Thomas W. Schubert

Weight as an Embodiment of Importance

Four studies show that the abstract concept of importance is grounded in bodily experiences of weight. Participants provided judgments of importance while they held either a heavy or a light clipboard. Holding a heavy clipboard increased judgments of monetary value (Study 1) and made participants consider fair decision-making procedures to be more important (Study 2). It also caused more elaborate thinking, as indicated by higher consistency between related judgments (Study 3) and by greater polarization of agreement ratings for strong versus weak arguments (Study 4). In line with an embodied perspective on cognition, these findings suggest that, much as weight makes people invest more physical effort in dealing with concrete objects, it also makes people invest more cognitive effort in dealing with abstract issues.

Synchronous multisensory stimulation blurs self-other boundaries.

In a study that builds on recent cognitive neuroscience research on body perception and social psychology research on social relations, we tested the hypothesis that synchronous multisensory stimulation leads to self-other merging. We brushed the cheek of each study participant as he or she watched a stranger’s cheek being brushed in the same way, either in synchrony or in asynchrony. We found that this multisensory procedure had an effect on participants’ body perception as well as social perception. Study participants exposed to synchronous stimulation showed more merging of self and the other than participants exposed to asynchronous stimulation. The degree of self-other merging was determined by measuring participants’ body sensations and their perception of face resemblance, as well as participants’ judgment of the inner state of the other, closeness felt toward the other, and conformity behavior. The results of this study show how multisensory integration can affect social perception and create a sense of self-other similarity.

Measuring the Sense of Presence and its Relations to Fear of Heights in Virtual Environments

This article describes a study in which a genuine effect of presence--the development of fear of virtual stimuli--was provoked. Using a self-report questionnaire, the sense of presence within this situation was measured. It was shown that fear increased with higher presence. The method, which involved 37 participants, was tested and validated with user tests at the Bauhaus University. A growing body of research in human-computer interface design for virtual environments (VE) concentrates on the problem of how to involve the user in the VE. This effect, usually called immersion or the sense of presence, has been the subject of much research activity. This research focuses on the influence of technical and technological parameters on the sense of presence. However, little work has been done on the effects of experienced sense of presence. One field in which a sense of presence is necessary for the successful application of VEs is the treatment of acrophobic patients. Our goals are to (a) create a theory-bas...

The Power of Pictures: Vertical Picture Angles in Power Pictures

Conventional wisdom suggests that variations in vertical picture angle cause the subject to appear more powerful when depicted from below and less powerful when depicted from above. However, do the media actually use such associations to represent individual differences in power? We argue that the diverse perspectives of evolutionary, social learning, and embodiment theories all suggest that the association between verticality and power is relatively automatic and should, therefore, be visible in the portrayal of powerful and powerless individuals in the media. Four archival studies (with six samples) provide empirical evidence for this hypothesis and indicate that a salience power context reinforces this effect. In addition, two experimental studies confirm these effects for individuals producing media content. We discuss potential implications of this effect.

In vitro Selection and Interaction Studies of a DNA Aptamer Targeting Protein A

A new DNA aptamer targeting Protein A is presented. The aptamer was selected by use of the FluMag-SELEX procedure. The SELEX technology (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment) is widely applied as an in vitro selection and amplification method to generate target-specific aptamers and exists in various modified variants. FluMag-SELEX is one of them and is characterized by the use of magnetic beads for target immobilization and fluorescently labeled oligonucleotides for monitoring the aptamer selection progress. Structural investigations and sequence truncation experiments of the selected aptamer for Protein A led to the conclusion, that a stem-loop structure at its 5’-end including the 5’-primer binding site is essential for aptamer-target binding. Extensive interaction analyses between aptamer and Protein A were performed by methods like surface plasmon resonance, MicroScale Thermophoresis and bead-based binding assays using fluorescence measurements. The binding of the aptamer to its target was thus investigated in assays with immobilization of one of the binding partners each, and with both binding partners in solution. Affinity constants were determined in the low micromolar to submicromolar range, increasing to the nanomolar range under the assumption of avidity. Protein A provides more than one binding site for the aptamer, which may overlap with the known binding sites for immunoglobulins. The aptamer binds specifically to both native and recombinant Protein A, but not to other immunoglobulin-binding proteins like Protein G and L. Cross specificity to other proteins was not found. The application of the aptamer is directed to Protein A detection or affinity purification. Moreover, whole cells of Staphylococcus aureus, presenting Protein A on the cell surface, could also be bound by the aptamer.

