Gestures can play a role in narrating emotionally valenced autobiographical events, particularly in second language use. We investigated how hand gestures, phenomenological experience, narrative details, and level of emotionality interact during autobiographical memory narration. Forty-one Turkish-speaking individuals (26 females; Mage = 21.12, SDage = 2.13) narrated emotional autobiographical events (2 in English, 2 in Turkish). Results indicated no effect of the second language on phenomenological ratings, level of emotionality, or narrative details. Representational gestures correlated with phenomenological characteristics and episodic details in nearly all narratives. The primary difference between first and second language use involved beat gestures, particularly in negative events. In the first language, they were linked to all details, while in the second language, they correlated only with the phenomenological characteristics. These findings suggest that representational gestures assist in scene construction in both languages for proficient speakers, while beat gestures emphasize details in the first language and enhance fluency in the second language.

This study examines the influence of commas and line breaks on attachment preferences in Spanish preverbal relative clauses with two potential antecedents (e.g., The colleague of the violinist who is a far-right supporter performed with the orchestra yesterday).Previous research in Spanish post-verbal relative clauses provided evidence that commas introduce an implicit prosodic boundary that encourages attachment to the higher determiner phrase (DP1, the colleague). Here, we assess the separate and combined effects of commas and line breaks in three offline studies in Spanish. First, we assess attachment preferences of sentences with relative clauses preceded by commas (i.e., appositive relative clauses) and without commas (i.e., restrictive relative clauses) in under-researched preverbal position. Then, we test whether line breaks could have the same effect as commas in determining attachment. Our findings suggest that only commas consistently and significantly impact attachment preferences favouring high attachment.

Iconicity (the extent to which word forms resemble their meanings) is proposed to be based in universally accessible form mappings that depict/express sensory imagery. In the present study, we explored phonological structural features proposed to be characteristic of iconicity and subjective iconicity ratings in two large English and Spanish datasets (Hinojosa et al., 2021; Winter et al., 2024). Restricting analyses to words with good rating agreement across participants, we show that the distributions of iconicity ratings differ considerably between the two languages, with far fewer Spanish words rated as iconic. Multiple regression analyses showed that structural markedness significantly predicted iconicity ratings in both languages, although the relationship was weaker in Spanish. Highly rated English forms included many phonaesthemes, i.e., words with systematic sound-meaning mappings that can be iconic or non-iconic. Surprisingly, English and Spanish words rated higher in iconicity had larger phonological neighbourhoods despite comprising less frequently occurring phoneme sequences. In English, words rated as more iconic were also more likely to be polysemes (i.e., convey multiple, metaphorically-related meanings) than linked to a specific sensory meaning. Regression models revealed phonological/phonetic features, syllable structures and reduplications predicted significant proportions of variance in both English (33.3%) and Spanish iconicity ratings (50.8%), demonstrating both common and language specific mappings. While our findings support the qualified use of subjective ratings for cross-linguistic comparisons of iconicity, we recommend researchers control for systematicity and polysemy and consider using additional/alternative measures to exclude non-iconic forms.

Perceptual averaging, a fundamental mechanism of visual short-term memory (VSTM), enables automatic extraction of the ensemble mean from similar visual stimuli. While concurrent physical exertion is known to impair VSTM, its impact on this ensemble-coding ability remains unclear. To address this gap, the current study employed a dual-task paradigm combining facial expression recognition with concurrent isometric handgrip contractions. Participants memorized four facial expressions and then classified a face probe as a set member or not while maintaining either 5% or 40% of their maximum force (low vs. high physical load). Results revealed that high physical load reduced hit rate and discriminability (d') while increasing false alarm rate, indicating impaired memory performance. However, recognition accuracy for probes that were the mean of the set and the fitted Gaussian parameter (reflecting the precision of mean representation) remained unchanged across load conditions, suggesting that mean representation was unaffected by concurrent physical exertion. These findings indicate that while concurrent physical exertion disrupts item-specific memory-i.e. individual representation in VSTM-primarily due to shared attentional resource competition between physical action and cognitive processing, perceptual averaging-i.e., mean representation in VSTM-remains resilient to dual-task interference, underscoring its stability and robustness in VSTM functioning.

