@article{KoernerTopolinskiStrack2015, author = {K{\"o}rner, Anita and Topolinski, Sascha and Strack, Fritz}, title = {Routes to Embodiment}, series = {Frontiers of Psychology}, volume = {9}, journal = {Frontiers of Psychology}, number = {940}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00940}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125960}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Research on embodiment is rich in impressive demonstrations but somewhat poor in comprehensive explanations. Although some moderators and driving mechanisms have been identified, a comprehensive conceptual account of how bodily states or dynamics influence behavior is still missing. Here, we attempt to integrate current knowledge by describing three basic psychological mechanisms: direct state induction, which influences how humans feel or process information, unmediated by any other cognitive mechanism; modal priming, which changes the accessibility of concepts associated with a bodily state; sensorimotor simulation, which affects the ease with which congruent and incongruent actions are performed. We argue that the joint impact of these mechanisms can account for most existing embodiment effects. Additionally, we summarize empirical tests for distinguishing these mechanisms and suggest a guideline for future research about the mechanisms underlying embodiment effects.}, language = {en} } @article{WieserMoscovitch2015, author = {Wieser, Matthias J. and Moscovitch, David A.}, title = {The effect of affective context on visuocortical processing of neutral faces in social anxiety - An ERP study}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01824}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125148}, pages = {1824}, year = {2015}, abstract = {It has been demonstrated that verbal context information alters the neural processing of ambiguous faces such as faces with no apparent facial expression. In social anxiety, neutral faces may be implicitly threatening for socially anxious individuals due to their ambiguous nature, but even more so if these neutral faces are put in self-referential negative contexts. Therefore, we measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to neutral faces which were preceded by affective verbal information (negative, neutral, positive). Participants with low social anxiety (LSA; n = 23) and high social anxiety (HSA; n = 21) were asked to watch and rate valence and arousal of the respective faces while continuous EEG was recorded. ERP analysis revealed that HSA showed elevated P100 amplitudes in response to faces, but reduced structural encoding of faces as indexed by reduced N170 amplitudes. In general, affective context led to an enhanced early posterior negativity (EPN) for negative compared to neutral facial expressions. Moreover, HSA compared to LSA showed enhanced late positive potentials (LPP) to negatively contextualized faces, whereas in LSA this effect was found for faces in positive contexts. Also, HSA rated faces in negative contexts as more negative compared to LSA. These results point at enhanced vigilance for neutral faces regardless of context in HSA, while structural encoding seems to be diminished (avoidance). Interestingly, later components of sustained processing (LPP) indicate that LSA show enhanced visuocortical processing for faces in positive contexts (happy bias), whereas this seems to be the case for negatively contextualized faces in HSA (threat bias). Finally, our results add further new evidence that top-down information in interaction with individual anxiety levels can influence early-stage aspects of visual perception.}, language = {en} } @article{KleihHerwegKaufmannetal.2015, author = {Kleih, Sonja C. and Herweg, Andreas and Kaufmann, Tobias and Staiger-S{\"a}lzer, Pit and Gerstner, Natascha and K{\"u}bler, Andrea}, title = {The WIN-speller: a new intuitive auditory brain-computer interface spelling application}, series = {Frontiers in Neuroscience}, volume = {9}, journal = {Frontiers in Neuroscience}, doi = {10.3389/fnins.2015.00346}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125972}, pages = {346}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The objective of this study was to test the usability of a new auditory Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) application for communication. We introduce a word based, intuitive auditory spelling paradigm the WIN-speller. In the WIN-speller letters are grouped by words, such as the word KLANG representing the letters A, G, K, L, and N. Thereby, the decoding step between perceiving a code and translating it to the stimuli it represents becomes superfluous. We tested 11 healthy volunteers and four end-users with motor impairment in the copy spelling mode. Spelling was successful with an average accuracy of 84\% in the healthy sample. Three of the end-users communicated with average accuracies of 80\% or higher while one user was not able to communicate reliably. Even though further evaluation is required, the WIN-speller represents a potential alternative for BCI based communication in end-users.}, language = {en} } @article{EderDeutsch2015, author = {Eder, Andreas B. and Deutsch, Roland}, title = {Watch the target! Effects in the affective misattribution procedure become weaker (but not eliminated) when participants are motivated to provide accurate responses to the target}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01442}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125982}, pages = {1442}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Previous research showed that priming effects in the affective misattribution procedure (AMP) are unaffected by direct warnings to avoid an influence of the primes. The present research examined whether a priming influence is diminished by task procedures that encourage accurate judgments of the targets. Participants were motivated to categorize the affective meaning of nonsense targets accurately by being made to believe that a true word was presented in each trial and by providing feedback on (allegedly) incorrect responses. This condition produced robust priming effects. Priming was however reduced and less reliable relative to more typical AMP conditions in which participants guessed the meaning of openly presented nonsense targets. Affective judgments of nonsense targets were not affected by advance knowledge of the response mapping during the priming phase, which argues against a response-priming explanation of AMP effects. These findings show that affective primes influence evaluative judgments even in conditions in which the motivation to provide accurate responses is high and a priming of motor responses is not possible. Priming effects were however weaker with high accuracy motivation, suggesting that a focus on accurate judgments is an effective strategy to control for an unwanted priming influence in the AMP.}, language = {en} }