TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Ullrich, Benjamin A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Are Effects of Action on Perception Real? Evidence from Transformed Movements JF - PLoS ONE N2 - It has been argued that several reported non-visual influences on perception cannot be truly perceptual. If they were, they should affect the perception of target objects and reference objects used to express perceptual judgments, and thus cancel each other out. This reasoning presumes that non-visual manipulations impact target objects and comparison objects equally. In the present study we show that equalizing a body-related manipulation between target objects and reference objects essentially abolishes the impact of that manipulation so as it should do when that manipulation actually altered perception. Moreover, the manipulation has an impact on judgements when applied to only the target object but not to the reference object, and that impact reverses when only applied to the reference object but not to the target object. A perceptual explanation predicts this reversal, whereas explanations in terms of post-perceptual response biases or demand effects do not. Altogether these results suggest that body-related influences on perception cannot as a whole be attributed to extra-perceptual factors. KW - vision KW - preprocessing KW - analysis of variance KW - sensory perception KW - hands KW - fingers KW - experimental design KW - perception Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-178574 VL - 11 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Diemer, Julia A1 - Alpers, Georg W. A1 - Peperkorn, Henrik M. A1 - Shiban, Youssef A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas T1 - The impact of perception and presence on emotional reactions: a review of research in virtual reality JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Virtual reality (VR) has made its way into mainstream psychological research in the last two decades. This technology, with its unique ability to simulate complex, real situations and contexts, offers researchers unprecedented opportunities to investigate human behavior in well controlled designs in the laboratory. One important application of VR is the investigation of pathological processes in mental disorders, especially anxiety disorders. Research on the processes underlying threat perception, fear, and exposure therapy has shed light on more general aspects of the relation between perception and emotion. Being by its nature virtual, i.e., simulation of reality, VR strongly relies on the adequate selection of specific perceptual cues to activate emotions. Emotional experiences in turn are related to presence, another important concept in VR, which describes the user's sense of being in a VR environment. This paper summarizes current research into perception of fear cues, emotion, and presence, aiming at the identification of the most relevant aspects of emotional experience in VR and their mutual relations. A special focus lies on a series of recent experiments designed to test the relative contribution of perception and conceptual information on fear in VR. This strand of research capitalizes on the dissociation between perception (bottom up input) and conceptual information (top-down input) that is possible in VR. Further, we review the factors that have so far been recognized to influence presence, with emotions (e.g., fear) being the most relevant in the context of clinical psychology. Recent research has highlighted the mutual influence of presence and fear in VR, but has also traced the limits of our current understanding of this relationship. In this paper, the crucial role of perception on eliciting emotional reactions is highlighted, and the role of arousal as a basic dimension of emotional experience is discussed. An interoceptive attribution model of presence is suggested as a first step toward an integrative framework for emotion research in VR. Gaps in the current literature and future directions are outlined. KW - exposure therapy KW - flight phobics KW - environments KW - virtual reality KW - anxiety KW - presence KW - emotion KW - fear KW - perception KW - anxiety disorders KW - presence questionnaire KW - public speaking KW - spider phobia KW - social phobia KW - immersion Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-144200 VL - 6 IS - 26 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kleint, Nina I. A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich A1 - Lueken, Ulrike T1 - Probing the interoceptive network by listening to heartbeats: an fMRI study JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Exposure to cues of homeostatic relevance (i.e. heartbeats) is supposed to increase the allocation of attentional resources towards the cue, due to its importance for self-regulatory, interoceptive processes. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study aimed at determining whether listening to heartbeats is accompanied by activation in brain areas associated with interoception, particularly the insular cortex. Brain activity was measured with fMRI during cue-exposure in 36 subjects while listening to heartbeats vs. sinus tones. Autonomic markers (skin conductance) and subjective measures of state and trait anxiety were assessed. Stimulation with heartbeat sounds triggered activation in brain areas commonly associated with the processing of interoceptive information, including bilateral insular cortices, the inferior frontal operculum, and the middle frontal gyrus. A psychophysiological interaction analysis indicated a functional connectivity between the middle frontal gyrus (seed region) and bilateral insular cortices, the left amygdala and the supplementary motor area. The magnitude of neural activation in the right anterior insular cortex was positively associated with autonomic arousal. The present findings indicate that listening to heartbeats induced activity in areas of the interoception network as well as changes in psychophysiological arousal and subjective emotional experience. As this approach constitutes a promising method for studying interoception in the fMRI environment, a clinical application in anxiety prone populations should be addressed by future studies. KW - inferior parietal lobule KW - brain activation KW - cortex KW - awareness KW - perception KW - cardiovascular arousal KW - panic disorder KW - humans KW - anterior insula KW - emotional experience Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148330 VL - 10 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kozlik, Julia A1 - Neumann, Roland A1 - Lozo, Ljubica T1 - Contrasting motivational orientation and evaluative coding accounts: on the need to differentiate the effectors of approach/avoidance responses JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Several emotion theorists suggest that valenced stimuli automatically trigger motivational orientations and thereby facilitate corresponding behavior. Positive stimuli were thought to activate approach motivational circuits which in turn primed approach-related behavioral tendencies whereas negative stimuli were supposed to activate avoidance motivational circuits so that avoidance-related behavioral tendencies were primed (motivational orientation account). However, recent research suggests that typically observed affective stimulus response compatibility phenomena might be entirely explained in terms of theories accounting for mechanisms of general action control instead of assuming motivational orientations to mediate the effects (evaluative coding account). In what follows, we explore to what extent this notion is applicable. We present literature suggesting that evaluative coding mechanisms indeed influence a wide variety of affective stimulus response compatibility phenomena. However, the evaluative coding account does not seem to be sufficient to explain affective S-R compatibility effects. Instead, several studies provide clear evidence in favor of the motivational orientation account that seems to operate independently of evaluative coding mechanisms. Implications for theoretical developments and future research designs are discussed. KW - emotional facial expressions KW - cerebral asymmetry KW - compatibility KW - perception KW - affective S-R compatibility KW - approach-avoidance behavior KW - automatic evaluation KW - arm flexion KW - stimuli KW - determinants KW - information KW - emotional responses KW - approach and avoidance KW - facial muscle contractions KW - theory of event coding Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-143192 VL - 6 IS - 563 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reber, Elisabeth T1 - Constructing evidence at Prime Minister's Question Time: An analysis of the grammar, semantics and pragmatics of the verb see JF - Intercultural Pragmatics N2 - Abstract Constructing evidence constitutes a practice to establish the speaker's authority at Prime Minister's Question Time (PMQT), a weekly half-hour session in the British House of Commons. Here the verb see constitutes a resource for both the questioning Leader of the Opposition (LO) and Members of Parliament (MP) as well as for the responding Prime Minister (PM) to claim first-hand perceptual experience. This paper takes an integrated approach, offering a combined analysis of the grammatical formatting, semantics and pragmatics of the verb see in the context of evidential moves at PMQT. It shows how the verb see is functional in referring to the perceptual basis of a claim made and how its grammatical formatting is reflective of the contingencies of the local interactional context. The analysis is grounded in 32 sessions of PMQT (ca. 16 hrs of video-recordings). The results can be summarised as follows: 1) The evidential function of the verb is achieved through its context-specific grammatical formatting and semantics. 2) The reference to the perceptual basis of a claim evoked by see may co-occur with epistemic qualification and evaluative expressions. 