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Publications in Psychology & Cognitive Sciences by NOMIS researchers

Seeing entities without seeing n-entities

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

January 1, 2020

When seeing a jaguar, we can see all the spots on its mantle without seeing a determinate number, N, of spots on the mantle. How is this visual phenomenon possible? Philosophers have tried to provide a reliable answer to this question, by recruiting evidence from vision science about the way attention works. Here we push this idea forward, by suggesting that an alternative and less complex solution, with respect to the one proposed in the literature, is possible. In particular, we argue that the puzzling visual phenomenon of ‘seeing entities without seeing N-entities’ strictly depends on the specific number of entities we are simultaneously attending to: a problematic scenario concerning this visual process arises only when the number of entities in the visual field exceeds a specific quantity. This depends, as we argue, on the fact that the nature of our visual content is modulated, in this perceptual scenario, by the limited way we can exercise visual attention on the properties of the objects of our perception. Differently from other accounts, our proposal allows us to properly define when and why such a problem arises, and explains why such a situation has traditionally been found to be so puzzling. Our idea is also well motivated by experimental results that so far have not been taken into account in the debate.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

Wearing your heart on your screen: Investigating congruency-effects in autonomic responses and their role in interoceptive processing during biofeedback

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

January 1, 2020

The experience of one’s embodied sense of self is dependent on the integration of signals originating both from within and outwith one’s body. During the processing and integration of these signals, the bodily self must maintain a fine balance between stability and malleability. Here we investigate the potential role of autonomic responses in interoceptive processing and their contribution to the stability of the bodily self. Using a biofeedback paradigm, we manipulated the congruency of cardiac signals across two hierarchical levels: (i) the low-level congruency between a visual feedback and participant’s own cardiac signal and (ii) the high-level congruency between the participants’ beliefs about the identity of the cardiac feedback and its true identity. We measured the effects of these manipulations on high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), a selective index of phasic vagal cardiac control. In Experiment 1, HF-HRV was sensitive to low-level congruency, independently of whether participants attempted to regulate or simply attend to the biofeedback. Experiment 2 revealed a higher-level congruency effect, as participants’ prior veridical beliefs increased HF-HRV while when false they decreased HF-HRV. Our results demonstrate that autonomic changes in HF-HRV are sensitive to congruencies across multiple hierarchical levels. Our findings have important theoretical implications for predictive coding models of the self as they pave the way for a more direct way to track the subtle changes in the co-processing of the internal and external milieus.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104053

Shared responsibility in collective decisions

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

June 1, 2019

Research investigating collective decision-making has focused primarily on the improvement of accuracy in collective decisions and less on the motives that drive individuals to make these decisions. We argue that a strong but neglected motive for making collective decisions is minimizing the material and psychological burden of an individual’s responsibility. Making difficult decisions with others shields individuals from the consequences of negative outcomes by reducing regret, punishment and stress. Considering shared responsibility as a another key motivation to join groups helps understand behaviours with societal implications such as political voting, committing norm violations, predicting natural disasters and making health-related decisions.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1038/s41562-019-0596-4

Seeing myself through my heart: Cortical processing of a single heartbeat speeds up self-face recognition

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

May 1, 2019

Recent research has highlighted the contribution of interoceptive signals to different aspects of bodily self-consciousness (BSC) by means of the cardio-visual stimulation – i.e. perceiving a pulsing stimulus in synchrony with one’s own heart. Here, for the first time, we investigate the effects of individual heartbeats on a critical feature of BSC, namely the recognition of one’s own face. Across two studies, we explored the cardiac-timing effects on a classic self-face recognition task. In Study 1, participants saw morphed faces that contained different percentages of the self-face and that of another unfamiliar individual. Study 2 used a similar design, albeit participants saw morphed faces of the self-face and that of a familiar other to provide a better control of self-familiarity. Results from both studies consistently revealed that the cortical processing of cardiac afferent signals conveyed by the firing of arterial baroreceptors affects the speed, but not the accuracy, of self-face recognition, when a single picture is presented during cardiac systole, as compared to diastole. This effect is stronger and more stable for stimuli with more self-cues than other-cues and for ‘ambiguous’ stimuli – i.e. at the individual point of subjective equality. Results from Study 2 also revealed that cardiac effects on the speed of self-face recognition cannot be explained simply on the basis of the imbalanced familiarity between the self’s and other’s faces used. The present findings highlight the interoceptive contributions to self-recognition and may be expand our understanding of pathological disturbances of self-experience.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.03.006