False predictions during sentence comprehension are a frequent phenomenon. Recent research has shown that in highly constrained sentences, inhibitory mechanisms are engaged to suppress false predictions. However, little is known about what specifically leads to this inhibition. Sixty-eight monolingual English-speaking adults participated in the current study to examine what triggers the inhibition of predicted words. We utilized the Cross-Modal Lexical Priming (CMLP) paradigm. Participants performed a visual lexical decision task (LDT) immediately after listening to incomplete sentences and sentences containing violations that did not match their prediction. In Experiment 1, violation sentences ended in pseudowords that contained a phonological mismatch, while in Experiment 2, violation sentences ended in environmental sounds that contained a semantic mismatch. To examine whether the predicted word was inhibited in each case, we compared LDT reaction times (RTs) to predicted words across sentence conditions. Results showed that LDT RTs to the predicted word were significantly slower after pseudowords, but not environment sounds. Taken together with previous work, this suggests that lexico-semantic information may not be required to trigger inhibition. While pseudoword violations-stimuli that resemble real words but lack meaning-inhibit false predictions, semantic mismatch alone may be insufficient to elicit inhibition.

Visual search can be facilitated by learning the spatial layouts of search items in repeatedly encountered displays (contextual cuing), thereby improving attentional guidance to the target. The current study investigated whether contextual cuing not only benefits attentional guidance but may also facilitate the identification of the target item (that is, its comparison with a target template stored in memory) once attention located the to-be-detected target. To test this idea, our study systematically varied the difficulty of target template matching by presenting targets with different orientations such that they are more difficult vs. easier to match with a template. The results from Experiment 1 revealed a reliable contextual cuing effect, but no evidence for a difference in cuing across the easy and difficult matching conditions. However, this lack of a difference may have resulted from opposing tendencies between search efficiency and template matching difficulty, which were evident in additional pretests. These opposing patterns may thus preclude a potential difference in the cuing effects. Experiment 2 then changed the search displays to remedy these opposing tendencies. While search and template matching now indeed revealed consistent effects, contextual cuing was again reliable but still not different across the matching conditions. Our results thus show that target template matching is not facilitated by statistical learning of contextual regularities. Instead, contextual cuing seems to primarily benefit the initial guidance of attention but it does not reveal an effect upon post-selective processing.

The role of attention in three distinct forms of numerical processing (i.e., subitizing, estimation, and counting) has been extensively studied. However, the similarities and differences in the impacts of top-down and bottom-up attention on these three processes remain poorly understood. This gap raises key theoretical questions: Do individuals adopt a uniform cognitive strategy (i.e., a static strategy) across forms of numerical processing and types of attentional modulation? Do they dynamically adjust accuracy and/or precision for varying forms of numerical processing and/or different types of attentional modulation (i.e., a dynamic strategy)? Or do they exhibit greater flexibility by combining these two strategies, depending on specific effects of attentional modulation on numerical processing? Using a novel paradigm that incorporates counting with continuous attentional consumption, we identified a combination of static and dynamic strategies: A greater reliance on attention for processing precision of small numerosities is ubiquitous across numerical processing forms and attentional modulation types. However, an attention-driven transition effect occurs exclusively across forms of numerical processing, not types of attentional modulation. Additionally, attention modulation on central tendency effect differs across numerical processing forms and attentional modulation types. These results highlight the dynamic nature and flexibility of attentional modulation on numerical processing.

Previous research found musicians tend to outperform non-musicians in speech perception. However, the exact mechanism underlying the musicians' advantage is equivocal. This study aimed to investigate the pathway(s) between musicianship and speech perception. Specifically, the study examined the mediating role of auditory sensitivity and executive function in the relation between musicianship and speech perception. A total of 136 Cantonese-speaking adults were recruited. Participants completed a series of tests assessing their musicianship, auditory sensitivity, executive function, and speech perception. The findings showed that auditory sensitivity mediates the effect of musicianship on speech perception, whereas executive function does not serve as a significant mediator.

Understanding how components of action tool knowledge are organized and interact is crucial for elucidating the cognitive and neural basis of tool use. In this study, we examined the relationship between two key dimensions: hand posture and manipulation. Forty-eight participants made similarity judgments based on these dimensions across pairs of familiar tools. Results revealed an asymmetrical interference pattern: judgments about manipulation were significantly influenced by hand posture, whereas the reverse effect was weaker. This asymmetry was modulated by perceptual similarity, particularly when participants attended to hand posture, suggesting a dynamic interaction between perceptual and conceptual features. Notably, perceptual similarity judgments were not solely explained by low-level visual features but were also influenced by stored action tool representations. This indicates that participants spontaneously activated integrated tool knowledge even during perceptual tasks. These findings support a model of action tool knowledge, with hand posture emerging as a primary dimension that influences and potentially precedes manipulation. Together, these results provide new insights into the cognitive architecture of tool knowledge and offer a foundation for future studies exploring the interaction between perceptual, motoric, and conceptual dimensions in action tool knowledge.

