Motion perception in touch: resolving contradictory findings by varying probabilities of different trial types

Representational momentum describes the typical overestimation of the final location of a moving stimulus in the direction of stimulus motion. While systematically observed in different sensory modalities, especially vision and audition, in touch, empirical findings indicate a mixed pattern of results, with some published studies suggesting the existence of the phenomenon, while others do not. In the present study, one possible moderating variable, the relative probabilities of different trial types, was explored in an attempt to resolve the seemingly contradictory findings in the literature. In some studies, only consistently moving target stimuli were presented and no representational momentum was observed, while other studies have included inconsistently moving target stimuli in the same experimental block, and observed representational momentum. Therefore, the present study was designed to systematically compare the localization of consistent target motion stimuli across two experimental blocks, for which either only consistent motion trials were presented, or else mixed with inconsistent target motion trials. The results indicate a strong influence of variations in the probability of different trial types on the occurrence of representational momentum. That is, representational momentum only occurred when both trial types (inconsistent and consistent target motion) were presented within one experimental block. The results are discussed in light of recent theoretical advancements in the literature, namely the speed prior account of motion perception.

Responding, fast and slow: Visual detection and localization performance is unaffected by retrieval

According to action control theories, responding to a stimulus leads to the binding of the response and stimulus features into an event file. Repeating any component of the latter retrieves previous information, affecting ongoing performance. Based on years of attentional orienting research, recent boundaries of such binding theories have been proposed as binding effects are fully absent in visual detection (e.g., Schöpper et al., 2020, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82(4), 2085-2097) and localization (e.g., Schöpper & Frings, 2022; Visual Cognition, 30(10), 641-658) performance. While this can be attributed to specific task demands, the possibility remains that retrieval of previous event files is hampered in such tasks due to overall fast responding. In the current study we instructed participants to signal the detection (Experiment 1) and location (Experiment 2) of dots orthogonally repeating or changing their nonspatial identity and location. Crucially, the dots were either hard or easy to perceive. As expected, making targets hard to perceive drastically slowed down detection and localization response speed. Importantly, binding effects were absent irrespective of perceptibility. In contrast, discriminating the nonspatial identity of targets (Experiment 3) showed strong binding effects. These results highlight the impact of task-dependence for binding approaches in action control.

Bound to a spider without its web: Task-type modulates the retrieval of affective information in subsequent responses

Action control theories assume that upon responding to a stimulus response and stimulus features are integrated into a short episodic memory trace; repeating any component spurs on retrieval, affecting subsequent performance. The resulting so-called "binding effects" are reliably observed in discrimination tasks. In contrast, in localization performance, these effects are absent and only inhibition of return (IOR) emerges - a location change benefit. Affective information has been found to modulate binding effects; yet a modulation of IOR has led to mixed results, with many finding no influence at all. In the current study, participants discriminated letters (Experiment 1) or localized dots (Experiment 2) on a touchpad in prime-probe sequences. During the prime display two images - one with fruits and one with a spider - appeared, one of which spatially congruent with the to-be-touched area. In the discrimination task, previously touching a spider compared to a fruit slowed down response repetitions. In contrast, the localization task only showed IOR. This suggests that task-irrelevant valence is integrated with the response and affects subsequent responses due to retrieval. However, this is not ubiquitous but depends on task type. The results shed further light on the impact of affective information on actions.

Need for (expected) speed: Exploring the indirect influence of trial type consistency on representational momentum

The biases affecting people's perception of dynamic stimuli are typically robust and strong for specific stimulus configurations. For example, representational momentum describes a systematic perceptual bias in the direction of motion for the final location of a moving stimulus. Under clearly defined stimulus configurations (e.g., specific stimulus identity, size, speed), for example, the frequently used "implied motion" trial sequence, for which a target is subsequently presented in a consistent direction and with a consistent speed, a displacement in motion direction is evidenced. The present study explores the potential influence of expectations regarding directional as well as speed consistencies on representational momentum, elicited by including other, inconsistently moving trial types within the same experimental block. A systematic representational momentum effect was observed when only consistent motion trials were presented. In contrast, when inconsistent target motion trials were mixed within the same block of experimental trials, the representational momentum effect decreased, or was even eliminated (Experiments 1 & 2). Detailed analysis indicated that this reflects a global (proportion of consistent and inconsistent motion trials within a particular experimental block), not local (preceding trial influencing actual trial) effect. Yet, additional follow-up studies (Experiments 3 & 4) support the idea that these changes in perceived location are strongly influenced by the overall stimulus speed statistics in the different experimental blocks. These results are discussed and interpreted in light of recent theoretical developments in the literature on motion perception that highlight the importance of expectations about stimulus speed for motion perception.

