday Morning, 9:00–10:30

Mirror neurons and systems: Anatomy, physiology and implications for interaction and communication

Giacomo Rizzolatti

Department of Neurosciences, University of Parma

Mirror neurons are a set of neurons that discharge both when the monkey ex-ecutes a specific motor act and when it observes another individual doing a similar act. In the first part of my lecture, I will review the basic functional properties of mirror neurons. I will review then their visual properties showing that mirror neu-rons represent a mechanism that allows a direct understanding of what the agent is doing. Mirror mechanism also exists in humans. Yet, there is some controversy on the role of the mirror mechanism in social cognition. I will discuss this issue and show that, although there are several mechanisms through which one can understand the behaviour of others, the parieto-frontal mechanism is the only mechanism that allows understanding others’ actions from the inside giving the observing individual a “first-person” person grasp of other individuals’ motor goals and intentions. I will conclude by discussing the role of mirror neurons in autism.

19

Tutorials

Saturday Morning, 11:00–12:30

Volition and action: Control dilemmas and the dynamics of intentional control

Thomas Goschke

Department of Psychology, Dresden University of Technology

This lecture addresses two questions concerning the intentional control of goal-directed action. First, I examine which role intentions play in the causation of voluntary action. Contrary to the idea that intentions are immediate “triggering causes” of actions, empirical and theoretical arguments suggest that intentions are better conceived as internal constraints, which bias perceptual processes and response dispositions towards goal-congruent attractor states. Second, I will dis-cuss the neglected question how complementary control processes are regulated dynamically. This question derives from the assumption that agents pursuing goal directed action in changing environments face antagonistic challenges, e.g., to shield goals from distraction vs. flexibly switch between goals (shielding-shifting-dilemma); to focus selectively on goal-relevant stimuli vs. monitor the environment for potentially significant stimuli (selection-monitoring-dilemma); to exploit learnt reward contingencies vs. explore novel but potentially risky op-tions (exploitation-exploration-dilemma). I will discuss recent evidence on the role of conflicts and emotions in the dynamic regulation of control dilemmas.

20

Tutorials

Saturday Afternoon, 14:00–15:30

The perceptual grounding of voluntary action and the social self

Bernhard Hommel

Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, University of Leiden

Voluntary action is anticipatory and, hence, must depend on associations between actions and their perceivable effects. This talk provides an overview of recent behavioral and neurocognitive work on the acquisition and intentional use of action-effect associations in infants, children, and adults. I will show that action effects are acquired from very early on and are still integrated automatically in adults. However, actively using effect representations for intentional action control seems to rely on the slowly developing frontal cortex, which plays a crucial role in selecting contextually appropriate action-effect associations. I will also show that perceived action effects form the basis of our self-concept and the degree to which we experience ourselves as separated from or part of another person.

21

Public Lecture

Thursday, June 24, 2010 – 19:30

The Mirror Mechanism: a mechanism to understand others

Giacomo Rizzolatti

University of Parma

22

Research Seminars


Reducing frustrations for blind people using the web by understanding perception-action relationships

Wayne Shebilske

Department of Psychology, Wright State University

Frustrations for individuals using the web include misperceptions and inappro-priate actions stemming from confusing page layout, poorly labeled forms, and missing or unusable alternative text descriptions for images. Way finding theories have guided unsuccessful attempts to reduce such frustrations based on the assumption that perception and action are determined by similar processes for individuals who are sighted and blind. Ecological Efference Mediation Theory is providing alternative guidance based on the proposal that individuals have inher-ited the capacity to combine diverse processing parts into qualitatively different whole perception/action processing systems to fit specific situations. Accordingly, proper guidance takes into account similarities and differences between the processing systems for blind and sighted individuals. Similarities include heavy reliance on keywords. Differences include dissimilar strategies for implementing keyword searches and disparate contextual information from overviews. The present seminar will review the theory and its application to sighted and blind individuals using the web.

23

Research Seminars


Perception and action as illuminated by “Two Visual Systems”

D. Alfred Owens1 in cooperation with Bruce Bridgeman2

1 Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College2 Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz

More than 40 years ago, ground-breaking research by Gerald Schneider (1967) on the Syrian hamster converged with concurrent studies from David Ingle (1967), Richard Held (1968), and Colwin Trevarthen (1968) to launch the astonishing idea that vertebrate vision has evolved two functionally distinct subsystems: focal processes for perception of objects and their properties, and ambient processes for proprioception and guidance of action. Later investigators built upon this novel concept through, for example, studies of blindsight (e.g., Weiskrantz, 1986) and the distinction between ventral and dorsal cortical pathways (Mishkin, et al., 1983; Goodale & Milner, 1992). This seminar offers a forum to discuss more recent work that has been influenced by the concept of two visual systems – one for perception and the other for action. Topics will include problems of perception and action when driving at night (e.g., Owens & Tyrrell, 1999).