Accurate inference of the mental states of others is essential for successful social interaction. Concerningly, previous work shows that humans are less accurate when inferring the views of out-group members relative to in-group members, but are unaware of this difference in accuracy (Payne et al., 2024). Across two studies (Experiment 1: n=142; Experiment 2: n=90) we asked whether feedback on the accuracy of mental state inferences could increase the accuracy of, and/or recalibrate participants' confidence in the accuracy of, mental state inferences for outgroup members. Feedback specific to individual targets significantly improved the accuracy of inferences when inferring those targets' views for both in-group and out-group members, but did not generalise to other group members. Furthermore, participants were able to use feedback to calibrate their confidence in the accuracy of their outgroup inferences. These results demonstrate that, with targeted feedback, people are more able to understand the minds of both in-group and out-group members, and become more aware of their ability to do so.

The current study investigates the influence of hierarchical metric structure on silent reading behavior during naturalistic reading, thus extending the scope of implicit prosody research beyond violation paradigms (Beck & Konieczny, 2020). By applying Fabb and Halle's (2008) prosodic framework to Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat, we examined how a five-level metric hierarchy affects eye-tracking measures, independent of known factors such as word frequency, length, text emphasis, and syntactic structure. Thirty-two native English-speaking adults silently read the text presented without images, while their eye movements were recorded. Metric hierarchy explained overall variance above and beyond other linguistic factors in both early and late reading measures, consistent with patterns observed during oral reading of the same text (Breen, 2018). Moreover, the metric effect interacted with linguistic factors at lower levels of the hierarchy: closed class words aligned with lower levels were read faster than open class words. Exploratory analyses disentangling layout and end-of-page effects showed that while the addition of metric structure explains overall variance in all reading measures above and beyond other linguistic factors and second, only early reading measures are affected by lower levels of the metric hierarchy when analyzing the first stanza of two-stanza trials. These results demonstrate that the influence of metric structure during silent reading of naturalistic poetic text is qualitatively similar to its influence on spoken durations, providing further support for the role of implicit prosody in on-line sentence processing. These findings pave the way for further research into the role of prosody in reading comprehension, particularly in less metrically regular texts and across developmental stages.

Visual short-term memory (vSTM) refers to the subset of the cognitive system responsible for storing visual information over short periods of time. While much research has focussed on its capacity limitations, less is known about how vSTM operates in dynamic environments where priorities shift across feature dimensions. In this study, we bridge research on vSTM and cognitive control by embedding change detection (Experiments 1 and 2) and delayed estimation (Experiment 3) paradigms within a task switching paradigm, where the relevant feature dimension (colour or orientation) either repeated or switched across trials. Across all experiments we observed a cost to vSTM performance on switch relative to repetition trials. Mixture modelling of delayed estimation responses revealed that these switch costs were not due to reduced memory precision or memory failures, but rather to a selective increase in non-target responses reflecting feature--location binding errors. We propose that dimension switching selectively impairs the binding of feature values to locations and allows interference from irrelevant (but recently attended) feature dimensions. Our findings demonstrate that vSTM is sensitive to failures of attentional control, not just capacity limits.

Person perception research predominantly focuses on faces as stimuli, and less attention is paid to full body, moving, stimulus people. Nor how our social perceptions might affect the way we observe unknown people. Here, we present two exploratory studies and a registered third. In Study One, 27 judges observed 12 videos of female targets walking and rated 'threat', 'attractiveness' and 'masculinity'. In Study Two, 30 judges observed 22 male and female targets in the same format with the same ratings. The registered Study Three included 48 judges observing the same 22 stimuli. Judges had their attention to target faces recorded with an eyetracker. In all studies time spent observing the targets' head decreased over time. In Study One ratings were associated with time spent observing the targets' head and these effects changed with observation over time. In Study Two no effects were found. Study Three found weak effects opposing Study One. We find overall meta-evidence of masculinity and attractiveness affecting attention to the faces of unknown others, but the individual study findings were highly inconsistent. Our findings draw attention to the risks of interpreting from an individual study and reflect the benefit of internal registered replications.

