Ralf F A Cox

University of Groningen | RUG · Heymans Institute for Psychological Research

Can we measure the experiences of physical and VR art installations? How could that be done? The present research attempts to answer these questions through the use of a multimethod approach to assess every dimension of the experience of art. Wristband and questionnaires have been used as research tools to understand how the experience of art insta...

In this theoretical essay a novel modelling approach for describing people’s art experiences is introduced. The aim is to build a framework that is able to capture the context-sensitive and dynamic nature of such experiences. The notion of ‘flux of art experience’ is introduced to emphasise that it is an emergent phenomenon which remains in a conti...

Two experiments and a dynamic model for human limb selection are reported. In Experiment 1, left-handed and right-handed participants (N = 36) repeatedly used one hand for grasping a small cube. After a clear switch in the cube's location, perseverative limb selection was revealed in both handedness groups. In Experiment 2, the cubes were presented...

In this study, we analyzed bodily movements in terms of postural control of people looking at paintings of distinct artistic styles (Mondriaan’s neoplasticism and Pollock’s action painting; Experiment 1), as well as at a more diverse set of 20th-century abstract paintings (Experiment 2). Secondly, we explored the relation between postural control,...

We explored how interpersonal coordination of speech is linked to personality traits of Extraversion and Agreeableness in dyadic conversations. We performed Windowed Lagged Cross-Correlations (WLCC), Categorical Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (Categorical CRQA), and Diagonal Cross-Recurrence Profiles (DCRP).

Insights, characterized by sudden discoveries following unsuccessful problem-solving attempts, are fascinating phenomena. Dynamic systems perspectives argue that insight arises from self-organizing perceptual and motor processes. Entropy and fractal scaling are potential markers for emerging new and effective solutions. This study investigated whet...

A method is proposed to study the temporal variability of legislative roll-call votes in a parliament from the perspective of complex dynamical systems. We studied the Chilean Chamber of Deputies' by analyzing the agreement ratio and the voting outcome of each vote over the last 19 years with a Recurrence Quantification Analysis and an entropy anal...

The goal of this on the road driving study was to investigate how drivers adapt their behavior when driving with conditional vehicle automation (SAE L3) on different occasions. Specifically, we focused on changes in how fast drivers took over control from automation and how their gaze off the road changed over time. On each of three consecutive day...

Objective In social interactions, humans tend to naturally synchronize their body movements. We investigated interpersonal synchronization in conversations and examined its relationship with personality differences and post‐interaction appraisals. Method In a 15‐minute semi‐structured conversation, 56 previously‐unfamiliar dyads introduced themsel...

A complex dynamic systems perspective was applied to explore how mother and child mutually shape interpersonal coordination. Applying a microanalytic design, this study examined the moment-to-moment interaction behavior of 39 Dutch mothers and their three- and four-year-old children (53.8% girls, predominantly White) during a collaboration task. Fi...

Motor resonance seems to play an important role in visual art encounters (cf. Freedberg & Gallese, 2007). On the one hand, viewers’ sensations and emotions seem to be closely related to the representational content, such as actions, intentions, and objects depicted in a given work of art. On the other hand, visible traces of the artist’s creative g...

Background Children with visual impairments (VI) are at risk for sensory processing difficulties. A widely used measure for sensory processing is the Sensory Profile (SP). However, the SP requires adaptation to accommodate for how children with VI experience sensory information. Aims (1) To examine sensory processing patterns in young children wit...

A complex dynamic systems perspective was applied to explore how mother and child mutually shape interpersonal coordination. Applying a microanalytic design, this study examined moment-to-moment interaction behavior of 39 Dutch mothers and their three- and four-year old children (53.8% girls, predominantly White) during a collaboration task. Fine-g...

Art is known to give rise to a large range of emotions in people. These emotions are associated with bodily sensations felt in various regions of the body and subjective feelings. The current study applies bodily sensation maps (BSMs; Nummenmaa et al., 2014) as a tool to measure art-elicited emotions by charting bodily sensations onto a body map. T...

In the current study we investigated if drivers of conditionally automated vehicles can be kept in the loop through lane change maneuvers. More specifically, we examined whether involving drivers in lane-changes during a conditionally automated ride can influence critical takeover behavior and keep drivers' gaze on the road. In a repeated measures...

Art is known for its ability to move people, figuratively but also literally. Researchers have tried to understand the groundings of aesthetic experience. The creation of art is also an embodied activity, which materializes in the artwork. In abstract modern paintings, for instance, the painter’s movements create a dynamical balance residing in the...

Art is well-known for its emotional effects on perceivers. These emotions consist of physical reactions to the artwork, felt in various regions of the body, as well as an articulation of subjective feelings towards it (cf. Cupchik, 2016). The current study is the first to apply Bodily Sensation Maps (BSMs, Nummenmaa et al., 2014) in encounters with...

Gestures and speech are clearly synchronized in many ways. However, previous studies have shown that the semantic similarity between gestures and speech breaks down as people approach transitions in understanding. Explanations for these gesture–speech mismatches, which focus on gestures and speech expressing different cognitive strategies, have bee...

Art is known to give rise to a large range of emotions in people. These emotions are associated with bodily sensations felt in various regions of the body and subjective feelings. The current study applies Bodily Sensation Maps (BSMs, Nummenmaa et al., 2014) as a tool to measure art-elicited emotions by charting bodily sensations onto a body map. T...

In this paper we investigated if keeping the driver in the perception-action loop during automated driving can improve takeover behavior from conditionally automated driving. To meet this aim, we designed an experiment in which visual exposure (perception) and manual control exposure (action) were manipulated. In a dynamic driving simulator experim...

This study investigated the developing ability of children to identify emotional facial expressions in terms of the contexts in which they generally occur. We presented Dutch 6- to 9-year-old primary school children (N = 164, 98 girls) prototypical contexts for different emotion categories and asked them whether different kinds of facial expression...

The psychophysical description of one of the pillars of color science, the color-matching paradigm, forms the basis of the representation theory of colors. This description entails the weighted integration of a spectral distribution of radiant energy (i.e. a light ray) with three color-matching functions. Here these color-matching functions are con...

How can you develop language if you are born without proper sight and hearing? Children with congenital deafblindness face profound difficulties in acquiring language, largely due to a lack of access to language in their environment. Indeed, only a few people with congenital deafblindness acquire language beyond the level of naming a limited amount...

Children move their hands to explore, learn and communicate about hands-on tasks. Their hand movements seem to be "learning" ahead of speech. Children shape their hand movements in accordance with spatial and temporal task properties, such as when they feel an object or simulate its movements. Their speech does not directly correspond to these spat...

The temporal structure of behavior contains a rich source of information about its dynamic organization, origins, and development. Today, advances in sensing and data storage allow researchers to collect multiple dimensions of behavioral data at a fine temporal scale both in and out of the laboratory, leading to the curation of massive multimodal c...

This is the GitHub repository containing the five Matlab code modules with sample examples introduced in the paper, Finding Structure in Time: Visualizing and Analyzing Behavioral Time Series. These code modules aim to facilitate behavioral researchers with varying degrees of programming skills to interpret and analyze high-density multi-modal beha...

In the current study, we applied the dynamical systems approach to obtain novel insights into resilience losses. Dyads (n = 42) performed a lateral rhythmical pointing (Fitts) task. To induce resilience losses and transitions in performance, dyads were exposed to ascending and descending scoring scenarios. To assess changes in the complexity of the...

The temporal structure of behavior contains a rich source of information about its dynamic organization, origins, and development. Today, advances in sensing and data storage allow researchers to collect multiple dimensions of behavioral data at a fine temporal scale both in and out of the laboratory, leading to the curation of massive multimodal c...

To provide an accessible introduction to Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) to readers from diverse academic backgrounds, we will introduce the method in three main steps. First, we will illustrate how the box counting method is used to approximate the fractal dimension of objects. Second, we will illustrate how Detrended Fluctuati...

Gestures and speech are clearly synchronized in many ways. However, previous studies have shown that the semantic similarity between gestures and speech breaks down as people approach transitions in understanding. Explanations for these gesture-speech mismatches which focus on gestures and speech expressing different cognitive strategies, have been...

Background: Dog-assisted therapy (DAT) is hypothesized to help children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS). Methods: The present authors compared synchronous movement patterns of these children (n = 10) and their therapy dogs during the first and last session of a DAT programme, and their post-therapy changes in emotional...

Synchronizing behaviors in interactions, such as during turn-taking, are often impaired in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Therapies that focus on turn-taking generally lead to increased social skills, less interruptions, and silent pauses, however a positive non-demanding environment is therefore thought to be beneficial. Such an environme...

Children move their hands to explore, learn and communicate about hands-on tasks. Their hand movements seem to be “learning” ahead of speech. Children shape their hand movements in accordance with spatial and temporal task properties, such as when they feel an object or simulate it’s movements. Their speech does not directly correspond to these spa...

The papers in the special issue of PPS on the origins and possible resolution of the crisis of confidence in psychological science hardly mention the word theory. We argue that all the excellent suggestions to reform the discipline will be in vain if it does not begin a discussion about the way it evaluates and revises its theories. We diagnose the...

Research on driving behavior from an ecological psychology perspective axiomatically assumes the drivers intention to perform the driving task. This assumption does not hold for drivers of conditionally automated vehicles who may engage in non-driving-related task but must remain capable of taking back control in response to the vehicle's request....

Researchers from the complex dynamical systems perspective seek their explanations of human behavior and development in the dynamical interactions across many levels in an active, situated individual. That is to say, behavior and development are both constraining and constrained by the continuous exchange between a myriad of processes distributed a...

During art history, works of art have elicited tears in many, evoked fainting in some, and brought about anger in others. Art's ability to, figuratively and literally, move people has always attracted psychologists, philosophers and others to investigate the groundings of aesthetic experience.

From a perceptual learning perspective, infants use social information (like gaze direction) in a similar way as other information in our physical environment (like object movements) to specify action possibilities. In the current study, we assumed that infants are able to learn an affordance upon observing an adult failing to act out that affordan...

When two people collaborate, their movements and speech coordinate and synchronize. In other words, the dyad becomes a coupled social system. Recent studies show that modulating the degree of coupling is functional, and reflects task specific affordances. Thus, there is a tension between strong and weak coupling between individuals in a dyadic task...

Under the premise that language learning is bidirectional in nature, this study aimed to investigate syntactic coordination within teacher-student interactions by using cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Seven teachers' and a group of their students' interactions were repeatedly measured in the course of an intervention in early scien...

How can depression be associated with both instability and inertia of affect? Koval et al. (2013, Emotion, 13, 1132) showed that this paradox can be solved by accounting for the statistical overlap between measures of affect dynamics. Nevertheless, these measures are still often studied in isolation. The present study is a replication of the Koval...

This study presents an empirical test and dynamic model of perseverative limb selection in children of 14‐, 24‐, and 36‐months old (N = 66 in total). In the experiment, children repeatedly grasped a spoon with a single hand. In two separate conditions, the spoon was presented either four times on their right side or four times on their left side. I...

In the weaning period, infants are introduced to solid food after being fed solely on milk, which involves a deliberate reorganization of the infant-caregiver feeding interaction. This multiple case study, involving 5 dyads with 10 repeated observations, analyzed its dynamical structure using Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis. The results sh...

After driving a vehicle with conditional automation (SAE Level 3) drivers display performance decrements when taking back manual control. This has been labeled the out-of-the-loop problem (OOTLP). This Poster investigates this pressing Human Factors problem from an ecological psychology perspective: corresponding “the loop” to perception-action cou...

Two experiments and a model on limb selection are reported. In Experiment 1 left-handed and right-handed participants (N = 36) repeatedly used one hand for grasping a small cube. After a clear switch in the cube's location, perseverative limb selection was revealed in both handedness groups. In Experiment 2 the cubes were presented in a clockwise a...

Complex systems applications in human movement sciences have increased our understanding of emergent coordination patterns between athletes. In the current study, we take a novel step and propose that movement coordination between athletes is a multiscale phenomenon. Specifically, we investigated so-called "complexity matching" of performance measu...

