Moritz Schaaf

Trier University · Department of Psychology

To act successfully, agents must monitor whether their behavior reached predicted effects. As deviations from predicted effects can result from own behavior (response-errors) or from circumstantial unreliability (effect-errors), both the own efferent activities and the accomplished environmental outcomes must be monitored. In three experiments, we...

The present study explored whether dual task performance is affected by deviations from the expected time point of a secondary task. In two psychological refractory period experiments, participants responded to two tasks, separated by either a short or long delay. In contrast to traditional dual tasking studies, however, the identity of Task 1 prob...

Human actions sometimes aim at preventing an event from occurring. How these to-be-prevented events are represented, however, is poorly understood. Recent proposals in the literature point to a possible divide between effect-producing, operant actions, and effect-precluding, prevention actions, suggesting that the control of operant actions relies...

Mouse tracking and the recording of movement trajectories have become powerful tools to investigate cognitive processes. Dedicated analysis software for this type of data is now readily available to empirical researchers, promising a substantial simplification of the required data processing tasks. However, existing solutions are designed for speci...

Mouse-tracking is regarded as a powerful technique to investigate latent cognitive and emotional states. However, drawing inferences from this manifold data source carries the risk of several pitfalls, especially when using aggregated data rather than single-trial trajectories. Researchers might reach wrong conclusions because averages lump togethe...

Modality-compatible stimulus–response mappings (e.g., responding vocally to an auditory stimulus and manually to a visual stimulus) are often easier to perform than modality-incompatible sets (reversed modality mappings). Here, we investigate sequential, trial-to-trial, modulations of modality compatibility effects. By reanalyzing a previous experi...

People interact with technical systems every day, making use of manifold input methods. One possible but not yet very established input method is eye gaze. The present article investigates a gaze-controlled interface in the context of manual assembly tasks, where it provides a language-free and at the same time hands-free input alternative. To this...

Our actions cause manifold environmental changes. Monitoring these action effects serves at least two vital functions: While the validation of currently relevant effects assesses goal-achievement, screening for currently irrelevant effects accumulates knowledge about potential action-effect relationships. However, monitoring the perceptual conseque...