Whenever we work towards completing a task, such as learning some information, we are susceptible to attentional lapses where our thoughts stray from the demands of the current task to something unrelated (i.e., mind-wandering). Although prior work indicates that the presence of mind-wandering probes (used to measure task-unrelated thoughts) in a cognitive task may not impact the measurement of abilities like processing speed, there could be reactive effects involving memory. We examined whether mind-wandering probes can impact memory by having participants study lists of words to remember for later tests; at pseudo-random intervals during encoding, participants either responded to mind-wandering probes, answered math problems, had unfilled interstimulus intervals, or studied the lists without any interruptions. Results revealed that mind-wandering probes (or other interruptions) do not significantly impact overall memory performance (though there may be some impact on items immediately preceding or following a probe) or the temporal dynamics of episodic memory. Thus, the present study suggests that using mind-wandering probes introduces minimal unexpected bias into research designs such that these interruptions do not adversely affect or benefit memory performance, consistent with prior research focused primarily on other cognitive domains.

People often hesitate to rely on algorithmic advice, even when it is objectively more accurate than human input-a phenomenon known as algorithm aversion. In two experiments, we investigated the cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect in a clinical decision-making context. Participants evaluated x-rays for bone fractures, with each image accompanied by advice purportedly from either an algorithm or a human source. Across experiments, we observed longer response times for algorithmic advice, indicating increased deliberation. Evidence accumulation modeling revealed that participants set higher decision thresholds when evaluating algorithmic advice, reflecting a more cautious decision strategy. This hesitancy, observed when the human advice was attributed to lay participants (Experiment 1), persisted when the human advice was attributed to expert radiologists (Experiment 2). Accumulation rates and prior preferences did not differ across advisor types, suggesting that algorithm aversion stems specifically from increased caution rather than reduced perceived reliability. These findings demonstrate that algorithm aversion manifests as a strategic shift in decision-making and highlight the value of formal cognitive models for understanding trust in artificial intelligence. Our findings advance the theoretical understanding of algorithm aversion by identifying response caution as a core mechanism. More broadly, the results demonstrate how formal models of decision-making can clarify the cognitive architecture of trust in automated systems, offering a foundation for future work on optimizing human-algorithm collaboration.

Prior research suggests that people who believe in and spread conspiracy theories are often viewed negatively, yet investigations systematically disentangling both factors are scarce. The present research addressed this gap through two pre-registered experiments with representative samples from the U.S. In Study 1, 418 participants evaluated eight fictional individuals across 3,344 trials, presented as (a) believing in and/or (b) spreading conspiracy theories in a 2 x 2 within-subjects design. Analyses revealed that both characters who believed in conspiracy theories and those who spread them were perceived as less competent, moral, and warm, and as more narcissistic, Machiavellian, and psychopathic. Moreover, both believers and spreaders were perceived as likely to engage in conspiratorial actions themselves, and participants reported lower willingness to interact with them. However, significant interactions for all variables showed that these effects were particularly pronounced for characters who spread conspiracy theories without believing in them. Notably, participants' own conspiracy beliefs and to some extent their right-wing political orientation attenuated several effects and reversed some. In Study 2, we employed the reverse-correlation technique to model 412 participants' mental representations of individuals who varied in belief and/or spread of conspiracy theories using a 2 x 2 between-subjects design. Results were directionally consistent with Study 1-both believers and spreaders of conspiracy theories were mentally represented less favorably-but no interactions or moderations were observed. Moreover, believing had significantly stronger effects than spreading on the rating dimensions. We discuss the social implications of these results and outline future directions.

Conspiracy beliefs are widespread and can lead to deleterious societal outcomes, yet little research has examined how they are learned. In associative learning, blocking occurs when people learn less about a novel cue in the presence of another causally predictive cue. Here, blocking was examined in a conspiratorial context. In the task, participants were told about a foreign politician and a possible conspiracy: This politician had allegedly been poisoned at a given location. Participants were then presented with a set of pairing between locations and illness; the conspiracy-congruent location was always presented together with a novel location. Learning about this novel location was blocked by the conspiracy-congruent location and, on aggregate, participants endorsed the conspiracy theory. There was, however, no evidence that conspiracy theorists were more likely to demonstrate blocking in general. Conspiracies can thus be acquired and maintained through similar associative-learning processes as other beliefs.

