Jurjen van der Helden

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) have difficulty performing and learning motor skills. Automatic activation of the mirror neuron system (MNS) during action observation and its coupling to the motor output system are important neurophysiological processes that underpin observational motor learning. In the present study, we tes...

In this chapter, the authors review the cognitive scientific state-of-the-art relevant for Distance Education (DE) followed by an overview of how different aspects of Distance Education relate to such cognitive mechanisms. The goal is to list and categorize the cognitive advantages and disadvantages of DE and consider and discuss how cognitive fact...

Our sensorimotor experience unfolds in sequences over time. We hypothesize that the processing of movement sequences with and without a temporal pause will recruit distinct but cooperating neural processes, including cortico-striatal and cortico-cerebellar networks. We thus, compare neural activity during sequence learning in the presence and absen...

The ability to learn from the consequences of our actions is crucial for adaptive goal-directed behavior. We learn to avoid actions that lead to unfavorable outcomes and pursue actions that lead to desirable results. By recording event-related potentials (ERPs), we show that neural reinforcement learning signals associated with positive outcomes ar...

Mankind is unique in her ability for observational learning, i.e. the transmission of acquired knowledge and behavioral repertoire through observation of others' actions. In the present study we used electrophysiological measures to investigate brain mechanisms of observational learning. Analysis investigated the possible functional coupling betwee...

Learning from past mistakes is of prominent importance for successful future behavior. In the present study, we tested whether reinforcement learning signals in the brain are predictive of adequate learning of a sequence of motor actions. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects engaged in a sequence learning task. The results sho...

Sudden changes in our environment like sound bursts or light flashes are thought to automatically attract our attention thereby affecting responses to subsequent targets, although an alternative view (the contingent attentional capture account) holds that stimuli only capture our attention when they match target features. In the current study, we e...

The paper of Maria Ruz and Juan Lupianez on attentional capture is excellent for at least three reasons. First, they succeeded in describing very clearly the results of almost two decades of research after attentional capture (AC) even when produced in complicated paradigms. Second, their timing of a thorough and critical review on the role of auto...

In the following paragraphs, we will argue that although many studies reviewed by Ruz and Lupiáñez clearly show that a top-down modulation plays an important role in determining the location to which attention will be deployed, attentional capture is stimulus-driven in nature. We agree with the authors' claim that the endogenous component is much m...

The Eriksen flanker task is often used to test the effectiveness of spatial attention. Objects are capable of influencing perceptual organization and spatial attention. We used Kanizsa objects (illusory rectangles created by pacmen inducers) to create different surrounding contexts onto which we presented the letter arrays. Our aim was to provoke i...

We used Kanizsa and Amodal rectangles to test whether the spatial distribution of attention was influenced by subjective figures, analogue to the seminal experiments of Egly, Driver, & Rafal (1994). We precued one of four ends of two (subjective) rectangles before subjects had to detect a luminant target. This target was either presented at the pos...

Kanizsa objects are thought to be perceived as (illusory) object shapes in the foreground, partly occluding the inducer elements lying in the background. Research suggests that the formation of such illusory object representations occurs at early stages of perceptual analysis. It has also been suggested that illusory objects capture attention in th...

Object-based attention refers to the effect that subjects are able to report the features of an object more efficiently on which attention has been focused than the features of an unattended object. It has been proposed that attention spreads more easily over an object surface than over other regions of space (Mattingley, Davis, & Driver, 1997). In...

De experimenten die in dit proefschrift beschreven staan hebben betrekking op visuele aandacht en de interactie van visuele aandacht met illusoire figuren in het bijzonder. Illusoire figuren zijn figuren die we waarnemen maar fysiek niet zo gepresenteerd zijn. Ik heb in de experimenten gebruik gemaakt van ‘Kanizsa-figuren’. Een typisch voorbeeld va...