EXPRESS: The Influence of Three-Dimensional Cues on Body Size Judgements

Research has shown that body size judgements are frequently biased, or inaccurate. Critically, judgement biases are further exaggerated for individuals with eating disorders, a finding that has been attributed to difficulties integrating body features into a perceptual whole. However, current understanding of which body features are integrated when judging body size is lacking. In this study, we examine whether individuals integrate three-dimensional (3D) cues to body volume when making body size judgements. Computer-generated body stimuli were presented in a 3D Virtual Reality (VR) environment. Participants (N = 412) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: in one condition the to-be-judged body was displayed binocularly (containing 3D cues to body volume), in the other, bodies were presented monocularly (2D cues only). Across 150 trials, participants were required to make a body size judgement of a target female body from a third-person point of view using an unmarked visual analogue scale (VAS). It was found that 3D cues significantly influenced body size judgements. Namely, thin 3D bodies were judged smaller, and overweight 3D bodies were judged larger, than their 2D counterpart. Furthermore, to reconcile these effects, we present evidence that the two perceptual biases, regression to the mean and serial dependence, were reduced by the additional 3D feature information. Our findings increase our understanding of how body size is perceptually encoded and creates testable predictions for clinical populations exhibiting integration difficulties.

EXPRESS: Distinct abilities associated with matching same identity faces vs. discriminating different faces: Evidence from individual differences in prosopagnosics and controls

Previous face matching studies provide evidence that matching same identity faces (match trials) and discriminating different face identities (non-match trials) rely on distinct processes. For example, instructional studies geared towards improving face matching in applied settings have often found selective improvements in match or non-match trials only. Additionally, a small study found that developmental prosopagnosics (DPs) have specific deficits in making match but not non-match judgments. In the current study, we sought to replicate this finding in DPs and examine how individual differences across DPs and controls in match vs. non-match performance relate to featural vs. holistic processing abilities. 43 DPs and 27 controls matched face images shown from similar front views or with varied lighting or viewpoint. Participants also performed tasks measuring featural (eyes/mouth) and holistic processing (part-whole task). We found that DPs showed worse overall matching performance than controls and that their relative match vs. non-match deficit depended on image variation condition, indicating that DPs do not consistently show match- or non-match-specific deficits. When examining the association between holistic and featural processing abilities and match vs. non-match trials in the entire group of DPs and controls, we found a very clear dissociation: Match trials significantly correlated with eye processing ability (r=.48) but not holistic processing (r=.11), whereas non-match trials significantly correlated with holistic processing (r=.32) but not eye processing (r=.03). This suggests that matching same identity faces relies more on eye processing while discriminating different faces relies more on holistic processing.

EXPRESS: “Run to the hills”: Specific contributions of anticipated energy expenditure during active spatial learning

Grounded views of cognition consider that space perception is shaped by the body and its potential for action. These views are substantiated by observations such as the distance-on-hill effect, described as the overestimation of visually perceived uphill distances. An interpretation of this phenomenon is that slanted distances are overestimated because of the integration of energy expenditure cues. The visual perceptual processes involved are however usually tackled through explicit estimation tasks in passive situations. The goal of this study was to consider instead more ecological active spatial processing. Using immersive virtual reality and an omnidirectional treadmill, we investigated the effect of anticipated implicit physical locomotion cost by comparing spatial learning for uphill and downhill routes, while maintaining actual physical cost and walking speed constant. In the first experiment, participants learnt city layouts by exploring uphill or downhill routes. They were then tested using a landmark positioning task on a map. In the second experiment, the same protocol was used with participants who wore loaded ankle weights. Results from the first experiment showed that walking uphill routes led to a global underestimation of distances compared to downhill routes. This inverted distance-of-hill effect was not observed in the second experiment, where an additional effort was applied. These results suggest that the underestimation of distances observed in experiment one emerged from recalibration processes whose function was to solve the transgression of proprioceptive predictions linked with uphill energy expenditure. Results are discussed in relation to constructivist approaches on spatial representations and predictive coding theories.

EXPRESS: People’s Preferences for Different Types of Rational Numbers in Linguistic Contexts

Rational numbers, like fractions, decimals, and percentages, differ in the concepts they prefer to express and the entities they prefer to describe as previously reported in display-rational number notation matching tasks and in math word problem compiling contexts. On the one hand, fractions and percentages are preferentially used to express a relation between two magnitudes, while decimals are preferentially used to represent a magnitude. On the other hand, fractions and decimals tend to be used to describe discrete and continuous entities, respectively. However, it remains unclear whether these reported distinctions can extend to more general linguistic contexts. It also remains unclear which factor, the concept to be expressed (magnitudes vs. relations between magnitudes) or the entity to be described (countable vs. continuous), is more predictive of people’s preferences for rational number notations. To explore these issues, two corpus studies and a number notation preference experiment were administered. The news and conversation corpus studies detected the general pattern of conceptual distinctions across rational number notations as observed in previous studies; the number notation preference experiment found that the concept to be expressed was more predictive of people’s preferences for number notations than the entity to be described. These findings indicate that people’s biased uses of rational numbers are constrained by multiple factors, especially by the type of concepts to be expressed, and more importantly, these biases are not specific to mathematical settings but are generalizable to broader linguistic contexts.

EXPRESS: Can arrows change the subjective perception of space? Exploring symbolic attention repulsion

The attention repulsion effect (ARE) refers to distortions in the perception of space for areas nearby the focus of attention. For instance, when attending to the right-hand side of the visual field, objects in central vision may appear as though they are shifted to the left. The phenomenon is likely caused by changes in visual cell functioning. To date, research on the ARE has almost exclusively used exogenous manipulations of attention. In contrast, research exploring endogenous attention repulsion has been mixed, and no research has explored the effects of non-predictive arrow cues on this phenomenon. This gap in the literature is unexpected, as symbolic attention appears to be a unique form of attentional orienting compared to endogenous and exogenous attention. Therefore, the current study explored the effects of symbolic orienting on spatial repulsion and compared it to an exogenously generated ARE. Across four experiments, both exogenous and symbolic orienting resulted in AREs; however, the magnitude of the symbolic ARE was smaller than the exogenous ARE. This difference in magnitude persisted, even after testing both phenomena using stimulus timing parameters known to produce optimal effects in traditional attentional cueing paradigms. Therefore, compared to symbolic attention, it appears that exogenous manipulations may tightly constrict attention resources on the cued location, in turn potentially influencing the functioning of visual cells for enhanced perceptual processing.

EXPRESS: Don’t blame yourself: Conscious source monitoring modulates feedback control during speech production

Sensory feedback plays an important role in speech motor control. One of the main sources of evidence for this are studies where online auditory feedback is perturbed during ongoing speech. In motor control, it is therefore crucial to distinguish between sensory feedback and externally generated sensory events. This is called source monitoring. Previous altered feedback studies have taken non-conscious source monitoring for granted, as automatic responses to altered sensory feedback imply that the feedback changes are processed as self-caused. However, the role of conscious source monitoring is unclear. The current study investigated whether conscious source monitoring modulates responses to unexpected pitch changes in auditory feedback. During a first block, some participants spontaneously attributed the pitch shifts to themselves (self-blamers) while others attributed them to an external source (other-blamers). Before block 2, all participants were informed that the pitch shifts were experimentally induced. The self-blamers then showed a reduction in response magnitude in block 2 compared with block 1, while the other-blamers did not. This suggests that conscious source monitoring modulates responses to altered auditory feedback, such that consciously ascribing feedback to oneself leads to larger compensation responses. These results can be accounted for within the dominant comparator framework, where conscious source monitoring could modulate the gain on sensory feedback. Alternatively, the results can be naturally explained from an inferential framework, where conscious knowledge may bias the priors in a Bayesian process to determine the most likely source of a sensory event.

EXPRESS: Task demands moderate the effect of emotion on attentional capture

The current experiment examined the effect of task demands on attention to emotional images. Eighty participants viewed pairs of images, with each pair consisting of an emotional (negative or positive) and a neutral image, or two neutral images. Participants’ eye movements were recorded during picture viewing, and participants were either asked 1) which picture contains more colour? (colour task), 2) are the images equally pleasant? (pleasantness task), 3) which picture do you prefer? (preference task), or 4) were given no task instructions (control task). Although the results did not suggest that emotional images strongly captured attention, emotional images were looked at earlier than neutral images. Importantly, the pattern of results were dependent upon the task instructions; whilst the preference and colour task conditions showed early attentional biases to emotional images, only positive images were looked at earlier in the pleasantness task condition, and no early attentional biases were observed in the control task. Moreover, total fixation duration was increased for positive images in the preference task condition, but not in the other task conditions. It was concluded that attention to emotional stimuli can be modified by the demands of the task during viewing. However, further research should consider additional factors, such as the cognitive load of the viewing tasks, and the content of the images used.

EXPRESS: The psychological role of music and attentional control for religious experiences in worship

This study investigated the psychological dynamics during worship experiences under the influence of different music conditions. 60 believers were recruited to participate in experiments where they were asked to engage in worship and to connect with God while continuously ranking how strongly they sensed the presence of the divine. After each condition, they were asked to rate how well they were able to focus on God during the worship procedure. Based on a previously published feedback loop model that portrays global psychological mechanisms in worship, we deduced two hypotheses: (i) the ability to focus on God is positively associated with how strong the subjective religious experience becomes; (ii) and the different musical conditions yield varying degrees in the intensity of the felt presence of God. Our statistical analyses on the current sample demonstrate that both alternative hypotheses can be accepted. For the latter thesis, two further assumptions were at play: (a) we speculated that religious worship songs were associated with stronger divine experiences than with secular ones; and (b) it was assumed that if they could worship to their own selection of songs, the experience would be more powerful than with the ones that were provided by the research team. Whereas upon our investigation the former assumption can be deemed correct, the latter shows a positive but insignificant association.

EXPRESS: Does physical weight alter the mental representation of the body? Evidence from motor imagery in obesity

Objective. Obesity is a clinical condition that impacts severely the physical body. However, evidence related to the mental representation of the body in action is scarce. The few available studies only focus on avoiding obstacles, rather than participants imagining their own body. Method. To advance knowledge in this field, we assessed the performance of twenty-two individuals with obesity compared to thirty individuals with a healthy weight in two tasks that implied different motor (more implicit vs. more explicit) imagery strategies. Two tasks were also administered to control for visual imagery skills, to rule out confounding factors. Moreover, we measured body uneasiness, through a standard questionnaire, as body image negativity could impact on other body representation components. Results. Our findings do not show differences in the motor imagery tasks between individuals with obesity and individuals with healthy weight. On the other hand, some differences emerge in visual imagery skills. Crucially, individuals with obesity did report a higher level of body uneasiness. Conclusions. Despite a negative body image and visual imagery differences, obesity per se does not impact on the representation of the body in action. Importantly, this result is independent from the level of awareness required to access the mental representation of the body.

EXPRESS: Are animates special? Exploring the effects of selective attention and animacy on visual statistical learning

Our visual system is built to extract regularities in how objects within our visual environment appear in relation to each other across time and space (‘visual statistical learning’). Existing research indicates that visual statistical learning is modulated by selective attention. Our attentional system prioritises information that enables behaviour; for example, animates are prioritised over inanimates (the ‘animacy advantage’). The present study examined the effects of selective attention and animacy on visual statistical learning in young adults (N = 284). We tested visual statistical learning of attended and unattended information across four animacy conditions: (i) living things that can self-initiate movement (animals); (ii) living things that cannot self-initiate movement (fruits and vegetables); (iii) non-living things that can generate movement (vehicles); and (iv) non-living things that cannot generate movement (tools and kitchen utensils). We implemented a four-point confidence-rating scale as an assessment of participants’ awareness of the regularities in the visual statistical learning task. There were four key findings. First, selective attention plays a critical role by modulating visual statistical learning. Second, animacy does not play a special role in visual statistical learning. Third, visual statistical learning of attended information cannot be exclusively accounted for by unconscious knowledge. Fourth, performance on the visual statistical learning task is associated with the proportion of stimuli that were named or labelled. Our findings support the notion that visual statistical learning is a powerful mechanism by which our visual system resolves an abundance of sensory input over time.