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Sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance - Distance change tasks

These tasks were developed to measure participants' perceptual sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance. In tasks 1a and 2a, participants are tasked with detecting changes in distance between pairs of boxers, and in tasks 1b and 2b, participants are tasked with detecting changes in distance between pairs of dancers. Tasks 1a and 1b include viewing conditions in which upright dyads are presented face-to-face and back-to-back. Tasks 2a and 2b include viewing conditions in which face-to-face dyads are presented upright and inverted.

Trials begin with a grey fixation cross (500 ms), followed by the sequential presentation of two dyadic stimuli (750 ms each). A visual mask is presented in the inter-stimulus interval (1000 ms) to prevent an afterimage. The first image always depicts an interpersonal distance of ~180 cm. On signal absent trials, the same image is presented in the second stimulus interval. On signal present trials, a different image is presented: the actors either appear closer together (~150 cm) or further apart (~210 cm). Participants are asked to judge whether the distance between the actors is different in the two intervals. Binary decisions are recorded via keypress.

Each task comprises 180 trials in total. Tasks 1a and 1b consist of 90 face-to-face trials (30 no change, 30 move closer, 30 move apart) and 90 back-to-back trials (30 no change, 30 move closer, 30 move apart). Tasks 2a and 2b consist of 90 upright trials (30 no change, 30 move closer, 30 move apart) and 90 inverted trials (30 no change, 30 move closer, 30 move apart). The different trial types are interleaved and stimulus order is randomized.

Tasks 3a and 3b represent control tasks which use faces as stimuli instead of dyads. Participants are tasked with detecting changes in distances between eyes. Task 3a uses a male face, and task 3b uses a female face. Faces are presented in upright and inverted viewing conditions.

The stimulus sets used in the dyad tasks were derived from stock images obtained from www.shutterstock.com. The images used in the face tasks were created in FaceGen modeller v3.31 (Singular Inversions Inc.).

These tasks are described in more detail in: Bunce, C., Press, C., Gray, K., & Cook, R. (2024). Perceptual sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance when observing social interactions: the effects of dyad arrangement and orientation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 0(ja). https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218241275595 Stimulus images and participant data are available on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/4pqm6/

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Experiment 1a task: Boxers (F2F vs. B2B)

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Experiment 1b task: Dancers (F2F vs. B2B)

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Experiment 2a task: Boxers (Upr vs. Inv)

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Experiment 2b task: Dancers (Upr vs. Inv)

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Experiment 3a task: Male faces (Upr vs. Inv)

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Experiment 3b task: Female faces (Upr vs. Inv)

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Preferred Citation Bunce, C., Press, C., Gray, K., & Cook, R. (2024). Perceptual sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance when observing social interactions: the effects of dyad arrangement and orientation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 0(ja).
https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218241275595
Conducted at Birkbeck, University of London
Published on 19 July 2023
Corresponding author Carl Bunce PhD Student
Psychology
Birkbeck, University of London