Practicing two simultaneous tasks in an extensive manner reduces the performance impairments (i.e., dual-task costs) that occur in dual-task compared to single-task situations. The present study provides empirical tests of the latent bottleneck model to explain this reduction and thus the practice-related improvement in dual-task performance. To do so, in three experiments, participants practiced a visual-manual and an auditory-verbal task in single-task and dual-task trials for several sessions. In these experiments, we changed the duration of the response-selection stages of the two tasks after practice and analysed the resulting effects on the reaction times (RTs) during subsequent transfer. The results showed a pattern of selective prolongations of the RTs in the two tasks, which depends on the location of the manipulated process relative to a presumed latent processing bottleneck. The manipulation of the time at bottleneck stages in the longer (auditory-verbal) task did not propagate into the RTs of the shorter task, while prolongations of bottleneck stages of a shorter (visual-manual) task propagated into longer task RTs after practice. These results are consistent with a latent bottleneck model of dual-task practice.

The visual system may perceptually process conspecifics more efficiently when they are interacting, versus not, to support social cognitive functions such as group detection. In three experiments, young adult university students were briefly shown dyads (upright or inverted) and made speeded judgments of whether they attended the same location (joint attention) or different locations (non-joint attention). Participants performed worse with inverted stimuli, but this inversion effect was smaller in joint attention conditions. These findings indicate perceptual grouping of joint attention dyads into a single perceptual unit. This joint attention grouping effect was evident when dyads looked towards spatial locations (Experiment 1), towards objects (Experiment 2), and for asymmetrically composed stimuli (Experiment 3). The effect was weaker for non-social directional stimuli (Experiment 1). These data support the idea that two interacting individuals are coded as one socially bound perceptual unit, supporting efficient and rapid social cognitive computations.

Models of human face recognition rely on the notion of representation, but rarely describe this in detail. Here, I will argue that our conception of face representations is often 'essentialist' - assuming that there is some fixed set of values that captures a particular person's face. However, this conception is inadequate for the purpose of familiar face recognition, and I will suggest that representations instead need to incorporate the statistical properties of our exposure to all the faces we know, including variability and sampling. I will review findings from empirical and simulation research suggesting that the idiosyncratic properties of each perceiver results in a unique set of representations, which can be difficult to understand using traditional experimental approaches. Methodological diversity seems to offer the best route for understanding face recognition - a problem that remains stubbornly unsolved.

Perceived contingency of a single cue and outcome is based on the relative exposure to four types of events: Cue-outcome pairings (A events), cue-alone presentations (B events), outcome-alone presentations (C events), and events in which neither the cue nor the outcome is presented (D events). Previous experiments found increases in the frequency of an event affected ratings of the perceived contingency between the cue and outcome, even compared to conditions with proportional decreases in the duration of trials (i.e, adjusted frequency conditions). The present experiments tested the generality and boundaries of this adjusted frequency effect by examining whether it generalizes to ratings of multiple cue-outcome dyads, to a cued-recall test, and to both sequential and simultaneous cue-outcome presentations. Experiment 1 revealed a strong effect of frequency but no effect of duration after training with a single cue-outcome dyad; however, a duration effect emerged when training consisted of five cue-outcome dyads. Experiment 2 showed an effect of duration as well as an adjusted frequency effect in contingency ratings after training with five dyads. Experiment 3 extended these observations to a cued-recall test after training with ten cue-outcome dyads. Experiment 4 used five dyads and found a within-experiment effect of duration on both contingency ratings and cued-recall scores. Whereas Experiments 1-4 varied the A events, Experiment 5 varied frequency and duration of the D events with ten cue-outcome dyads and revealed effects of duration as well as frequency on both cued recall and cue-outcome contingency ratings. In summary, these experiments detected an increase in the importance of event duration with increases in the number of dyads. Moreover, subject ratings of contingency closely tracked results in a cued-recall test, suggesting that a common mechanism underlies these two measures.

