Markus Janczyk’s research while affiliated with University of Bremen and other places

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Publications (178)


Reviewing Evidence for the Perception–Action Model From Garner Interference
  • Literature Review
  • Full-text available

February 2025

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3 Reads

Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance

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Angela Osenberg

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Markus Janczyk

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Volker H. Franz

It is a widely accepted notion that visual information in the brain is processed via two parallel but separate cortical pathways, the ventral stream for visual perception and the dorsal stream for visuomotor actions. Perception–action dissociations from behavioral experiments are often cited as supportive evidence and one such example is Garner interference: It is assumed that perceptual/ventrally processed tasks suffer Garner interference, while visuomotor/dorsally processed tasks are immune to it (Ganel & Goodale, 2003). Ideally, this dissociation is demonstrated by comparing manual size estimation (assumed ventrally processed) with grasping (assumed dorsally processed). However, few studies actually made this comparison. We addressed this empirical shortage with two improved replications, yielding smaller effects of Garner interference in manual estimation than previous studies reported. In two subsequent experiments, we attempted to modulate Garner interference by manipulating the temporal profile of participants’ responses, building on previous work (Hesse & Schenk, 2013) and extending it to manual estimation. We conclude with a literature review covering all relevant studies on Garner interference. Contrary to previous claims, the currently available evidence for a perception–action dissociation from Garner interference is insufficient to support a ventral–dorsal dissociation.

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Thoughts About “Thoughts About Actions and Outcomes”: Comment on

December 2024

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45 Reads

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1 Citation

Motivation Science

Custers (2023) provides an inspiring and to some extent critical review of evidence in the realm of ideomotor action control. The main part of the review consists of an evidence-based reinterpretation of results obtained with an experimental paradigm termed “induction paradigm.” Moreover, the broader implications of this interpretation for understanding goal-oriented action in general are outlined. We appreciate the review as it helps to identify crucial open questions. In this present comment though, we have a look at the presented critical evidence, and we suggest that considerable parts of the ensuing critique have already been picked up and paved the way for rigorous empirical research, thereby inspiring a more optimistic future of research on ideomotor action control.


Fig. 1 Left panel: DMC (Ulrich et al., 2015), right panel: RDMC (Lee & Sewell, 2024). Note. For DMC, the solid black line represents the expected time-course of activation within the controlled channel, the dotted green and red lines are the respective activations within the automatic channel, and the solid green and red lines are the overall expected activations from superimposing both channels (green: congruent, red: incongruent). For RDMC, the dashed and the dotted lines are expected activations within the controlled and the automatic chan-
Summary of log-likelihood, AIC, and BIC values for DMC and RDMC, separately for the Simon and flanker data sets
Correlations from the parameter recovery study RDMC
A comment on the Revised Diffusion Model for Conflict tasks (RDMC)

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

In conflict tasks, such as the Simon, Eriksen flanker, or Stroop task, a relevant and an irrelevant feature indicate the same or different responses in congruent and incongruent trials, respectively. The congruency effect refers to faster and less error-prone responses in congruent relative to incongruent trials. Distributional analyses reveal that the congruency effect in the Simon task becomes smaller with increasing RTs, reflected by a negative-going delta function. In contrast, for other tasks, the delta function is typically positive-going, meaning that congruency effects become larger with increasing RTs. The Diffusion Model for Conflict tasks (DMC; Ulrich et al., Cognitive Psychology, 78 , 148–174, 2015) accounts for this by explicitly modeling the information accumulated from the relevant and the irrelevant features and attributes negatively- versus positively-sloped delta functions to different peak times of a pulse-like activation resulting from the task-irrelevant feature. Because the underlying function implies negative drift rates, Lee and Sewell ( Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31 (5), 1–31, 2024) recently questioned this assumption and suggested their Revised Diffusion Model for Conflict tasks (RDMC). We address three issues regarding RDMC compared to DMC: (1) The pulse-like function is not as implausible as Lee and Sewell suggest. (2) RDMC itself comes with a questionable assumption that different parameters are required for congruent and incongruent trials. (3) Moreover, we present data from a new parameter recovery study, suggesting that RDMC lacks acceptable recovery of several parameters (in particular compared to DMC). In this light, we discuss RDMC as not (yet) a revised version of DMC.


