https://hdl.handle.net/10481/14935 Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:52:23 GMT 2026-04-11T09:52:23Z https://hdl.handle.net/10481/112697 When gaze conflicts with space: Implicit eye contact and the reversed congruency effect Marotta, Andrea; Chacón Candia, Jeannete The human ability to perceive and interpret others’ gaze direction is crucial for social interaction and may rely on specialized attentional mechanisms. A particularly striking finding in this domain is the reversed congruency effect (RCE), in which responses are faster when gaze direction and spatial position are incongruent. Two experiments (44 participants each) tested how gaze deviation modulates this effect to test two competing accounts: the eye-contact hypothesis, which attributes the RCE to implicit misperceptions of direct gaze, and the joint-attention hypothesis, which links it to shared attention toward a common focus. Participants performed a spatial interference task in which faces displayed either partially or fully averted gaze. A robust RCE emerged for partially averted gaze, while the effect was reduced for fully averted ones, a pattern that constrains competing accounts of the RCE. Subjective ratings confirmed that subtle deviations were perceived as more direct, but congruency did not affect explicit judgments of being looked at. This dissociation suggests that the RCE may reflect implicit processes related to the social interpretation of gaze rather than explicit awareness, providing constraints on competing accounts of gaze-based attention. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/112697 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/112336 Unifying temporal preparation: The temporal preparation task (TEP-Task) Capizzi, Mariagrazia; Attout, Lucie; Mioni, Giovanna; Charras, Pom The dynamic nature of our environment allows us to anticipate the onset of relevant events, enhancing our responses to them. Temporal preparation can be assessed in the laboratory using various tasks, including foreperiod tasks, temporal orienting tasks, and rhythmic tasks. However, the existing literature lacks a unified task to measure the most common temporal preparation effects (i.e., foreperiod, sequential, temporal orienting, and rhythmic effects) in a single session. The main goal of the present study was to fill this gap by devising the temporal preparation task (TEP-Task) to measure temporal preparation effects in a single 35-min testing session. Besides its utility in single-session assessments, the TEP-Task may also serve for future research across diverse populations and experimental demands. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/112336 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/112186 Exploring episodic specificity induction on divergent thinking in children Tomás, Guillermo; Bajo Molina, María Teresa; Marful Quiroga, María Alejandra Previous studies suggest that Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI) improves the recall of episodic details and facilitates transfer to other cognitive tasks requiring episodic thinking (i.e., divergent thinking). However, the only study examining an adapted future-oriented ESI in children has failed to show benefits in subsequent cognitive tasks. To investigate this, two experiments were conducted using the standard ESI protocol with children. Experiment 1 tested second graders, fifth graders, and young adults using children-adapted materials (i.e., TV cartoons), while Experiment 2 tested fifth graders using non-adapted materials. Both experiments confirmed that ESI improved the recall of episodic details compared to a control condition. Additionally, developmental differences in episodic recall in Experiment 1 disappeared after controlling for total verbal production, suggesting that children’s episodic memory benefits when recalling materials that are child-friendly. Conversely, unexpected findings regarding transfer effect to divergent thinking revealed no transfer effects in Experiment 2 (non-adapted materials) and a significant increase in idea fluency and flexibility following the control condition in Experiment 1 (children-adapted materials). This result may be explained by a positive mood induction, as general questions accompanied by child-friendly videos could enhance creative performance following the control condition. These findings highlight the importance of carefully selecting and adapting ESI materials to children population in future studies. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/112186 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111921 Do picture books affect counting directionality in preliterate children? Developmental course and potential mechanisms Santiago De Torres, Julio Ramón; Jiménez Carvelo, Ana María; Rivera, Laura; Serrano Chica, Francisca Why the number line in preliterate children is already consistent with the direction of the script? Here we aimed to 1) show that being read a mirror-printed picture book is able to change lateral biases in counting; 2) trace the development of preliterate biases; and 3) test the role of mental model construction processes. Spanish-speaking 3 and 4 year-olds (N = 155, white, 87 female) carried out a task of counting a row of objects and a task in which they built a toy scene before and after being exposed to a mirror-reversed storybook. The left-to-right or right-to-left direc­ tionality of their responses was recorded. Only the older group showed pre-test lateral biases. The mirror book changed the lateral biases in counting, and induced a congruent, but smaller change in the model construction task. The two tasks did not correlate, against the implication of shared mechanisms in them. This study was funded by grants PSI2015-67531-P to Julio Santiago, and PID2021-126589OB-I00 to Francisca Serrano, MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and “ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) A way of making Europe.” https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111921 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111910 Action and abstraction: Motor interference changes meaning in language understanding Solana, Pablo; Escámez, Omar; Vigliocco, Gabriella; Casasanto, Daniel; Santiago De Torres, Julio Ramón Can the body shape meaning? Eight experiments (four preregistered) tested whether interfering with the motor system changes how people interpret language about actions. Participants (total N = 880) rhythmically moved their hands or feet while being presented with sentences describing hand or foot actions (e.g., “scoring a goal in soccer”) and asked to choose between two interpretations of their meaning: one more concrete (e.g., ”kicking a ball“) and another more abstract (e.g., ”winning a match“). Despite not all experiments showed significant results, the overall pattern revealed effector-specific effects of motor interference on meaning construction, which were further modulated by the amount of delay between the sentences and their interpretations. When the delay was short (200 ms), participants chose more concrete interpretations for described actions that involved the same effector being moved. In contrast, when the delay was long (15 s), participants who moved their feet chose more abstract interpretations for foot-related sentences. Although preliminary, these results provide the first evidence that motor action can cause qualitative changes in sentence understanding, consistent with the functional role of the motor system in lexical semantics suggested by embodiment theories. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111910