Concurrent execution of response inhibition and timing tasks can lead to bidirectional interference. However, it remains unclear how response inhibition toward specific stimuli influences subsequent time perception. To investigate this, we employed emotionally evocative facial stimuli (fearful faces) and manipulated the difficulty of response inhibition using reaction time deadlines (RTD). In Experiment 1, participants performed a go/no-go task, in which fearful faces were associated with go or no-go responses, followed by a temporal bisection task using the same faces. In Experiment 2, task difficulty was manipulated across two sessions, one week apart, by setting RTDs at 1000 ms (Easy) and 500 ms (Hard). The association between fearful faces and response type was counterbalanced across participants. Results showed that fearful faces previously associated with no-go signals were judged to last for a shorter duration than those associated with go signals. Additionally, during the second week, participants who completed the easy task first exhibited greater temporal underestimation compared to those who completed the difficult task first, while no significant difference was found during the first session. These findings are consistent with the idea that associative learning of response inhibition toward fearful faces can induce automatic inhibition, which in turn influences subsequent time perception. Stepwise reduction in response inhibition difficulty may serve as an effective strategy for modulating the subjective duration of negative emotional experiences.

Many studies have shown that it is possible to recognise an artefact type and subsequently form an impression by observing only its shape. However, it is unclear whether the likeability of an artefact is due to its creatureliness, association with the object it imitates, or the likeability of the imitated object. Additional research is required to clarify whether the likeability of an object originates from its association with motion, perception of animacy, or the motion factor itself. Therefore, this study video-recorded the movement of plant-like artefacts to examine and determine the factors that significantly influence their likeability. This study considered the degree of animacy of the artefacts, their degree of association with the imitated plants, and the degree of likeability of the imitated plants as factors. Fifty-five participants with different sexual orientations completed an online questionnaire regarding their impressions of the artefacts in the recordings they watched. The responses were subjected to multiple regression analysis. The results showed that the degree of animacy and association with the imitated plants had the greatest influences on the likeability of the artefacts.

Number line estimation (NLE) tasks are widely employed in research and pedagogical contexts. For both children and adults, leftmost digits disproportionately influence number line placements-a phenomenon known as a left digit effect or left digit bias. Here, we ask whether left digit bias is limited to literal leftmost digits. In Study 1, adults completed a standard 0 to 1000 number line task and a leading zero version in which target numerals began with leftmost zeros (e.g., 0398). Study 2 used the leading zero task (placing numbers like 0398 on a range up to 1000) and a leading one-zero task (placing numbers like 10398 on a 10000-11000 number line). A robust "left digit" bias was observed for the hundreds digits in all cases, showing that left digit effects are deeply context-dependent. Task conditions can lead to strong left-digit-like biases for digits that are not the literal leftmost digits in the target numerals.

Facial expressions convey a speaker's emotional state, facilitating the prediction and interpretation of their thoughts and behaviours. Interactive feedback during social interactions provides statistical evidence for the basis of a causal percept, which allows understanding of conversations. We aimed to determine whether emotional expression affects sensitivity to contingent relationships and whether this sensitivity is guided by the statistical evidence for causality. In Experiments 1-3, we tested happy and sad facial expressions and non-emotional control stimuli (e.g. shapes) and varied contingent emotional expressions (negative, zero and positive contingency) as well as outcome frequency (low, moderate and high). Participants' judgements of contingency were based on a probabilistic learning process rather than simple pairing or prior knowledge, and they perceived a weaker sense of causality with sad faces than either happy faces or non-emotional control stimuli. Finally, in Experiment 4, we tested threat-related angry and fearful faces alongside happy faces. The results showed that participants could learn the statistical contingent relationships with faces but still perceived a weaker sense of causality with angry, fearful faces compared to happy faces. Overall, the results suggest that learning was guided by statistical evidence, but aversive expressions (those with negative valence) were less effective. We discuss this result in relation to the stimulus properties (i.e. salience) of faces, the content of emotive expressions and how these impact learning.

In the ecological approach to perceiving and acting, affordances are emergent, higher-order relationships between animals and their environment. Accordingly, studies have shown that affordances are perceived 'as such' rather than as combinations of lower-order constituents of that affordance. We investigated whether affordances are in the same way. Participants used circular rubber mats to create steppingstone paths from Mat A to Mat B (in the 'Stop-at-B' condition) and from Mat A to Mat B to Mat C (in the 'Continue-to-C' condition). We derived and analyzed sets of variables related to gap distance, path trajectory, and path variability. Consistent with our hypotheses, participants configured the A-to-B portion of the path differently in each condition-in particular, with respect to variables related to gap distance and path variability. Conversely, when participants configured paths from A-to-B-to-C, we found no evidence that they configured the A-to-B portion of the path differently than the B-to-C portion of the path. Overall, the results suggest that affordances for crossing a path from A-to-B were created distinctly from those for crossing a path from A-to-B-to-C. More generally, they suggest that affordances were created as emergent higher-order relationships rather than as a combination of lower-order constituents.