The Warburg Dance Movement Library—The WADAMO Library: A Validation Study

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

January 1, 2019

The Warburg Dance Movement Library is a validated set of 234 video clips of dance movements for empirical research in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience of action perception, affect perception and neuroaesthetics. The library contains two categories of video clips of dance movement sequences. Of each pair, one version of the movement sequence is emotionally expressive (Clip a), while the other version of the same sequence (Clip b) is not expressive but as technically correct as the expressive version (Clip a). We sought to complement previous dance video stimuli libraries. Facial information, colour and music have been removed, and each clip has been faded in and out. We equalised stimulus length (6 seconds, 8 counts in dance theory), the dancers’ clothing and video background and included both male and female dancers, and we controlled for technical correctness of movement execution. The Warburg Dance Movement Library contains both contemporary and ballet movements. Two online surveys (N = 160) confirmed the classification into the two categories of expressivity. Four additional online surveys (N = 80) provided beauty and liking ratings for each clip. A correlation matrix illustrates all variables of this norming study (technical correctness, expressivity, beauty, liking, luminance, motion energy).

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1177/0301006618816631

Going at the heart of social cognition: is there a role for interoception in self-other distinction?

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

December 1, 2018

Interoception describes the processing and awareness of bodily signals arising from visceral organs, essential for the organism’s homeostatic needs. Beyond homeostasis, the integration of exteroceptive and interoceptive signals is required for the coherence of bodily self-awareness. Here we suggest that interoception also plays a critical role in social cognition. Relating to others as individuals who are distinct from one’s self requires the simultaneous yet distinct co-representation of self and others. We propose that interoceptive awareness appears to stabilise the mental representation of one’s self as distinct from others. A more nuanced understanding of the role of interoception in the representation of others in relation to ourselves is vital to determine its importance in social cognition.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Social Psychology

DOI
10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.04.008

Being a Beast Machine: The Somatic Basis of Selfhood

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

November 1, 2018

Modern psychology has long focused on the body as the basis of the self. Recently, predictive processing accounts of interoception (perception of the body ‘from within’) have become influential in accounting for experiences of body ownership and emotion. Here, we describe embodied selfhood in terms of ‘instrumental interoceptive inference’ that emphasises allostatic regulation and physiological integrity. We apply this approach to the distinctive phenomenology of embodied selfhood, accounting for its non-object-like character and subjective stability over time. Our perspective has implications for the development of selfhood and illuminates longstanding debates about relations between life and mind, implying, contrary to Descartes, that experiences of embodied selfhood arise because of, and not in spite of, our nature as ‘beast machines’.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1016/j.tics.2018.08.008

Non-political anger shifts political preferences towards stronger leaders

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

August 1, 2018

Past research has shown that anger is associated with support for confrontational and punitive responses during crises, and notably with the endorsement of authoritarian ideologies. One important question is whether it is anger generated specifically in a political context that explains the association between anger and specific political preferences or whether any feeling of anger would be associated with changes in political attitudes. Here, we tested the effect of non-politically motivated incidental anger on the preference for strong leaders. In line with past research, we predicted that anger would increase preferences for strong leaders. Across two experiments, we exposed participants to an anger induction task. Before and after this experimental manipulation, we measured participants’ political leader preferences by asking them to choose between the faces of two leaders they would vote for in a hypothetical election. The level of self-reported anger predicted the probability of choosing more dominant-looking and less trustworthy-looking leaders after the induction, suggesting that even non-political incidental anger increases preferences for strong leaders.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Social Psychology

DOI
10.1038/s41598-022-15765-8

Afferent cardiac signals modulate attentional engagement to low spatial frequency fearful faces

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

July 1, 2018

Despite the growing consensus that the continuous dynamic cortical representations of internal bodily states shape the subjective experience of emotions, physiological arousal is typically considered only a consequence and rarely a determinant of the emotional experience. Recent experimental approaches study how afferent autonomic signals from the heart modulate the processing of sensory information by focussing on the phasic properties of arterial baroreceptor firing that is active during cardiac systole and quiescent during cardiac diastole. For example, baroreceptor activation has been shown to enhance the processing of threat-signalling stimuli. Here, we investigate the role of cardiac afferent signals in the rapid engagement and disengagement of attention to fear stimuli. In an adapted version of the emotional attentional cueing paradigm, we timed the presentation of cues, either fearful or neutral faces, to coincide with the different phases of the cardiac cycle. Moreover, we presented cues with different spatial frequency ranges to investigate how these interoceptive signals influence the processing of visual information. Results revealed a selective enhancement of attentional engagement to low spatial frequency fearful faces presented during cardiac systole relative to diastole. No cardiac cycle effects were observed to high spatial frequency nor broad spatial frequency cues. These findings expand our mechanistic understanding of how body–brain interactions may impact the visual processing of fearful stimuli and contribute to the increased attentional capture of threat signals.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1016/j.cortex.2017.06.016

Longitudinal brain development of numerical skills in typically developing children and children with developmental dyscalculia

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

January 4, 2018

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a learning disability affecting the acquisition of numerical-arithmetical skills. Studies report persistent deficits in number processing and aberrant functional activation of the fronto-parietal numerical network in DD. However, the neural development of numerical abilities has been scarcely investigated. The present paper provides a first attempt to investigate behavioral and neural trajectories of numerical abilities longitudinally in typically developing (TD) and DD children. During a study period of 4 years, 28 children (8–11 years) were evaluated twice by means of neuropsychological tests and a numerical order fMRI paradigm. Over time, TD children improved in numerical abilities and showed a consistent and well-developed fronto-parietal network. In contrast, DD children revealed persistent deficits in number processing and arithmetic. Brain imaging results of the DD group showed an age-related activation increase in parietal regions (intraparietal sulcus), pointing to a delayed development of number processing areas. Besides, an activation increase in frontal areas was observed over time, indicating the use of compensatory mechanisms. In conclusion, results suggest a continuation in neural development of number representation in DD, whereas the neural network for simple ordinal number estimation seems to be stable or show only subtle changes in TD children over time.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.3389/fnhum.2017.00629

From the body’s viscera to the body’s image: Is there a link between interoception and body image concerns?

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

June 1, 2017

Interoception, the sense of the physiological condition of the body originating from within its internal organs, and body image, namely the perception, feelings and attitudes one has about one’s body, are two fundamental components of our sense of personal identity and overall well-being. However, the relation between interoception and body image remains poorly understood. We here review recent behavioural and neuroimaging evidence from non-clinical and clinical populations (e.g. eating disorders) to propose that basic interoceptive processes and interoceptive awareness may crucially contribute to the complex formation of body image, as well as to its disturbances. In particular, lower interoceptive accuracy and awareness are associated with body-image concerns. We provide a potential mechanistic explanation of the link between interoception and body image, which aims to integrate interoceptive and exteroceptive representations of the body. The suggested link between interoception and body image can inform new empirically testable hypotheses on the underlying neurocognitive processes that are central to body image concerns and disturbances, and motivate relevant clinical implications.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Behavioral Science & Comparative Psychology

DOI
10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.03.017

Cardiac afferent activity modulates the expression of racial stereotypes

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

January 17, 2017

Negative racial stereotypes tend to associate Black people with threat. This often leads to the misidentification of harmless objects as weapons held by a Black individual. Yet, little is known about how bodily states impact the expression of racial stereotyping. By tapping into the phasic activation of arterial baroreceptors, known to be associated with changes in the neural processing of fearful stimuli, we show activation of race-Threat stereotypes synchronized with the cardiovascular cycle. Across two established tasks, stimuli depicting Black or White individuals were presented to coincide with either the cardiac systole or diastole. Results show increased race-driven misidentification of weapons during systole, when baroreceptor afferent firing is maximal, relative to diastole. Importantly, a third study examining the positive Black-Athletic stereotypical association fails to demonstrate similar modulations by cardiac cycle. We identify a body-brain interaction wherein interoceptive cues can modulate threat appraisal and racially biased behaviour in context-dependent ways.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1038/ncomms13854

Mentalizing homeostasis: The social origins of interoceptive inference

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in

January 1, 2017

Is the self already relational in its very bodily foundations? The question of whether our mental life is initially and primarily shaped by embodied dimensions of the individual or by interpersonal relations is debated in many fields, including psychology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and more recently, cognitive neuroscience. In this interdisciplinary target article, we put forward the radical claim that even some of the most minimal aspects of selfhood, namely the feeling qualities associated with being an embodied subject, are fundamentally shaped by embodied interactions with other people in early infancy and beyond. Such embodied interactions allow the developing organism to mentalize its homeostatic regulation. In other words, embodied interactions contribute directly to the building of mental models of the infant’s physiological states, given the need to maintain such states within a given dynamic range despite internal or external perturbations. Specifically, our position rests on the following three propositions: (1) the progressive integration and organization of sensory and motor signals constitutes the foundations of the minimal self, a process which we have linked to contemporary, computational models of brain function and named “embodied mentalization”; (2) interactions with other people are motivated and constrained by the same principles that govern the “mentalization” of sensorimotor signals in the individual-and hence the mentalization of one’s body can include signals from other bodies in physical proximity and interaction, especially in interaction with particular bodies. (3) Crucially, given the dependency of humans in early infancy, there is a “homeostatically necessary” plethora of such embodied “proximal” interactions, especially as regards interoception. Collectively, such experiences of proximal intercorporeality “sculpt” the mentalization process and hence the constitution of the minimal self, including the progressive sophistication of mental distinctions between “subject-object,” “self-other” and even “pleasure-pain.” Finally, we explore notions of cardiac and more broadly interoceptive awareness as later, cognitive acquisitions that allow us to progressively solidify such distinctions, as well as understand and empathise with other people.

Research field(s)
Health Sciences, Psychology & Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology

DOI
10.1080/15294145.2017.1294031

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