Emily S. Cross

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Cross

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Emily S.

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0000-0002-1671-5698

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09800 - Cross, Emily S. / Cross, Emily S.

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Publications1 - 10 of 144

Neural Substrates of Contextual Interference during Motor Learning Support a Model of Active Preparation
Cross, Emily S.; Schmitt, Paul J.; Grafton, Scott T. (2007)
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
When individuals acquire new skills, initial performance is typically better and tasks are judged to be easier when the tasks are segregated and practiced by block, compared to when different tasks are randomly intermixed in practice. However, subsequent skill retention is better for a randomly practiced group, an effect known as contextual interference (CI). The present study examined the neural substrates of CI using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Individuals learned a set of three 4-element sequences with the left hand according to a block or random practice schedule. Behavioral retest for skill retention confirmed the presence of a typical CI effect with the random group outperforming the block group. Using a go/no-go fMRI paradigm, sequence preparation during the premovement study period was separated from movement execution. Imaging data for the two groups were compared for the first 1/3 and final 1/3 of training trials. Toward the end of training, behavioral performance between the two groups was similar, although the random group would later display a performance advantage on retention testing. During study time, the random group showed greater activity in sensorimotor and premotor regions compared to the block group. These areas are associated with motor preparation, sequencing, and response selection. This pattern of recruitment is consistent with the hypothesis that CI benefits in a sequencing task are due to improved capacity to actively prepare motor responses.
Moving Me, Moving You: Emotional Expressivity, Empathy, and Prior Experience Shape Whole-Body Movement Preferences
Smith, Rebecca A.; Cross, Emily S. (2025)
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
Aesthetics shape and color almost every aspect of our daily lives, from the products we interact with and the clothes we wear to the design of our homes and cities. However, many people associate aesthetics with art, and an historical academic interest in the factors that shape the experience of engaging with art has yielded rich insights into our understanding of the value and ubiquity of empirical aesthetics. While most existing research has focused on music and the visual arts, there is a growing interest in the aesthetics of human movement among empirical aesthetics researchers. In the present study, we sought to examine how individual differences in global empathy and previous movement experience influence aesthetic evaluations of dance sequences. Observers (N = 55) completed a self-report measure of global empathy (Toronto Empathy Questionnaire), provided an assessment of their prior dance experience (via the Goldsmith's Dance Sophistication Index) and rated a series of whole-body point-light display movements (imbued with happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and nonexpressive neutrality) from the McNorm Library (Smith & Cross, 2023) in terms of beauty and liking on 100-point slider scales. Participants demonstrated a general preference for emotionally expressive movement sequences, while specific types of emotional expressivity influenced liking, but not beauty, judgments. Additionally, differences in both prior dance experience and levels of global empathy influenced aesthetic evaluations of the McNorm Library dance clips. We consider the implications of these results for empirical aesthetics and social perception research and discuss how empirical aesthetics research in this area may be of interest, or use, to dance practitioners.
The influence of visual training on predicting complex action sequences
Cross, Emily S.; Stadler, Waltraud; Parkinson, Jim; et al. (2013)
Human Brain Mapping
Linking observed and executable actions appears to be achieved by an action observation network (AON), comprising parietal, premotor, and occipitotemporal cortical regions of the human brain. AON engagement during action observation is thought to aid in effortless, efficient prediction of ongoing movements to support action understanding. Here, we investigate how the AON responds when observing and predicting actions we cannot readily reproduce before and after visual training. During pre- and posttraining neuroimaging sessions, participants watched gymnasts and wind-up toys moving behind an occluder and pressed a button when they expected each agent to reappear. Between scanning sessions, participants visually trained to predict when a subset of stimuli would reappear. Posttraining scanning revealed activation of inferior parietal, superior temporal, and cerebellar cortices when predicting occluded actions compared to perceiving them. Greater activity emerged when predicting untrained compared to trained sequences in occipitotemporal cortices and to a lesser degree, premotor cortices. The occipitotemporal responses when predicting untrained agents showed further specialization, with greater responses within body-processing regions when predicting gymnasts' movements and in object-selective cortex when predicting toys' movements. The results suggest that (1) select portions of the AON are recruited to predict the complex movements not easily mapped onto the observer's body and (2) greater recruitment of these AON regions supports prediction of less familiar sequences. We suggest that the findings inform both the premotor model of action prediction and the predictive coding account of AON function.
