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Browsing School of Applied Social Sciences by Author "Agostini, Tiziano"
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Item Open Access Automatic spatial association for luminance(Springer, 2014-01-09) Fumarola, Antonia; Prpic, Valter; Da Pos, Osvaldo; Murgia, Mauro; Umilta, Carlo; Agostini, TizianoIn the present study, we investigated whether luminance and the side of response execution are associated, showing a SNARC-like effect (faster responses with the left hand for dark stimuli, and vice versa for light stimuli). A total of 30 participants were tested in two experiments. In Experiment 1, the association between space and the luminance of chromatic stimuli was directly tested (brightness discrimination). In Experiment 2, the same spatial association was tested indirectly (hue discrimination). The results showed that participants responded faster with their left hand to hues with lower luminance, and with their right hand to hues with higher luminance, in either the direct or the indirect task. The consistency of this association in both tasks demonstrates the automaticity of the SNARC-like effect for luminance.Item Open Access Contrasting a Misinterpretation of the Reverse Contrast(MDPI, 2020) Agostini, Tiziano; Murgia, Mauro; Sors, Fabrizio; Prpic, Valter; Galmonte, AlessandraThe reverse contrast is a perceptual phenomenon in which the effect of the classical simultaneous lightness contrast is reversed. In classic simultaneous lightness contrast configurations, a gray surrounded by black is perceived lighter than an identical gray surrounded by white, but in the reverse contrast configurations, the perceptual outcome is the opposite: a gray surrounded by black appears darker than the same gray surrounded by white. The explanation provided for the reverse contrast (by different authors) is the belongingness of the gray targets to a more complex configuration. Different configurations show the occurrence of these phenomena; however, the factors determining this effect are not always the same. In particular, some configurations are based on both belongingness and assimilation, while one configuration is based only on belongingness. The evidence that different factors determine the reverse contrast is crucial for future research dealing with achromatic color perception and, in particular, with lightness induction phenomena.Item Open Access The contribution of early auditory and visual information to the discrimination of shot power in ball sports(Elsevier, 2017-04-05) Sors, Fabrizio; Murgia, Mauro; Santoro, Ilaria; Prpic, Valter; Galmonte, Alessandra; Agostini, TizianoObjective: It is well-established that early visual information has an important role in human ability to play ball sports, as its correct interpretation promotes accurate predictions concerning the ball motion. Other research highlights that auditory information provides relevant cues in various sport situations. The present study combines these two lines of research with the aim to investigate the contribution of early auditory and visual information to the discrimination of shot power in sport-specific situations. Design: Two experiments were run, one concerning soccer penalty kicks and the other concerning volleyball smashes. In both experiments there were three conditions: Audio, Audiovideo, and Video; a within subjects design was used, with the three conditions carried out in three different days and in a counterbalanced order among participants. Method: Participants’ task was to discriminate the power of two penalties/smashes presented in rapid sequence, on the basis of a two-alternative forced choice paradigm. Results: The results revealed that, for both penalties and smashes, response accuracy was above chance level in all the three conditions; moreover, while for the penalties no difference among the conditions was observed, for the smashes participants were more accurate in the Audio and Audiovideo conditions compared to the Video condition. As concerns the response times, for both penalties and smashes participants were faster in the Audio and Audiovideo conditions compared to the Video condition. Conclusions: Taken together, the results suggest that the discrimination of shot power was more easily performed on the basis of early auditory information than on the basis of the respective visual information.Item Open Access Ecological sounds affect breath duration more than artificial sounds(Springer, 2015-01-31) Murgia, Mauro; Santoro, Ilaria; Tamburini, Giorgia; Prpic, Valter; Sors, Fabrizio; Galmonte, Alessandra; Agostini, TizianoPrevious research has demonstrated that auditory rhythms affect both movement and physiological functions. We hypothesized that the ecological sounds of human breathing can affect breathing more than artificial sounds of breathing, varying in tones for inspiration and expiration. To address this question, we monitored the breath duration of participants exposed to three conditions: (a) ecological sounds of breathing, (b) artificial sounds of breathing having equal temporal features as the ecological sounds, (c) no sounds (control). We found that participants’ breath duration variability was reduced in the ecological sound condition, more than in the artificial sound condition. We suggest that ecological sounds captured the timing of breathing better than artificial sounds, guiding as a consequence participants’ breathing. We interpreted our results according to the Theory of Event Coding, providing further support to its