Simulation of vertical and horizontal head movements during semantic and affective evaluation of linguistic stimuli is investigated in explicit and implicit tasks. • Motion detection software is implemented to allow participants to assess the stimuli with head movements. • Accepted stimuli were evaluated faster with vertical head movements and refused stimuli with horizontal head movements. • Semantic evaluation activated the simulation of the vertical and horizontal head movements as gestures having a communicative function "for the other", whilst affective evaluation activated their simulation as approach and avoidance responses "for the self". • The greater the affective valence of the stimulus, the more implicit and automatic the simulation. Nodding and shaking of the head as simulated approach and avoidance responses
Category learning performance can be influenced by many contextual factors, but the effects of these factors are not the same for all learners. The present study suggests that these differences can be due to the different ways evidence is used, according to two main basic modalities of processing information, analytically or holistically. In order to test the impact of the information provided, an inductive rule-based task was designed, in which feature salience and comparison informativeness between examples of two categories were manipulated during the learning phases, by introducing and progressively reducing some perceptual biases. To gather data on processing modalities, we devised the Active Feature Composition task, a production task that does not require classifying new items but reproducing them by combining features. At the end, an explicit rating task was performed, which entailed assessing the accuracy of a set of possible categorization rules. A combined analysis of the data collected with these two different tests enabled profiling participants in regard to the kind of processing modality, the structure of representations and the quality of categorial judgments. Results showed that despite the fact that the information provided was the same for all participants, those who adopted analytic processing better exploited evidence and performed more accurately, whereas with holistic processing categorization is perfectly possible but inaccurate. Finally, the cognitive implications of the proposed procedure, with regard to involved processes and representations, are discussed.
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