How do people in the UK and Japan imagine an encounter with a robot?: a story-stem study
Rooksby, Maki; Goetz, Terry J.; Muto, Yumiko; et al. (2025)
CHI EA '25: Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
The role of culture for human—robot interaction (HRI) remains largely inconclusive. Yet, experimental investigations are challenging, as findings are often constrained by specific experimental setups. A qualitative approach—one where people produce their own HRI situations—may offer a unique insight into cultural factors during HRI. Using a story-stem technique, people who identified themselves as UK or Japanese nationals were asked to write a short story, beginning with a fellow human of their country group encountering a robot. Thematic analysis focusing on the nature of human— robot relationship as well as the extent to which the robot character is portrayed to be agentic, indicated that stories enacting both highly agentic robot characters and an in-group relationship were far more frequent in the Japanese group. The findings are discussed as to what contribution such a qualitative approach may make for the ongoing work to design culturally sensitive robots.
Individuals expend more effort to compete against robots than humans after observing competitive human-robot interactions
Timmerman, Rosanne H.; Hsieh, Te-Yi; Henschel, Anna; et al. (2021)
Lecture Notes in Computer Science ~ Social Robotics
In everyday life, we often observe and learn from interactions between other individuals –– so-called third-party encounters. As robots are poised to become an increasingly familiar presence in our daily lives, third-party encounters between other people and robots might offer a valuable approach to influence people’s behaviours and attitudes towards robots. Here, we conducted an online experiment where participants (n = 48) watched videos of human-robot dyads interacting in a cooperative or competitive manner. Following this observation, we measured participants’ behaviour and attitudes towards the human and robotic agents. First, participants played a game with the agents to measure whether their behaviour was affected by their observed encounters. Second, participants’ attitudes toward the agents were measured before and after the game. We found that the third-party encounters influenced behaviour during the game but not attitudes towards the observed agents. Participants showed more effort towards robots than towards humans, especially when the human and robot agents were framed as competitive in the observation phase. Our study suggests that people’s behaviours towards robots can be shaped by the mere observation of third-party encounters between robots and other people.
There or not there? A multidisciplinary review and research agenda on the impact of transparent barriers on human perception, action, and social behavior
Marquardt, Gesine; Cross, Emily S.; de Sousa, Alexandra A.; et al. (2015)
Frontiers in Psychology
Through advances in production and treatment technologies, transparent glass has become an increasingly versatile material and a global hallmark of modern architecture. In the shape of invisible barriers, it defines spaces while simultaneously shaping their lighting, noise, and climate conditions. Despite these unique architectural qualities, little is known regarding the human experience with glass barriers. Is a material that has been described as being simultaneously there and not there from an architectural perspective, actually there and/or not there from perceptual, behavioral, and social points of view? In this article, we review systematic observations and experimental studies that explore the impact of transparent barriers on human cognition and action. In doing so, the importance of empirical and multidisciplinary approaches to inform the use of glass in contemporary architecture is highlighted and key questions for future inquiry are identified.
Walking the Line: Assessing the Role of Gait in a Quadruped Robot's Perception
Dafas, Haralambos; Li, Emma; Cross, Emily S. (2024)
2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN)
How a robot moves is among the first things an observer notices when they encounter a robot. While considerable research has investigated the perception of robot body language, no studies yet, to our knowledge, have explored the social effects of how a robot moves through space (its gait) on people's first impressions of a robot. To this end, here we performed two complementary experiments online (n = 98) and in-person (n = 26), with the objective of determining the extent to which a quadruped robot's gait influences a) what animal people perceived it to be; and b) its social attributes in terms of warmth, competence, causing discomfort and zoomorphism. Results differed depending on whether participation was online or in-person, with gaits influencing participants' perception more markedly when they encountered the robot in-person. Online, most participants saw the robot as a dog for every gait except one, while in-person participants reported more varied responses. Participants in both studies rated the more active, "bouncy" gait as warmer and less discomforting. In-person participants also consistently rated all gaits as warmer, more competent, less discomforting and more zoomorphic than did online participants. The study supports findings that in-person exposure and embodiment affect a robot's social perception and further suggests that gait may have a limited effect as well.
