Alessandra Pecunioso

University of Padova | UNIPD · Department of General Psychology

This study aimed to evaluate the utility and applicability of electrooculography (EOG) when studying ocular activity during complex motor behavior. Due to its lower spatial resolution relative to eye tracking (ET), it is unclear whether EOG can provide valid and accurate temporal measurements such as the duration of the Quiet Eye (QE), that is the...

Numerous studies have examined the relationship between changes in Physical Activity (PA) and mental health during the lockdown. With respect to Italy, there is a lack of studies investigating changes in the type of and in the levels of PA performed pre- and during the lockdown and the relationship among PA changes and psychological variables such...

[This corrects the article on p. 55 in vol. 11, PMID: 32116895.].

Researchers in behavioral neuroscience commonly observe the behavior of animal subjects in the presence of two alternative stimuli. However, this type of binary choice introduces a potential confound related to side biases. Understanding whether subjects exhibit this bias, and the origin of it (pre-existent or acquired throughout the experimental s...

Many studies have investigated whether numerical and spatial abilities share similar cognitive systems. A novel approach to this issue consists of investigating whether the same perceptual biases underlying size illusions can be identified in numerical estimation tasks. In this study, we required adult participants to estimate the number of white d...

The study of visual illusions has captured the attention of comparative psychologists since the last century, given the unquestionable advantage of investigating complex perceptual mechanisms with relatively simple visual patterns. To date, the observation of animal behavior in the presence of visual illusions has been largely confined to mammal an...

Visual illusions are powerful tools to understand similarities and differences in the perceptual mechanisms of human and nonhuman animals. Such investigation is particularly important in the presence of animal species whose brains largely differ from ours, because it can reveal whether perceptual laws described in humans are strictly related to the...

In 1985, Macphail argued that there are no differences among the intellects of non-human vertebrates and that humans display unique cognitive skills because of language. Mathematical abilities represent one of the most sophisticated cognitive skills. While it is unquestionable that humans exhibit impressive mathematical skills associated with langu...

The horizontal-vertical (HV) illusion is a classical example of an asymmetrical perception of size in the vertical and horizontal axes, also known as ‘anisotropy of the perceived space’. Several authors argued that the horizontally-oriented ellipse of the binocular visual field might play an important role in the emergence of this illusion. Alterna...

Several studies in mammals, birds, and fish have documented better cognitive abilities associated with an asymmetrical distribution of cognitive functions in the two halves of the brain, also known as 'functional brain lateralization'. However, the role of brain lateralization in learning abilities is still unclear. In addition, although recent stu...

A large body of experimental evidence suggests that long-term musical training has profound consequences on the functional organization of the brain, leading to an improvement of cognitive abilities that are non-primarily involved in music. Here, we tested the hypothesis stating that long-term musical training has effects in the perceptual laws und...