24

Posters | Wednesday Afternoon


I–1Action impairs and facilitates concurrent perception

Roland Thomaschke1, Brian Hopkins2, Chris Miall3, & Andrea Kiesel4

1Department of Psychology, University of Regensburg2Department of Psychology, Lancaster University

3Behavioural Brain Sciences Centre, University of Birmingham4Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg

Previous research has shown that actions impair the perception of symbolically compatible stimuli, but facilitate the perception of spatially compatible stimuli. We propose that the motorvisual impairment effect is due to action planning, while the motorvisual facilitation effect is due to action control. As planning processes action context, while control is relatively independent of context, we hypothesized that motorvisual impairment effects are influenced by modulations of task context, while motorvisual facilitation effects are not. We conducted two dual-task experiments. In one experiment, key presses impaired participants’ dis-crimination of symbolically action-compatible stimuli. In the second experiment, key presses facilitated participants’ discrimination of spatially action compatible stimuli. These results confirm previous findings. We then modulated the action context by cueing the key presses via different tone-key assignments. As predicted by our hypothesis, context modulation affected the motorvisual impairment ef-fect, but not the motorvisual facilitation effect.

I–2A role for local motion features in the perception of biological motion

Daniel R. Saunders

Department of Psychology, Queen’s University

Most studies of biological motion perception have assumed that a global integrat-ing process is responsible for visually retrieving information about an animal from its movement. We hypothesize that observers can draw on a secondary source

25


of information: invariants contained in local motion patterns, especially in the motion of those body parts which most strongly show the interplay of gravity, motor control, and inertia, such as the feet. These motion features might quickly reveal the presence of an animal, and other useful properties of the animal such as its heading direction. Experimental results from the Biomotion Lab provide support for this hypothesis: heading direction can be determined when the global structure has been removed; there is a separate local motion inversion effect; observers fixate on the feet when they are trying to determine direction; and changes to the motion profile of the feet can produce a stronger or weaker impression of biological motion.

I–3Premotor cortex stimulation enhances mirror and counter-mirror

motor facilitation

Caroline Catmur1, Rogier Mars2, Matthew Rushworth2, & Cecilia Heyes3

1Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London2Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford

3All Souls College & Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford

Mirror neurons fire during both the performance of an action and the observa-tion of the same action being performed by another. These neurons have been recorded in ventral premotor and inferior parietal cortex in the macaque, but hu-man brain imaging studies suggest that areas responding to the observation and performance of actions are more widespread. We used paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to test whether dorsal, as well as ventral, premotor cortex is involved in producing mirror motor facilitation effects. Stimulation of premo-tor cortex enhanced mirror motor facilitation, and also enhanced the effects of counter-mirror training. No differences were found between the two premotor areas. These results support an associative account of mirror neuron properties, whereby multiple regions that process both sensory and motor information have the potential to contribute to mirror effects.

26


I–4Components of the motor system perform different functions

during action observation

Clare Press

Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London

Previous studies have demonstrated that when we observe somebody else ex-ecuting an action many areas of our own motor systems are active. It has been argued that these motor activations are evidence that we motorically simulate observed actions; this function may support various functions such as imitation and action understanding. However, it is not known whether all motor systems are encoding the same properties of observed actions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a repetition suppression paradigm, participants were required to either observe or execute a ringpull or precision grip action, both as a first and second event. We found contrasting repetition suppression effects in BA6 and BA44, suggestive of different roles played by the two premotor areas during action observation. These data suggest that the function of motor activa-tion during action observation is not unitary.

I–5Motor psychophysics and the role of effort

Chase J. Coelho & David A. Rosenbaum

Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University

How does the motor system select the movements that it generates? Movements that are made are generally less effortful than the many alternatives that could achieve the task at hand, but a method is needed to measure effort. We developed a psychophysical procedure to address this challenge. We presented Penn State students with two paced back-and-forth object-displacement tasks of varying physical dimensions. We asked participants to perform whichever task seemed easier, and we fit the choice data with alternative mathematical models reflect-ing hypothesized costs. Based on the models, we could reject several hypotheses about the factors defining effort, and we could embrace other factors. The factors that could be embraced are kinetic; they take account of forces. The factors that

27


could not be embraced are kinematic; they don’t take account of forces. Our work demonstrates the promise of the task-choice method for identifying performance costs and helps establish a rigorous scientific approach to the study of effort.

I–6The continuous end-state comfort effect:

The influence of contextual, motor, and cognitive factors

Oliver Herbort

Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg

The end-state comfort effect refers to the finding that the way humans grasp objects often depends on future interactions with them. The effect has been extensively studied by observing if participants grasp a to-be-rotated bar either with a prone or supine forearm. We now explored the end-state comfort effect in situations in which participants could select among a continuum of grasp orientations. In four experiments, participants had to rotate a box that had to be grasped by a circular dial-like handle. Unlike a bar, this handle did not afford specific grasp orientations. Interestingly, experiment 1 revealed that the direction of the rotation had a stronger effect on the participants’ grasp orientations than the actual extent of the rotation. Three more experiments replicated this finding and showed that the range of possible rotations does not affect grasp orientation, but that the forearm orientation before the start of the grasp and the cognitive representation of the task modulate the end-state comfort effect.

28


I–7Does postural stability of elderly people improve with the aid of haptic

supplementation by a light grip of a mobile support?

Inke Marie Albertsen & Jean-Jacques Temprado

Institut des Sciences du Mouvement Etienne-Jules Marey – UMR 6233 CNRS & Université de la Méditerranée

Haptic supplementation by a « light touch » of the index finger has been re-peatedly shown to increase postural stability, though corresponding studies predominantly concentrated on fixed support touch conditions. The present study aimed to explore the effect of a « light grip » (LG, with 3 fingers) on differ-ent supports (fixed or mobile stick). Two groups of 11 participants (M= 25,9 years; M= 70,9 years) were tested in a quiet stance task. Variability and amplitude of postural oscillations were measured in eight experimental conditions in which the mobility of the given support and its resistance (in opposite direction to the body movement) were manipulated. The results show an equivalent benefit for both age groups and confirm that the stabilizing effect is independent from the nature of the support. This suggests a possible future application in gerontology by conceiving an “informational” mobility device that could help elderly people maintaining postural stability in complex potentially destabilizing situations.

I–8Multimodal conceptual representations of object size

Dermot Lynott & Louise Connell

School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester

Which is bigger: a grapefruit or an apple? A planet or a moon? People readily make these kinds of size comparisons, but the nature of the underlying repre-sentations remains opaque. One source of information for such comparisons is visual. However, embodied cognition research suggests additional conceptual information emerges from physical interactions with objects; arms, hands and fingers feed back touch and proprioceptive information when contact is made. Crucially, simulating non-visual information depends on the capacity to physically

29


interact with the objects in question; while a grapefruit might be held in the hands, a planet does not afford haptic interaction. Here we present data from studies that involve participants making size-comparison judgements while receiving touch or proprioceptive stimulation to the hands. We show that such body-specific perceptual information influences the speed that people can judge object size and discuss how this depends on the size of the objects being compared and the nature of the comparison being carried out.

I–9Abstractness-concreteness and imageability norms do not reflect

sensory experience

Louise Connell & Dermot Lynott

School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester

Word norms for abstractness-concreteness and imageability have been a cor-nerstone of research in cognitive psychology for over 40 years, and are assumed to reflect the extent to which a concept is experienced or mentally represented with perceptual information. Here, we show that existing norms fail to capture this notion. First, there is a clear dissociation between these norms and ratings of experiential strength in separate perceptual modalities (vision, audition, taction etc.). Second, these norms routinely cause concepts with strong sensory compo-nents to be miscategorised as abstract entities. Lastly, high and low ends of these norming scales are differentially related to the various perceptual modalities, sug-gesting that people are unable to aggregate multimodal perceptual experience into a single composite rating with any degree of consistency. As an alternative measure, we propose that researchers investigating sensory experience in concep-tual representation should collect separate ratings for each perceptual modality, and select the maximum rating of experiential strength.

30


I–10Illusory shrinkage and growth: Body-based rescaling affects

the perception of size

Sally Linkenauger

Department of Psychology, University of Virginia

The notion that apparent sizes are perceived relative to the size of one’s body is supported through the discovery of a new visual illusion. When graspable objects are magnified by wearing magnifying goggles, they appear to shrink back to near normal size when one’s hand (also magnified) is placed next to them. When objects are minified by wearing minifying goggles, the opposite occurs. However, this change in apparent size does not occur when familiar objects or someone else’s hand is placed next to the object. Interestingly, the magnitude of this illusion is less when one places their non-dominant hand next to the object than when one places their dominant hand next to the object. Presumably, objects’ appar-ent sizes shift closer to their actual size when the hand is viewed, because object sizes are rescaled to the magnified or minified hand rather than the known size of the hand. These findings highlight the role of body scaling in size perception.

I–11Vocal gesture

Marcus Perlman

Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz

The psychological processes involved in the production of iconic gesture and the relationship of these processes to language has been the subject of considerable debate. The experiments presented in this poster offer new insight into this issue through examination of the use of iconic vocal gestures. These gestures, such as the use of prosodic tempo and duration to depict the speed and temporal contour of a described event, are especially interesting because of how they are directly integrated into the articulatory movements of speech. The reported studies in-vestigate the use of vocal gesture in several contexts, including the naturalistic description of video clips, story reading, a “vocal charades” game, and popular mu-

31


sic. Overall, the results suggest that vocal gesture is a common aspect of spoken communication and lend support to the hypothesis that simulated sensorimotor imagery drives the production of both gesture and language.

I–12Brain damage to auditory cortex affects the processing

of sound-related concepts

Natalie Trumpp1, Daniel Kliese1, Klaus Hoenig1, Thomas Haarmeier2, & Markus Kiefer1

1Department of Psychiatry, University of Ulm2 Centre for Neurology and Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research,

University of Tuebingen

Classical models assume that conceptual knowledge is represented in an amo-dal system distinct from sensory and motor systems. Recent models propose that concepts are grounded in distributed modality-specific brain areas which typically process sensory or action-related object information. In support of the modality-specific theory, previous studies showed that acoustic concepts evoke high activities in auditory brain regions. The present neuropsychological study investigated the effect of a focal lesion in left superior/middle temporal areas on the processing of sound-related concepts. Patient and control subjects per-formed a lexical decision task on visually presented names referring to objects with high vs. low relevance of acoustic information (helicopter/pillow). The patient showed longer reaction times and a higher number of errors to acoustic than to non-acoustic words. Control subjects performed comparably for both word classes. This patient`s impairment in processing sound-related concepts shows that modality-specific cortex plays a causal role in conceptual processing.

32


I–13Modality-specific representation of acoustic and action-related concepts:

ERP-evidence during word reading

Daniel Kliese, Natalie Trumpp, Klaus Hoenig, & Markus Kiefer

Department of Psychiatry, University of Ulm

Concepts are traditionally seen as abstract mental entities which are represented distinctly from perceptual or motor brain systems. Recent views assume that concepts are embodied in the sense that they are grounded in perception and action. Previous studies have shown that conceptual processing activates visual and action-related brain systems. Here we investigated the neural representation of acoustic (“telephone”) and action-related (“hammer”) conceptual features with ERP recordings. We used a reading task requiring no motor response to avoid any confounding motor brain activation. We obtained early ERP effects (175–195 ms after stimulus onset) at frontocentral and central electrodes with a different polarity and topography for acoustic and action-related words. The topography and the early onset of the ERP effects suggest that they reflect rapid access to conceptual features rather than imagery processes, thereby supporting the no-tion that concepts are grounded in perception and action.

33

Posters | Thursday Afternoon

Thursday Afternoon, 14:00–15:30

II–1Haptic information and coordination dynamics

Paula L. Silva1, Till Frank2, & Michael T. Turvey2

1 Department of Physical Therapy, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais2 Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action, University of Connecticut

Current research suggests that non-visual perception of the spatial orientation of body segments is tied to vectors representative of their mass moment distribu-tion (Vmm). Our question was whether the relative orientation of Vmm of right and left hands (ΔVmm = Vmm left – Vmm right) constitutes haptic information supporting bimanual coordination. Blindfolded participants coordinated the motions of a pair of cross-shaped, hand-held pendulums that were either symmetrically loaded (ΔVmm = 0 ) or asymmetrically loaded(ΔVmm ≠ 0). The sign and magnitude of ΔVmm systematically affected the pattern of coordination (indexed by mean relative phase Φ), but not its stability. The effect of ΔVmm on Φ was not modified by either coordination mode or movement frequency. These results suggest that the changes in Φ were a function of shifts in the perceptual frame of reference exploited to achieve the intended coordination pattern and not a function of de-tuning. The implications of the findings to the theory and modeling of bimanual rhythmic coordination will be discussed.

II–2MY left hand does know what YOUR right hand is doing

Christina Jäger, Antje Holländer, Karsten Müller, & Wolfgang Prinz

Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

We investigated if a stimulus-response link relevant for a co-actor’s task exerts an influence on one’s own task. We divided a bimanual reaching task between two participants in such way that they jointly performed the task using one hand each. In our paradigm subjects initiated their responses simultaneously, giving us the possibility to analyze the data with respect to joint timing effects.

34


In this task the relation of the executed movements could be either congruent or incongruent. Finding poorer performance for incongruent movement patterns we suggest that people do have a representation of the other’s task. Significant between- and within dyads correlations of RT indicate that co-actors align their movement speed on a global and on a local level. Additional experiments and time-series analyses let us suggest that co-representation is dependent on social context and that movement speed alignment proceeds in a low-frequency range.

II–3Bimanual coordination and corpus callosum microstructure in

young adults with traumatic brain injury

Karen Caeyenberghs1, I. Leunissen1, J. Coxon1, M. Geurts1, A. Leemans2, K. Michiels3, H. Beyens3, C. Kiekens3, S. Sunaert4, & S.P. Swinnen1

1 Motor Control Laboratory, KULeuven2 Image Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht

3 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University Hospital Leuven Campus Pellenberg

4 Department of Radiology, University Hospital, KULeuven

Many coordinated movements of the upper extremities rely on precise timing of movements and interhemispheric communication via the corpus callosum (CC), which is especially vulnerable to TBI. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been shown to be an effective tool in identifying reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) in TBI patients. However, the relationship between this tissue damage and functional performance is not well understood. Here, we investigated the rela-tionship between FA in specific regions of the CC (i.e. genu, body, splenium) and bimanual task performance. 25 adults with TBI and 18 controls (mean age = 25 y 4 mo) made spatially and temporally coupled bimanual circular motions during event-related fMRI. The purdue pegboard test and TEMPA were used to measure fine finger movements. DTI along with standard anatomical scans were acquired of all subjects. This study provides evidence for a structural alteration of callosal fibers in adults with TBI that are correlated with bimanual motor functioning, inspiring new avenues for therapy.

35


II–4Intermanual transfer of adaptation is independent of cognitive awareness

Jordan A. Taylor, Gregory J. Wojaczynski, Christina S. Gee, & Richard B. Ivry

Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

Sensorimotor adaptation can be influenced by the size of the perceived errors. Large unexpected errors engage cognitive awareness, often leading to the use of compensatory strategies to facilitate performance. These strategies will influence learning processes, sometimes in surprising ways including the development of less stable memories. A common tool to probe this representation is to exam-ine how adaptation to experimentally-induced visual perturbations generalizes across limbs. If error awareness leads to a more abstract representation of the learning goal, then intermanual transfer may be contingent on the use of strate-gies and adaptation may not be effector-dependent. We compared intermanual generalization following small gradually-introduced errors, which did not engage awareness, and large abruptly introduced errors, which did engage awareness. We observed intermanual generalization under both conditions, suggesting that the learning mechanisms were robust across different error sizes. The pattern of generalization is more suggestive of a general environmental adaptation rather than a limb specific adaptation.