3) The formatting of the verb may be indexical of the political relationship between the questioner and the responding PM. KW - parliamentary interaction KW - perception KW - evidentiality KW - epistemic modality KW - see Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-195549 SN - 1613-365X SN - 1612-295X N1 - Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich. VL - 11 IS - 3 SP - 357 EP - 387 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chen, Yi-chun A1 - Gerber, Bertram T1 - Generalization and discrimination tasks yield concordant measures of perceived distance between odours and their binary mixtures in larval Drosophila JF - The Journal of Experimental Biology N2 - Similarity between odours is notoriously difficult to measure. Widely used behavioural approaches in insect olfaction research are cross-adaptation, masking, as well as associative tasks based on olfactory learning and the subsequent testing for how specific the established memory is. A concern with such memory-based approaches is that the learning process required to establish an odour memory may alter the way the odour is processed, such that measures of perception taken at the test are distorted. The present study was therefore designed to see whether behavioural judgements of perceptual distance are different for two different memory-based tasks, namely generalization and discrimination. We used odour-reward learning in larval Drosophila as a study case. In order to challenge the larvae's olfactory system, we chose to work with binary mixtures and their elements (1-octanol, n-amyl acetate, 3-octanol, benzaldehyde and hexyl acetate). We determined the perceptual distance between each mixture and its elements, first in a generalization task, and then in a discrimination task. It turns out that scores of perceptual distance are correlated between both tasks. A re-analysis of published studies looking at element-to-element perceptual distances in larval reward learning and in adult punishment learning confirms this result. We therefore suggest that across a given set of olfactory stimuli, associative training does not grossly alter the pattern of perceptual distances. KW - discrimination KW - drosophila melanogaster KW - generalization KW - memory KW - olfaction KW - perception Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-121625 VL - 217 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fischer, Rico A1 - Plessow, Franziska A1 - Kiesel, Andrea T1 - The effects of alerting signals in masked priming JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Alerting signals often serve to reduce temporal uncertainty by predicting the time of stimulus onset. The resulting response time benefits have often been explained by facilitated translation of stimulus codes into response codes on the basis of established stimulus-response (S-R) links. In paradigms of masked S-R priming alerting signals also modulate response activation processes triggered by subliminally presented prime stimuli. In the present study we tested whether facilitation of visuo-motor translation processes due to alerting signals critically depends on established S-R links. Alerting signals resulted in significantly enhanced masked priming effects for masked prime stimuli that included and that did not include established S-R links fi.e., target vs. novel primes). Yet, the alerting-priming interaction was more pronounced for target than for novel primes. These results suggest that effects of alerting signals on masked priming are especially evident when S-R links between prime and target exist. At the same time, an alerting-priming interaction also for novel primes suggests that alerting signals also facilitate stimulus-response translation processes when masked prime stimuli provide action-trigger conditions in terms of programmed S-R links. KW - response selection KW - visual cortex KW - temporal predictability KW - stimuli KW - primes KW - target primes KW - simon task KW - automaticity KW - performance KW - perception KW - mechanism KW - novel primes KW - action-trigger KW - masked priming KW - accessory KW - alerting signal Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-122581 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 IS - 448 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - El-Keredy, Amira A1 - Schleyer, Michael A1 - König, Christian A1 - Ekim, Aslihan A1 - Gerber, Bertram T1 - Behavioural Analyses of Quinine Processing in Choice, Feeding and Learning of Larval Drosophila JF - PLoS One N2 - Gustatory stimuli can support both immediate reflexive behaviour, such as choice and feeding, and can drive internal reinforcement in associative learning. For larval Drosophila, we here provide a first systematic behavioural analysis of these functions with respect to quinine as a study case of a substance which humans report as "tasting bitter". We describe the dose-effect functions for these different kinds of behaviour and find that a half-maximal effect of quinine to suppress feeding needs substantially higher quinine concentrations (2.0 mM) than is the case for internal reinforcement (0.6 mM). Interestingly, in previous studies (Niewalda et al. 2008, Schipanski et al 2008) we had found the reverse for sodium chloride and fructose/sucrose, such that dose-effect functions for those tastants were shifted towards lower concentrations for feeding as compared to reinforcement, arguing that the differences in dose-effect function between these behaviours do not reflect artefacts of the types of assay used. The current results regarding quinine thus provide a starting point to investigate how the gustatory system is organized on the cellular and/or molecular level to result in different behavioural tuning curves towards a bitter tastant. KW - honeybees KW - chemosensory system KW - bitter taste KW - melanogaster KW - receptor KW - reward KW - brain KW - organization KW - architecture KW - perception Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-130811 VL - 7 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gruss, L. Forest A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Schweinberger, Stefan R. A1 - Keil, Andreas T1 - Face-evoked steady-state visual potentials: effects of presentation rate and face inversion JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Face processing can be explored using electrophysiological methods. Research with event-related potentials has demonstrated the so-called face inversion effect, in which the N170 component is enhanced in amplitude and latency to inverted, compared to upright, faces. The present study explored the extent to which repetitive lower-level visual cortical engagement, reflected in flicker steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs), shows similar amplitude enhancement to face inversion. We also asked if inversion-related ssVEP modulation would be dependent on the stimulation rate at which upright and inverted faces were flickered. To this end, multiple tagging frequencies were used (5, 10, 15, and 20 Hz) across two studies (n=21, n=18). Results showed that amplitude enhancement of the ssVEP for inverted faces was found solely at higher stimulation frequencies (15 and 20 Hz). By contrast, lower frequency ssVEPs did not show this inversion effect. These findings suggest that stimulation frequency affects the sensitivity of ssVEPs to face inversion. KW - N170 KW - upside-down faces KW - selective attention KW - spatial attention KW - cortex KW - perception KW - recognition KW - brain KW - FMRI KW - area Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-134399 VL - 6 IS - 316 ER - TY - THES A1 - Gerdes, Antje B. M. T1 - Preferential Processing of Phobic Cues : Attention and Perception in Spider Phobic Patients T1 - Bevorzugte Verarbeitung phobischer Reize : Aufmerksamkeits- und Wahrnehmungsprozesse bei spinnenphobischen Patienten N2 - Cognitive views of the psychopathology of anxiety propose that attentional biases toward threatening information play a substantial role in the disorders’ etiology and maintenance. For healthy subjects, converging evidence show that threatening stimuli attract attention and lead to enhanced activation in visual processing areas. It is assumed that this preferential processing of threat occurs at a preattentive level and is followed by fast attentional engagement. High-anxious individuals show augmented tendencies to selectively attend toward fear-relevant cues (Mathews, 1990) and exhibit elevated neural processing of threatening cues compared to non-anxious individuals (Dilger et al., 2003). Regarding attentional biases in high-anxious subjects, it remains unanswered up to now whether initial engagement of attention toward threat or difficulties to disengage from threat is an underlying mechanism. Furthermore, little is known whether the preferential (attentive) processing of threatening cues does influence perceptional outcomes of anxious subjects. In order to directly study separate components of attentional bias the first study of this dissertation was a combined reaction time and eye-tracking experiment. Twenty one spider phobic patients and 21 control participants were instructed to search for a neutral target while ignoring task-irrelevant abrupt-onset distractor circles which contained either a small picture of a spider (phobic), a flower (non-phobic, but similar to spiders in shape), a mushroom (non-phobic, and not similar to spiders in shape), or small circles with no picture. As expected, patients’ reaction times to targets were longer on trials with spider distractors. However, analyses of eye movements revealed that this was not due to attentional capture by spider distractors; patients more often fixated on all distractors with pictures. Instead, reaction times were delayed by longer fixation durations on spider distractors. This result does not support automatic capture of attention by phobic cues but suggests that phobic patients fail to disengage attention from spiders. To assess whether preferential processing of phobic cues differentially affects visual perception in phobic patients compared to healthy controls, the second study of this dissertation used a binocular rivalry paradigm, where two incompatible pictures were presented to each eye. These pictures cannot be merged to a meaningful percept and temporarily, one picture predominates in conscious perception whereas the other is suppressed. 