validity, and suggesting its possible extension in the domain of physiological functions which are both consciously and unconsciously controlled.Item Open Access Emotional Semantic Congruency based on stimulus driven comparative judgements(Elsevier, 2019-04-22) Fantoni, Carlo; Baldassi, Giulio; Rigutti, Sara; Prpic, Valter; Murgia, Mauro; Agostini, TizianoA 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.Item Open Access Further Empirical Evidence on Patrick Hughes’ Reverspectives: A Pilot Study(MDPI, 2020-12-26) Galmonte, Alessandra; Murgia, Mauro; Sors, Fabrizio; Prpic, Valter; Agostini, TizianoReverspectives are paintings created by the English artist Patrick Hughes. They are 3D structures, for example, pyramids or prisms, which elicit an illusory depth perception that corresponds to the reverse of the physical depth layout. Rogers and Gyani state that “the perspective information provided by a simple grid of vertical and horizontal lines on a slanting surface can be just as powerful as the information provided by a rich, naturalistic scene”. The present experiment was aimed to further investigate this perspective reversal. Three independent variables were manipulated: (1) texture components (i.e., vertical, horizontal, and oblique lines components), (2) texture spatial arrangement (i.e., Hughes-type “perspective” grid vs. equidistant “no perspective” grid), and (3) illumination direction (i.e., homogeneous illumination, light from above, and light from below). The dependent variable was the “critical distance”, namely, the distance between an approaching observer and the stimulus at which the illusory depth perception of concavity/convexity switched to the actual perception of convexity/concavity. The results showed that a stronger illusion is elicited by: (a) a Hughes-type texture spatial arrangement; (b) a complete grid texture composition, having both vertical and horizontal, and oblique components; and (c) illumination from below, as opposed to the condition in which light is coming from above.Item Open Access The Influence of Encoding and Testing Directions on Retrieval of Spatial Information in Explored and Described Environments(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Santoro, Ilaria; Sors, Fabrizio; Mingolo, Serena; Prpic, Valter; Grassi, Michele; Agostini, Tiziano; Murgia, MauroThe verbal descriptions of an environment elicit a spatial mental model, in which the linear disposition of the described objects might be related to the properties of the description. In particular the direction from which the environment is encoded might shape the spatial mental model, as a consequence of a cultural bias in reading and writing direction. The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of the direction in which objects are encoded on the retrieval of spatial information. In two experiments we asked participants to encode an environment through either physical exploration or verbal description, that are encoding modalities which preserve the sequential presentation of spatial information. We manipulated both the encoding and testing directions of the spatial information, and tested participants by using a two-alternative forced choice task. In both experiments, the results did not reveal any significant effect, disconfirming the idea of the left-right cultural bias for western people for this type of task. The lack of effect suggests that encoding an environment through physical movement and verbal descriptions determines the development of a mental representation which is relatively independent from encoding sequential order.Item Open Access Large as being on top of the world and small as hitting the roof: A shared magnitude representation for the comparison of emotions and numbers(Springer, 2020) Baldassi, Giulio; Murgia, Mauro; Prpic, Valter; Rigutti, Sara; Domijan, Drazen; Agostini, Tiziano; Fantoni, CarloPrevious work on the direct Speed–Intensity Association (SIA) on comparative judgment 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 judgments. 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 emotionalItem Open Access Loudness, but not shot power, influences simple reaction times to soccer penalty sounds(Drustvo psihologa Srbije, 2018) Sors, Fabrizio; Prpic, Valter; Santoro, Ilaria; Galmonte, Alessandra; Agostini, Tiziano; Murgia, MauroObjective: The aim of the present study was to investigate how ecological sport sounds (i.e., foot-ball impacts of soccer penalty kicks) affect simple reaction times. Design: Three within-subjects, simple reaction time experiments were carried out; they differed among each other for the manipulations performed on the stimuli. Method: In Experiment 1, the loudness of the stimuli was manipulated; instead, in Experiment 2 and 3 shot power was manipulated, using as stimuli impacts of shots with different speeds. Results: The results highlighted an inverse relation between stimuli loudness and reaction times; instead, the natural differences among shots with different power were not sufficient to influence reaction times. Conclusions: Sounds associated to different shot power seem to differ in parameters which are not actually relevant for simple reaction times. Future studies should further investigate on similar issues, better clarifying whether the properties of ecological sounds can naturally influence reaction times.Item Open Access Magnitude and Order are Both Relevant in SNARC and SNARC-like Effects: A Commentary on Casasanto and Pitt (2019)(Wiley, 2021-07-02) Prpic, Valter; Mingolo, Serena; Agostini, Tiziano; Murgia, MauroIn a recent paper by Casasanto and Pitt (2019), the authors addressed a debate regarding the role of order and magnitude in SNARC and SNARC-like effects. Their position is that all these effects can be explained by order, while magnitude could only account for a subset of evidence. Although we agree that order can probably explain the majority of these effects, in this commentary we argue that magnitude is still relevant, since there is evidence that cannot be explained based on ordinality alone. We argue that SNARC-like effects can occur for magnitudes not clearly characterized by overlearned ordinality and that magnitude can prevail on order, when the two are pitted against each other. Finally, we propose that different interpretations of the role of order and magnitude depend on the interaction of stimulus properties and task demands.Item Open Access Octave Bias in Pitch Perception: The Influence of Pitch Height on Pitch Class Identification(Sage, 2016-05-31) Prpic, Valter; Murgia, Mauro; De Tommaso, Matteo; Boschetti, Giulia; Galmonte, Alessandra; Agostini, TizianoPitch height and pitch class are different, but strictly related, percepts of music tones. To investigate the influence of pitch height in a pitch class identification task, we systematically analyzed the errors—in terms of direction and amount—committed by a group of musicians. The aim of our study was to verify the existence of constant errors in the identification of pitch classes across consecutive octaves. Stimuli were single piano tones from the C major scale executed in two consecutive octaves. Participants showed different response patterns in the two octaves. The direction of errors revealed a constant tendency to underestimate pitch classes in the lowest octave and to overestimate pitch classes in the highest octave. Thus, pitch height showed to influence pitch class identification. We called this bias ‘‘pitch class polarization’’, since the same pitch class was judged to be respectively lower and higher, depending on relatively low or high pitch height.Item Open Access Panic disorder patients and healthy people differently identify their own heart frequency through sound(Drustvo psihologa Srbije, 2015) Santoro, Ilaria; Murgia, Mauro; Tamburini, Giorgia; Prpic, Valter; Sors, Fabrizio; Galmonte, Alessandra; Agostini, TizianoThe ability to detect the perceptual cues related to cardiac activity is an important aspect related to the onset and maintenance of some psychopathological disorders, such as panic disorder. We tested two groups – panic disorder (PD) patients and healthy participants – in order to examine the ability to estimate participants’ own heart frequency. We used an auditory identification task, based on the administration of auditory tracks representative of ecological sounds of heartbeat. Results showed that all healthy participants underestimated their own heart frequency, whereas the majority of PD patients overestimated it. This different response tendency could influence the development of psychopathologies such as panic disorder. These outcomes suggest the possible development of training for PD patients based on the use of auditory stimulation.Item Open Access Perceptual belongingness determines the direction of lightness induction depending on grouping stability and intentionality(Elsevier, 2016-05-30) Murgia, Mauro; Prpic, Valter; Santoro, Ilaria; Sors, Fabrizio; Agostini, Tiziano; Galmonte, AlessandraContrast and assimilation are two opposite perceptual phenomena deriving from the relationships among perceptual elements in a visual field. In contrast, perceptual differences are enhanced; while, in assimilation, they are decreased. Indeed, if contrast or assimilation occurs depends on various factors. Interestingly, Gestalt scientists explained both phenomena as the result of perceptual belongingness, giving rise to an intriguing paradox. Benary suggested that belongingness determines contrast; conversely, Fuchs suggested that it determines assimilation. This paradox can be related both to the grouping stability (stable/multi-stable) and to the grouping intentionality (intentional/non-intentional). In the present work we ran four experiments to test whether the contrast/assimilation outcomes depend on the above-mentioned variables. We found that, intentionality and multi-stability elicit assimilation; while, non-intentionality and stability elicit contrast.Item Open Access Separate Mechanisms for Magnitude and Order Processing in the Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) Effect: The Strange Case of Musical Note Values(American Psychological Association, 2016) Prpic, Valter; Fumarola, Antonia; De Tommaso, Matteo; Luccio, Riccardo; Murgia, Mauro; Agostini, TizianoThe SNARC effect is considered an evidence of the association between numbers and space, with faster left key-press responses to small numbers and faster right key-press responses to large numbers. We examined whether visually presented note values produce a SNARC-like effect. Differently from numbers, note values are represented as a decreasing left-to-right progression, allowing us to disambiguate the contribution of order and magnitude in determining the direction of the effect. Musicians with formal education performed a note value comparison in Experiment 1 (direct task), a line orientation judgment in Experiment 2 (indirect task), and a detection task in Experiment 3 (indirect task). When note values were task relevant (direct task), participants responded faster to large note values with the