36


II–5A lesion of the parietal cortices improves prism adaptation:

Evidence from a patient with bilateral optic ataxia

Damien Pastor1, John Crawford2, Laure Pisella1, Yves Rossetti1,3, & Jacinta O’Shea1,4

1 INSERM, U864, Espace et Action, Université Lyon 1; IFR19, Institut Fédératif des Neurosciences de Lyon, IFRH, Institut Fédératif et de Recherche

2 School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen3 Hôpital Henry Gabrielle, Hospices Civils de Lyon

4 Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford

Introduction: Prism adaptation (PA) is used to study sensorimotor plasticity and in neurological rehabilitation. The contributions of the cerebellum and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) remain to be discussed. Objective: To understand the contri-bution of the PPC in PA we tested a patient (IG) with a rare bilateral lesion of this structure. Methods: Our new protocol includes adaptation and deadaptation to explore the detailed dynamics of PA. As IG lacks on-line visuomotor control, her performances was compared to that of 7 normal age-matched controls subjects deprived of their correction capacity by movement vision. Results: IG and controls showed similar error reduction during adaptation and deadaptation periods, sug-gesting that her off-line movement control was preserved. Interestingly, IG shows a hyperadaptative profile: (1) she adapts faster and more, (2) shows longer-lasting prismatic after-effects. Conclusion: These results suggest that intact PPC normally inhibits the cerebellar adaptation. Interferate the PPC could have tuned up and prolonged the therapeutic effects of the PA.

37


II–6Robot-assisted learning of a visuo-motor transformation task

Katrin Rapp

Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund University of Technology

While motor performance benefits in many ways from robot assistance, mo-tor learning is a more difficult domain and the constituents of effective robot assistance in motor learning are still to be defined clearly. Among others, the extent to which the learner is actively involved in movement production and experiences movement errors may play a crucial role. I present two experiments which address both of these aspects of motor learning using a pointing task with a visuo-motor transformation in effect and different guidance conditions. In the first experiment learners were either assisted by a robot via path guidance, which still necessitates active movement on the part of the learner, via full target guid-ance, or not at all. The second experiment sheds further light on the role of errors in learning this motor task in particular and the role robot assistance might play in motor learning in general.

II–7The precision of the acquired internal model of a complex visuo-motor

transformation is influenced by the type of visual feedback during practice

Sandra Sülzenbrück & Herbert Heuer

Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund University of Technology

We investigated the influence of the type of visual feedback during practice of the complex visuo-motor transformation of a sliding two-sided lever on the ac-quisition of an internal model of the transformation. Three groups of participants, practicing with different types of visual feedback, were compared with respect to movement accuracy, curvature and movement time. One group received con-tinuous visual feedback during practice, and two groups were presented terminal visual feedback, either only the end position of the movement or the end posi-

38


tion together with the trajectory of the cursor. Results showed that continuous visual feedback led to more precise movement end positions during practice than terminal visual feedback, but to less precise movements during open-loop tests. This finding indicates that terminal visual feedback supports the development of a precise internal model of a new visuomotor transformation.

II–8Crosstalks between proximal and distal action effects when using a tool

Christine Sutter, Stefan Ladwig, Kathrin Wendler, & Jochen Müsseler

Work and Cognitive Psychology, RWTH Aachen University

When using a tool, proximal and distal action effects do often not correspond or are even in conflict. In the present experiments we examined the role of proximal and distal action effects in a closed loop task of sensorimotor control. Different gains for the x-axis perturbed the relation between hand movements on a digitizer tablet and cursor movements on a display. While the covered hand movement was held constant, the cursor amplitude on the display was shorter, equal or longer. When participants were asked to replicate the hand movement without visual feedback, hand amplitudes varied in accordance with the presented gain. Adding a second transformation (Ex. 1 left-right inversion; Ex. 2 vertical-horizontal transformation) reduced the impact of distal action effects on proximal action effects. In conclusion, distal action effects overrule proximal action effects, when the proprioceptive/tactile feedback shows a feature overlap with the visual feed-back on the display.

39


II–9The role of conscious and automatic processes in temporal prediction

during sensorimotor synchronization

Nadine Pecenka

Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Musical ensemble performance requires precise action coordination. To play in synchrony, musicians presumably anticipate their co-performers’ upcoming sounds. Our previous studies revealed individual differences in musicians’ tem-poral prediction abilities during on-beat finger-tapping to a tempo-changing pacing signal. An ongoing study examines the degree of cognitive control that is required for generating such (more or less accurate) temporal predictions. Cogni-tive load was varied by means of a visual working-memory task (3 levels: observa-tion, 1-back and 2-back comparisons) that was administered while participants tapped to a tempo-changing pacing signal. Results indicate that the degree to which individuals predict ongoing tempo changes decreases with increasing working-memory demands. We are currently administering an additional set of finger-tapping tasks to investigate the relationship between automatic (phase) vs. conscious (period) error correction and temporal prediction mechanisms. Individuals with strong prediction tendencies may utilize conscious error correc-tion processes more effectively than individuals with weak prediction tendencies.

II–10Dissolving modules: Component interaction dynamics as basis

for cognitive control

Stefan Scherbaum, Maja Dshemuchadse, Rico Fischer, Hannes Ruge, & Thomas Goschke

Department of Psychology, Dresden University of Technology

A central topic in cognitive science is how cognitive control is adapted flexibly to changing task demands at different time scales. An influential account of how cognitive control is recruited in a context-sensitive manner is conflict-monitoring theory, which postulates a conflict-monitoring module in the anterior cingulate

40


cortex, registering conflict and signaling the demand for enhanced control. Here, we propose an alternative explanation for conflict-adaptation effects based on component interaction dynamics instead of a specific monitoring module. Re-sults from three experiments in which we investigated the dynamics of conflict-adaptation at different time scales (within and across trials) were consistent with the idea that conflict-adaptation effects can occur in the absence of a dedicated monitoring module. Moreover, a connectionist model based on component in-teraction dynamics and multistable goal attractor network dynamics replicated classical conflict-adaptation effects as well as the within-trial dynamics examined in our experiments without an explicit conflict-monitoring module.