A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study on the prefrontal correlates of cognitive offloading via a personal knowledge assistant

The saving of previously encoded information boosts both memory for subsequent information (saving-enhanced memory; SEM) as well as cognitive performance in general (saving-enhanced performance; SEP). These findings have been replicated in a setting that involves the assistance by an intelligent software that automatically structures and saves work content in an interactive sidebar. It is assumed that beneficial effects on cognitive performance due to (automatic) saving are caused by a reduction in current workload by means of cognitive offloading. We tested this assumption by measuring neural activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) via functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-once after saving and once after deleting of previously collected information that had to be recalled later-on. On a behavioral level, there was a brief benefit of saving. However, cognitive offloading became most apparent on a neural level: after saving, participants showed significantly lower activation in the right DLPFC. Also, the more participants benefited from cognitive offloading, the more they were able to re-access previously collected, saved information. Thus, fNIRS results indicated reduced mental load after saving, confirming the assumption that saving triggers cognitive offloading.

Effect-less? Event-files are not terminated by distal action effects

Event-files that bind features of stimuli, responses, and action effects figure prominently in contemporary views of action control. When a previous feature repeats, a previous event-file is retrieved and can influence current performance. It is unclear, however, what terminates an event-file. A tacit assumption is that registering the distal (e.g., visual or auditory) sensory consequences of an action (i.e., the "action effect") terminates the event-file, thereby making it available for retrieval. We tested three different action-effect conditions (no distal action effect, visual action effect, or auditory action effect) in the same stimulus-response (S-R) binding task and observed no modulation of S-R binding effects. Instead, there were comparably large binding effects in all conditions. This suggests that proximal (e.g., somatosensory, proprioceptive) action effects terminate event-files independent of distal (e.g., visual, auditory) action effects or that the role event-file termination plays for S-R binding effects needs to be corrected. We conclude that current views of action control require further specification.

The impact of entrepreneurship research on other academic fields

The remarkable ascent of entrepreneurship witnessed as a scientific field over the last 4 decades has been made possible by entrepreneurship's ability to absorb theories, paradigms, and methods from other fields such as economics, psychology, sociology, geography, and even biology. The respectability of entrepreneurship as an academic discipline is now evidenced by many other fields starting to borrow from the entrepreneurship view. In the present paper, seven examples are given from this "pay back" development. These examples were first presented during a seminar at the Erasmus Entrepreneurship Event called what has the entrepreneurship view to offer to other academic fields? This article elaborates on the core ideas of these presentations and focuses on the overarching question of how entrepreneurship research impacts the development of other academic fields. We found that entrepreneurship research questions the core assumptions of other academic fields and provides new insights into the antecedents, mechanisms, and consequences of their respective core phenomena. Moreover, entrepreneurship research helps to legitimize other academic fields both practically and academically.

How weather triggers the emergence of bats from their subterranean hibernacula

Hibernation is one of the most important behaviours of bats of the temperate zone. During winter, when little food or liquid water is available, hibernation in torpor lowers metabolic costs. However, the timing of emergence from hibernation is crucial for the resumption of the reproductive process in spring. Here, we investigate the spring emergence of six bat species or pairs of bat species of the genera Myotis and Plecotus at five hibernation sites in Central Europe over 5 years. Using generalized additive Poisson models (GAPMs), we analyze the influence of weather conditions (air and soil temperature, atmospheric pressure, atmospheric pressure trend, rain, wind, and cloud cover) as predictors of bat activity and separate these extrinsic triggers from residual motivation to emerge from hibernation (extrinsic factors not studied; intrinsic motivation). Although bats in a subterranean hibernaculum are more or less cut off from the outside world, all species showed weather dependence, albeit to varying degrees, with air temperature outside the hibernaculum having a significant positive effect in all species. The residual, potentially intrinsic motivation of species to emerge from their hibernacula corresponds to their general ecological adaptation, such as trophic specialization and roosting preferences. It allows the definition of three functional groups (high, medium and low residual activity groups) according to the degree of weather dependence of spring activity. A better knowledge of the interplay of extrinsic triggers and residual motivation (e.g., internal zeitgebers) for spring emergence will help to understand the flexibility of a species to adapt to a changing world.

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and multiple linear regression (MLR) modelling of Cu, Cd, and Pb adsorption onto tropical soils

Soils interact in many ways with metal ions thereby modifying their mobility, phase distribution, plant availability, speciation, and so on. The most prominent of such interactions is sorption. In this study, we investigated the sorption of Pb, Cd, and Cu in five natural soils of Nigerian origin. A relatively sparsely used method of modelling soil-metal ion adsorption, i.e. adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), was applied comparatively with multiple linear regression (MLR) models. The isotherms were well described by Freundlich and Langmuir equations (R² ≥ 0.95) and the kinetics by nonlinear two-stage kinetic model, TSKM (R² ≥ 0.81). Based on the values delivered by the Langmuir equation, the maximum adsorption capacities (Q_m*) were found to be in the ranges 10,000-20,000, 12,500-50,000, and 4929-35,037 µmol kg^-1 for Cd, Cu, and Pb, respectively. The study revealed significant correlations between Q_m* and routinely determined soil parameters such as soil organic carbon (C_org), cation exchange capacity (CEC), amorphous Fe and Mn oxides, and percentage clay content. These soil parameters, combined with operational variables (i.e. solution/soil pH, initial metal concentration (C_o), and temperature), were used as input vectors in ANFIS and MLR models to predict the adsorption capacities (Q_e) of the soil-metal ion systems. A total of 255 different ANFIS and 255 different MLR architectures/models were developed and compared based on three performance metrics: MAE (mean absolute error), RMSE (root mean square errors), and R² (coefficient of determination). The best ANFIS returned MAE_test 0.134, RMSE_test 0.164, and R²_test 0.76, while the best MLR returned MAE_test 0.158, RMSE_test 0.199, and R²_test 0.66, indicating the predictive advantage of ANFIS over MLR. Thus, ANFIS can fairly accurately predict the adsorption capacity and/or distribution coefficient of a soil-metal ion system a priori. Nevertheless, more investigation is required to further confirm the robustness/generalisation of the proposed ANFIS.

Negative effects of time autonomy in digital collaboration

This article in the journal Group. Interaction. Organization (GIO) focuses on the effects of time autonomy on job-to-home spillover and emotional exhaustion when employees face high time pressure in digital collaboration. We assume time autonomy to strengthen rather than to buffer the detrimental indirect effects of high time pressure on emotional exhaustion via job-to-home spillover, and that high digital collaboration amplifies this effect even further. In a sample of N = 111 employees, we investigated this research question using conditional process analysis. Results support our assumptions as for high digital collaboration high time autonomy amplified the detrimental indirect effect of time pressure on emotional exhaustion via job-to-home spillover, whereas for low digital collaboration high time autonomy buffered this indirect effect. Thus, employees’ risk for emotional exhaustion is higher when time pressure, time autonomy and digital collaboration are high. Therefore, employees and leaders should carefully consider their choices concerning the use of time in the context of digital collaboration.

Biomass partitioning and nutrient fluxes in Silphium perfoliatum and silage maize cropping systems

ABSTRACT

Cup plant cultivation as feedstock for anaerobic digestion has become an emerging topic in European Agriculture. Although there is a gap in methane yields between cup plant and the benchmark crop silage maize, cup plant as a perennial crop provides several ecological advantages. Amongst others, studies have proven its potential for carbon sequestration. With the present study, we addressed the gap in knowledge about biomass partitioning above- and belowground as well as recycling of organic matter and nutrients for cup plant and compared the results to silage maize. Therefore, a 2 year field experiment was conducted under practical conditions on rather shallow soil conditions in a low mountain landscape in Western Germany. Relevant plant fractions like litterfall, yield biomass and stubbles were collected continuously and analyzed for their nutrient contents. Results show that the cup plant is characterized by more than 2000 kg ha^- 1 a^- 1 of pre-harvest losses with a high palatability. In sum, only 77% of the grown cup plant biomass can be harvested in contrast to 96% of silage maize. Thus, an intense, element-specific nutrient recycling takes place in cup plant whereas this is negligible in silage maize. Furthermore, clearly different, element-specific nutrient exports with yield were highlighted. In cup plant, exports were distinctly lower for nitrogen but several times higher for calcium compared to silage maize. Cup plant also showed 36% more roots with higher root masses particularly in the subsoil.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10705-022-10242-0.

Refugee's agency and coping strategies in refugee camps during the coronavirus pandemic: ethnographic perspectives

The global spread of the coronavirus pandemic has particularly dramatic consequences for the lives of migrants and refugees living in already marginalised and restricted conditions, whose ongoing crisis is at risk of being overlooked. But refugees are not only extremely vulnerable and at risk of infection, as several reports show, quickly develop their own protection measures like the production of hygienic products, the publication of their situation and calls for action and help. Therefore, this paper aims to research the effects of the coronavirus crisis on refugees in camp settings with a special ethnographic focus on how refugees actively deal with this crisis and if they, through already developed resilience, are capable of adapting to the restrictions as well as inventing strategies to cope with the difficult situation. To account for the variety of refugee camps as well as the different living conditions due to their locality, history and national asylum politics, we will look at three different locations, namely refugee asylum homes in Germany, hotspots on the Greek islands as well as one refugee camp in Kenya. The main questions will be how, under structurally and institutionally framed conditions of power and victimisation in refugee camps, forms of agency are established, made possible or limited. The goal is to show which strategies refugees apply to cope with the enhanced restrictions and exclusion, how they act to protect themselves and others from the virus and how they present and reflect their situation during the coronavirus pandemic. Finally, this discussion offers a new perspective to consider refugees not only as vulnerable victims, but also as actively engaged individuals.

[Perceived Inequality and Political Demand]

According to a recent social science debate, citizens tend to perceive income inequality rather inaccurately, which also influences their acceptance of redistributive policy programmes. The study reported in this article examines whether this can be confirmed using the example of the wealth tax. The wealth tax was suspended in Germany in 1996, but politicians have been debating its reintroduction for several years. Against the background of the debate on biased perceptions in the formation of distributional policy preferences, the article asks, first, how accurately the existing tax burden on wealthy households through the top income tax rate is assessed and whether a bias has consequences for the support of a wealth tax. Second, based on approaches that attribute an important role to mass media in the formation of distributional policy preferences, the influence of media framing on the acceptance of this controversial instrument is examined. According to data from an online survey, the burden of the top income tax tends to be overestimated. The more the tax is overestimated, the lower the political support for a wealth tax. Framing experiments with randomized control and treatment groups have mapped current discourses around the wealth tax and reconstructed positive frames-wealth taxes as an investment promoting tax reform, as a contribution to the reduction of national debt caused by the coronavirus pandemic-as well as negative frames-restriction of investments and loss of jobs if companies are burdened. Exposing potential job losses significantly lowers the support for a wealth tax. Strong support drops to the middle category of "partly/partly," a signal of indecision. The struggle for naming power is thus open. Support for a property tax becomes uncertain the more that political communication activates the framework of threatened jobs.

Temporal expectancy modulates stimulus-response integration

We can use information derived from passing time to anticipate an upcoming event. If time before an event varies, responses towards this event become faster with increasing waiting time. This variable-foreperiod effect has been often observed in response-speed studies. Different action control frameworks assume that response and stimulus features are integrated into an event file that is retrieved later if features repeat. Yet the role of foreperiods has so far not been investigated in action control. Thus, we investigated the influence of foreperiod on the integration of action-perception features. Participants worked through a standard distractor-response binding paradigm where two consecutive responses are made towards target letters while distractor letters are present. Responses and/or distractors can repeat or change from first to second display, leading to partial repetition costs when only some features repeat or repetition benefits when all features repeat (the difference constituting distractor-response binding). To investigate the effect of foreperiod, we also introduced an anti-geometric distribution of foreperiods to the time interval before the first response display. We observed that distractor-response binding increased with increasing foreperiod duration, and speculate that this was driven by an increase in motor readiness induced by temporal expectancy.