Toward a Better Approach for Measuring Visual-Search Slopes

September 2024

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54 Reads

Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance

The slope of the function relating response times to the number of stimuli in a visual-search display is commonly considered a measure of search speed and is extensively used to test theories of visual cognition. Unfortunately, this important measure is confounded in multiple ways so that many classical findings in the literature must be called into question. As a way out of this predicament, we here develop a new technique to measure search speed (data collected in 2022 and 2023): Instead of manipulating the number of stimuli that need to be searched via a set-size manipulation, we achieve the intended purpose by placing the search target at different spatial positions with respect to an a-priori-known search order. Reliably inducing such a search order is the main achievement of the present study, but we also report several additional data patterns that might turn out instrumental for future research on visual attention.


EXPRESS: Learning and Transfer of Response-Effect Relations

September 2024

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22 Reads

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1 Citation

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)

Acting means changing the environment according to one’s own goals, and this often requires bodily movements as responses. How these responses are selected is a central question in contemporary cognitive psychology. The ideomotor principle offers a simple answer based on two assumptions: An agent first learns an association between a response and its effects. Later, this association can be used in a reverse way: when the agent wants to achieve a desired effect and activates its representation, the associated response representation becomes activated as well. This reversed use of the learned association is considered the means to select the required response. In three experiments we addressed two questions related to the first assumption: First, we tested whether effect representations generalize to more abstract conceptual knowledge. This is important, because outside the laboratory and in novel situations, effects are variable and not always exactly identical, such that generalization is necessary for successful actions. Second, the nature of the response-effect relation has been debated recently, and more data are necessary to put theorizing on firm empirical ground. Results of our experiments suggest that (a) abstraction to conceptual knowledge seems to occur only under very restricted situations, and (b) it seems that no (implicit) associations between responses and effects are learned, but rather (explicit) propositional knowledge in the form of rules.


An Introduction and Tutorial to Fitting (Time-Dependent) Diffusion Models with the R-Package dRiftDM

June 2024

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65 Reads

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1 Citation

Using mathematical models of human cognition has become an increasingly important and valuable research tool in many different fields of psychological research and neighboring areas. Widely used are drift diffusion models (DDMs) that can be used to predict probability density functions (PDFs) of binary choice reaction tasks. Often, the parameters of such a model are time-independent (i.e., they do not vary as a function of time within a trial). However, the more general case is that of time-dependent parameters. Several recent models, for example, assume time-dependency for the drift rate and/or the boundaries. Such time-dependent (or non-stationary) models increase mathematical complexity, but several solutions to approximate the PDFs have been advanced. We here present dRiftDM, an R package particularly designed to meet the needs of psychological research. This package approximates the PDFs by solving the Kolmogorov-Forward-Equation to handle time-dependent models as well. Fitting a model to data can be done participant-wise, and model parameters and statistics are easily accessible and can be visualized directly to provide information about (qualitative) model fits. Hands-on examples for using pre-built models and for developing own models are provided.


Fig. 1 Mean response times, percentages error, and task-order switch rates for Experiment 1a. Note. (A) and (B) Results for response times (RTs) to the first performed task as a function of compatibility in trial N and compatibility in trial N − 1, separately for task-order repetitions and switches, respectively. (C) and (D) Analogous results for percentages error (PEs). (E) Task-order switch (TOS) rates as a function of trial N − 1 compatibility. In panels (A) to (D), gray dots and trian-
Fig. 6 Summary of the effects relevant to the present study. Note. In each panel, we show an effect relevant to the present study as a difference variable (of differences; see Langenberg et al. 2023) separately for each experiment and when pooling the data ('pool') from all experiments. Gray shaded areas indicate kernel density estimates across individual data. Dots and lines indicate the mean difference with a corresponding 95% confidence interval. A '*' above a mean indicates that this mean is significantly different from zero. A The sequential modulation of the BCE, that is, the two-way interaction between trial N compatibility and trial N − 1 compatibility. Values were calculated by first averag-
Task-order control in dual-tasks: Only marginal interactions between conflict at lower levels and higher processes of task organization

May 2024

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49 Reads

Attention Perception & Psychophysics

When simultaneously performing two tasks that share response properties, interference can occur. Besides general performance decrements, performance in the first task is worse when the second task requires a spatially incompatible response, known as the backward crosstalk effect (BCE). The size of this BCE, similar to congruency effects in conflict tasks, is subject to a sequential modulation, with a smaller BCE after incompatible compared to compatible trials. In the present study, we focus on a potential bidirectional interaction between crosstalk (and its resolution) at a lower level of task performance and higher-order processes of task organization. Two questions were of particular interest: First, do participants switch task order more frequently after a conflict-prone incompatible trial than after a compatible trial? Second, does changing task order influence the efficiency of conflict resolution, as indexed by the size of the sequential modulation of the BCE. Across four experiments, we only found marginal evidence for an influence of lower-level conflict on higher-order processes of task organization, with only one experiment revealing a tendency to repeat task order following conflict. Our results thus suggest practical independence between conflict and task-order control. When separating processes of task selection and task performance, the sequential modulation was generally diminished, suggesting that conflict resolution in dual-tasks can be disrupted by a deliberate decision about task order, or, alternatively, by a longer inter-trial interval. Finally, the study found a strong bias towards repeating the same task order across trials, suggesting that task-order sets not only impact task performance but also guide task selection.


Separating Facilitation and Interference in Backward Crosstalk

March 2024

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28 Reads

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1 Citation

Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance

Valentin Koob

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Carlotta Sauerbier

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[...]

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Markus Janczyk

When two speeded tasks have spatially overlapping responses, preactivated Task 2 (T2) response information influences Task 1 (T1) response selection, a phenomenon known as the backward crosstalk effect (BCE). Current models of the BCE implicitly assume that T2 response information is equally present in trials requiring compatible or incompatible responses, such that T1 performance improves when T2 requires a compatible response and deteriorates when T2 requires an incompatible response. Thus, T2 response information should have a facilitatory and an interfering effect on T1. Interestingly, this hypothesis has never been tested, and the present study (conducted between 2021 and 2023) attempts to fill this gap by using neutral trials in which T2 responses did not spatially overlap with those in T1. The results suggest that the BCE (in T1) reflects both facilitation and interference effects of comparable magnitude, thus corroborating current conceptualizations of the BCE. We also observed an unexpected pattern of effects for T2, with only an interference effect, but no facilitation effect. Additional experiments led us to conclude that the T2 result was sensitive to the specific task characteristics. Conclusions about how the crosstalk transfers from T1 to T2 when switching tasks are therefore not possible.


Illustration of the continuum ranging from very concrete modality-specific representations on the one hand (left side) to more abstract symbolic representations on the other hand (right side)
Properties and examples of modal and amodal representations (see text for further explanations)
The modal-amodal continuum comprising different forms of representations, ranging from image-like representations to frames and propositions
The modal-amodal continuum in a plane given by the two dimensions “analog-to-symbolic” and “modality-specific-to-modality-general”. Modality may refer to the input side as well as the response side
The modal-to-amodal trajectory view (left) versus the early-amodal-representations view (right)
Modal and amodal cognition: an overarching principle in various domains of psychology

October 2023

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475 Reads

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16 Citations

Psychological Research

Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlie processing in specific domains of cognition (e.g., perception, mental imagery, and language). However, in this paper, we suggest that both formats play a major role in most cognitive domains. We believe that a comprehensive theory of cognition requires a solid understanding of these representational formats and their functional roles within and across different domains of cognition, the developmental trajectory of these representational formats, and their role in dysfunctional behavior. Here we sketch such an overarching perspective that brings together research from diverse subdisciplines of psychology on modal and amodal representational formats so as to unravel their functional principles and their interactions.


Fig. 1 Illustration of the central bottleneck model and idealized predictions for RTs: a Processing of Task 1 and Task 2 for short and long SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony). b Processing of the survival versus the moving relevance rating (Task 1) and a tone classification
Survival processing occupies the central bottleneck of cognitive processing: A psychological refractory period analysis

August 2023

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84 Reads

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1 Citation

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Words judged for relevance in a survival situation are remembered better than words judged for relevance in a nonsurvival context. This survival processing effect has been explained by selective tuning of human memory during evolution to process and retain information specifically relevant for survival. According to the richness-of-encoding hypothesis the survival processing effect arises from a domain-general mechanism-namely, a particularly rich and distinct form of encoding. This form of information processing is effortful and requires limited cognitive capacities. In our experiment, we used the well-established psychological refractory period framework in conjunction with the effect propagation logic to assess the role of central cognitive resources for the survival processing effect. Our data demonstrate that the survival memory advantage indeed relies on the capacity-limited central stage of cognitive processing. Thus, rating words in the context of a survival scenario involves central processing resources to a greater amount than rating words in a nonsurvival control condition. We discuss implications for theories of the survival processing effect.


Citations (60)


... My recent address (Custers, 2023) that Kunde and Janczyk (2024), as well as Hommel and Eder (2024) commented on was based on recent unexpected empirical findings from our lab (see Dogge et al., 2019;Sun et al., 2020Sun et al., , 2022. These studies were inspired by, and aimed to build on, insights from ideomotor theory. ...

Reference:

The Homunculus in the Room: A Reply to and
Thoughts About “Thoughts About Actions and Outcomes”: Comment on

Motivation Science

... After Sun et al. (2020), this bimodal distribution has been demonstrated in other recent studies (Eichfelder et al., 2023;Janczyk et al., 2024). In those studies, visual inspection suggested that effects were driven by a peak in the distribution at the extreme end (participants with around 90% compatibility), while the majority of participants made up a second peak at chance level (50% compatibility). ...

EXPRESS: Learning and Transfer of Response-Effect Relations
  • Citing Article
  • September 2024

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)

... In particular, it is hypothesized that the stimulus of Task 2 activates its associated response after perception. Thus, given sufficient temporal proximity between the two stimuli, activated Task 2 response information can then influence Task 1 response selection, thereby shortening or prolonging Task 1 response selection on compatible or incompatible trials, respectively (Koob et al., 2024; see also , for a computational approach). ...

Separating Facilitation and Interference in Backward Crosstalk

Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance

... Especially in dual-task situations, where two simultaneous categorizations are to be made on two separate stimuli (or multiple features of a single stimulus), several dual-task-specific control requirements arise. These include, for example, task order control (Kübler et al., 2018;Luria & Meiran, 2003), maintenance and updating of task representations , the flexible allocation of resources between tasks (Lehle & Hübner, 2009) or the monitoring for conflicts in dual tasks (Schuch et al., 2019), as well as interference control when protecting a prioritized primary task from crosstalk that arises from simultaneous Task 2 processing (for an overview, see Fischer & Janczyk, 2022). ...

Dual-Task Performance with Simple Tasks
  • Citing Chapter
  • September 2022

... These methods were evaluated to benchmark the accuracy of the proposed QLE system. To rigorously assess whether the proposed method significantly outperforms these benchmark techniques, 50 trials were conducted, and one-sided t-tests [100] were implemented. The null hypothesis H0 posited that the mean performance measure (either MAE or MAPE) of the proposed method is equal to or worse than that of the benchmark methods. ...

Difference Hypotheses for Up to Two Means: t-Tests
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2023

... The hypotheses are tested using the Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). This statistic is used in analysing whether a statistically significant difference or variation exists between the means of three or more groups in which the same participants or subjects are involved in each group [52]. The assumptions for this type of test are contained in the literature [53]. ...

Repeated-Measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2023

... The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to identify a statistically significant dependence in the samples. ANOVA is one of the most common methods of statistical analysis [57][58][59][60][61]. The procedure of variance analysis consists of determining the ratio of systematic (intergroup) variance to random (intragroup) variance in the measured data. ...

Factorial Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2023

... Descriptive statistics were employed to summarize user preferences and platform performance. The relationships between user trust and specific platform features were explored through regression analysis, and ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) was used to test for significant differences in platform performance across user groups (Janczyk & Pfister, 2023). User behavior and risk perception patterns were also clustered by applying clustering techniques that grouped respondents according to common characteristics like risk tolerance or platform usage frequency. ...

Understanding Inferential Statistics: From A for Significance Test to Z for Confidence Interval
  • Citing Book
  • January 2023

... Later, in 2008 in his grounded cognition theory he revised his view and argued that cognition was based on modal simulations. Kaup et al. (2024) argued that perception has both modal and amodal representational formats. Spence & Di Stefano (2024) reviewed various interpretations of amodal and reported: 'Many developmental scientists conceive of the term as referring to those perceptual qualities, such as, for example, the size and shape of an object, that can be picked up by multiple senses (e.g. ...

Modal and amodal cognition: an overarching principle in various domains of psychology

Psychological Research

... The pulse-like time-course of activation DMC itself is agnostic as to whether the reduction of activation in the automatic channel is due to mere passive decay or an inhibitory mechanism acting on and reducing the activation, as suggested by Ridderinkhof (2002; see also Mittelstädt et al., 2023;Ridderinkhof et al., 2004). A possible implication of inhibition is also acknowledged by Lee and Sewell (2024, Footnote 5). ...

The Impact of Distractor Relevance on the Strength and Timing of Cognitive Control: Evidence From Delta Plots and Diffusion Model Analyses

Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition