6 research outputs found
Hand in motion reveals mind in motion
No full textRecently, researchers have measured hand movements en route to choices on a screen to understand the dynamics of a broad range of psychological processes. We review this growing body of research and explain how manual action exposes the real-time unfolding of underlying cognitive processing. We describe how simple hand motions may be used to continuously index participants’ tentative commitments to different choice alternatives during the evolution of a behavioral response. As such, hand-tracking can provide unusually high-fidelity, real-time motor traces of the mind. These motor traces cast novel theoretical and empirical light onto a wide range of phenomena and serve as a potential bridge between far-reaching areas of psychological science—from language, to high-level cognition and learning, to social cognitive processes
High-level context effects on spatial displacement: The effects of body orientation and language on memory
No full textThree decades of research suggests that cognitive simulation of motion is involved in the comprehension of object location, bodily configuration, and linguistic meaning. For example, the remembered location of an object associated with actual or implied motion is typically displaced in the direction of motion. In this paper, two experiments explore context effects in spatial displacement. They provide a novel approach to estimating the remembered location of an implied motion image by employing a cursor-positioning task. Both experiments examine how the remembered spatial location of a person is influenced by subtle differences in implied motion, specifically, by shifting the orientation of the person’s body to face upward or downward, and by pairing the image with motion language that differed on intentionality, fell versus jumped. The results of Experiment 1, a survey-based experiment, suggest that language and body orientation influenced vertical spatial displacement. Results of Experiment 2, a task that used Adobe Flash and Amazon Mechanical Turk, showed consistent effects of body orientation on vertical spatial displacement but no effect of language. Our findings replicate are in line with previous work on spatial displacement task that used a cursor-positioning task with implied motion stimuli. We discuss how different ways of simulating motion can influence spatial memory
Causes of degradation and erosion of a blanket mire in the southern Pennines, UK
No full textThis study investigates the causes of erosion and degradation of March Haigh, a blanket mire in the southern Pennines (UK), over a period of 160 years starting in 1840 AD. Peat samples taken from the site were dated using 210Pb; their humification and magnetic susceptibility were measured; and they were examined for pollen, plant macrofossils and microscopic charcoal. Stratigraphic correlation with a dated ‘master’ sample was achieved using indicators of air pollution (magnetic susceptibility) and climate (peat humification). The data were used in conjunction with documentary records to reconstruct past variations in grazing pressure, climate, moorland fires and air pollution. Three major vegetation changes have occurred on the moorland since 1840, namely: (1)the disappearance of Sphagnum spp. in the mid 19th century; (2)the replacement of Calluna vulgaris by Poaceae as the dominant vegetation type ca. 1918; and (3)a reduction in vegetation cover and consequent erosion ca. 1959. The results concur with the findings of other investigations of ecological change in the southern Pennines insofar as degradation of vegetation prior to the mid 20th century appears to have been caused by air pollution, climate change and fire. Following the removal of vegetation by a severe fire during the summer of 1959, unprecedented sheep stocking levels maintained the bare peat surface and thus precipitated extensive erosion
The dynamics of reference and shared visual attention
No full textIn the tangram task, two participants are presented with the same set of abstract shapes portrayed in different orders. One participant must instruct the other to arrange their shapes so that the orders match. To do this, they must find a way to refer to the abstract shapes. In the current experiment, the eye movements of pairs of participants were tracked while they were engaged in a computerized version of the task. Results revealed the canonical tangram effect: participants became faster at completing the task from round 1 to round 3. Also, their eye-movements synchronized over time. Cross-recurrence analysis was used to quantify this coordination, and showed that as participants’ words coalesced, their actions approximated a single coordinated system
Good things peak in pairs: A note on the Bimodality Coefficient
No full textA commentary on
Assessing bimodality to detect the presence of a dual cognitive process
by Freeman, J. B., and Dale, R. (2013). Behav. Res. Methods 45, 83–97. doi: 10.3758/s13428-012-0225-
Exploring the movement dynamics of deception
No full textBoth the science and the everyday practice of detecting a lie rest on the same assumption: hidden cognitive states that the liar would like to remain hidden nevertheless influence observable behavior. This assumption has good evidence. The insights of professional interrogators, anecdotal evidence, and body language textbooks have all built up a sizeable catalog of non-verbal cues that have been claimed to distinguish deceptive and truthful behavior. Typically, these cues are discrete, individual behaviors—a hand touching a mouth, the rise of a brow—that distinguish lies from truths solely in terms of their frequency or duration. Research to date has failed to establish any of these non-verbal cues as a reliable marker of deception. Here we argue that perhaps this is because simple tallies of behavior can miss out on the rich but subtle organization of behavior as it unfolds over time. Research in cognitive science from a dynamical systems perspective has shown that behavior is structured across multiple timescales, with more or less regularity and structure. Using tools that are sensitive to these dynamics, we analyzed body motion data from an experiment that put participants in a realistic situation of choosing, or not, to lie to an experimenter. Our analyses indicate that when being deceptive, continuous fluctuations of movement in the upper face, and somewhat in the arms, are characterized by dynamical properties of less stability, but greater complexity. For the upper face, these distinctions are present despite no apparent differences in the overall amount of movement between deception and truth. We suggest that these unique dynamical signatures of motion are indicative of both the cognitive demands inherent to deception and the need to respond adaptively in a social context. - See more at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00140/abstract#sthash.hvDiQ3Bb.dpu