Building a motor simulation de novo: Observation of dance by dancers
Cross, Emily S.; de C. Hamilton, Antonia F.; Grafton, Scott T. (2006)
NeuroImage
Research on action simulation identifies brain areas that are active while imagining or performing simple overlearned actions. Are areas engaged during imagined movement sensitive to the amount of actual physical practice? In the present study, participants were expert dancers who learned and rehearsed novel, complex whole-body dance sequences 5 h a week across 5 weeks. Brain activity was recorded weekly by fMRI as dancers observed and imagined performing different movement sequences. Half these sequences were rehearsed and half were unpracticed control movements. After each trial, participants rated how well they could perform the movement. We hypothesized that activity in premotor areas would increase as participants observed and simulated movements that they had learnt outside the scanner. Dancers' ratings of their ability to perform rehearsed sequences, but not the control sequences, increased with training. When dancers observed and simulated another dancer's movements, brain regions classically associated with both action simulation and action observation were active, including inferior parietal lobule, cingulate and supplementary motor areas, ventral premotor cortex, superior temporal sulcus and primary motor cortex. Critically, inferior parietal lobule and ventral premotor activity was modulated as a function of dancers' ratings of their own ability to perform the observed movements and their motor experience. These data demonstrate that a complex motor resonance can be built de novo over 5 weeks of rehearsal. Furthermore, activity in premotor and parietal areas during action simulation is enhanced by the ability to execute a learned action irrespective of stimulus familiarity or semantic label.
Safety at Stake: How Individuals Task Prioritization Influences Human–Drone Proxemics
Bretin, Robin; Cross, Emily S.; Khamis, Mohamed (2025)
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction
Autonomous drones are expected to become prevalent in populated environments such as warehouses, factories, and homes, where individuals and drones will coexist while independently performing tasks. However, the dynamics of this shared autonomy, particularly the spatial behaviors (proxemics) that arise in these settings, remain underexplored in the Human–Drone Interaction (HDI) field. Understanding how task-driven behaviors influence navigation around drones is critical for ensuring their seamless integration into such environments. This study investigates how individuals’ prioritization of task completion interacts with proxemic behaviors, potentially overriding defensive mechanisms like maintaining safety distances. We conducted a study with 26 participants in a fully immersive virtual environment where both participants and a drone were tasked with moving objects. Using a 2 × 2 within-subject design, we examined proxemics in relaxed and competitive scenarios, with the drone carrying either normal or explosive boxes (triggering explosions on contact). Results revealed a significant interaction between scenario type and the drone’s danger level: in relaxed scenarios, participants deviated more from the shortest path when the drone carried explosive boxes. However, stronger task-oriented behavior correlated with closer approaches to the drone, regardless of danger. These findings highlight the dominance of goal-oriented behavior in shaping Human–Drone Proxemics and its implications for drone deployment in high-performance environments.
The Role of Empathic Traits in Emotion Recognition and Emotion Contagion of Cozmo Robots
Hsieh, Te-Yi; Cross, Emily S. (2022)
2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
In this online study, we investigated how well people could recognize emotions displayed by video recordings of a Cozmo robot, and the extent to which emotion recognition is shaped by individuals' empathic traits. We also explored whether participants who report more empathic tendencies experienced more emotional contagion when watching Cozmo's emotional displays, since emotion contagion is a core aspect of empathy. We tested participants' perceptions of Cozmo's happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, and neutral displays. Across 103 participants, we report high recognition rates for most emotion categories except neutral animations. Furthermore, the mixed effects modelling revealed that an empathy subtype (the empathic concern subscale from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) significantly impacted emotional contagion. Contrary to predictions, participants with high empathic concern subscale scores were less likely to find the robot's videos emotionally contagious. The study validates the utility of Cozmo robots to display emotional cues recognizable to human users, and further suggests that empathic traits could shape our affective interactions with robots, though perhaps in a counterintuitive way.

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Emily S. Cross

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