Kyle T. Gagnon

Utilizing topology to generate and test theories of change

Statistical and methodological innovations in the study of change are advancing rapidly, and visual tools have become an important component in model building and testing. Graphical representations such as path diagrams are necessary, but may be insufficient in the case of complex theories and models. Topology is a visual tool that connects theory and testable equations believed to capture the theorized patterns of change. Although some prior work has made use of topologies, these representations have often been generated as a result of the tested models. This article argues that utilizing topology a priori, when developing a theory, and applying analogous statistical models is a prudent method to conduct research. This article reviews topology by demonstrating how to build a topological representation of a theory and recover the implied equations, ultimately facilitating the transition from complex theory to testable model. Finally, topologies can guide researchers as they adjust or expand their theories in light of recent model testing.

Relating spatial perspective taking to the perception of other's affordances: providing a foundation for predicting the future behavior of others

Understanding what another agent can see relates functionally to the understanding of what they can do. We propose that spatial perspective taking and perceiving others affordances, while two separate spatial processes, together share the common social function of predicting the behavior of others. Perceiving the action capabilities of others allows for a common understanding of how agents may act together. The ability to take anothers perspective focuses an understanding of action goals so that more precise understanding of intentions may result. This review presents an analysis of these complementary abilities, both in terms of the frames of reference and the proposed sensorimotor mechanisms involved. Together, we argue for the importance of reconsidering the role of basic spatial processes to explain more complex behaviors.

Plunging into the Pool of Death: Imagining a Dangerous Outcome Influences Distance Perception

We examined whether manipulating the imagined consequences of falling would influence the perception of height, distance, and size. In experiment 1, height and size perception were measured when participants stood at a short height (0.89 m) or a medium height (1.91 m) above either an empty pool or a pool filled with a bed of nails. Participants who viewed the bed of nails and imagined falling into it estimated both the height as taller and the size of the bed of nails as larger than participants who imagined falling into an empty pool. In a second experiment, participants overestimated the horizontal ground distance to and across the bed of nails after being told to imagine jumping over it. Overall, these experiments suggest that costs associated with imagined actions can influence the perception of both vertical and horizontal extents that are not inherently dangerous.

Sex Differences in Exploration Behavior and the Relationship to Harm Avoidance

Venturing into novel terrain poses physical risks to a female and her offspring. Females have a greater tendency to avoid physical harm, while males tend to have larger range sizes and often outperform females in navigation-related tasks. Given this backdrop, we expected that females would explore a novel environment with more caution than males, and that more-cautious exploration would negatively affect navigation performance. Participants explored a novel, large-scale, virtual environment in search of five objects, pointed in the direction of each object from the origin, and then navigated back to the objects. We found that females demonstrated more caution while exploring as reflected in the increased amounts of pausing and revisiting of previously traversed locations. In addition, more pausing and revisiting behaviors led to degradation in navigation performance. Finally, individual levels of trait harm avoidance were positively associated with the amount of revisiting behavior during exploration. These findings support the idea that the fitness costs associated with long-distance travel may encourage females to take a more cautious approach to spatial exploration, and that this caution may partially explain the sex differences in navigation performance.

Close contact with racial outgroup members moderates attentional allocation towards outgroup versus ingroup faces

Some research has demonstrated that White perceivers direct more initial attention to Black relative to White target faces, while other work has failed to show this relationship. Several variables have been identified that moderate early attention to racial outgroup versus racial ingroup faces. In the current paper, two studies sought to extend this work by testing whether close contact with racial outgroup members moderates the amount of initial attention directed towards racial outgroup members relative to ingroup members using a dot-probe task. In Study 1, Whites’ attentional allocation to Black versus White faces was moderated by the amount of close and meaningful contact with Blacks. Study 2 extended these findings by demonstrating that Whites’ attentional allocation to Asian relative to White faces was moderated by close contact with Asians. These findings identify close outgroup contact as an additional moderating variable in the attentional capture of racial outgroup versus ingroup faces, for groups both associated and not associated with threat.

The influence of social context and body size on action judgments for self and others.

Judgments of affordances, the potential actions that an observer can carry out within an environment, require observers to relate information about their body to information in the environment. Although humans can accurately judge affordances for others, it is unknown whether other peoples capability to act influences ones own affordance judgments. Based on theoretical accounts and recent empirical evidence highlighting the importance of social information in perception and action, we hypothesized that the action capabilities of another person would influence ones own affordance judgments. Participants judged their own and anothers ability to pass through an aperture in 3 experiments that varied the differences in body sizes between the participant and another agent using naturally occurring body size differences or an artificial large body suit. Results showed an influence of the others body size on self-affordance judgments only when the participant and the other agent remained in their natural body size (Experiment 3), but not when the body size differences between the participant and the other agent were extreme because of the body suit (Experiments 1 and 2).

Not all those who wander are lost: Spatial exploration patterns and their relationship to gender and spatial memory

When humans and animals navigate through environments, they form spatial memories important for supporting subsequent recall of locations relative to their own position and orientation, as well as to other object locations in the environment. The goal of the current study was to examine whether individual differences in initial exploration of a large-scale novel environment relate to subsequent spatial memories. A majority of studies examining spatial memory formed in large-scale spaces have constrained encoding of the environment by leading participants on pre-determined paths, thereby limiting their free exploration. We allowed participants to freely explore a large-scale, virtual environment to locate a set of objects within. We then tested their ability to navigate back to those objects as well as their ability to point to them from one another. Based on previous work suggesting gender differences in navigation strategies and spatial anxiety, we predicted that males and females would show different patterns of initial exploration and that these exploration patterns would account for gender differences in measures of spatial memory. We found that females revisited previous locations more often and showed lower rates of spreading through an area. These measures of exploration partially accounted for gender differences in efficiency in navigation and pointing accuracy to remembered locations. The results demonstrate the importance of exploration in spatial memory and provide a new perspective on gender differences in spatial cognition.

I'd Like to Introduce You to My Desktop: Toward a Theory of Social Human-Computer Interaction

Entire industries have grown up around the physiological, cognitive, and economic demands of technology on users, but there is little research into the specific psychological processes and implications of the social function of human-computer interaction (HCI), especially when the computer is programmed to mimic human norms. To understand this issue better, it is necessary to find the limits of what HCI with social capacity means. The Computers are Social Actors paradigm, or CASA (Reeves & Nass, 1996) began this exploration. We begin by replicating aspects of a study on acts of reciprocity toward a computer (Fogg 1997), then we consider the role of agreeableness in the number of favors a human performs for a computer. Finally, we examine individual differences in styles of altruism and if a strange computer is treated similarly to an unknown human. We hypothesize a) that a helpful computer elicits more favors than an unhelpful computer, b) that high agreeable people are more generous to a software agent than low agreeable people, and c) that a positive correlation exists between the number of favors performed for a computer and an individual’s trait of reciprocal altruism. Data analysis of 54 participants shows that the helpfulness of the computer is not significantly correlated to the number of favors performed for it, that agreeableness has a negative correlation to number of favors performed when the computer is helpful, and that reciprocal altruism is negatively correlated to the number of favors performed for a computer. A discussion of the possible limitations and implications of the research follows.