Previous studies highlighted spatial compatibility effects other than those strictly arising from... more Previous studies highlighted spatial compatibility effects other than those strictly arising from stimulus-response locations. In particular, the so-called Destination Compatibility (DC) effect refers to faster responses for dynamic (i.e., moving) stimuli the end point of which is spatially compatible with the response key. Four experiments examined whether the DC effect also occurs with static visual stimuli symbolically representing either motion destination alone (Experiment 1a), or both motion origin and destination (Experiments 1b, 2a, and 2b). Overall, our results are consistent in showing a DC effect; most importantly, the present findings reveal a predominance of the effect of destination of motion over that of origin, even when both the starting and ending positions of the stimulus are symbolically represented and participants are instructed to respond according to motion origin. This finding suggests that the DC effect is independent from other stimulus-response compatibil...
Chapter 5. Is the acoustic modality relevant for abstract concepts?
Gaze direction is an important social cue for understanding the intentions of other people. Indee... more Gaze direction is an important social cue for understanding the intentions of other people. Indeed, interacting with others requires the ability to encode their current focus of attention in order to predict their future actions. Previous studies have showed that when asked to detect or identify a target, people are faster if shown a gaze oriented toward rather than away from that target. Most importantly, there is evidence that the emotion conveyed by the face with the averted gaze matters. We further tested the interplay between gaze and face emotion in the context of manipulable objects to understand whether and to what extent other people's gaze influences our own actions toward objects. Participants judged whether a target graspable object was upright or inverted after viewing a face cue with a central or averted gaze. Importantly, the target's handle could be oriented toward the gazed-at location or the opposite side such that gaze and handle were corresponding or non-...
Recent studies suggest that covering the face inhibits the recognition of identity and emotional ... more Recent studies suggest that covering the face inhibits the recognition of identity and emotional expressions. However, it might also make the eyes more salient, since they are a reliable index to orient our social and spatial attention. This study investigates (1) whether the pervasive interaction with people with face masks fostered by the COVID-19 pandemic modulates the processing of spatial information essential to shift attention according to other’s eye-gaze direction (i.e., gaze-cueing effect: GCE), and (2) whether this potential modulation interacts with motor responses (i.e., Simon effect). Participants were presented with face cues orienting their gaze to a congruent or incongruent target letter location (gaze-cueing paradigm) while wearing a surgical mask (Mask), a patch (Control), or nothing (No-Mask). The task required to discriminate the identity of the lateralized target letters by pressing one of two lateralized response keys, in a corresponding or a non-corresponding...
Social proximity has since ever been evaluated as positive. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19... more Social proximity has since ever been evaluated as positive. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically reduced our social relations to avoid spreading the contagion. The present study aims to investigate people's current assessment of social proximity by using an affective priming paradigm (APP). We hypothesized that if our evaluation of social proximity is positive, then words with positive valence (e.g., relaxed) should be processed faster when preceded by images of social proximity than social distancing. On the contrary, if our evaluation of social proximity is turning negative, then words with a negative valence (e.g., sad) should be processed faster when preceded by images of social proximity than social distancing. To this end, we presented participants with prime images showing line drawings representing humans in situations of proximity or distancing and asked them to evaluate the valence (i.e., positive or negative) of a subsequent target word. In ...
Figure 1: Example of written and spoken same and different-modality prime and target sentences in... more Figure 1: Example of written and spoken same and different-modality prime and target sentences in the Different-Different (DD) Different-Same (DS), Same-Different (SD), and Same-Same (SS) conditions. Participants: 60 students (41 females; mean age: 22.31, SD: 2.05). Task: lexical decision task (LDT) on concept-property target pairs presented either visually or aurally (see figure for an example of the experimental conditions).
Is there an action potentiation effect with two-handles objects?
Giornale italiano di psicologia, 2019
Two experiments explore the action Potentiation effect with grasped bimanual objects having two s... more Two experiments explore the action Potentiation effect with grasped bimanual objects having two symmetrical handles. objects typically used in the kitchen (e.g., mezzaluna knife) and objects typically used during spare time (e.g., joypad) were presented during a categorization task in four experimental conditions: compatible grasping object, incompatible grasping object, object alone, two-handles grasping object. results show a more difficult categorization when objects were shown as grasped on the opposite side than the response rather than on the same side in each of two different response modes (bimanual: experiment 1; unimanual: experiment 2). We discuss implications of these results for action potentiation and spatial coding theories
Social distancing and isolation have been imposed to contrast the spread of COVID‐19. The present... more Social distancing and isolation have been imposed to contrast the spread of COVID‐19. The present study investigates whether social distancing affects our cognitive system, in particular the processing of different types of brand logos in different moments of the pandemic spread in Italy. In a size discrimination task, six different logos belonging to three categories (letters, symbols, and social images) were presented in their original format and spaced. Two samples of participants were tested: one just after the pandemic spread in Italy, the other one after 6 months. Results showed an overall distancing effect (i.e., spaced stimuli are processed slower than original ones) that interacted with the sample, revealing a significant effect only for participants belonging to the second sample. However, both groups showed a distancing effect modulated by the type of logo as it only emerged for social images. Results suggest that social distancing behaviors have been integrated in our co...
Several behavioral studies show that semantic content influences reach-to-grasp movement response... more Several behavioral studies show that semantic content influences reach-to-grasp movement responses. However, not much is known about the influence of motor activation on semantic processing. The present study aimed at filling this gap by examining the influence of pre-activated motor information on a subsequent lexical decision task. Participants were instructed to observe a prime object (e.g., the image of a frying pan) and then judge whether the following target was a known word in the lexicon or not. They were required to make a keypress response to target words describing properties either relevant (e.g., handle) or irrelevant (e.g., ceramic) for action or unrelated to the prime object (e.g., eyelash). Response key could be located on the same side as the depicted action-relevant property of the prime object (i.e., spatially compatible key) or on the opposite side (i.e., spatially incompatible key). Results showed a facilitation in terms of lower percentage errors when the targe...
My dissertation sets out to contribute to the ongoing theoretical debate on the format of concept... more My dissertation sets out to contribute to the ongoing theoretical debate on the format of conceptual representation from both a theoretic (Part 1) and an experimental point of view (Part 2). From a theoretic point of view, it is attempted to show that the amodal and grounded views do not bear incompatible claims. On the contrary, grounded cognitition has complemented traditional approaches taking into account the modalities, the body, and the environment’s influence on cognitive mechanisms. From an experimental point of view, this dissertation is committed to testing predictions coming from grounded accounts of knowledge. Specifically, it is aimed at verifying the assumption that modality-specific representations underlie concepts and conceptual processing through the investigation of the Modality-Switch Effect, a cost for performance in terms of speed and accuracy occurring when two different sensory modality properties for concepts alternate compared to when the same sensory modal...
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Papers by Elisa Scerrati