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Wang XM, Karlinsky A, Constable MD, Gregory SEA, Welsh TN. Social gaze cueing elicits facilitatory and inhibitory effects on movement execution when the model might act on an object. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2024; 77:230-241. [PMID: 36999402 PMCID: PMC10798020 DOI: 10.1177/17470218231162546] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2022] [Revised: 02/08/2023] [Accepted: 02/16/2023] [Indexed: 04/01/2023]
Abstract
Social cues, such as eye gaze and pointing fingers, can increase the prioritisation of specific locations for cognitive processing. A previous study using a manual reaching task showed that, although both gaze and pointing cues altered target prioritisation (reaction times [RTs]), only pointing cues affected action execution (trajectory deviations). These differential effects of gaze and pointing cues on action execution could be because the gaze cue was conveyed through a disembodied head; hence, the model lacked the potential for a body part (i.e., hands) to interact with the target. In the present study, the image of a male gaze model, whose gaze direction coincided with two potential target locations, was centrally presented. The model either had his arms and hands extended underneath the potential target locations, indicating the potential to act on the targets (Experiment 1), or had his arms crossed in front of his chest, indicating the absence of potential to act (Experiment 2). Participants reached to a target that followed a nonpredictive gaze cue at one of three stimulus onset asynchronies. RTs and reach trajectories of the movements to cued and uncued targets were analysed. RTs showed a facilitation effect for both experiments, whereas trajectory analysis revealed facilitatory and inhibitory effects, but only in Experiment 1 when the model could potentially act on the targets. The results of this study suggested that when the gaze model had the potential to interact with the cued target location, the model's gaze affected not only target prioritisation but also movement execution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaoye Michael Wang
- Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, Centre for Motor Control, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - April Karlinsky
- Department of Kinesiology, California State University, San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA, USA
| | - Merryn D Constable
- Department of Psychology, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
| | | | - Timothy N Welsh
- Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, Centre for Motor Control, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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The role of primary motor cortex in manual inhibition of return: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Behav Brain Res 2023; 445:114380. [PMID: 36870395 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2023.114380] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/06/2022] [Revised: 02/25/2023] [Accepted: 03/01/2023] [Indexed: 03/06/2023]
Abstract
Inhibition of return (IOR) is a behavioural phenomenon characterised by longer response times (RTs) to stimuli presented at previously cued versus uncued locations. The neural mechanisms underlying IOR effects are not fully understood. Previous neurophysiological studies have identified a role of frontoparietal areas including posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in the generation of IOR, but the contribution of primary motor cortex (M1) has not been directly tested. The present study investigated the effects of single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over M1 on manual IOR in a key-press task where peripheral (left or right) targets followed a cue at the same or opposite location at different SOAs (100/300/600/1000 ms). In Experiment 1, TMS was applied over right M1 on a randomized 50% of trials. In Experiment 2, active or sham stimulation was provided in separate blocks. In the absence of TMS (non-TMS trials in Experiment 1 and sham trials in Experiment 2), evidence of IOR was observed in RTs at longer SOAs. In both experiments, IOR effects differed between TMS and non-TMS/sham conditions, but the effects of TMS were greater and statistically significant in Experiment 1 where TMS and non-TMS trials were randomly interspersed. The magnitude of motor-evoked potentials was not altered by the cue-target relationship in either experiment. These findings do not support a key role of M1 in the mechanisms of IOR but suggest the need for further research to elucidate the role of the motor system in manual IOR effects.
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Kritikos A, Chandler-Mather N, Sparks S, Welsh T. Biological motion elicits between-person Inhibition of Return in temporal and spatial movement parameters. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2022; 230:103747. [PMID: 36148738 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103747] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2021] [Revised: 08/03/2022] [Accepted: 09/12/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
The present study was designed to gain a deeper understanding of the processing of biological motion stimuli. To this end, we investigated if the inhibition of return (IoR) effect emerges in initiation times and trajectories of pointing movements to targets in left and right space where the preceding cues were pointing movement of a human model or a dot with the same biological motion. Targets were randomly presented in the same or opposite side from the direction of the motion cue. It was hypothesised that the visuomotor system should resonate with the biological motion of a dot, but that the human model should exaggerate the effect. Thus, the human model should trigger stronger attention shifts compared with the dot model and lead to more robust IoR effects in both spatial (movement) and temporal parameters of the observer's pointing responses. Initiation times and the spatial parameters (angle of the hand trajectory) of the pointing movements were analysed. Results indicate that facilitation and IoR effects triggered by human and dot stimuli did not differ. Based on these findings, it seems that the crucial feature of motion cues that generate shifts in attention is biological motion, rather than human appearance per se.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ada Kritikos
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
| | - Ned Chandler-Mather
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
| | - Samuel Sparks
- School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
| | - Timothy Welsh
- The Centre for Motor Control, Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, University of Toronto, Canada.
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Roberts JW, Lawrence GP, Welsh TN, Wilson MR. Does high state anxiety exacerbate distractor interference? Hum Mov Sci 2021; 76:102773. [PMID: 33636571 DOI: 10.1016/j.humov.2021.102773] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2020] [Revised: 02/06/2021] [Accepted: 02/09/2021] [Indexed: 01/10/2023]
Abstract
Attentional Control Theory states that anxiety can cause attention to be allocated to irrelevant sources of information by hindering the ability to control attention and focus on the information that matters. In a separate line of inquiry, action-centred views of attention state that non-target distractors involuntarily activate response codes that may cause interference with target-directed movements (distractor interference effect). Due to the proposed negative effects of anxiety on attentional control, we examined whether anxiety could also modulate distractor interference. Participants executed target-directed aiming movements to one of three targets with the potential of a distractor being presented at near or far locations. Distractors were presented at different times with respect to the target presentation in order to explore the excitatory (0, -100 ms) and inhibitory (-850 ms) processing of the distractor. As a broad indication of the effect of anxiety, the analysis of no distractor trials indicated a lower proportion of time and displacement to reach peak velocity under high compared to low anxiety conditions. Meanwhile, the typical excitatory influence of the distractors located near, compared to far, at a short distractor-onset asynchrony was found in movement time and overall response time. However, this distractor excitation was even greater under high compared to low anxiety in the reaction time component of the response. These findings broadly implicate the attentional control perspective, but they further indicate an influence of anxiety on the excitation rather than inhibition of responses.
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Affiliation(s)
- James W Roberts
- Liverpool Hope University, Psychology, Action and Learning of Movement (PALM) Laboratory, School of Health Sciences, Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK.
| | - Gavin P Lawrence
- School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences, Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance, Bangor University, George Building, Bangor LL57 2PZ, UK
| | - Timothy N Welsh
- Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M52 2W6, Canada; Centre for Motor Control, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M52 2W6, Canada
| | - Mark R Wilson
- University of Exeter, School of Sport and Health Sciences, Heavitree Road, Exeter EX1 2LU, UK
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Abstract
In this article, we challenge the usefulness of "attention" as a unitary construct and/or neural system. We point out that the concept has too many meanings to justify a single term, and that "attention" is used to refer to both the explanandum (the set of phenomena in need of explanation) and the explanans (the set of processes doing the explaining). To illustrate these points, we focus our discussion on visual selective attention. It is argued that selectivity in processing has emerged through evolution as a design feature of a complex multi-channel sensorimotor system, which generates selective phenomena of "attention" as one of many by-products. Instead of the traditional analytic approach to attention, we suggest a synthetic approach that starts with well-understood mechanisms that do not need to be dedicated to attention, and yet account for the selectivity phenomena under investigation. We conclude that what would serve scientific progress best would be to drop the term "attention" as a label for a specific functional or neural system and instead focus on behaviorally relevant selection processes and the many systems that implement them.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bernhard Hommel
- Institute of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Unit and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands
| | - Craig S Chapman
- Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
| | - Paul Cisek
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
| | - Heather F Neyedli
- School of Health and Human Performance, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
| | - Joo-Hyun Song
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Timothy N Welsh
- Centre for Motor Control, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, 55 Harbord Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 2W6, Canada.
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Symbolic, non-directional predictive cues affect action execution. Atten Percept Psychophys 2019; 81:2391-2399. [DOI: 10.3758/s13414-019-01794-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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Probing the time course of facilitation and inhibition in gaze cueing of attention in an upper-limb reaching task. Atten Percept Psychophys 2019; 81:2410-2423. [DOI: 10.3758/s13414-019-01821-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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Manzone J, Cole GG, Skarratt PA, Welsh TN. Response-specific effects in a joint action task: social inhibition of return effects do not emerge when observed and executed actions are different. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2016; 81:1059-1071. [DOI: 10.1007/s00426-016-0794-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/29/2016] [Accepted: 08/10/2016] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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Reach tracking reveals dissociable processes underlying cognitive control. Cognition 2016; 152:114-126. [PMID: 27045465 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.03.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/27/2015] [Revised: 03/17/2016] [Accepted: 03/21/2016] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
The current study uses reach tracking to investigate how cognitive control is implemented during online performance of the Stroop task (Experiment 1) and the Eriksen flanker task (Experiment 2). We demonstrate that two of the measures afforded by reach tracking, initiation time and reach curvature, capture distinct patterns of effects that have been linked to dissociable processes underlying cognitive control in electrophysiology and functional neuroimaging research. Our results suggest that initiation time reflects a response threshold adjustment process involving the inhibition of motor output, while reach curvature reflects the degree of co-activation between response alternatives registered by a monitoring process over the course of a trial. In addition to shedding new light on fundamental questions concerning how these processes contribute to the cognitive control of behavior, these results present a framework for future research to investigate how these processes function across different tasks, develop across the lifespan, and differ among individuals.
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Effects of spatial response coding on distractor processing: evidence from auditory spatial negative priming tasks with keypress, joystick, and head movement responses. Atten Percept Psychophys 2014; 77:293-310. [PMID: 25214304 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-014-0760-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Prior studies of spatial negative priming indicate that distractor-assigned keypress responses are inhibited as part of visual, but not auditory, processing. However, recent evidence suggests that static keypress responses are not directly activated by spatially presented sounds and, therefore, might not call for an inhibitory process. In order to investigate the role of response inhibition in auditory processing, we used spatially directed responses that have been shown to result in direct response activation to irrelevant sounds. Participants localized a target sound by performing manual joystick responses (Experiment 1) or head movements (Experiment 2B) while ignoring a concurrent distractor sound. Relations between prime distractor and probe target were systematically manipulated (repeated vs. changed) with respect to identity and location. Experiment 2A investigated the influence of distractor sounds on spatial parameters of head movements toward target locations and showed that distractor-assigned responses are immediately inhibited to prevent false responding in the ongoing trial. Interestingly, performance in Experiments 1 and 2B was not generally impaired when the probe target appeared at the location of the former prime distractor and required a previously withheld and presumably inhibited response. Instead, performance was impaired only when prime distractor and probe target mismatched in terms of location or identity, which fully conforms to the feature-mismatching hypothesis. Together, the results suggest that response inhibition operates in auditory processing when response activation is provided but is presumably too short-lived to affect responding on the subsequent trial.
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