II–11Remapping, attention, and inhibition of return

Sebastiaan Mathôt & Jan Theeuwes

Department of Cognitive Psychology, VU University Amsterdam

In a series of experiments we investigated what happens to visual attention, as measured by facilitation and inhibition, in the interval surrounding a saccade. Just before saccade execution, the locus of attention shifts in the direction of the saccade. We interpret this finding in terms of the pre-saccadic RF-shifts (predictive remapping), which have been reported in single-cell recording studies. Immedi-ately after saccade execution, there was a split (or spread) of attention between the spatiotopic and retinotopic locus of attention. This suggests that the locus of attention is remapped, but only partly. We investigated this phenomenon in more detail by measuring the time-course of spatiotopic and retinotopic Inhibition of Return after a saccade. We found that retinotopic inhibition is transient, whereas spatiotopic inhibition is less pronounced, but more sustained.

41


II–12The role of attractive faces in the orienting of attention

Julia Yukovsky, Carmel Mevorach, & Glyn W. Humphreys

Behavioural Brain Sciences Centre, University of Birmingham

Using an adaptation of the flanker paradigm, we investigated the effects that at-tractive faces have on disengagement of attention in patients with left parietal (LP) and right parietal (RP) damage. Generally, patients with RP damage were more distracted by the face flankers than patients with LP damage. Interestingly, the RP patients, but not the LP patients, were faster to identify the target, in both visual fields, when it was flanked by a highly attractive face than a mildly attractive face. A possible explanation for this surprising result is the familiar nature of highly at-tractive faces. The hypothesis that familiarity may facilitate the disengagement process in patients with RP damage is presently being tested.

42

Posters | Friday Afternoon


III–1Development in action-effect learning, a pupillometric/ eyetracking study

Stephan A. Verschoor, Michiel M. Spapé, Szilvia Biro, & Bernhard Hommel

Psychology Department, Leiden University

To perform a goal-directed action, one needs knowledge about the consequences of this action. According to the two-stage model of action control (Elsner & Hom-mel, 2001), voluntary action is anticipatory and must depend on associations between actions and their perceivable effects. Action control is attributed to the automatic bi-directional association of movements and their sensory effects. Support for the this model was found in adult studies (see Hommel, 2005 ) and recently also in 4- and 7-years-old children (Eenshuistra, Weidema & Hommel, 2004) and in a study in 18-month-olds (Verschoor, Weidema, Biro & Hommel, in preparation). However, we believe that the paradigms used may not have been sensitive enough to pick up the same effect in younger age-groups. In the current study we used a modified pupillometric/ eyetracking version of the task used by Elsner & Hommel (2001) to study the acquisition of bi-directional associations in infants. We will present developmental data in favour of bidirectional associations using this method.

III–2Understanding others in autism

Maddalena Fabbri-Destro, Sonia Boria, & Giacomo Rizzolatti

Department of Neuroscience and IIT Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition, University of Parma

When we observe a motor act (e.g. grasping a cup) done by another individual, we extract two types of information: the goal (grasping) and the intention un-derlying it (e.g. grasping for drinking). Here we examined whether children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to understand these two aspects of motor acts. We tested therefore a group of children with ASD (n=16) and a group

43


of typically developing (TD) children (n=25). We found that, while children with ASD understand the goal of an observed act (what), they fail to capture correctly its intention (why), relying, in their understanding, on context cues rather than capitalizing on information from the action itself. A pilot study with children with Williams Syndrome proved to differ from ASD, thus indicating that the deficit observed in ASD is typical of this syndrome.

III–3What do infants look at in an imitation task when an agent is modelling an

object-directed action? A peer vs. adult vs. hands-only study

Rana Esseilly

Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Université Paris Descartes

Although there are many studies on imitation in infants, little is known about how the efficiency of modeling depends on the agent. We compared 10-month-olds’ imitational learning of a new skill when either an adult or a peer demonstrated the action. To investigate the importance of social context, we added ostensive cues in one adult modeling condition, and removed social reference in another condition in which only the adult’s hands were visible. 123 infants were tested altogether, and their looking strategies were assessed using an eye tracker. The results showed that infants learned the new skill after observation of the model, with little difference between the peer model, the adult model, and the adult ostensive conditions. In contrast, without demonstration and in the hands-only condition, there was no learning over the four trials. Infants looked more at the demonstrator’s face than at the object; while ostensive cues increased the time spent looking at the object. The results are discussed in relation to the “like me” and “natural pedagogy” theories.

44


III–4How rational is imitation in infancy?

Sabine Hunnius, Markus Paulus, Marlies Vissers, & Harold Bekkering

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen

Imitation is an important mechanism through which children acquire new action skills. In their seminal paper, Gergely and colleagues (2002) presented evidence that even preverbal infants rationally evaluate the observed actions when imitat-ing. In the experiment, infants observed an adult model illuminating a light-box with a head touch. However, the conditions differed not only in how rational the observed actions were, but also in the extent to which infants could relate them to their own action repertoire. In one condition, the model leaned forward with her hands on the table (a possible action for 14-month-olds), whereas in the other the model had her arms folded across her chest (an impossible action). We replicated the experiment and added four conditions in which we systematically varied how much infants could relate the actions to their motor repertoire. Our results provide evidence that rational principles of efficiency determine infants’ imitation to a lesser extent, whereas processes of motor mapping appear to be crucial.