left key-press, and vice versa. Conversely, when note values were task irrelevant (indirect tasks), the direction of this association was reversed. This evidence suggests the existence of separate mechanisms underlying the SNARC effect. Namely, an Order-Related Mechanism (ORM) and a Magnitude-Related Mechanism (MRM), that are revealed by different task demands. Indeed, according to a new model we proposed, ordinal and magnitude related information seem to be preferentially involved in direct and indirect tasks, respectively.Item Open Access SNARC-like compatibility effects for physical and phenomenal magnitudes: A study on visual illusions(Springer, 2018-12-03) Prpic, Valter; Soranzo, Alessandro; Santoro, Ilaria; Fantoni, Carlo; Galmonte, Alessandra; Agostini, Tiziano; Murgia, MauroBoth numerical and non-numerical magnitudes elicit similar Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effects, with small magnitudes associated with left hand responses and large magnitudes associated with right hand responses (Dehaene, Bossini, Giraux, 1993). In the present study, we investigated whether the phenomenal size of visual illusions elicits the same SNARC-like effect revealed for the physical size of pictorial surfaces. Four experiments were conducted by using the Delboeuf illusion (Experiment 1) and the Kanizsa triangle illusion (Experiments 2, 3 & 4). Experiment 1 suggests the presence of a SNARC-like compatibility effect for the physical size of the inducers, while this effect was not revealed for the phenomenal size of the induced elements, possibly masked by a stronger effect of the inducers. A SNARC-like effect for the phenomenal size of the Kanizsa triangle was revealed when participants directly compared the size of the triangles (Experiment 4). Conversely, when participants performed an indirect task (orientation judgment), the SNARC-like effect was present neither for the illusory nor for the physical displays (Experiments 2 & 3). The effect revealed for the size of illusory triangles was comparable to that of real triangles with physical contours, suggesting that both phenomenal and physical magnitudes similarly elicit SNARC-like effects.Item Open Access SNARCing with a phone: the role of order in spatial-numerical associations is revealed by context and task demands(American Psychological Association, 2021) Mingolo, Serena; Prpic, Valter; Bilotta, Eleonora; Fantoni, Carlo; Agostini, Tiziano; Murgia, MauroPrevious literature on the SNARC effect examined which factors modulate spatial-numerical associations. Recently, the role of order in the SNARC effect has been debated and further research is necessary to better understand its contribution. The present study investigated how the order elicited by the context of the stimuli and by task demands interact. Across three experiments, we presented numbers in the context of a mobile phone keypad, an overlearned numerical display in which the ordinal position of numbers differs from the mental number line. The experiments employed three tasks with different levels of consistency with the order elicited by the context. In Experiment 1, participants judged numbers based on their spatial position on the keypad, and we found a spatial association consistent with the keypad configuration, indicating that the spatial association is driven both by the context and by the task when they consistently elicit the same order. In Experiment 2a, participants performed a magnitude classification task and results revealed a lack of spatial associations, suggesting a conflict between the orders elicited by the context and by the task. In Experiment 2b, participants performed a parity judgement task and the results revealed a SNARC effect, suggesting that the order elicited by the context did not modulate the spatial association. Overall, three different tasks gave rise to three different results. This shows that the context alone is not sufficient in modulating spatial-numerical associations, but that the consistency between the orders elicited by context and task demands is a key factor.Item Open Access The Spatial Representation of Angles(Sage, 2016-08-05) Fumarola, Antonia; Prpic, Valter; Fornasier, Deanna; Sartoretto, Flavio; Agostini, Tiziano; Umilta, CarloWe investigated whether angle magnitude, similarly to numerical quantities (i.e., the spatial-numerical association of response codes effect), is associated to the side of response execution. In addition, we investigated whether this association has the properties of a spatially oriented mental line, since angles are taught in a right-to-left progression. We tested two groups of participants: civil engineering students (high familiarity with angles) and psychology students (low familiarity with angles). In Experiment 1, participants were asked to judge the continuity of the angles’ arms (continuous vs. dashed). Magnitude of the angles was task-irrelevant. In Experiment 2, they were asked to judge whether the presented angles were smaller or larger than a right angle (90 ). Therefore, the angle magnitude was relevant for performing the task. Overall, engineering students responded faster with their left hand to large angles and with their right hand to small angles. Conversely, psychology students did not show any reliable differences between left- and right-hand responses. In the case of engineering students, the spatial association has a right-to-left (counter clockwise) direction, suggesting the influence of education and practice on the mental representation of angle magnitude.Item Open Access