The aim of this study was to investigate interpersonal coordination in young children during dyadic problem solving, by using Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA). We examined the interactions of seven dyads of children (Mage= 5.1 years) in a longitudinal design (6 sessions) with a sequence of problem-solving tasks increasing in difficul...

As humans, we continuously adapt our behavior to changes in our environment, and our cognitive abilities continuously develop over time. A major question for scientists has been to discover the (cognitive) mechanism that underlies the control of human behavior in real-time, as well as cognitive development on the long-term. This chapter will discus...

As humans, we continuously adapt our behavior to changes in our environment, and our cognitive abilities continuously develop over time. A major question for scientists has been to discover the (cognitive) mechanism that underlies the control of human behavior in real time, as well as cognitive development in the long term. This chapter will discus...

Aim: To compare fine motor performance of 3-year-old children with visual impairment with peers having normal vision, to provide reference scores for 3-year-old children with visual impairment on the ManuVis, and to assess inter-rater reliability. Method: 26 children with visual impairment (mean age: 3 years 7 months (SD 3 months); 17 boys) and...

Complexity Matching

Purpose: The main objective of this study was to analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of magnifier use in children with visual impairment who did not use a low vision aid earlier, in an ecologically valid goal-directed perceptuomotor task. Methods: Participants were twenty-nine 4- to 8-year-old children with visual impairment and 47 age-matched...

The current study focuses on one child's (male, 3 years old) learning behaviors in an English as a Foreign Language classroom, and explores the coordination and developmental patterns of his nonverbal (gestures and body language) and verbal (verbal repetition and verbal responses) learning behaviors over time. Guided by the principles of the theory...

The current study focuses on one child's (male, 3 years old) learning behaviors in an English as a Foreign Language classroom, and explores the coordination and developmental patterns of his nonverbal (gestures and body language) and verbal (verbal repetition and verbal responses) learning behaviors over time. Guided by the principles of the theory...

Cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA) is a powerful nonlinear time-series method to study coordination and cooperation between people. This chapter concentrates on two methodological issues related to CRQA on categorical data streams, which are commonly encountered in the behavioral sciences . Firstly, we introduce a more general definiti...

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the controllability of cylinder-shaped and dome-shaped magnifiers in young children with visual impairment. Methods: This study investigates goal-directed arm movements in low-vision aid use (stand and dome magnifier-like object) in a group of young children with visual impairment (n = 56) compared to a group...

As children learn they use their speech to express words and their hands to gesture. This study investigates the interplay between real-time gestures and speech as children construct cognitive understanding during a hands-on science task. 12 children (M = 6, F = 6) from Kindergarten (n = 5) and first grade (n = 7) participated in this study. Each v...

This study on psychological momentum (PM) in sports provides the first experimental test of an interconnection between short-term PM (during a match) and long-term PM (across a series of matches). Twenty-two competitive athletes were striving to win a prize during a rowing-ergometer tournament, consisting of manipulated races. As hypothesized, athl...

The aim of this study was to examine (1) the temporal structures of variation in rowers’ (natural) ergometer strokes to make inferences about the underlying motor organization, and (2) the relation between these temporal structures and skill level. Four high-skilled and five lower-skilled rowers completed 550 strokes on a rowing ergometer. Detrende...

Cooperation with peers is challenging for young children, and there are large individual differences in the development of cooperation. The roles of child characteristics and peer experiences for peer interaction during free play have been studied extensively, but it is unclear which factors predict young children's successful cooperation at differ...

During social interaction, the behavior of interacting partners becomes coordinated. Although interpersonal coordination is well-studied in adults, relatively little is known about its development. In this project we explored how 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children spontaneously coordinated their drumming with a peer. Results showed that all children a...

Insight into the typical motor development of children with visual impairment (VI) is necessary in order to recognise whether children with VI are at risk of motor developmental problems, and to evaluate the effectiveness of exercise interventions. In 2003 the ManuVis was published with reference values for children with VI of ages from 6 to 11 yea...

The study concerns the evaluation of treatment efficacy for childhood aggression using Recurrence Quantification Analysis, a nonlinear time-series analysis technique. The quantification of second-to-second dyadic interactions of parents and children during treatment sessions revealed the presence of characteristic fingerprints of phase-transitions...