Humans are predisposed to attend to emotions conveyed by facial expressions. However, compulsory attraction to emotions gets challenging when multiple emotional stimuli compete for attention, as in the emotion comparison task. In this task, participants are asked to choose which of two simultaneously presented faces displays the most positive (happiest) or negative (angriest) emotion. Participants usually respond faster to the face displaying the most intense emotion. This effect is stronger for face pairs that contain globally positive rather than negative emotional faces. Both effects are consistent with an attentional capture phenomenon driven by the perceptual salience of facial expressions. In the present experiment, we studied the temporal dynamics of attentional capture in the emotion comparison task by tracking participants’ eye movements using gaze-contingent displays and responses. Our results show that, on the first fixation, participants were more accurate and dwelled longer on the left target face when it displayed the most intense emotion within the pair. On the second fixation, the pattern was reversed, with higher accuracy and longer gaze time on the right target face. Overall, our pattern of gazing behavior indicates that the typical results observed in the emotion comparison task arise from the optimal combination over time of two low-level attentional factors: the perceptual salience of emotional stimuli and the scanning habit of participants.

Recent findings on emotion comparison show a typical pattern of motor reactivity rising from attentional capture. When pairs of emotional faces are presented simultaneously, the most intense emotional face is recognized faster (Emotional Semantic Congruency-ESC effect). Furthermore, a global response speed advantage for emotional pairs with positive rather than negative average emotion intensity is observed (i.e., emotional size effect), with the choice for the happiest face resulting in a faster response than the choice for the angriest face within the pair (i.e., the happiness advantage). In two experiments, we asked whether these effects are orientation dependent, and thus linked to whether face processing is holistic or part-based. Participants were asked to choose the angriest/happiest face in emotional pairs displayed either in upright or inverted orientation and including (Experiment 1) or not including (Experiment 2) a neutral face. Beyond an overall facilitation for upright relative to inverted pairs, results showed orientation independent ESC and emotional size effects. Furthermore, the happiness advantage was present in emotional pairs of Experiment 2 but not in emotional pairs of Experiment 1, independently from face orientation. Together, results suggest that attentional capture in emotion comparison is immaterial on the type of face processing, being orientation invariant.

Summary Recent studies explored the contribution of auditory information in ecological contexts to biological motion perception and its influence on movement execution. This work provides an overview of the most influential scientific contributions in this domain and analyzes the most recent findings, both in sport and motor rehabilitation. Overall, the literature indicates that ecological sounds associated with movements are relevant for perceiving some important features of sport movements. Auditory information is also relevant during performance execution, and can be used to create training protocols. Also, similarly auditory information can be used in clinical contexts to provide rhythmic information to enhance the efficacy of motor rehabilitation protocols. In conclusion, we can say that the role of ecological sounds of movements is examined in conveying complexity of information from a gestalt perspective.

Previous work on the direct speed–intensity association (SIA) on comparative judgement tasks involved spatially distributed responses over spatially distributed stimuli with high motivational significance like facial expressions of emotions. This raises the possibility that the inferred stimulus-driven regulation of lateralized motor reactivity described by SIA, which was against the one expected on the basis of a valence-specific lateral bias, was entirely due to attentional capture from motivational significance (beyond numerical cognition). In order to establish the relevance of numerical cognition on the regulation of attentional capture we ran two complementary experiments. These involved the same direct comparison task on stimulus pairs that were fully comparable in terms of their analog representation of intensity but with different representational domain and motivational significance: symbolic magnitudes with low motivational significance in experiment 1 vs. emotions with rather high motivational significance in experiment 2. The results reveal a general SIA and point to a general mechanism regulating comparative judgements. This is based on the way spatial attention is captured toward locations that contain the stimulus which is closest in term of relative intensity to the extremal values of the series, regardless from its representational domain being it symbolic or emotional.

Simultaneous lightness contrast (SLC) is the condition whereby two equal greys look different when they are placed one against a dark background and the other against a bright background. Adelson (1993) noticed that the SLC magnitude increases when the homogeneous backgrounds are replaced with more articulated ones. In Adelson's display, all darker patches are on one side of the stimuli whilst the brighter are on the other. The aim of this research is to test whether this regularity causes the SLC magnitude to increase. On a paper-based experiment, participants were requested to match on a Munsell scale two greys placed against a dark and a white background while the luminance of additional elements was manipulated: dark and bright elements could have been added to either side. Results show that when bright elements where added to the darker background and bright elements where added to the darker background the SLC magnitude reduced. Vice-versa, when bright elements were added to the bright background, and dark elements were added to the dark background, the SLC magnitude increased. It is concluded that the photometric relationships in the stimuli determine the SLC magnitude, not the level of articulation per se.

A common cognitive process in everyday life consists in the comparative judgements of emotions given a pair of facial expressions and the choice of the most positive/negative among them. Results from three experiments on complete-facial expressions (happy/angry) and mixed-facial expressions (neutral/happy-or-angry) pairs viewed with (Experiment 1 and 3) or without (Experiment 2) foveation and performed in conditions in which valence was either task relevant (Experiment 1 and 2) or task irrelevant (Experiment 3), show that comparative judgements of emotions are stimulus driven. Judgements' speed increased as the target absolute emotion intensity grew larger together with the average emotion of the pair, irrespective of the compatibility between the valence and the side of motor response: a semantic congruency effect in the domain of emotion. This result undermines previous interpretation of results in the context of comparative judgements based on the lateralization of emotions (e.g., SNARC-like instructional flexibility), and is fully consistent with our formalization of emotional semantic congruency: the direct Speed-Intensity Association model.