Interaction of pig manure-derived dissolved organic matter with soil affects sorption of sulfadiazine, caffeine and atenolol pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) released into the environment have an adverse impact on the soil and water ecosystem as well as human health. Sorption of PhACs by soils and its potential modification through introduced DOM in the applied animal manure or treated wastewater (TWW) determines the mobility and environmental relevance of PhACs. Sulfadiazine, caffeine and atenolol were selected as target PhACs to investigate their sorption behaviors by five selected arable soils in the absence and presence of pig manure DOM. Sulfadiazine was least sorbed, followed by caffeine and atenolol according to the Freundlich sorption isotherm fit (soil average K_f [μg^(1-n) mLⁿ g^-1] 4.07, 9.06, 18.92, respectively). The addition of manure DOM (31.34 mg C L^-1) decreased the sorption of sulfadiazine and especially of caffeine and atenolol (average K_f 3.04, 6.17, 5.79, respectively). Freundlich sorption isotherms of the PhACs became more nonlinear in the presence of manure DOM (Freundlich exponent n changed from 0.74-1.40 to 0.62-1.12), implying more heterogeneous sorption of PhACs in soil-DOM binary systems. Sorption competition of DOM molecules with sulfadiazine and caffeine mostly contributed to their decreased soil sorption when DOM was present. In contrast, the formation of DOM-atenolol associates in the solution phase caused the largely decreased soil sorption of atenolol in the presence of DOM. It is suggested that DOM concentration (e.g., ≥ 60 mg C L^-1) and its interaction with PhACs should be taken into consideration when assessing the environmental impact of land application of animal manure or irrigation with TWW.

When irrelevant information helps: Extending the Eriksen-flanker task into a multisensory world

Charles W. Eriksen dedicated much of his research career to the field of cognitive psychology, investigating human information processing in those situations that required selection between competing stimuli. Together with his wife Barbara, he introduced the flanker task, which became one of the standard experimental tasks used by researchers to investigate the mechanisms underpinning selection. Although Eriksen himself was primarily interested in investigating visual selection, the flanker task was eventually adapted by other researchers to investigate human information processing and selection in a variety of nonvisual and multisensory situations. Here, we discuss the core aspects of the flanker task and interpret the evidence of the flanker task when used in crossmodal and multisensory settings. "Selection" has been a core topic of psychology for nearly 120 years. Nowadays, though, it is clear that we need to look at selection from a multisensory perspective-the flanker task, at least in its crossmodal and multisensory variants, is an important tool with which to investigate selection, attention, and multisensory information processing.

Why do patients go off track? Examining potential influencing factors for being at risk of psychotherapy treatment failure

BACKGROUND

Routine outcome monitoring can support clinicians to detect patients who deteriorate [not-on-track (NOT)] early in psychotherapy. Implemented Clinical Support Tools can direct clinicians' attention towards potential obstacles to a positive treatment outcome and provide suggestions for suitable interventions. However, few studies have compared NOT patients to patients showing expected progress [on-track (OT)] regarding such obstacles. This study aimed to identify domains that have predictive value for NOT trajectories and to compare OT and NOT patients regarding these domains and the items of the underlying scales.

METHODS

During treatment, 413 outpatients filled in the Hopkins-Symptom-Checklist-11 (depressive and anxious symptom distress) before every therapy session as a routine outcome measure. Further, the Assessment for Signal Clients, Affective Style Questionnaire, and Outcome Questionnaire-30 were applied every fifth session. These questionnaires measure the following domains, which were investigated as potential obstacles to treatment success: risk/suicidality, therapeutic alliance, motivation, social support and life events, as well as emotion regulation. Two groups (OT and NOT patients) were formed by defining a cut-off (failure boundary) as the 90% confidence interval (upper bound) of the respective patients' expected recovery curves. In order to differentiate group membership based on the respective problem areas, multilevel logistic regression analyses were performed. Further, OT and NOT patients were compared with regard to the domains' and items' cut-offs by performing Pearson chi-square tests and independent samples t-tests.