III–5Acting with task intention abolishes facilitation effects of observed actions

Sasha Ondobaka, Floris de Lange, & Harold Bekkering

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen

Production of simple actions is facilitated by the observation of irrelevant similar actions of others. This process has been intensely studied in paradigms using simple intransitive movements. However, in everyday social interactions, indi-vidual actions are always embedded in more abstract tasks. It remains unknown whether acting with a task intention modulates the facilitative effect of action observation. We examined this issue using a joint card game paradigm. While facing the experimenter who performed similar actions, participants executed

45


either a simple action (e.g. picked the left card) or carried out a task (e.g. picked the higher card). There was no effect of experimenter’s irrelevant actions or tasks when participants acted with a task intention. Only when they executed simple actions, the response times were strongly dependent on both the experimenter’s actions and tasks. The results suggest that automatic facilitation effects of irrel-evant observed behaviour of other people might only occur when we act with a motor intention.

III–6Animacy in the eye of agency

Mathias Hegele1, Jan Zwickel2, & Marc Grosjean1

1Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund University of Technology

2Department Psychology, LMU Munich

Previous research on the control of eye movements demonstrated the oculomo-tor system’s sensitivity to the covariation of tangential velocity and curvature as expressed in the Two-Thirds Power Law, the latter having been conceived as a characteristic property of animate movements. The purpose of the present study was twofold: first, to evaluate the generalizability of the oculomotor system’s sensitivity from predictable to less predictable visuomotor environments, and second to determine the impact of instructed agency (animate vs. inanimate) of observed movements on oculomotor tracking performance. Preliminary results show that the benefit of animate velocity profiles is limited to predictable elliptic movement trajectories and that instructed agency primarily affects the efficiency of saccades as compared to smooth pursuit. Based on the notion of saccadic control reflecting the feedforward and smooth pursuit the feedback component of the oculomotor control, it is argued that instructed agency selectively affects feedforward control by the selection of appropriate internal models of the ob-served movements.

46


III–7The immediate and delayed self:

Effects of temporal cues on corticomotor excitability

Carmen Weiss1, Manos Tsakiris2, Patrick Haggard3, & Simone Schütz-Bosbach1

1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences2Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London3Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Department of Psychology,

University College London

Previous research indicated that an action (effect) is more likely to be self-attrib-uted when there is a temporal match between its execution and actual sensory feedback. At the perceptual level, a temporal match seems to result in a suppres-sion of action-related afferent signals. Recent studies (Schütz-Bosbach et al., 2006, 2009) showed a similar suppression in the human motor system for movements that were not executed, but illusionary attributed to self. In the present study we sought to further specify the involvement of the human motor system in self-agency by investigating its sensitivity to temporal discrepancies between executed and observed movements. To this end, we compared corticomotor excitability after observation of real-time and delayed finger movements. Further-more, we explored whether a potential modulation of corticomotor excitability parallels or dissociates from the explicit detection of temporal discrepancies. First results will be presented and discussed with respect to sensorimotor and explicit representations of self-agency.

III–8Your action or my action: How the sense of agency is influenced by

ideomotor learning and agents’ characteristics

Stephanie Spengler1, Simone Schütz-Bosbach1, & Marcel Brass2

1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences2Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Gent

When we execute actions to bring about changes in our environment, we usually have the feeling to control our action and to cause the accompanying action–ef-

47


fect (‘sense of agency’). A recent multi-factorial model suggests a combination of bottom-up and top-down levels: a pre-reflective, automatic feeling of agency, relying on the comparison of different sensory and motor indicators, which can trigger, if a mismatch occurs, a second explicit, reflective judgment of agency. In an fMRI study we could show that the sense of agency develops from previous action-effect learning and that a decreased sense of agency activated regions in the temporo-parietal junction (related to senorimotor mismatch) and the medial prefrontal cortex (related to other-judgments). This latter relationship was modu-lated also by the external attribution disposition of the participants. Complement-ing our view on agentive processes, our findings indicate that ideomotor learning provides an essential basis for the distinction of agents’ behaviour and also point to a possible high-level contribution of personal background beliefs of the actor to the sense of agency.

III–9Like the back of my hand: An implicit body representation

underlying human position sense

Matthew Longo

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London

Perceiving the location of body parts through proprioception requires that in-formation about joint angles (i.e., body posture) be combined with information about the size and shape of the segments between joints. While information about posture is specified by afferent signals, no signals are directly informative about body size and shape. Thus, position sense must refer to a stored body model of the body’s metric properties. While the need for such a model has long been recognised, its properties have never been systematically investigated. We report a novel technique to isolate and measure this body model. Participants judged the location in external space of ten landmarks on the hand. By analyzing the internal configuration of these locations, we produced implicit maps of the mental hand representation. This part of the body model is massively distorted, in a reliable and characteristic fashion, featuring shortened fingers and broadened hands. Intriguingly, these distortions appear to retain several characteristics of the primary somatosensory homunculus.

48


III–10Pointing with a stick does not alter judged distances

Denise D. J. de Grave, Eli M. Brenner, & Jeroen B. J. Smeets

Faculty Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam

The judged distance one can reach (judged reachability) has been reported to beincreased after a stick has been used. Furthermore, an object is judged to be closer when a stick is used to point at the object compared to when pointing is performed with the hand. In this study we try to confirm whether pointing with a stick affects judged distances. To do so, we show subjects a cylindrical object on a table. In each trial, subjects either estimate how far the object is away from their body (in cm) or they point to a location halfway between the object and the starting position of their hand. In one block of trials they point with their finger and in another block they point with a stick. No differences in verbal distance judgments are found when pointing is done with a stick or with the hand. The position to which subjects pointed is also not affected by pointing with a stick. We conclude that pointing with a stick does not alter judged distances of objects.

III–11Doing the math: Why do fingers count? An account of the relation between

finger gnosis and mathematical ability

Marcie Penner-Wilger

Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College Lancaster

There is a relation between children’s ability to distinguish which fingers have been lightly touched without visual feedback (i.e., finger gnosis) and their con-current and longitudinal math ability. Math ability, however, involves a complex interplay of skills and abilities. In the current work, the relation is pinpointed more specifically to the representation of number. A novel account of how the relation between finger and number representation evolved is proposed. We propose that the relation arises because the two tasks use overlapping neural substrates, as the result of the re-use of part of the finger gnosis circuit for the purpose of representing number. Imaging results from multiple cognitive domains are used to

49


investigate what low-level function the shared neural substrate could be contrib-uting to these two apparently different uses. Currently, a model of the proposed shared neural substrate is being implemented in simulated spiking neurons.

III–12Adaptive user interface to support web-based information seeking

for the blind

Carissa Brunsman-Johnson

Interactive Systems Modeling & Simulation Laboratory, Wright State University

Websites are difficult to information seek for users who are blind if the websites do not perform as expected. Information seeking on the web is a series of per-ceptions guiding actions. The user may perceive a word or image and then move the cursor accordingly. A user who is blind may perceive a website to contain information based on previous experience and will conduct actions based on this perception. In a recent study, we observed dependence on a small group of commands that are used for both users who are sighted and blind. These com-mands are significant because they are all keyword based. This discovery implies that users have a perceived vocabulary in which they use when they information seek a website. Currently this research is seeking to create a framework to adapt websites to enhance keyword searches and strengthen the keyword selection and better match the initial perception.

51

Index

Albertsen, Inke Marie 28Barsalou, Lawrence W. 9Brunsman-Johnson, Carissa 49Caeyenberghs, Karen 34Catmur, Caroline 25Coelho, Chase J. 26Connell, Louise 29de Grave, Denise D. J. 48Esseilly, Rana 43Fabbri-Destro, Maddalena 42Goschke, Thomas 19Haggard, Patrick 16Hegele, Mathias 45Herbort, Oliver 27Heyes, Cecilia 10Hommel, Bernhard 20Humphreys, Glyn 17Hunnius, Sabine 44Jäger, Christina 33Kiefer, Markus 9Kliese, Daniel 32Linkenauger, Sally 30Longo, Matthew 47Lynott, Dermot 28Mathôt, Sebastiaan 40Ondobaka, Sasha 44Owens, D. Alfred 22Pastor, Damien 36Pecenka, Nadine 39Penner-Wilger, Marcie 48Perlman, Marcus 30Press, Clare 26Proffitt, Dennis R. 13Rapp, Katrin 37Rizzolatti, Giacomo 18, 21Rosenbaum, David A. 14Rossetti, Yves 15Saunders, Daniel R. 24Scherbaum, Stefan 39

Shebilske, Wayne 23Silva, Paula L. 33Spengler, Stephanie 46Sülzenbrück, Sandra 37Sutter, Christine 38Taylor, Jordan A. 35Thomaschke, Roland 24Trumpp, Natalie 31Turvey, Michael T. 12Verschoor, Stephan A. 42von Hofsten, Claes 11Weiss, Carmen 46Yukovsky, Julia 41

Tuesday, June 22

Wednesday,June 23

Thursday, June 24

Friday, June 25

Saturday, June 26

8:45–

9:00

Welcome Address

9:00–

10:30

Tutorial 1L. W. Barsalou

M. Kiefer

Tutorial 4M. T. Turvey

Tutorial 7Y. Rossetti

Tutorial 10G. Rizzolatti

10:30–


11:00–

12:30

Tutorial 2C. M. Heyes

Tutorial 5D. R. Proffitt

Tutorial 8P. Haggard

Tutorial 11T. Goschke

12:30–

14:00Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch

14:00–

15:30

Poster Session I

Poster Session II

Poster Session III

Tutorial 12B. Hommel

15:30–


16:00–

17:30

Tutorial 3C. von Hofsten

Tutorial 6D. Rosenbaum

Tutorial 9G. Humphreys

Concluding Discussion

16:00 – 17:00

17:30–

19:00

Research Seminar

W. ShebilskeDinner (ZiF)

Research Seminar

D. A. Owens

19:00Welcome

Buffet(Hotel)

19:30Public Lecture

G. Rizzolatti

19:30Conference

Dinner(ZiF)

Perception and Action - University Bielefeld · Emergence of perception-action couplings and...

Documents

Transcript of Perception and Action - University Bielefeld · Emergence of perception-action couplings and...