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In the New Look literature of the 1950s, it has been suggested that size judgments are dependent on the aVective content of stimuli. This suggestion, however, has been 'discredited' due to contradictory Wndings and methodological problems. In the present study, we revisited this forgotten issue in two experiments. The Wrst experiment investigated the inXuence of aVective content on size perception by examining judgments of the size of target circles with and without aVectively loaded (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. Circles with a picture were estimated to be smaller than circles without a picture, and circles with a negative picture were estimated to be larger than circles with a positive or a neutral picture conWrming the suggestion from the 1950s that size perception is inXuenced by aVective content, an eVect notably conWned to negatively loaded stimuli. In a second experiment, we examined whether aVective content inXuenced the Ebbinghaus illusion. Participants judged the size of a target circle whereby target and Xanker circles diVered in aVective loading. The results replicated the Wrst experiment. Additionally, the Ebbinghaus illusion was shown to be weakest for a negatively loaded target with positively loaded and blank Xankers. A plausible explanation for both sets of experimental Wndings is that negatively loaded stimuli are more attention demanding than positively loaded or neutral stimuli.

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This study was designed to combine two, otherwise separated, fields of research regarding motor resonance and mimicry by adopting a naturalistic mimicry paradigm while probing motor resonance with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). At stake was whether the motor system resonates instantaneously with unobtrusive nonverbal behavior of another person. We measured excitability in the left and right hand while participants viewed sequences of video clips and static images. In the video clips an actor performed several clerical tasks, while either inconspicuously touching his face (face-touching (FT) condition) or not (no face-touching (NFT) condition). We found that excitability was higher in the FT condition than in the NFT and baseline conditions. Furthermore, our data showed a general heightened excitability in the left motor cortex relative to the right. Taken together, the results suggest that observed hand-face gestures--even though outside the primary focus of attention and occurring inconspicuously throughout an ongoing action setting--can cause instantaneous resonant activity in the observer's motor system. It thus supports the idea of motor resonance involvement in mimicry and demonstrates that this can be studied using a naturalistic mimicry paradigm.

The FAIR Principles provide guidance on how to improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of digital resources. Since the publication of the principles in 2016, several workflows have been proposed to support the process of making data FAIR (FAIRification). However, to respect the uniqueness of different communities, both the principles and the available workflows have been deliberately designed to remain agnostic in terms of standards, tools, and related implementation choices. Consequently, FAIRification needs to be properly planned in advance, and implementation details must be discussed with stakeholders and aligned with FAIRification objectives. To support this, we describe GO-Plan, a method for identifying and refining FAIRification objectives. Leveraging on best practices and techniques from requirements and ontology engineering, the method aims at incrementally elaborating the most obvious aspects of the domain (e.g. the initial set of elements to be collected) into complex and comprehensive objectives. Experience has demonstrated that the definition of clear objectives enables stakeholders to communicate effectively and make informed implementation decisions, such as defining achievement criteria for distinct principles and identifying relevant metadata to be collected. This paper describes the GO-Plan method and reports on a real-world application in the development of a FAIR ontology catalogue.