University Students’ Hangover May Affect Cognitive Research(Frontiers, 2020-09-29) Murgia, Mauro; Mingolo, Serena; Prpic, Valter; Sors, Fabrizio; Santoro, Ilaria; Bilotta, Eleonora; Agostini, TizianoUniversity students are the most employed category of participants in cognitive research. However, researchers cannot fully control what their participants do the night before the experiments (e.g., consumption of alcohol) and, unless the experiment specifically concerns the effects of alcohol consumption, they often do not ask about it. Despite previous studies demonstrating that alcohol consumption leads to decrements in next-day cognitive abilities, the potential confounding effect of hangover on the validity of cognitive research has never been addressed. To address this issue, in the present study, a test-retest design was used, with two groups of university students: at T0, one group was constituted by hungover participants, while the other group was constituted by non-hungover participants; at T1, both groups were re-tested in a non-hangover state. In particular, the tests used were two versions of a parity judgment task and an arithmetic verification task. The results highlight that: (a) the response times of university students experiencing a hangover are significantly slower than those of non-hangover students and (b) the response times of hungover students are slower than those of the same students when re-tested in a non-hangover state. Additionally, it was also observed that the prevalence of hungover students in the university campus varies depending on the day of the week, with a greater chance of enrolling hungover participants on specific days. In light of the latter result, the recruitment of university students as participants in cognitive experiments might lead researchers to erroneously attribute their results to the variables they are manipulating, ignoring the effects of the potential hangover state.Item Metadata only Using perceptual home-training to improve anticipation skills of soccer goalkeepers(Elsevier, 2014-07-31) Murgia, Mauro; Sors, Fabrizio; Muroni, Alessandro Franco; Santoro, Ilaria; Prpic, Valter; Galmonte, Alessandra; Agostini, TizianoObjective: This study aims to test the effectiveness of a perceptual training concerning the anticipatory skills of soccer goalkeepers, by assessing their performances while engaged in predicting the direction of penalty kicks. Design: Forty-two skilled goalkeepers were randomly assigned to three training groups: Experimental, placebo, and control. All the groups were tested at the beginning of the experiment and re-tested after a period of eight weeks. Method: The pre-test consisted of the presentation of temporally occluded videos of penalties recorded from the goalkeeper's perspective, and participants had to predict the direction of the ball. The experimental group practiced with an interactive home-training, based on video analogous to those of the test, with the addition of both positive and negative feedback. The placebo group viewed television footage of penalty kick shoot-outs. Participants of both groups were free to schedule their own training/placebo sessions. Finally, the control group did not receive any treatment. Results: The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the home-training protocol, evidencing significant accuracy improvements between pre-test and post-test only for the experimental group. Conclusions: The outcomes indicate that skilled athletes can benefit from perceptual training, which was not investigated before among soccer goalkeepers. Indeed, all the previous training studies concerning soccer penalty predictions were run on participants with either recreational or no goalkeeping experience at all. Moreover, the present training protocol is innovative because learners can schedule training sessions on their own. Finally, its usability suggests numerous potential applications.Item Open Access Walking during the encoding of described environments enhances a heading-independent spatial representation(Elsevier, 2017-08-12) Santoro, Ilaria; Murgia, Mauro; Sors, Fabrizio; Prpic, Valter; Agostini, TizianoPrevious studies demonstrated that physical movement enhanced spatial updating in described environments. However, those movements were executed only after the encoding of the environment, minimally affecting the development of the spatial representation. Thus, we investigated whether and how participants could benefit from the execution of physical movement during the encoding of described environments, in terms of enhanced spatial updating. Using the judgement of relative directions task, we compared the effects of walking both during and after the description of the environment, and walking only after the description on spatial updating. Spatial updating was evaluated in terms of accuracy and response times in different headings. We found that the distribution of response times across Headings seemed not to be related to the physical movement executed, whereas the distribution of accuracy scores seemed to significantly change with the action executed. Indeed, when no movement occurred during the encoding of the environment, a preference for the learning heading was found, which did not emerge when walking during encoding occurred. Therefore, the results seem to suggest that physical movement during encoding supports the development of a heading-independent representation of described environments, reducing the anchoring for a preferred heading in favor of a global representation.