The stereotype of women's limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although laboratory tests prove men's average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at different parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. Performance is related to mental rotation skills and self-assessment in beginners, but only to self-assessment in more experienced drivers. We assume that, due to differential feedback, self-assessment incrementally replaces the controlling influence of mental rotation, as parking is trained with increasing experience. Results suggest that sex differences in spatial cognition persist in real-life situations, but that socio-psychological factors modulate the biological causes of sex differences.

Object substitution masking (OSM) is a form of visual masking in which a briefly presented target surrounded by four small dots is masked by the continuing presence of the four dots after target offset. A major parameter in the prediction of OSM is the time required for attention to be directed to the target following its onset. Object substitution theory (Di Lollo et al. in J Exp Psychol Gen 129:481-507, 2000) predicts that the sooner attention can be focused at the target's location, the less masking will ensue. However, recently Luiga and Bachmann (Psychol Res 71:634-640, 2007) presented evidence that precueing of attention to the target location prior to target-plus-mask onset by means of a central (endogenous) arrow cue does not reduce OSM. When attention was cued exogenously, OSM was attenuated. Based on these results, Luiga and Bachmann argued that object substitution theory should be adapted by differentiating the ways of directing attention to the target location. The goal of the present study was to further examine the dissociation between the effects of endogenous and exogenous precueing on OSM. Contrary to Luiga and Bachmann, our results show that prior shifts of attention to the target location initiated by both exogenous and endogenous cues reduce OSM as predicted by object substitution theory and its computational model CMOS.

Previous studies claimed that task representation is carried out by the activated long-term memory portion of working memory (WM; Meiran and Kessler in J Exp Psychol Human Percept Perform 34:137-157, 2008). The present study provides a more direct support for this hypothesis. We used the reaction-time task-rule congruency effect (RT-TRCE) in a task-switching setup, and tested the effects of loading WM with irrelevant task rules on RT-TRCE. Experiment 1 manipulated WM load in a between-subject design. WM participants performed a color/shape task switching, while having 0, 1 or 3 numerical task rules as WM load. Experiment 2 used a similar load manipulation (1 or 3 rules to load WM) in a within-subject design. Experiment 3 extended these results by loading WM with perceptual tasks that were more similar to the shape/color tasks. The results show that RT-TRCE was not affected by WM load supporting the activated long-term memory hypothesis.

Biological motion perception is influenced by observers' familiarity with the observed action. Here, we used classical dance as a means to investigate how visual and motor experience modulates perceptual mechanism for configural processing of actions. Although some ballet moves are performed by only one gender, male and female dancers train together and acquire visual knowledge of all ballet moves. Twenty-four expert ballet dancers (12 female) and matched non-expert participants viewed pairs of upright and inverted point light female and common dance movements. Visual discrimination between different exemplars of the same movement presented upright was significantly better in experts than controls, whilst no differences were found when the same stimuli were presented upside down. These results suggest expertise influences configural action processing. Within the expert group, effects were stronger for female participants than for males, whilst no differences were found between movement types. This observer gender effect could suggest an additional role for motor familiarity in action perception, over and above the visual experience. Our results are consistent with a specific motor contribution to configural processing of action.

The central bottleneck model assumes that in the psychological refractory paradigm, Task 1 performance is independent of Task 2 demands. Previous studies, however, have reported backward crosstalk effects of motor demands in Task 2 on Task 1 performance. These effects have been attributed to interference at the central level. The present study aimed to isolate more directly potential backward effects at the motor level. Therefore, in three experiments, movement distance in Task 2 was manipulated using a guided ballistic movement. The results showed that movement distance in Task 2 affected reaction time as well as response duration in Task 1. It is argued that the backward effect observed in this study is due to response coupling at motor rather than central levels.

In counter updating tasks, responses are typically faster when items repeat than when they change (item switch costs). The present study explored the contribution of stimulus-response bindings to these item switch costs. In two experiments, we orthogonally manipulated the repetition/switch of to-be-counted items and the repetition/switch of required manual responses. Item switch costs were considerably lower when item switches were accompanied by response switches than when accompanied by response repetitions. Experiment 2 showed that, although there was also a smaller contribution from stimulus-stimulus bindings (i.e., shape-location), the major part was due to stimulus-response bindings. These results show that in the widely used standard version of the counter updating task, a considerable portion of item switch costs is caused by the unbinding of stimulus-response bindings rather than by processes of switching items in working memory.

At the phenomenal level, consciousness arises in a consistently coherent fashion as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness (subjectivity) with explicitly orientational characteristics--that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain. Understanding these twin elements of consciousness begins with the recognition that ultimately (and most primitively), cognitive systems serve the biological self-regulatory regime in which they subsist. The psychological structures supporting self-located subjectivity involve an evolutionary elaboration of the two basic elements necessary for extending self-regulation into behavioral interaction with the environment: an orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing interaction in terms of controllable spatiotemporal parameters, and processing architecture that relates behavior to homeostatic needs via feedback. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged the emergence of anticipative feedforward processing mechanisms, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive self-locational schema processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness-as-subjectivity.

Considerable research has shown that both demonstration and verbal instruction can facilitate learning of a motor task in inexperienced individuals. In the current study, verbal instructions were used as a means to reduce the discovery learning process and control the amount of trial-to-trial variability in demonstrations. The task required models to learn to trace a pair of circles with a 90 degrees -relative phase pattern between the arms. Verbal instructions directed one group of models toward a single strategy, and this group improved at a faster rate and performed better in a 24-h retention test compared to a group of models in a discovery learning context. The discovery models utilized multiple strategies throughout the practice. Each model was watched for 2 days by an observer, who was instructed that they would have to produce the 90 degrees -relative phase pattern on day 3. Observers, who watched the discovery models, performed better than those who watched the single strategy models. The results support two primary conclusions. First, trial-to-trial variability associated with strategy selection processes in a model benefits an observer by facilitating perceptual discrimination processes that may play a key role in action generation. Second, verbal instructions that reduce discovery learning during physical practice benefit acquisition and retention performance when the task has multiple strategies wherein no one strategy guarantees the best performance outcome.

Holding an action plan in memory for later execution can delay execution of another action if the actions share a similar (compatible) feature. This compatibility interference (CI) occurs for actions that share the same response modality (e.g., manual response). We investigated whether CI can generalize to actions that utilize different response modalities (manual and vocal). In three experiments, participants planned and withheld a sequence of key-presses with the left- or right-hand based on the visual identity of the first stimulus, and then immediately executed a speeded, vocal response ('left' or 'right') to a second visual stimulus. The vocal response was based on discriminating stimulus color (Experiment 1), reading a written word (Experiment 2), or reporting the antonym of a written word (Experiment 3). Results showed that CI occurred when the manual response hand (e.g., left) was compatible with the identity of the vocal response (e.g., 'left') in Experiment 1 and 3, but not in Experiment 2. This suggests that partial overlap of semantic codes is sufficient to obtain CI unless the intervening action can be accessed automatically (Experiment 2). These findings are consistent with the code occupation hypothesis and the general framework of the theory of event coding (Behav Brain Sci 24:849-878, 2001a; Behav Brain Sci 24:910-937, 2001b).

The present study addresses the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic spatial representations. In three experiments we probe spatial language and spatial memory at the same time points in the task sequence. Experiments 1 and 2 show analogous delay-dependent biases in spatial language and spatial memory. Experiment 3 extends this correspondence, showing that additional perceptual structure along the vertical axis reduces delay-dependent effects in both tasks. These results indicate that linguistic and non-linguistic spatial systems depend on shared underlying representational processes. In addition, we also address how these delay-dependent biases can arise within a single theoretical framework without positing differing prototypes for linguistic and non-linguistic spatial systems.