ScriptingRT: A Software Library for Collecting Response Latencies in Online Studies of Cognition

ScriptingRT is a new open source tool to collect response latencies in online studies of human cognition. ScriptingRT studies run as Flash applets in enabled browsers. ScriptingRT provides the building blocks of response latency studies, which are then combined with generic Apache Flex programming. Six studies evaluate the performance of ScriptingRT empirically. Studies 1–3 use specialized hardware to measure variance of response time measurement and stimulus presentation timing. Studies 4–6 implement a Stroop paradigm and run it both online and in the laboratory, comparing ScriptingRT to other response latency software. Altogether, the studies show that Flash programs developed in ScriptingRT show a small lag and an increased variance in response latencies. However, this did not significantly influence measured effects: The Stroop effect was reliably replicated in all studies, and the found effects did not depend on the software used. We conclude that ScriptingRT can be used to test response latency effects online.

Self-other bodily merging in the context of synchronous but arbitrary-related multisensory inputs

A debated issue in the multisensory literature concerns the relative contribution of bottom-up sensory components versus top-down cognitive elaborations in contributing to the rise and persistency of bodily illusion. Previous studies, for instance, have shown that simultaneity of sensory inputs and plausibility of the stimulated object play an important role in the rubber hand phenomenon, whereas violation of tactile expectancy does not disrupt the illusory feeling to own a fake hand. The present research examined this issue in the context of the “enfacement” phenomenon (i.e., self-other face-perception modification), using entirely arbitrary and non-ecological pairs of visual and tactile events. Visual and tactile stimulation was matched in terms of spatial location, but not linked by any previously learned associations, making temporal synchrony a critical binding factor. Participants received electro-tactile stimulations on their cheek, while they watched the face of a stranger illuminated on the cheek with a dot of white light. Synchronous (vs. asynchronous) stimulations yielded the enfacement effect. In addition, the stranger stimulated in synchrony was judged as more similar, physically and in terms of personality, and as closer to the self. These findings suggest that synchronous multisensory stimulation on the face can produce both perceptual and social binding, even in the absence of any previously learned associations between the stimulations.

Telling Things Apart The Distance Between Response Keys Influences Categorization Times

People use spatial distance to talk and think about differences between concepts, and it has been argued that using space to think about different categories provides a scaffold for the categorization process. In the current study, we investigated the possibility that the distance between response keys can influence categorization times in binary classification tasks. In line with the hypothesis that distance between response keys can facilitate response selection in a key-press version of the Stroop task, our results showed that responses on incongruent Stroop trials were significantly facilitated when participants performed the Stroop task with response keys located far apart, compared with when they performed the task with response keys located close together. These results support the idea that the spatial structuring of response options facilitates categorizations that require cognitive effort, and that people can incorporate environmental structures such as spatial distance in their thought processes. Keeping your hands apart might actually help to keep things apart in your mind.

Moment-to-moment changes in feeling moved match changes in closeness, tears, goosebumps, and warmth: time series analyses

ABSTRACT Feeling moved or touched can be accompanied by tears, goosebumps, and sensations of warmth in the centre of the chest. The experience has been described frequently, but psychological science knows little about it. We propose that labelling one’s feeling as being moved or touched is a component of a social-relational emotion that we term kama muta (its Sanskrit label). We hypothesise that it is caused by appraising an intensification of communal sharing relations. Here, we test this by investigating people’s moment-to-moment reports of feeling moved and touched while watching six short videos. We compare these to six other sets of participants’ moment-to-moment responses watching the same videos: respectively, judgements of closeness (indexing communal sharing), reports of weeping, goosebumps, warmth in the centre of the chest, happiness, and sadness. Our eighth time series is expert ratings of communal sharing. Time series analyses show strong and consistent cross-correlations of feeling moved and touched and closeness with each other and with each of the three physiological variables and expert-rated communal sharing – but distinctiveness from happiness and sadness. These results support our model.

Judgments of Dominance from the Face Track Physical Strength

It is commonly assumed that judgments of dominance from faces partly rely on implicit judgments of bodily strength. In two studies, we demonstrate such a relation for both computer-generated and natural photos of male faces. We find support when aggregating data across participants, when analyzing with hierarchical models, and also when strength and dominance are judged by different raters. Moreover, we identify common predictors that underlie perceptions of both strength and dominance: brow height, eye length, chin length, and the widths of the nose and mouth.