Beauty ideals modulate recognition of filtered images.

Social media has affected how we relate to our body image. Digital makeovers have both reinforced existing beauty ideals and created new ones. This project investigated whether young adults' recognition of image filters was associated by the beliefs of beauty ideals and gender.

Children's self and other's body perception: Effects of familiarity and gender on how children perceive adults.

Our ability to perceive our own and other people's bodies is critical to the success of social interactions. Research has shown that adults have a distorted perception of their own body and those of other adults. However, these studies ask perceivers to estimate for adults with a similar bodily make-up.

The Social Reach: 8-Month-Olds Reach for Unobtainable Objects in the Presence of Another Person.

Linguistic communication builds on prelinguistic communicative gestures, but the ontogenetic origins and complexities of these prelinguistic gestures are not well known. The current study tested whether 8-month-olds, who do not yet point communicatively, use instrumental actions for communicative purposes. In two experiments, infants reached for objects when another person was present and when no one else was present; the distance to the objects was varied.

Synchronous imitation of continuous action sequences: The role of spatial and topological mapping.

What are the mapping mechanisms that enable people to synchronously imitate continuous action sequences observed in others? We investigated this question in 4 experiments that used a tapping task where participants synchronously performed alternating bimanual hand movements with a model presented in an egocentric or allocentric orientation. Their task was to tap in synchrony, with each hand matching the movements of the ipsilateral model hand as closely as possible. The results show that automatic establishment of topological mappings, where the performer's hand is mapped onto the model's anatomically matching hand even if the 2 are spatially misaligned, can interfere with maintaining spatial mappings (Experiments 1 and 2).

Development of interpersonal coordination between peers during a drumming task.

During social interaction, the behavior of interacting partners becomes coordinated. Although interpersonal coordination is well-studied in adults, relatively little is known about its development. In this project we explored how 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children spontaneously coordinated their drumming with a peer.

Scaling up perception-action links: Evidence from synchronization with individual and joint action.

How do we map joint actions we participate in onto joint actions we observe others performing, such as when a couple dancing tango observes another couple dancing tango? We investigated this question using a task in which participants were instructed to perform individual or joint movements in synchrony with individual or joint movements observed on a computer screen. The observed movements started slowly and then continuously increased in tempo (from 1.75 Hz to 3 Hz).

A perceptual-motor deficit predicts social and communicative impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have known impairments in social and motor skills. Identifying putative underlying mechanisms of these impairments could lead to improved understanding of the etiology of core social/communicative deficits in ASDs, and identification of novel intervention targets. The ability to perceptually integrate one's physical capacities with one's environment (affordance perception) may be such a mechanism.

Interpersonal and intrapersonal coordinative modes for joint and single task performance.

In recent years, research in the field of social interactions has focused on the exploration of the coordinative structures that substantiate joint task performance. The current project explores whether interpersonal coordination during joint task performance gives rise to a joint coordinative structure across individuals, and whether such coordinative structures are affected by task demands. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to identify relevant interpersonal and intrapersonal coordinative modes for the single and joint performance of a supra-postural task, which varied along its precision and role demands.

Interpersonal synergies.

We present the perspective that interpersonal movement coordination results from establishing interpersonal synergies. Interpersonal synergies are higher-order control systems formed by coupling movement system degrees of freedom of two (or more) actors. Characteristic features of synergies identified in studies of intrapersonal coordination - dimensional compression and reciprocal compensation - are revealed in studies of interpersonal coordination that applied the uncontrolled manifold approach and principal component analysis to interpersonal movement tasks.

Joint action in a cooperative precision task: nested processes of intrapersonal and interpersonal coordination.

The authors determined the effects of changes in task demands on interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination. Participants performed a joint task in which one participant held a stick to which a circle was attached at the top (holding role), while the other held a pointer through the circle without touching its borders (pointing role). Experiment 1 investigated whether interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination varied depending on task difficulty.

Emergence of collective memories.

Background: We understand the dynamics of the world around us as by associating pairs of events, where one event has some influence on the other. These pairs of events can be aggregated into a web of memories representing our understanding of an episode of history. The events and the associations between them need not be directly experienced-they can also be acquired by communication.

Perceiving action boundaries: learning effects in perceiving maximum jumping-reach affordances.

Coordinating with another person requires that one can perceive what the other is capable of doing. This ability often benefits from opportunities to practice and learn. Two experiments were conducted in which we investigated perceptual learning in the context of perceiving the maximum height to which an actor could jump to reach an object.

Carrying the height of the world on your ankles: encumbering observers reduces estimates of how high an actor can jump.

The authors investigated how changes in action capabilities affect estimation of affordances for another actor. Observers estimated maximum jumping-reach height for themselves and another actor. Half of the observers wore ankle weights that reduced their jumping ability.

An information-based approach to action understanding.

It has been proposed that the ability to make sense of other agents' behavior relies on the activation of internal mechanisms that map action perception onto action execution. In this study we explored the constraints on this ability introduced by eyeheight-scaled information in the optic array. Short and tall participants provided maximum overhead reaching judgments for themselves and another participant.

Postural responses to specific types of working memory tasks.

Standing participants performed working memory tasks that varied along three dimensions: (1) type of information presented (verbal or visual); (2) the primary cognitive process engaged (encoding or rehearsal); and (3) interference that targeted the working memory components (phonological loop and visual sketchpad) believed primarily active during rehearsal. Postural sway variability decreased during rehearsal and increased during encoding. The effects during encoding, but not during rehearsal, differed for verbal versus visual material.