TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Jos J. A1 - Bovend'Eerdt, Thamar J. H. A1 - van Dooren, Fleur E. P. A1 - Fischer, Martin H. A1 - Pratt, Jay T1 - The closer the better hand proximity dynamically affects letter recognition accuracy JF - Attention, perception, & psychophysics : AP&P ; a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc. N2 - A growing literature has suggested that processing of visual information presented near the hands is facilitated. In this study, we investigated whether the near-hands superiority effect also occurs with the hands moving. In two experiments, participants performed a cyclical bimanual movement task requiring concurrent visual identification of briefly presented letters. For both the static and dynamic hand conditions, the results showed improved letter recognition performance with the hands closer to the stimuli. The finding that the encoding advantage for near-hand stimuli also occurred with the hands moving suggests that the effect is regulated in real time, in accordance with the concept of a bimodal neural system that dynamically updates hand position in external space. KW - Perception and action Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-012-0339-3 SN - 1943-3921 VL - 74 IS - 7 SP - 1533 EP - 1538 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Apel, Jens K. A1 - Cangelosi, Angelo A1 - Ellis, Rob A1 - Goslin, Jeremy A1 - Fischer, Martin H. T1 - Object affordance influences instruction span JF - Experimental brain research N2 - We measured memory span for assembly instructions involving objects with handles oriented to the left or right side. Right-handed participants remembered more instructions when objects' handles were spatially congruent with the hand used in forthcoming assembly actions. No such affordance-based memory benefit was found for left-handed participants. These results are discussed in terms of motor simulation as an embodied rehearsal mechanism. KW - Action simulation KW - Affordance KW - Embodied cognition KW - Rehearsal KW - Sequential instruction KW - Working memory Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3251-0 SN - 0014-4819 VL - 223 IS - 2 SP - 199 EP - 206 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bender, Stephan A1 - Rellum, Thomas A1 - Freitag, Christine A1 - Resch, Franz A1 - Rietschel, Marcella A1 - Treutlein, Jens A1 - Jennen-Steinmetz, Christine A1 - Brandeis, Daniel A1 - Banaschewski, Tobias A1 - Laucht, Manfred T1 - Dopamine inactivation efficacy related to functional DAT1 and COMT variants influences motor response evaluation JF - PLoS one N2 - Background: Dopamine plays an important role in orienting, response anticipation and movement evaluation. Thus, we examined the influence of functional variants related to dopamine inactivation in the dopamine transporter (DAT1) and catechol-O-methyltransferase genes (COMT) on the time-course of motor processing in a contingent negative variation (CNV) task. Methods: 64-channel EEG recordings were obtained from 195 healthy adolescents of a community-based sample during a continuous performance task (A-X version). Early and late CNV as well as motor postimperative negative variation were assessed. Adolescents were genotyped for the COMT Val(158) Met and two DAT1 polymorphisms (variable number tandem repeats in the 3'-untranslated region and in intron 8). Results: The results revealed a significant interaction between COMT and DAT1, indicating that COMT exerted stronger effects on lateralized motor post-processing (centro-parietal motor postimperative negative variation) in homozygous carriers of a DAT1 haplotype increasing DAT1 expression. Source analysis showed that the time interval 500-1000 ms after the motor response was specifically affected in contrast to preceding movement anticipation and programming stages, which were not altered. Conclusions: Motor slow negative waves allow the genomic imaging of dopamine inactivation effects on cortical motor post-processing during response evaluation. This is the first report to point towards epistatic effects in the motor system during response evaluation, i.e. during the post-processing of an already executed movement rather than during movement programming. Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0037814 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 7 IS - 5 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bender, Stephan A1 - Rellum, Thomas A1 - Freitag, Christine A1 - Resch, Franz A1 - Rietschel, Marcella A1 - Treutlein, Jens A1 - Jennen-Steinmetz, Christine A1 - Brandeis, Daniel A1 - Banaschewski, Tobias A1 - Laucht, Manfred T1 - Time-Resolved influences of functional DAT1 and COMT variants on visual perception and post-processing JF - PLoS one N2 - Background: Dopamine plays an important role in orienting and the regulation of selective attention to relevant stimulus characteristics. Thus, we examined the influences of functional variants related to dopamine inactivation in the dopamine transporter (DAT1) and catechol-O-methyltransferase genes (COMT) on the time-course of visual processing in a contingent negative variation (CNV) task. Methods: 64-channel EEG recordings were obtained from 195 healthy adolescents of a community-based sample during a continuous performance task (A-X version). Early and late CNV as well as preceding visual evoked potential components were assessed. Results: Significant additive main effects of DAT1 and COMT on the occipito-temporal early CNV were observed. In addition, there was a trend towards an interaction between the two polymorphisms. Source analysis showed early CNV generators in the ventral visual stream and in frontal regions. There was a strong negative correlation between occipito-temporal visual post-processing and the frontal early CNV component. The early CNV time interval 500-1000 ms after the visual cue was specifically affected while the preceding visual perception stages were not influenced. Conclusions: Late visual potentials allow the genomic imaging of dopamine inactivation effects on visual post-processing. The same specific time-interval has been found to be affected by DAT1 and COMT during motor post-processing but not motor preparation. We propose the hypothesis that similar dopaminergic mechanisms modulate working memory encoding in both the visual and motor and perhaps other systems. Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0041552 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 7 IS - 7 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brzezicka, Aneta A1 - Krejtz, Izabela A1 - von Hecker, Ulrich A1 - Laubrock, Jochen T1 - Eye movement evidence for defocused attention in dysphoria - A perceptual span analysis JF - International journal of psychophysiology N2 - The defocused attention hypothesis (von Hecker and Meiser, 2005) assumes that negative mood broadens attention, whereas the analytical rumination hypothesis (Andrews and Thompson, 2009) suggests a narrowing of the attentional focus with depression. We tested these conflicting hypotheses by directly measuring the perceptual span in groups of dysphoric and control subjects, using eye tracking. In the moving window paradigm, information outside of a variable-width gaze-contingent window was masked during reading of sentences. In measures of sentence reading time and mean fixation duration, dysphoric subjects were more pronouncedly affected than controls by a reduced window size. This difference supports the defocused attention hypothesis and seems hard to reconcile with a narrowing of attentional focus. KW - Dysphoria KW - Defocused attention KW - Eye tracking KW - Moving window paradigm KW - Perceptual span Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.09.022 SN - 0167-8760 VL - 85 IS - 1 SP - 129 EP - 133 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Hansen, Detlef T1 - Profiling linguistic disability in German-speaking children JF - Assessing Grammar : the Languages of LARSP Y1 - 2012 SN - 978-1-8476-9639-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847696397-007 SP - 77 EP - 91 PB - Multilingual Matters CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Daig, Isolde A1 - Mahlberg, Richard A1 - Stethin, Julia A1 - Shroeder, Franziska A1 - Wrase, Jana A1 - Knoll, Nina A1 - Bschor, Tom A1 - Esser, Günter A1 - Heinz, Andreas A1 - Kienast, Thorsten T1 - Decreased verbal learning but not recognition performance in alcohol-dependent individuals during early abstinence Y1 - 2012 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dambacher, Michael A1 - Dimigen, Olaf A1 - Braun, Mario A1 - Wille, Kristin A1 - Jacobs, Arthur M. A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold T1 - Stimulus onset asynchrony and the timeline of word recognition: Event-related potentials during sentence reading JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Three ERP experiments examined the effect of word presentation rate (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) on the time course of word frequency and predictability effects in sentence reading. In Experiments 1 and 2, sentences were presented word-by-word in the screen center at an SOA of 700 and 490 ms, respectively. While these rates are typical for psycholinguistic ERP research, natural reading happens at a considerably faster pace. Accordingly. Experiment 3 employed a near-normal SOA of 280 ms, which approximated the rate of normal reading. Main results can be summarized as follows: (1) The onset latency of early frequency effects decreases gradually with increasing presentation rates. (2) An early interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing is observed only under a near-normal SOA. (3) N400 predictability effects occur later and are smaller at a near-normal (i.e., high) presentation rate than at the lower rates commonly used in ERP experiments. (4) ERP morphology is different at the shortest compared to longer SOAs. Together, the results point to a special role of a near-normal presentation rate for visual word recognition and therefore suggest that SOA should be taken into account in research of natural reading. KW - Word recognition KW - Sentence reading KW - Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) KW - Frequency KW - Predictability KW - Event-related potentials (ERPs) Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.04.011 SN - 0028-3932 VL - 50 IS - 8 SP - 1852 EP - 1870 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dimigen, Olaf A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold A1 - Sommer, Werner T1 - Trans-saccadic parafoveal preview benefits in fluent reading: A study with fixation-related brain potentials JF - NeuroImage : a journal of brain function N2 - During natural reading, a parafoveal preview of the upcoming word facilitates its subsequent recognition (e.g., shorter fixation durations compared to masked preview) but nothing is known about the neural correlates of this so-called preview benefit. Furthermore, while the evidence is strong that readers preprocess orthographic features of upcoming words, it is controversial whether word meaning can also be accessed parafoveally. We investigated the timing, scope, and electrophysiological correlates of parafoveal information use in reading by simultaneously recording eye movements and fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) while participants read word lists fluently from left to right. For one word the target (e.g., "blade") parafoveal information was manipulated by showing an identical ("blade"), semantically related ("knife"), or unrelated ("sugar") word as preview. In boundary trials, the preview was shown parafoveally but changed to the correct target word during the incoming saccade. Replicating classic findings, target words were fixated shorter after identical previews. In the EEG, this benefit was reflected in an occipitotemporal preview positivity between 200 and 280 ms. In contrast, there was no facilitation from related previews. In parafoveal-on-foveal trials, preview and target were embedded at neighboring list positions without a display change. Consecutive fixation of two related words produced N400 priming effects, but only shortly (160 ms) after the second word was directly fixated. Results demonstrate that neural responses to words are substantially altered by parafoveal preprocessing under normal reading conditions. We found no evidence that word meaning contributes to these effects. Saccade-contingent display manipulations can be combined with EEG recordings to study extrafoveal perception in vision. KW - EEG KW - Eye tracking KW - Active vision KW - Eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRP) KW - Parafoveal vision KW - Boundary technique Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.04.006 SN - 1053-8119 SN - 1095-9572 VL - 62 IS - 1 SP - 381 EP - 393 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elsner, Birgit A1 - Pfeifer, Caroline T1 - Movement or goal Goal salience and verbal cues affect preschoolers' imitation of action components JF - Journal of experimental child psychology N2 - The impact of goal salience and verbal cues given by the model on 3- to 5-year-olds' reproduction of action components (movement or goal) was investigated in an imitation choice task. Preschoolers watched an experimenter moving a puppet up or down a ramp, terminating at one of two target objects. The target objects were either differently colored plastic bowls (low-salient group) or sociofunctionally relevant objects (high-salient group). While demonstrating the action in several trials, the model verbalized either the movement, the goal, both the movement and the goal, or none of the components. Children imitated the action on a second ramp with reversed positions of the target objects, so they needed to decide whether to reproduce the observed movement or the observed end state. In the high-salient group, preschoolers preferentially imitated the goal component, whereas in the low-salient group, they did not show a preference for one of the components. Across trials, preschoolers preferentially imitated the goal when this component or both components were verbalized, whereas they showed no preference when the movement or none of the components was emphasized. Yet, verbal cues seemed to have stronger effects in the low-salient condition. We conclude that sociofunctional salience of action goals and communicative cues of the model affect young children's representation of observed actions, leading to a selective reproduction of those action components that are relevant to the child. KW - Imitation KW - Verbal cues KW - Goal salience KW - Preschoolers KW - Early social cognition KW - Action representation Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.02.010 SN - 0022-0965 VL - 112 IS - 3 SP - 283 EP - 295 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER -