TY - JOUR A1 - Kühne, Katharina A1 - Nenaschew, Kristina A1 - Miklashevsky, Alex T1 - Space-valence mapping of social concepts BT - Do we arrange negative and positive ethnic stereotypes from left to right? JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Introduction: The body-specificity hypothesis states that in right-handers, positive concepts should be associated with the right side and negative concepts with the left side of the body. Following this hypothesis, our study postulated that negative out-group ethnic stereotypes would be associated with the left side, and positive in-group stereotypes would be associated with the right side. Methods: The experiment consisted of two parts. First, we measured the spatial mapping of ethnic stereotypes by using a sensibility judgment task, in which participants had to decide whether a sentence was sensible or not by pressing either a left or a right key. The sentences included German vs. Arabic proper names. Second, we measured implicit ethnic stereotypes in the same participants using the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT), in which Arabic vs. German proper names were presented in combination with positive vs. negative adjectives. Right-handed German native speakers (N = 92) participated in an online study. Results: As predicted, in the GNAT, participants reacted faster to German names combined with positive adjectives and to Arabic names combined with negative adjectives, which is diagnostic of existing valenced in-and outgroup ethnic stereotypes. However, we failed to find any reliable effects in the sensibility judgment task, i.e., there was no evidence of spatial mapping of positive and negative ethnic stereotypes. There was no correlation between the results of the two tasks at the individual level. Further Bayesian analysis and exploratory analysis in the left-handed subsample (N = 9) corroborated the evidence in favor of null results. Discussion: Our study suggests that ethnic stereotypes are not automatically mapped in a body-specific manner. KW - body-specificity hypothesis KW - embodied cognition KW - ethnic stereotypes KW - in-group stereotypes KW - implicit associations KW - GNAT KW - out-group stereotypes Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1070177 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 13 PB - Frontiers CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kühne, Katharina A1 - Fischer, Martin H. A1 - Jeglinski-Mende, Melinda A. T1 - During the COVID-19 pandemic participants prefer settings with a face mask, no interaction and at a closer distance JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Peripersonal space is the space surrounding our body, where multisensory integration of stimuli and action execution take place. The size of peripersonal space is flexible and subject to change by various personal and situational factors. The dynamic representation of our peripersonal space modulates our spatial behaviors towards other individuals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this spatial behavior was modified by two further factors: social distancing and wearing a face mask. Evidence from offline and online studies on the impact of a face mask on pro-social behavior is mixed. In an attempt to clarify the role of face masks as pro-social or anti-social signals, 235 observers participated in the present online study. They watched pictures of two models standing at three different distances from each other (50, 90 and 150 cm), who were either wearing a face mask or not and were either interacting by initiating a hand shake or just standing still. The observers’ task was to classify the model by gender. Our results show that observers react fastest, and therefore show least avoidance, for the shortest distances (50 and 90 cm) but only when models wear a face mask and do not interact. Thus, our results document both pro- and anti-social consequences of face masks as a result of the complex interplay between social distancing and interactive behavior. Practical implications of these findings are discussed. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16730-1 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 12 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Springer Nature CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Felisatti, Arianna A1 - Fischer, Martin H. A1 - Kulkova, Elena A1 - Kühne, Katharina A1 - Michirev, Alexej T1 - Separation/connection procedures BT - from cleansing behavior to numerical cognition JF - Behavioral and brain sciences : an international journal of current research and theory with open peer commentary N2 - Lee and Schwarz (L&S) suggest that separation is the grounded procedure underlying cleansing effects in different psychological domains. Here, we interpret L&S's account from a hierarchical view of cognition that considers the influence of physical properties and sensorimotor constraints on mental representations. This approach allows theoretical integration and generalization of L&S's account to the domain of formal quantitative reasoning. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20000461 SN - 1469-1825 VL - 44 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kühne, Katharina A1 - Fischer, Martin H. A1 - Zhou, Yuefang T1 - The Human Takes It All BT - Humanlike Synthesized Voices Are Perceived as Less Eerie and More Likable. Evidence From a Subjective Ratings Study JF - Frontiers in Neurorobotics N2 - Background: The increasing involvement of social robots in human lives raises the question as to how humans perceive social robots. Little is known about human perception of synthesized voices. Aim: To investigate which synthesized voice parameters predict the speaker's eeriness and voice likability; to determine if individual listener characteristics (e.g., personality, attitude toward robots, age) influence synthesized voice evaluations; and to explore which paralinguistic features subjectively distinguish humans from robots/artificial agents. Methods: 95 adults (62 females) listened to randomly presented audio-clips of three categories: synthesized (Watson, IBM), humanoid (robot Sophia, Hanson Robotics), and human voices (five clips/category). Voices were rated on intelligibility, prosody, trustworthiness, confidence, enthusiasm, pleasantness, human-likeness, likability, and naturalness. Speakers were rated on appeal, credibility, human-likeness, and eeriness. Participants' personality traits, attitudes to robots, and demographics were obtained. Results: The human voice and human speaker characteristics received reliably higher scores on all dimensions except for eeriness. Synthesized voice ratings were positively related to participants' agreeableness and neuroticism. Females rated synthesized voices more positively on most dimensions. Surprisingly, interest in social robots and attitudes toward robots played almost no role in voice evaluation. Contrary to the expectations of an uncanny valley, when the ratings of human-likeness for both the voice and the speaker characteristics were higher, they seemed less eerie to the participants. Moreover, when the speaker's voice was more humanlike, it was more liked by the participants. This latter point was only applicable to one of the synthesized voices. Finally, pleasantness and trustworthiness of the synthesized voice predicted the likability of the speaker's voice. Qualitative content analysis identified intonation, sound, emotion, and imageability/embodiment as diagnostic features. Discussion: Humans clearly prefer human voices, but manipulating diagnostic speech features might increase acceptance of synthesized voices and thereby support human-robot interaction. There is limited evidence that human-likeness of a voice is negatively linked to the perceived eeriness of the speaker. KW - human-robot interaction KW - paralinguistic features KW - synthesized voice KW - text-to-speech KW - uncanny valley Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.593732 SN - 1662-5218 VL - 14 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gianelli, Claudia A1 - Kühne, Katharina A1 - Lo Presti, Sara A1 - Mencaraglia, Silvia A1 - Dalla Volta, Riccardo T1 - Action processing in the motor system BT - Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) evidence of shared mechanisms in the visual and linguistic modalities JF - Brain and cognition : a journal of experimental and clinical research N2 - In two experiments, we compared the dynamics of corticospinal excitability when processing visually or linguistically presented tool-oriented hand actions in native speakers and sequential bilinguals. In a third experiment we used the same procedure to test non-motor, low-level stimuli, i.e. scrambled images and pseudo-words. Stimuli were presented in sequence: pictures (tool + tool-oriented hand action or their scrambled counterpart) and words (tool noun + tool-action verb or pseudo-words). Experiment 1 presented German linguistic stimuli to native speakers, while Experiment 2 presented English stimuli to non-natives. Experiment 3 tested Italian native speakers. Single-pulse trascranial magnetic stimulation (spTMS) was applied to the left motor cortex at five different timings: baseline, 200 ms after tool/noun onset, 150, 350 and 500 ms after hand/verb onset with motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM) muscles. We report strong similarities in the dynamics of corticospinal excitability across the visual and linguistic modalities. MEPs' suppression started as early as 150 ms and lasted for the duration of stimulus presentation (500 ms). Moreover, we show that this modulation is absent for stimuli with no motor content. Overall, our study supports the notion of a core, overarching system of action semantics shared by different modalities. KW - TMS KW - motor cortex KW - action observation KW - action language KW - motor KW - inhibition KW - motor-evoked potentials Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2019.105510 SN - 0278-2626 SN - 1090-2147 VL - 139 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kühne, Katharina A1 - Gianelli, Claudia T1 - Is Embodied Cognition Bilingual? BT - current evidence and perspectives of the embodied cognition approach to bilingual language processing JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Accumulating behavioral and neurophysiological evidence supports the idea of language being grounded in sensorimotor processes, with indications of a functional role of motor, sensory and emotional systems in processing both concrete and abstract linguistic concepts. However, most of the available studies focused on native language speakers (L1), with only a limited number of investigations testing embodied language processing in the case of a second language (L2). In this paper we review the available evidence on embodied effects in L2 and discuss their possible integration into existing models of linguistic processing in L1 and L2. Finally, we discuss possible avenues for future research towards an integrated model of L1 and L2 sensorimotor and emotional grounding. KW - embodied language KW - grounding KW - sensorimotor KW - native language KW - second language Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00108 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 10 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER -