Publications

Shaheed Azaad, Günther Knoblich, Natalie Sebanz (2021) · Cambridge University Press

Even the simplest social interactions require us to gather, integrate, and act upon, multiple streams of information about others and our surroundings. In this Element, we discuss how perceptual processes provide us with an accurate account of action-relevant information in social contexts. We overview contemporary theories and research that explores how: (1) individuals perceive others' mental states and actions, (2) individuals perceive affordances for themselves, others, and the dyad, and (3) how social contexts guide our attention to modulate what we perceive. Finally, we review work on the cognitive mechanisms that make joint action possible and discuss their links to perception.

Shaheed Azaad, Simon M Laham (2020) · Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

When participants make left/right responses to unimanually graspable objects, response times (RTs) are faster when the responding hand is aligned with the viewed object’s handle. This object-based compatibility effect (CE) is often attributed to motor activation elicited by the object’s afforded grasp. However, some evidence suggests that the object-based CE is an example of spatial CEs, or Simon effects, elicited by the protruding nature of objects’ handles. Moreover, recent work shows that the way in which objects are centred on-screen might attenuate or reverse CEs, perhaps due to differences in pixel asymmetry (the proportion of pixels either side of fixation) between centralities. In this study, we tested whether pixel asymmetry also contributes to between-object variation in object-based CEs. In experiment 1 ( N = 34), we found that between-object differences in asymmetry predicte...

Shaheed Azaad, Simon M Laham (2019) · Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Tucker and Ellis found that when participants made left/right button-presses to indicate whether objects were upright or inverted, responses were faster when the response hand aligned with the task-irrelevant handle orientation of the object. The effect of handle orientation on response times has been interpreted as evidence that individuals perceive grasp affordances when viewing briefly presented objects, which in turn activate grasp-related motor systems. Although the effect of handle alignment has since been replicated, there remains doubt regarding the extent to which the effect is indeed driven by affordance perception. Objects that feature in affordance-compatibility paradigms are asymmetrical and have laterally protruding handles (e.g., mugs) and thus confound spatial and affordance properties. Research has attempted to disentangle spatial compatibility and affordance effects wi...

Shaheed Azaad, Simon M. Laham, Phebe Shields (2019) · Cognition