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Villani C, D’Ascenzo S, Scerrati E, Ricciardelli P, Nicoletti R, Lugli L. Wearing the face mask affects our social attention over space. Front Psychol 2022; 13:923558. [PMID: 35992481 PMCID: PMC9386249 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.923558] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2022] [Accepted: 07/13/2022] [Indexed: 01/30/2023] Open
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that covering the face inhibits the recognition of identity and emotional expressions. However, it might also make the eyes more salient, since they are a reliable index to orient our social and spatial attention. This study investigates (1) whether the pervasive interaction with people with face masks fostered by the COVID-19 pandemic modulates the processing of spatial information essential to shift attention according to other’s eye-gaze direction (i.e., gaze-cueing effect: GCE), and (2) whether this potential modulation interacts with motor responses (i.e., Simon effect). Participants were presented with face cues orienting their gaze to a congruent or incongruent target letter location (gaze-cueing paradigm) while wearing a surgical mask (Mask), a patch (Control), or nothing (No-Mask). The task required to discriminate the identity of the lateralized target letters by pressing one of two lateralized response keys, in a corresponding or a non-corresponding position with respect to the target. Results showed that GCE was not modulated by the presence of the Mask, but it occurred in the No-Mask condition, confirming previous studies. Crucially, the GCE interacted with Simon effect in the Mask and Control conditions, though in different ways. While in the Mask condition the GCE emerged only when target and response positions corresponded (i.e., Simon-corresponding trials), in the Control condition it emerged only when they did not correspond (i.e., Simon-non-corresponding trials). These results indicate that people with face masks induce us to jointly orient our visual attention in the direction of the seen gaze (GCE) in those conditions resembling (or associated with) a general approaching behavior (Simon-corresponding trials). This is likely promoted by the fact that we tend to perceive wearing the mask as a personal safety measure and, thus, someone wearing the face mask is perceived as a trustworthy person. In contrast, people with a patch on their face can be perceived as more threatening, therefore inducing a GCE in those conditions associated with a general avoidance behavior (Simon-non-corresponding trials).
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Affiliation(s)
- Caterina Villani
- Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- *Correspondence: Caterina Villani, ;
| | - Stefania D’Ascenzo
- Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Elisa Scerrati
- Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
| | - Paola Ricciardelli
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
- Milan Centre for Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Roberto Nicoletti
- Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Luisa Lugli
- Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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Klostermann A. Does the Simon Effect Interfere with the Synergy Between Perception and Action? Percept Mot Skills 2021; 128:1765-1784. [PMID: 34078181 DOI: 10.1177/00315125211022917] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Research suggests that - particularly - the execution of precision-demanding far-aiming tasks necessitates an optimal coupling between perception and action. In this regard, the duration of the last fixation before initiating movement - i.e., the Quiet Eye (QE) - has been functionally related to subsequent motor performance. In the current study, we investigated potential mechanisms of QE by applying the Simon paradigm - i.e., cognitive interferences evoked by stimulus-effect incompatibilities over response selection. To this end, we had participants throw balls as precisely as possible, either with their left or right hand (hands condition, HC) or at left or right targets (targets condition, TC), respectively. Via monaural auditory stimuli, participants received information about the hand side and the target side, respectively, either with compatible (i.e., congruent stimulus-effect side) or incompatible (i.e., incongruent stimulus-effect side) stimulus-effect mappings. Results showed that participants reacted slower and showed later first fixation onsets at the target in incompatible vs. compatible trials, thus, replicating and extending the classical Simon effect. Crucially, in the HC, there were earlier QE onsets and longer QE durations in incompatible (vs. compatible) trials, suggesting an inhibition of cognitive interferences over response selection to preserve motor performance. These findings are in line with attentional explanations of QE, suggesting optimized attentional control with efficient management of limited cognitive resources (optimal-attentional-control explanation) or with the inhibition of alternative response parametrization (inhibition explanation).
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D'Ascenzo S, Lugli L, Nicoletti R, Umiltà C. Practice effects vs. transfer effects in the Simon task. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2020; 85:1955-1969. [PMID: 32770264 PMCID: PMC8289792 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-020-01386-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/13/2019] [Accepted: 07/08/2020] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
The Simon effect refers to the fact that, even though stimulus position is task-irrelevant, responses to a task-relevant stimulus dimension are faster and more accurate when the stimulus and response spatially correspond than when they do not. Although the Simon effect is a very robust phenomenon, it is modulated by practice or transfer from previous tasks. Practice refers to the modulation of the Simon effect as a function of number of trials. Transfer refers to the modulation of the Simon effect as a function of preceding tasks. The aim of the present study is to disentangle the role of practice and transfer in modulating the Simon effect and to investigate whether such modulation can be extended to a different response modality. Three experiments were conducted, which included three sessions: the Baseline session, the Inducer session and the Diagnostic session. The task performed in the Baseline and the Diagnostic sessions were comprised of location-irrelevant trials (i.e., they were Simon tasks). The task performed in the Inducer session required performing location-relevant trials (i.e., it was a spatial compatibility task with a compatible or an incompatible stimulus–response mapping). In the first and third experiments, participants were required to respond manually in all sessions. In the second experiment, the task performed in the Inducer session required manual response, while in the Baseline and Diagnostic sessions the tasks required ocular response. Results showed a reduced-Diagnostic Simon effect after both compatible and incompatible mapping in the Inducer session, regardless of whether response modality was the same or different. These results support the notion that the practice effect prevails over the transfer effect.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefania D'Ascenzo
- Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Via Azzo Gardino, 23, 40122, Bologna, Italy.
| | - Luisa Lugli
- Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Via Azzo Gardino, 23, 40122, Bologna, Italy
| | - Roberto Nicoletti
- Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Via Azzo Gardino, 23, 40122, Bologna, Italy
| | - Carlo Umiltà
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padova, Italy
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Kostov K, Janyan A. Critical bottom-up attentional factors in the handle orientation effect: asymmetric luminance transients and object-center eccentricity relative to fixation. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2020; 85:1685-1705. [PMID: 32248290 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-020-01329-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2019] [Accepted: 03/24/2020] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
In 1998, Tucker and Ellis found that keypress responses are faster when the task-irrelevant orientation of a graspable object's handle corresponds to response hand location. Over the past 20 years, researchers have disagreed over the extent to which grasping affordance or spatial compatibility contributes to the effect. One of the causes behind the conflicting findings and interpretations may be that studies advocating the grasping affordance view have tended to overlook the contributions of low-level perceptual characteristics to the observed correspondence effects. The present study evaluated the role of visual salience and bottom-up attention in the occurrence of the effect. Experiment 1 involved a vertical orientation task (bimanual keypresses) using photographs of graspable objects, centered based on object width or pixel area. The same procedure was performed using a color discrimination task on solid-colored silhouettes, large (Experiment 2) and small-sized (Experiment 3), as well as silhouette outlines (Experiment 4). Similar result patterns across Experiments 1-3 were observed and discussed in the context of diverging findings in Experiment 4, prompting us to introduce the notion of asymmetry-based Simon effects, whereby location is coded at stimulus onset on the basis of asymmetric changes in luminance between both hemifields, coupled with object-center eccentricity relative to fixation. These low-level factors were critical in modulating the temporal dynamics, as well as the direction of compatibility effects (toward handles or bodies), irrespective of grasping affordance, task, object identity, or stimulus size. The present findings provide further evidence that the Tucker and Ellis paradigm for studying variable affordances is extremely vulnerable to location-coding, which may arise on the basis of exogenous deployments of attention. This problem is only exacerbated in a large portion of the relevant literature, whereby visually complex stimuli are primarily discussed in terms of their graspable nature and relation to task, rather than their low-level, attention-capturing features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kiril Kostov
- Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology, New Bulgarian University, 21, Montevideo Street, 1618, Sofia, Bulgaria.
| | - Armina Janyan
- Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology, New Bulgarian University, 21, Montevideo Street, 1618, Sofia, Bulgaria
- Research Center for Cognitive Science, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
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Chehrehnegar N, Nejati V, Shati M, Esmaeili M, Rezvani Z, Haghi M, Foroughan M. Behavioral and cognitive markers of mild cognitive impairment: diagnostic value of saccadic eye movements and Simon task. Aging Clin Exp Res 2019; 31:1591-1600. [PMID: 30659514 DOI: 10.1007/s40520-019-01121-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2018] [Accepted: 01/03/2019] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) has been considered as a prodromal stage of Alzheimer disease (AD). Subtle changes in specific aspects of executive function like inhibitory control have been found in MCI. AIMS We examined attentional and inhibitory control with the aim to distinguish between amnestic MCI patients and healthy controls. METHOD Using neuropsychological, behavioral, and oculomotor function experiments, we examined executive function in 59 normal control, 49, multiple domain amnestic MCI (a-MCI) subjects, and 21 early stage AD patients using eye tracking and Simon task as measures of attentional control, to determine which saccade and behavioral tasks were sensitive enough to identify a-MCI. Saccades were investigated in gap and overlap pro-saccade and anti-saccade tasks. RESULTS Scores on the Simon task were inversely correlated with general cognitive status and can distinguish a-MCI from controls with excellent specificity (AUC = 0.65 for reaction time and 0.59 for false responses). More importantly, our results showed that saccadic gains were affected in a-MCI and were the most sensitive measures to distinguish a-MCI from normal participants AST gap task AUC = 0.7, PST gap task AUC = 0.63, AST overlap task (AUC = 0.73). Moreover, these parameters were strongly correlated with neuropsychological measures. Using tests in parallel model, improved sensitivity up to 0.97. CONCLUSION The present results enable us to suggest eye tracking along with behavioral data as a possible sensitive tools to detect a-MCI in preclinical stage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Negin Chehrehnegar
- Iranian Research Center on Aging, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran
- Occupational Therapy Department, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
| | - Vahid Nejati
- Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Shahid Behehsti University Tehran, Tehran, Iran
- Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mohsen Shati
- Mental health, Research center, School of behavioral Sciences and Mental Health, Tehran Institute of Psychiatry, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mahdieh Esmaeili
- Iranian Research Center on Aging, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Zahra Rezvani
- Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Marjan Haghi
- Iranian Research Center on Aging, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mahshid Foroughan
- Iranian Research Center on Aging, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
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Abstract
Although the joint Simon task (JST) has been investigated for more than a decade, its cause is still unclear. According to ideomotor views of action control, action effects are a commonly cited explanation. However, action effects are usually confounded with the actions producing such effects. We combined a JST with eye tracking and asked participants to respond by performing specific saccades. Saccades were followed by visual feedback (central vs. lateral feedback), serving as the action effect. This arrangement allowed us to isolate actions from action effects and, also to prevent each actor from seeing the reciprocal actions of the other actor. In this saccadic JST, we found a significant compatibility effect in the individual setting. The typical enhanced compatibility effect in the joint setting of the JST was absent with central action feedback and even when lateralized visual action feedback was provided. Our findings suggest that the perception of action effects alone might not be sufficient to modulate compatibility effects for eye movements. The presence of a compatibility effect in the individual setting shows the specific requirements of a saccadic compatibility task - the requirement to perform prosaccades to compatible and antisaccades to incompatible target locations. The lack of a difference between compatibility effects in joint and individual settings and the lack of a modulation of the compatibility effect through lateralized visual action feedback shows that the finding of a joint Simon effect that has frequently been reported for manual responses is absent for saccadic responses.
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Michalczyk Ł, Bielas J. The gap effect reduces both manual and saccadic inhibition of return (IOR). Exp Brain Res 2019; 237:1643-1653. [PMID: 30953082 PMCID: PMC6584218 DOI: 10.1007/s00221-019-05537-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/02/2019] [Accepted: 04/01/2019] [Indexed: 11/05/2022]
Abstract
Inhibition of return (IOR) is the effect of slower responses to validly than invalidly cued targets. The discovery of IOR raised controversy as to whether it has two “flavors”, i.e., attentional/perceptual and motoric, or whether it is a homogeneous visual-motor phenomenon that should be understood in terms of the preparation of different effectors (mainly eye movement). Since manipulation of fixation offset (0 and 200 ms gap) is believed to affect the latency of saccades, we measured its influence on saccadic and manual IOR with a simple keypress response when eye movements were forbidden. In the two experiments which we carried out, the fixation offset decreased IOR in both the saccadic and the manual conditions. The results suggest the limitations of the attentional hypothesis, which assumes that manual IOR is independent of the motoric component; they are also in line with the tenets of the oculomotor hypothesis of IOR.
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Affiliation(s)
- Łukasz Michalczyk
- Institute of Psychology, Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow, Kopernika 26, 31-501, Krakow, Poland.
| | - Jacek Bielas
- Institute of Psychology, Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow, Kopernika 26, 31-501, Krakow, Poland
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D'Ascenzo S, Lugli L, Baroni G, Guidotti R, Rubichi S, Iani C, Nicoletti R. Visual versus auditory Simon effect: A behavioural and physiological investigation. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2018; 71:917-930. [PMID: 28293982 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1307429] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated whether the visual and auditory Simon effects could be accounted for by the same mechanism. In a single experiment, we performed a detailed comparison of the visual and the auditory Simon effects arising in behavioural responses and in pupil dilation, a psychophysiological measure considered as a marker of the cognitive effort induced by conflict processing. To address our question, we performed sequential and distributional analyses on both reaction times and pupil dilation. Results confirmed that the mechanisms underlying the visual and auditory Simon effects are functionally equivalent in terms of the interaction between unconditional and conditional response processes. The two modalities, however, differ with respect to the strength of their activation and inhibition. Importantly, pupillary data mirrored the pattern observed in behavioural data for both tasks, adding physiological evidence to the current literature on the processing of visual and auditory information in a conflict task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefania D'Ascenzo
- 1 Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy.,2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Luisa Lugli
- 2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Giulia Baroni
- 2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Roberto Guidotti
- 3 Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, and Institute of Advanced Biomedical Technologies, 'G. D'Annunzio' University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
| | - Sandro Rubichi
- 4 Department of Education and Human Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
| | - Cristina Iani
- 1 Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy
| | - Roberto Nicoletti
- 2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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Sensory neural pathways revisited to unravel the temporal dynamics of the Simon effect: A model-based cognitive neuroscience approach. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2017; 77:48-57. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.02.023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2016] [Revised: 01/23/2017] [Accepted: 02/22/2017] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
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