Norms for grip agreement for 296 photographs of objects

Is there a lower visual field advantage for object affordances? A registered report

It's been repeatedly shown that pictures of graspable objects can facilitate visual processing, even in the absence of reach-to-grasp actions, an effect often attributed to the concept of affordances. A classic demonstration of this is the handle compatibility effect, characterised by faster reaction times when the orientation of a graspable object's handle is compatible with the hand used to respond, even when the handle orientation is task-irrelevant. Nevertheless, it is debated whether the speeded reaction times are a result of affordances or spatial compatibility. First, we investigated whether we could replicate the handle compatibility effect while controlling for spatial compatibility. Participants (N = 68) responded with left or right-handed keypresses to whether the object was upright or inverted and, in separate blocks, whether the object was red or green. We failed to replicate the handle compatibility effect, with no significant difference between compatible and incompatible conditions, in both tasks. Second, we investigated whether there is a lower visual field (VF) advantage for the handle compatibility effect in line with what has been found for hand actions. A further 68 participants responded to object orientation presented either in the upper or lower VF. A significant handle compatibility effect was observed in the lower VF, but not the upper VF. This suggests that there is a lower VF advantage for affordances, possibly as the lower VF is where our actions most frequently occur. However, future studies should explore the impact of eye movements on the handle compatibility effect and tool affordances.

Manipulating objects during learning shrinks the global scale of spatial representations in memory: a virtual reality study

Goal-directed approaches to perception usually consider that distance perception is shaped by the body and its potential for interaction. Although this phenomenon has been extensively investigated in the field of perception, little is known about the effect of motor interactions on memory, and how they shape the global representation of large-scale spaces. To investigate this question, we designed an immersive virtual reality environment in which participants had to learn the positions of several items. Half of the participants had to physically (but virtually) grab the items with their hand and drop them at specified locations (active condition). The other half of the participants were simply shown the items which appeared at the specified position without interacting with them (passive condition). Half of the items used during learning were images of manipulable objects, and the other half were non manipulable objects. Participants were subsequently asked to draw a map of the virtual environment from memory, and to position all the items in it. Results show that active participants recalled the global shape of the spatial layout less precisely, and made more absolute distance errors than passive participants. Moreover, global scaling compression bias was higher for active participants than for passive participants. Interestingly, manipulable items showed a greater compression bias compared to non-manipulable items, yet they had no effect on correlation scores and absolute non-directional distance errors. These results are discussed according to grounded approaches of spatial cognition, emphasizing motor simulation as a possible mechanism for position retrieval from memory.

The Postural Effect on the Memory of Manipulable Objects

The grounded cognition approach posits the involvement of sensory-motor processes in the representation of knowledge. However, the functional impact of these processes on cognition has been questioned, and some authors have explored the effect of motor interference on memory to test causally this hypothesis. In a seminal study, Dutriaux and Gyselinck (2016) showed that keeping the hands behind the back during learning decreases the memory of manipulable objects, but not the memory of nonmanipulable objects. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the mechanism behind the effect of posture in memory observed by Dutriaux and Gyselinck. The present experiment replicated the posture manipulation during learning but asked participants to keep their hands behind the back during recall. Results showed a similar detrimental effect of the hands behind the back specific to manipulable objects. This shows that the mechanism behind this effect arises from postural interference rather than from a compatibility between the posture during learning and the posture during recall and adds new evidence in favor of the sensory-motor grounding of knowledge.

Does Cup-Grip Type Affect Tremor among People with Essential Tremor?

Essential tremor (ET) is a movement disorder that may cause functional disability in daily activities, such as drinking from a cup or drawing. This study aims to characterize effects of varied cup-grip types and measured axes on the actual performance of people with ET and find correlations between cup-grip type and measured axes, and spiral drawing measures. Participants (20 with ET and 18 controls) held a cup of water in a steady position in three grip types and drew a spiral. The cup acceleration was measured by the cup triaxial accelerometer, analyzed in X, Y and Z axes (directions); deviation of the measured acceleration from the desired steady position acceleration was computed. Significant group differences were found for outcome measures in all grip types. Among participants with ET, significantly higher measured values were found in the cup’s horizontal plane (X and Y axes) compared to the vertical direction (Z axis) and for on-the-handle versus around-the-cup grips in the X and Y axes. Significant correlations were found between this grip’s measures and spiral-drawing actual performance measures, indicating the measurement axis and grip type may affect actual performance. These findings may support the future development of assistive devices for tremor suppression and personalized supportive therapy.

