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Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) display difficulties in perception-action coupling when engaging in tasks requiring predictive timing. We investigated the influence of awareness on auditory-motor adjustments to small and large rhythmic perturbations in the auditory sequence to examine whether children synchronize their movements automatically or through planning and whether those adjustments occur consciously or subconsciously. Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to assess functional connectivity patterns underlying different adjustment strategies. Thirty-two children aged 7-11 participated, including children with DCD and their typically developing (TD) peers with and without musical training. All children automatically adjusted their motor responses to small rhythmic perturbations by employing the anticipatory mode, even when those changes were consciously undetectable. Planned adjustments occurred only when children consciously detected large fluctuations (Δ 20%), which required a shift from predictive to reactive strategies. Compared to TD peers, children with DCD showed reduced interhemispheric connectivity during planned adjustments and displayed similar neural patterns regardless of task constraints. Notably, they benefited from rhythmic entrainment despite having increased variability and lower perceptual acuity. Musical training was associated with enhanced auditory-perceptual timing, reduced variability, and increased interhemispheric coherence. These insights are important for the therapeutic application of auditory/rhythm-based interventions in children with DCD., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The movements of phonation structures (e.g., tongue) have been shown to facilitate compatible hand movements. For example, reaction time (RT) of precision and power hand grips (made with tips of thumb and finger vs. whole hand) are shortened with the production of syllables that share similar action features (e.g., employing the proximal vs. dorsal portion of the tongue, respectively). This effect is coined the articulation-grip correspondence (AGC) effect. However, it is not known if the AGC effect is due to action facilitation vs. interference, and if such facilitation/ interference is due to covertly or overtly reading the syllable. To answer the associated empirical questions, the present experiment involved participants initiating a precision or power grip without the covert/ overt reading of a syllable, or while covertly or overtly reading the syllable /ti/ or /ka/. In both the covert and overt reading conditions, there were longer RTs for precision grips with the syllable /ka/ than /ti/, and there were longer RTs for power grips with the syllable /ti/. In contrast, the syllable /ti/ or /ka/ did not alter precision or power grip RTs, respectively. These findings support the notion of articulation-grip interference but not facilitation and that such interference can be observed with covert (silent) reading., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Introduction: Body-related shame is a negative self-conscious emotion that is heightened during adolescence and is associated with several adverse outcomes. Of particular interest, and informed by Objectification Theory, body-related shame may impact attentional focus because the experience of this intense emotion may limit cognitive resources required to effectively engage in tasks. The purpose of the present study was to examine the association between body-related shame and attentional focus over time during adolescence., Methods: Adolescents (n = 160; M age  ± SD = 16.05 ± 0.98; 80% self-identifying girls) completed an online survey in 2022 at baseline (Time 1) and 3 months later (Time 2). Stepwise regression was used to test the association between body-related shame and attentional focus, with weight perception included as a covariate., Results: The regression model demonstrated that higher body-related shame predicted poorer attentional focus 3 months later (β = -0.44, p < .001), after controlling for weight perception (14% variance explained in attention)., Conclusions: Findings support and extend theoretical tenets by highlighting the potential importance of targeting body-related shame to reduce the negative impact on attentional focus among adolescents., (© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Adolescence published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Foundation for Professionals in Services to Adolescents.)

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. Participants responded to letters that were randomly presented on four faces. Two of these faces initially showed direct gaze, two showed averted gaze. Upon target presentation, two faces changed gaze direction (from averted to direct and vice versa). Simultaneously, facial expressions changed from neutral to either an approach- or an avoidance-oriented emotion expression (Experiment 1a: angry/fearful; Experiment 1b: happy/disgusted). Although angry and fearful expressions diminished any effects of gaze direction (Experiment 1a), a direct gaze advantage was found for happy and an averted gaze advantage for disgusted faces (Experiment 1b). This pattern is consistent with hypotheses suggesting a processing benefit when emotion expression and gaze information are congruent in terms of approach- or avoidance-orientation. In Experiment 2, we tracked eye movements and, again, found evidence for an approach-avoidance-congruency advantage for happy and disgusted faces both in performance and gaze behavior. Gaze behavior analyses suggested an integration of gaze and emotion information that was already visible from 300 ms after target onset. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study was designed to gain a deeper understanding of the processing of biological motion stimuli. To this end, we investigated if the inhibition of return (IoR) effect emerges in initiation times and trajectories of pointing movements to targets in left and right space where the preceding cues were pointing movement of a human model or a dot with the same biological motion. Targets were randomly presented in the same or opposite side from the direction of the motion cue. It was hypothesised that the visuomotor system should resonate with the biological motion of a dot, but that the human model should exaggerate the effect. Thus, the human model should trigger stronger attention shifts compared with the dot model and lead to more robust IoR effects in both spatial (movement) and temporal parameters of the observer's pointing responses. Initiation times and the spatial parameters (angle of the hand trajectory) of the pointing movements were analysed. Results indicate that facilitation and IoR effects triggered by human and dot stimuli did not differ. Based on these findings, it seems that the crucial feature of motion cues that generate shifts in attention is biological motion, rather than human appearance per se., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 The University of Queensland. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Biological motion is salient to the human visual and motor systems and may be intrinsic to the perception of animacy. Evidence for the salience of visual stimuli moving with trajectories consistent with biological motion comes from studies showing that such stimuli can trigger shifts of attention in the direction of that motion. The present study was conducted to determine whether or not top-down beliefs about animacy can modify the salience of a nonbiologically moving stimulus to the visuomotor system. A nonpredictive cuing task was used in which a white dot moved from a central location toward a left- or right-sided target placeholder. The target randomly appeared at either location 200, 600, or 1,300 ms after the motion onset. Five groups of participants experienced different stimulus conditions: (1) biological motion, (2) inverted biological motion, (3) nonbiological motion, (4) animacy belief (paired with nonbiological motion), and (5) computer-generated belief (paired with nonbiological motion). Analysis of response times revealed that the motion in the biological motion and animacy belief groups, but not in the inverted and nonbiological motion groups, affected processing of the target information. These findings indicate that biological motion is salient to the visual system and that top-down beliefs regarding the animacy of the stimulus can tune the visual and motor systems to increase the salience of nonbiological motion.

The direction of gaze towards or away from an observer has immediate effects on attentional processing in the observer. Previous research indicates that faces with direct gaze are processed more efficiently than faces with averted gaze. We recently reported additional processing advantages for faces that suddenly adopt direct gaze (abruptly shift from averted to direct gaze) relative to static direct gaze (always in direct gaze), sudden averted gaze (abruptly shift from direct to averted gaze), and static averted gaze (always in averted gaze). Because changes in gaze orientation in previous study co-occurred with changes in head orientation, it was not clear if the effect is contingent on face or eye processing, or whether it requires both the eyes and the face to provide consistent information. The present study delineates the impact of head orientation, sudden onset motion cues, and gaze cues. Participants completed a target-detection task in which head position remained in a static averted or direct orientation while sudden onset motion and eye gaze cues were manipulated within each trial. The results indicate a sudden direct gaze advantage that resulted from the additive role of motion and gaze cues. Interestingly, the orientation of the face towards or away from the observer did not influence the sudden direct gaze effect, suggesting that eye gaze cues, not face orientation cues, are critical for the sudden direct gaze effect.

Aspects of spatial cognition, specifically spatial skills, are strongly correlated with interest and success in STEM courses and STEM-related professions. Because growth in STEM-related industries is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, it is important to develop evidence-based and theoretically grounded methods and interventions that can help train relevant spatial skills. In this article, we discuss research showing that aspects of spatial cognition are embodied and how these findings and theoretical developments can be used to influence the design of tangible and embodied interfaces (TEIs). TEIs seek to bring interaction with digital content off the screen and into the physical environment. By incorporating physical movement and tangible feedback in digital systems, TEIs can leverage the relationship between the body and spatial cognition to engage, support, or improve spatial skills. We use this knowledge to define a design space for TEIs that engage spatial cognition and illustrate how TEIs that are designed and evaluated from a spatial cognition perspective can expand the design space in ways that contribute to the fields of cognitive science and human computer interaction.

Although humans typically move more slowly as they age, one exception may be the saccadic motor system. To fully determine whether the execution of saccades is affected by age, the authors examined detailed kinematics of vertical and horizontal saccades across a range of saccadic amplitudes (4 degrees, 8 degrees, and 12 degrees). Ten younger and 20 older adults participated in each experiment. Whereas in the 1st experiment, the authors assessed volitionally generated saccades, in the 2nd experiment, they evaluated reflexively generated saccades. The results of those experiments showed that the saccadic motor system is relatively impervious to the effects of aging; in fact, the differences between vertical and horizontal saccades were more evident than were differences between saccades produced by younger and older adults. The authors discuss possible reasons for that relative resistance to aging.

Consistent with action-based theories of attention, the presence of a nontarget stimulus in the environment has been shown to alter the characteristics of goal-directed movements. Specifically, it has been reported that movement trajectories veer away from (Howard & Tipper, 1997) or towards (Welsh, Elliott, & Weeks, 1999) the location of a nontarget stimulus. The purpose of the experiments reported in this paper was to test a response activation model of selective reaching conceived to account for these variable results. In agreement with the model, the trajectory changes in the movements appear to be determined by the activation levels of each competing response at the moment of response initiation. The results of the present work, as well as those of previous studies, are discussed within the framework of the model of response activation.