This paper reviews research that examines the topographic organization of the human brain, the role of development and of plasticity, and the constraints that give rise to the replicable organization across individuals and cultures. To address these questions, we evaluate the topographic arrangement of regions in ventral temporal cortex (VTC) that respond strongly to the viewing of faces and words, and demonstrate that both categories drive responses in both hemispheres albeit to a greater degree in the right hemisphere for faces and left hemisphere for words. We hypothesize that this weighted asymmetric topography emerges over the course of development, and we instantiate the hypothesis within a computational model and confirm predictions of this account with evidence from normal and impaired behavior and neuroimaging. We also confront challenges to a particular component of this account, namely, the status of the local competition between word and face representations in VTC, and go on to describe an expanded perspective with empirical data and a more complex computational framework, which highlights the generality of both local and long-range constraints on the emergence of within- and between-hemisphere topographic organization. Together, these findings offer a framework in which topographic organization emerges through an optimization process constrained by biological connectivity, the nature of the visual representations and development.

Object detection and categorization are essential to object recognition. Previous studies suggested that the lateral occipital complex (LOC) plays a key role in various steps of object representation. However, it remains unclear whether the LOC contributes to object detection or object categorization causally. To investigate these issues, two experiments utilizing an object priming paradigm were realized. The results of the first experiment demonstrated the validity of an object priming paradigm for dissociating object detection and categorization within the same task in both accuracy and reaction time. Next in the second experiment, state-dependent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the right LOC within a similar paradigm. The results showed a dissociation between the object detection and categorization in reaction time as well. A direct causal relationship between the right LOC and the representation of object detection or object categorization, however, was not found. Together, these findings suggest that there is a dissociation between perceptual detection and categorization of objects within the same task. This indicates an earlier detection of objects than the categorization of them. TMS over the rLOC neither alters object detection nor categorization in the current priming task and used setup.

When we pause and relax, strange sensations might arise; a tingling in the hand, an itch on the foot, often without any clear cause. These "ghost" bodily experiences, known as spontaneous sensations (SPS), offer a unique window into how we perceive our bodies. In an online experimental study of 175 participants, we examined how SPS differ across body regions (hands, feet, whole body) and whether individual differences in visual attention shape these experiences. We measured both the general tendency to notice SPS (SPSTrait) and in the moment awareness of them (SPSState), alongside performance on a visual Posner task of endogenous attention. SPSTrait was reported more strongly in the whole body compared to the feet, suggesting a broad, higher-order body representation. In contrast, SPSState did not vary by body part. These experiences, whether momentary i.e. SPSState or habitual i.e. SPSTrait, were unrelated to how participants performed on the visual attention task. Our findings support a representational distinction: SPSTrait may reflect somatorepresentation, a top-down, global body model, whereas SPSState may arise from bottom-up somatosensation.

Automated facial recognition (AFR) systems are commonly used to help verify the identity of individuals, often in a one-to-one face matching task. The AFR system may be a decision aid, such that a human operator must ultimately approve the final identification decision. Previous research has shown that time pressure, a common operational factor in many applied settings, impairs human face matching accuracy. We investigated whether time pressure influences human reliance on AFR decisions in a face matching task, predicting that participants would show greater automation reliance as time pressure increased and the task became harder. Each participant ( = 129) completed a face matching task under blocks of high (2s), medium (5s), and low time pressure (10s), where the stimuli disappeared from the screen after the allocated time. For each pair of faces, participants made an initial identification decision without assistance. Participants were then shown an identification decision from a simulated AFR system (92.3% accurate), before they were asked to submit their final (assisted) decision to the same trial. As predicted, human accuracy improved with AFR assistance in all time pressure conditions, with the greatest improvements occurring under higher time pressure. But replicating previous studies, average aided human accuracy was below that of the AFR system alone. Moreover, assisted accuracy fell in all conditions when the AFR system provided an incorrect decision, suggesting participants struggled to correct system errors. Our results have implications for human oversight of AFR systems in applied face identification scenarios.