23 spider phobic patients and 20 non-anxious control participants were shown standardized pictures of spiders or flowers, each paired with a neutral pattern under conditions of binocular rivalry. Their task was to continuously indicate the predominant percept by key presses. Analyses show that spider phobic patients perceived the spider picture more often and longer as dominant compared to non-anxious control participants. Thus, predominance of phobic cues in binocular rivalry provides evidence that preferential processing of fear-relevant cues in the visual system actually leads to superior perception. In combination both studies support the notion that phobic patients process phobic cues preferentially within the visual system resulting in enhanced attention and perception. At early stages of visual processing, this is mainly reflected by delayed attentional disengagement and across time, preferential processing leads to improved perception of threat cues. N2 - Kognitive Theorien nehmen an, dass Aufmerksamkeitsverzerrungen bezüglich bedrohlicher Reize eine substantielle Rolle bei der Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung von Angst spielen. Für gesunde Personen konnte gezeigt werden, dass bedrohliche Reize die Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ziehen und verstärkt im visuellen System verarbeitet werden. Es wird angenommen, dass diese bevorzugten Verarbeitungsprozesse automatisch und präattentiv sind und von einer schnellen Aufmerksamkeitsausrichtung gefolgt werden. Hochängstliche Personen zeigen eine verstärkte Tendenz, ihre Aufmerksamkeit selektiv auf Gefahrenreize auszurichten (Mathews, 1990) und verarbeiten diese Reize auch auf neuronaler Ebene intensiver als nichtängstliche Personen (Dilger, et al., 2003). Bisher ungeklärt ist, ob bedrohliche Reize tatsächlich die Aufmerksamkeit initial auf sich ziehen oder ob die beschriebenen Aufmerksamkeitsverzerrungen besserdurch Schwierigkeiten, Aufmerksamkeit von Gefahrenreizen abzuwenden, erklärt werden können. Darüberhinaus wurde bisher kaum untersucht, ob sich eine bevorzugte Verarbeitung von angstrelevanten Reizen auch auf die Wahrnehmung ängstlicher Personen auswirken kann. Um verschiedene Aufmerksamkeitskomponenten direkt zu untersuchen, wurden in der ersten Studie dieser Dissertation sowohl manuelle Reaktionszeiten als auch Augenbewegungen erfasst. 21 Patienten mit Spinnenphobie und 21 nichtängstliche Kontrollpersonen sollten während der Suche nach einem neutralen Zielreiz aufgabenirrelevante kreisförmige Reize explizit ignorieren, die kleine Bilder von Spinnen (phobisch), Blumen (nicht phobisch, aber mit spinnenähnlicher Form), Pilzen (nicht phobisch und keine spinnenähnliche Form) oder kein Bild enthalten konnten. Wie erwartet zeigte sich, dass die Reaktionszeiten der Patienten in den Durchgängen langsamer waren, in denen aufgabenirrelevante Spinnen auftauchten. Allerdings zeigte die Analyse der Augenbewegungen, dass die Spinnen initial nicht häufiger fixiert wurden, sondern die Patienten häufiger auf alle Distraktoren mit Bild schauten. Allerdings verweilte der Blick der Patienten länger auf den Spinnenbildern, was die verlangsamten Reaktionen auf den Zielreiz erklären kann. Diese Befunde unterstützen nicht die Annahme einer automatischen Entdeckung phobischer Reize, sondern weisen vielmehr auf Schwierigkeiten phobischer Patienten hin, die Aufmerksamkeit von Spinnen zu lösen. In der zweiten Studie dieser Dissertation wurde ein binokulares Rivalitätsparadigma eingesetzt, um zu untersuchen, ob eine bevorzugte Verarbeitung phobischer Reize die visuelle Wahrnehmung bei Patienten mit Spinnenphobie beeinflussen kann. Bei diesem Paradigma wird jedem Auge ein unterschiedliches Bild dargeboten, was zu einem Wahrnehmungswechsel führt, bei dem jeweils ein Bild die bewusste Wahrnehmung dominiert während das andere unterdrückt wird. 23 Patienten mit Spinnenphobie und 20 nichtängstlichen Kontrollpersonen wurden standardisierte Bilder von Spinnen und Blumen, jeweils gepaart mit einem neutralen Muster, stereoskopisch dargeboten. Die Aufgabe bestand darin, durchgehend die dominante Wahrnehmung durch Tastendruck zu kodieren. Patienten mit Spinnenphobie berichteten häufiger und länger, Spinnenbilder dominant wahrzunehmen. Diese Wahrnehmungsdominanz von phobischen Reizen bei binokularer Rivalität weist darauf hin, dass eine bevorzugte Verarbeitung bedrohlicher Reize im visuellen System dazu führen kann, dass diese Reize auch verstärkt wahrgenommen werden. Zusammenfassend unterstützen die Befunde beider Studien die Annahme, dass Patienten mit Spinnenphobie phobierelevante Reize innerhalb des visuellen Systems bevorzugt verarbeiten, was sich in verzögerter Aufmerksamkeitsabwendung zeigt und des Weiteren zu einer verstärkten Wahrnehmung der bedrohlichen Reizen führt. KW - Phobie KW - Visuelle Aufmerksamkeit KW - Visuelle Wahrnehmung KW - Angst KW - Disengagement KW - Spinnenphobie KW - Aufmerksamkeitsprozesse KW - Engagement KW - Disengagement KW - Binokulare Rivalität KW - spider phobia KW - attention KW - perception KW - engagement KW - disengagement KW - binocular rivalry Y1 - 2008 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-28684 ER -