Erroneous saccade co-execution during manual action control is independent of oculomotor stimulus-response translation ease.

Recent multiple action control studies have demonstrated difficulties with single-action (vs. dual-action) execution when accompanied by the requirement to inhibit a prepotent additional response (e.g.

Flipping the script: Action-plan modification during single- and multiple-action control.

In this paper, we tested the idea that local changes in action demands (e.g., due to an invalid cue or trial-by-trial) result in frugal modifications of existing action plans via action-plan-modification operations.

Dual-Action Costs and Benefits in a Uni-Modal Single-Onset Paradigm.

While performing two actions at the same time has mostly been associated with reduced performance, several recent studies have observed the effect, that is, dual-action . Previous evidence suggests that dual-action benefits result from single-action inhibitory costs - more specifically, it appears that under certain circumstances, single-action representations are derived from dual-action representations by removing (i.e.

Preparing for simultaneous action and inaction: Temporal dynamics and target levels of inhibitory control.

When a single action is required, along with the simultaneous inhibition of another action, this typically results in frequent false-positive executions of the latter (inhibition failures). The absence of inhibitory demands in dual-action trials can render performance less error-prone (and sometimes faster) than in single-action trials. In the present study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of inhibitory control difficulties by varying the preparation time (for simultaneous action execution and inhibition).

Explaining dual-action benefits: Inhibitory control and redundancy gains as complementary mechanisms.

Performing two actions at the same time usually results in performance costs. However, recent studies have also reported dual-action benefits: performing only one of two possible actions may necessitate the inhibition of the initially activated, but unwarranted second action, leading to single-action costs. Presumably, two preconditions determine the occurrence and strength of such inhibition-based dual-action benefits: (a) response set reductivity and (b) action prepotency.

Don't look at me like that: Integration of gaze direction and facial expression.

Efficient decoding of facial expressions and gaze direction supports reactions to social environments. Although both cues are processed fast and accurately, when and how these cues are integrated is still debated. We investigated the temporal integration of gaze and emotion cues.

Dual-action benefits: global (action-inherent) and local (transient) sources of action prepotency underlying inhibition failures in multiple action control.

Previous research has shown that the simultaneous execution of two actions (instead of only one) is not necessarily more difficult but can actually be easier (less error-prone), in particular when executing one action requires the simultaneous inhibition of another action. Corresponding inhibitory demands are particularly challenging when the to-be-inhibited action is highly prepotent (i.e.

Representing action in terms of what not to do: Evidence for inhibitory coding during multiple action control.

Performing two actions at the same time (vs. in isolation) usually results in performance costs. However, recent studies have reported that it is also possible to observe dual-action benefits, a finding that challenges standard theories of multiple action control.

Crossing Gender Borders: Bidirectional Dynamic Interaction Between Face-Based and Voice-Based Gender Categorization.

The processing of voices and faces is known to interact, for example, when recognizing other persons. However, few studies focus on both directions of this interaction, including the influence of incongruent visual stimulation on voice perception. In the present study, we implemented an interference paradigm involving 1152 videos of faces with either gender-congruent or gender-incongruent voices.

Gaze interaction: anticipation-based control of the gaze of others.

Gaze control is an important component of social communication, e.g. to direct someone's attention.

Are Face-Incongruent Voices Harder to Process?

Based on current integration theories of face-voice processing, the present study had participants process 1,152 videos of faces uttering digits. Half of the videos contained face-voice gender-incongruent stimuli (vs. congruent stimuli in the other half).

The hard work of doing nothing: Accounting for inhibitory costs during multiple action control.

Performing many actions at the same time is usually associated with performance costs. However, recent eye-tracking evidence indicates that under specific conditions, inhibiting a secondary response can be more costly than executing it, resulting in dual-action benefits. Here, we show that performance gains due to the absence of inhibitory control demands in dual-action trials are not limited to saccades as a response modality.

Aesthetic appreciation of poetry correlates with ease of processing in event-related potentials.

Rhetorical theory suggests that rhythmic and metrical features of language substantially contribute to persuading, moving, and pleasing an audience. A potential explanation of these effects is offered by "cognitive fluency theory," which stipulates that recurring patterns (e.g.

Aesthetic and emotional effects of meter and rhyme in poetry.

Metrical patterning and rhyme are frequently employed in poetry but also in infant-directed speech, play, rites, and festive events. Drawing on four line-stanzas from nineteenth and twentieth German poetry that feature end rhyme and regular meter, the present study tested the hypothesis that meter and rhyme have an impact on aesthetic liking, emotional involvement, and affective valence attributions. Hypotheses that postulate such effects have been advocated ever since ancient rhetoric and poetics, yet they have barely been empirically tested.

Neural correlates of morphosyntactic and verb-argument structure processing: an EfMRI study.

In the current study, we investigated the processing of ungrammatical sentences containing morphosyntactic and verb-argument structure violations in an fMRI paradigm. In the morphosyntactic condition, participants listened to German perfect tense sentences with morphosyntactic violations which were neither related to finiteness nor to agreement but which were based on a syntactic feature mismatch between two verbal elements. When compared to correct sentences, morphosyntactically ungrammatical sentences elicited an increase in brain activity in the left middle to posterior superior temporal gyrus (STG).

Auditory processing of different types of pseudo-words: an event-related fMRI study.

Imaging results on real word and pseudo-word processing have been heterogeneous, allowing only cautious claims about the neuroanatomical loci of lexico-semantic processing. In order to shed more light on this issue, we examined the impact of different structures of non-lexical stimuli on the outcome of comparisons between such items and matched real words. We anticipated that the degree to which a pseudo-word still resembles a particular real word template determines how word-like it is processed.