Brazilian norms for the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS)

Norms for visual stimuli are critical for designing reliable psychological and neuroscientific studies. However, such normative sets of stimuli are scarce for the Brazilian population. Here, we report norms for the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) for Brazilian college students. Sixty-five Brazilian university students rated the initial normative set of BOSS images for familiarity and visual complexity, and produced a name for each object. Data analysis focused on comparing the present norms to prior BOSS norms (English-Canadian, French-Canadian, and Thai) across four normative dimensions: familiarity, visual complexity, modal name agreement, and H value, and considered these dimensions according to whether items pertained to living or non-living domains. Correlation analyses revealed that the present norms show strong similarities to prior BOSS norms, although objects were scored as more familiar in the Brazilian relative to all prior norms, especially relative to the Thai norms. In addition, familiarity was greater for living than for non-living items in the English- and French-Canadian norms, but such difference was absent in the Brazilian and Thai norms, suggesting that familiarity is more strongly affected by culture than by semantic domain. In sum, even when cultural differences are considered, the current study reveals that the images of the BOSS data set are in general well known for Brazilians, demonstrating that they can be useful for psychological and neuroscientific research in Brazil.

Manipulability agreement as a predictor of action initiation latency

In the domain of cognition, an increasing number of researchers are interested in the role of objects' motor affordances in cognitive processing. However, outside of the existing norms on the objects' levels of manipulability (e.g., Magnié, Besson, Poncet, & Dolisi, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 25:521-560,2003), relatively few norms exist that would allow researchers to have good control over objects' motor dimensions. In the present study, we have provided norms on the extent to which participants agreed about the movements typically performed for using specific objects--what we will call manipulability agreement. We showed that manipulability agreement was a good predictor of the times needed to initiate the action associated with the object. This study provides ratings on a new dimension of objects' motor affordances that could be useful to researchers in the domain of visual cognition.

When motor congruency modulates immediate memory for objects

In line with the embodied cognition view, some researchers have suggested that our capacity to retain information relies on the perceptual and motor systems used to interact with our environment (Barsalou, 1999; Glenberg, 1997). For instance, the language production architecture would be responsible for the retention of verbal materials such as a list of words (Acheson & MacDonald, 2009). However, evidence for the role of the motor system in object memory is still limited. In the present experiments, participants were asked to retain lists of objects in memory. During encoding, participants had to pantomime an action to grasp (Experiments 1A & 1B) or to use the objects (Experiment 2) that was either congruent or incongruent with the objects to be retained. The results showed that performing an incongruent action impaired memory performance compared to a congruent action. This suggests that motor affordances play a role during object retention. The results are discussed in light of the embodied cognition view.

A motor similarity effect in object memory

In line with theories of embodied cognition (e.g., Versace et al. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21, 522-560, 2009), several studies have suggested that the motor system used to interact with objects in our environment is involved in object recognition (e.g., Helbig, Graf, & Kiefer Experimental Brain Research, 174, 221-228, 2006). However, the role of the motor system in immediate memory for objects is more controversial. The objective of the present study was to investigate the role of the motor system in object memory by manipulating the similarity between the actions associated to series of objects to be retained in memory. In Experiment 1, we showed that lists of objects associated to dissimilar actions were better recalled than lists associated to similar actions. We then showed that this effect was abolished when participants were required to perform a concurrent motor suppression task (Experiment 2) and when the objects to be memorized were unmanipulable (Experiment 3). The motor similarity effect provides evidence for the role of motor affordances in object memory.

Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) phase II: 930 new normative photos

Researchers have only recently started to take advantage of the developments in technology and communication for sharing data and documents. However, the exchange of experimental material has not taken advantage of this progress yet. In order to facilitate access to experimental material, the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) project was created as a free standardized set of visual stimuli accessible to all researchers, through a normative database. The BOSS is currently the largest existing photo bank providing norms for more than 15 dimensions (e.g. familiarity, visual complexity, manipulability, etc.), making the BOSS an extremely useful research tool and a mean to homogenize scientific data worldwide. The first phase of the BOSS was completed in 2010, and contained 538 normative photos. The second phase of the BOSS project presented in this article, builds on the previous phase by adding 930 new normative photo stimuli. New categories of concepts were introduced, including animals, building infrastructures, body parts, and vehicles and the number of photos in other categories was increased. All new photos of the BOSS were normalized relative to their name, familiarity, visual complexity, object agreement, viewpoint agreement, and manipulability. The availability of these norms is a precious asset that should be considered for characterizing the stimuli as a function of the requirements of research and for controlling for potential confounding effects.

Occurrence, plausibility, and desirability for 124 Life Events Inventory items

Imagination inflation is where imaginative elaboration of possible childhood experiences inflates (increases) participants' estimation that these events actually occurred, as indicated by pre- to post-manipulation ratings changes. This research primarily uses the Life Events Inventory (LEI), listing possible experiences that could have happened during childhood (Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3, 208-214, 1996). Although imagination inflation research has spawned more than 50 investigations, no normative ratings exist on individual items contained in the LEI. To address this, we present descriptive statistics (mean, median, standard deviation, confidence interval) for 124 LEI items on occurrence (how likely is it that this experience happened to you), plausibility (how plausible is it that this event could have happened to someone), and desirability (how desirable is this experience). Occurrence and plausibility showed similar patterns of mean item ratings and were highly correlated, whereas desirability was moderately correlated with plausibility and unrelated to occurrence. These data should facilitate a more informed selection of specific LEI items to use in further research and can assist in clarifying the contributions of normative occurrence, plausibility, and desirability to imagination inflation effects.