RESULTS

The life events and motivation scale as well as the risk/suicidality scale proved to be significant predictors of being not-on-track. NOT patients also crossed the cut-off significantly more often on the domains risk/suicidality, social support, and life events. For both OT and NOT patients, the emotion regulation domain's cut-off was most commonly exceeded.

CONCLUSION

Life events, motivation, and risk/suicidality seem to be directly linked to treatment failure and should be further investigated for the use in clinical support tools.

Creating a network of importance: The particular effects of self-relevance on stimulus processing

Several factors guide our attention and the way we process our surroundings. In that regard, there is an ongoing debate about the way we are influenced by stimuli that have a particular self-relevance for us. Recent findings suggest that self-relevance does not always capture our attention automatically. Instead, an interpretation of the literature might be that self-relevance serves as an associative advantage facilitating the integration of relevant stimuli into the self-concept. We compared the effect of self-relevant stimuli with the effect of negative stimuli in three tasks measuring different aspects of cognitive processing. We found a first dissociation suggesting that negative valence attracts attention while self-relevance does not, a second dissociation suggesting that self-relevance influences stimulus processing beyond attention-grabbing mechanisms and in the form of an "associative glue," while negative valence does not, and, last but not least, a third dissociation suggesting that self-relevance influences stimulus processing at a later stage than negative valence does.

The official soundtrack to "Five shades of grey": Generalization in multimodal distractor-based retrieval

When responding to two events in a sequence, the repetition or change of stimuli and the accompanying response can benefit or interfere with response execution: Full repetition leads to benefits in performance while partial repetition leads to costs. Additionally, even distractor stimuli can be integrated with a response, and can, upon repetition, lead to benefits or interference. Recently it has been suggested that not only identical, but also perceptually similar distractors retrieve a previous response (Singh et al., Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78(8), 2307-2312, 2016): Participants discriminated four visual shapes appearing in five different shades of grey, the latter being irrelevant for task execution. Exact distractor repetitions yielded the strongest distractor-based retrieval effect, which decreased with increasing dissimilarity between shades of grey. In the current study, we expand these findings by conceptually replicating Singh et al. (2016) using multimodal stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N=31), participants discriminated four visual targets accompanied by five auditory distractors. In Experiment 2 (N=32), participants discriminated four auditory targets accompanied by five visual distractors. We replicated the generalization of distractor-based retrieval - that is, the distractor-based retrieval effect decreased with increasing distractor-dissimilarity. These results not only show that generalization in distractor-based retrieval occurs in multimodal feature processing, but also that these processes can occur for distractors perceived in a different modality to that of the target.

Adsorption of phenylurea herbicides by tropical soils

The distribution of pesticides in soils with consequences for their mobility, bioavailability and water contamination is mainly ruled by sorption processes. Such processes are seldom investigated in tropical soils. Thus, specific interactions between tropical soils and most pesticides are widely unknown. Furthermore, the question arises whether the same factors govern adsorption in tropical and temperate soils. Thus, the sorption behaviour of five phenylurea herbicides (PUHs) was studied in eighteen differently composed soils originating from southwestern Nigeria. Sorption data were obtained by equilibrating the soil samples with 0.01 M CaCl2 solutions spiked with increasing concentrations of the target PUHs. The equilibrium data fitted well to the Freundlich isotherm equation (R2 ≥ 0.96), delivering the corresponding parameters (Kf and n). Linear distribution coefficients (Kd) were also calculated. The Pearson correlation was used to identify the specific soil and herbicide properties that have statistically significant correlations with sorption parameters. High correlations were established for various soil properties (pH, cation exchange capacity, organic carbon content, content of amorphous Fe and Mn oxides, clay/silt mass proportions) as well as molecular descriptors (octanol-water partition coefficient (log Kow) and molecular mass (Mw)) of the moderately hydrophobic herbicides. Monuron, chlorotoluron and isoproturon showed higher affinities for soil than previously reported. The gathered knowledge might assist in the assessment and in the precautionary avoidance of potential risks generated by these compounds in tropical soils.