Introduction. According to recent studies, cognition and emotions are strictly connected to timing behaviour and time perception, even though the underling psychological mechanisms are not completely understood. Only recently the topic of time distortions in emotional contexts has attracted the attention of researchers, who typically used the classical methods of time perception. In particular, the most employed paradigms consisted of Temporal Bisection Task (comparing temporal stimuli to two reference stimuli, “long” and “short”) and Time Production. Here, for the first time, we propose a new paradigm based on the adjustment method, called Subjective Time Adjustment (STA), to evaluate time distortions in emotional contexts induced by visual stimuli. Methods. Thirty university students participated in this experiment and were divided in two groups (low vs. high arousal movies). All participants were tested individually in a quiet room. They were required to sit down and relax for about 10 minutes before starting the experiment. Then they were asked to adjust a flashing light in order to make its frequency equal to 60 flashes per minute: this measure was considered as individual baseline. After the baseline, participants were exposed to a five-minutes movie promoting either a low or a high arousal, depending on the assigned condition. After the movie, all participants were re-tested using the same method as the baseline. Results. The results showed that the adjustments made before and after the movie remained constant in the low arousal condition, but increased significantly in the high arousal condition. Conclusion. Our study shows that, similarly to previous studies, our STA paradigm can detect distortions in time perception due to the exposition to emotional movies.

The current research aims to study the link between the type of vision experienced in a collaborative immersive virtual environment (active vs. multiple passive), the type of error one looks for during a cooperative multi-user exploration of a design project (affordance vs. perceptual violations), and the type of setting in which multi-user perform (field in Experiment 1 vs. laboratory in Experiment 2). The relevance of this link is backed by the lack of conclusive evidence on an active vs. passive vision advantage in cooperative search tasks within software based on immersive virtual reality (IVR). Using a yoking paradigm based on the mixed usage of simultaneous active and multiple passive viewings, we found that the likelihood of error detection in a complex 3D environment was characterized by an active vs. multi-passive viewing advantage depending on: (1) the degree of knowledge dependence of the type of error the passive/active observers were looking for (low for perceptual violations, vs. high for affordance violations), as the advantage tended to manifest itself irrespectively from the setting for affordance, but not for perceptual violations; and (2) the degree of social desirability possibly induced by the setting in which the task was performed, as the advantage occurred irrespectively from the type of error in the laboratory (Experiment 2) but not in the field (Experiment 1) setting. Results are relevant to future development of cooperative software based on IVR used for supporting the design review. A multi-user design review experience in which designers, engineers and end-users all cooperate actively within the IVR wearing their own head mounted display, seems more suitable for the detection of relevant errors than standard systems characterized by a mixed usage of active and passive viewing.

Prefrontal cortex plays an important role in decision making (DM), supporting choices in the ordinary uncertainty of everyday life. To assess DM in an unpredictable situation, a playing card task, such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), has been proposed. This task is supposed to specifically test emotion-based learning, linked to the integrity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). However, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has demonstrated a role in IGT performance too. Our aim was to study, by multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy, the contribution of DLPFC to the IGT execution over time. We tested the hypothesis that low and high risk choices would differentially activate DLPFC, as IGT execution progressed. We enrolled 11 healthy adults. To identify DLPFC activation associated with IGT choices, we compared regional differences in oxy-hemoglobin variation, from baseline to the event. The time course of task execution was divided in four periods, each one consisting of 25 choices, and DLPFC activation was distinctly analyzed for low and high risk choices in each period. We found different time courses in DLPFC activation, associated with low or high risk choices. During the first period, a significant DLPFC activation emerged with low risk choices, whereas, during the second period, we found a cortical activation with high risk choices. Then, DLPFC activation decreased to non-significant levels during the third and fourth period. This study shows that DLPFC involvement in IGT execution is differentiated over time and according to choice risk level. DLPFC is activated only in the first half of the task, earlier by low risk and later by high risk choices. We speculate that DLPFC may sustain initial and more cognitive functions, such as attention shifting and response inhibition. The lack of DLPFC activation, as the task progresses, may be due to VMPFC activation, not detectable by fNIRS, which takes over the IGT execution in its second half.

The Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) suggests the existence of an association between number magnitude and response position, with faster left-hand responses to small numbers and faster righthand responses to large numbers (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). Moreover, Rusconi, Kwan, Giordano, Umilta, & Butterworth (2006) showed that the internal representation of pitch height is spatially organized, especially in participants with formal musical education (i.e., Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes: the SMARC effect). In the present study we investigated whether a similar association exists between music tempo (beats per minutes) and the spatial position of response execution. Participants were all musically untrained persons. To test our hypothesis they performed both an order-relevant task (i.e., time comparison task) and an order-irrelevant task (i.e., timbre judgment task). Results showed a global trend with faster left-hand responses to slower beat sequences and faster right-hand responses to faster beat sequences. From this evidences we can finally conclude that a SNARC-like effect exists for music tempo similar as for pitch height and numbers.