Background The problem we are addressing is best expressed in the graphs below:

1. Individual Differences in Embodiment Andrew Jones, Tyler Hubbard, Dallas Swindell, Emily Shields, & William Langston Middle Tennessee State University • Background • The problem we are addressing is best expressed in the graphs below: • Results • Task differences: • Is performance on the semantic relatedness task related to performance on the iconicity task? We split participants on the basis of performance on the iconicity task (low M = -31.67, SD = 319.08; high M = 647.67, SD = 330.21). We computed the interaction between iconicity performance (low, high) and semantic relatedness (correct iconicity, incorrect iconicity). The interaction was significant, F(1, 79) = 4.94, MSE = 15418, p = .03. There was not a semantic relatedness effect for low iconicity participants, there was a reversed semantic relatedness effect for high iconicity participants, t(40) = 2.34, p = .02. • Is performance on the currency rating task related to performance on the iconicity task? The interaction between iconicity performance and the currency rating task (light, heavy) was marginally significant, F(1, 81) = 3.17, MSE = 124.93, p = .08. There was not an effect in the currency rating task for low iconicity participants, the effect was reversed for high iconicity participants, t(41) = -1.88, p = .07. Figure 1. Semantic relatedness judgment, t(82) = -1.01, p = .32, d = 0.08. Figure 2. Iconicity judgment, t(82) = -6.05, p < .001, d = .49. Figure 3. Currency rating, t(87) = -0.81, p = .42, d = .09. • These are the results for three embodiment tasks, the data are sorted by the size of the effect, with participant number on the x-axis. In all cases, a positive number indicates an embodiment effect. • As is apparent in the data, there is considerable variability in the direction and size of the effect. Our goal is to explain this variability. We considered three potential sources for the differences: • Task differences; • Differences in the stimuli; • Differences between the participants. • Our primary focus here will be differences between participants. • Tasks: • Input embodiment: Some aspect of the environment creates a perceptual or motor simulation that changes responding. • Semantic relatedness: The task is from Zwaan and Yaxley (2003) as modified by Louwerse and Jeuniaux (2010). Participants saw 32 pairs of semantically related items that also had an up-down iconic relationship (e.g., foam-beer). There were also 32 unrelated filler pairs. Participants judged whether or not the words in each pair were related. For the related pairs, 16 were presented in their correct orientation, 16 were reversed (e.g., beer over foam). Zwaan and Yaxley found that it took longer for participants to judge pairs that were presented in reverse order. Louwerse and Jeuniaux found that a linguistic factor (order frequency) accounted for participants’ reaction times better that iconicity. • Iconicity judgment: The task is from Louwerse and Jeuniaux (2010). Participants saw 32 pairs of items, 16 in their correct orientation, 16 in their incorrect orientation, and judged whether they were in the correct arrangement. Louwerse and Jeuniaux found that iconicity significantly affected response times. • Output embodiment: The way that a participant holds their body affects responding. • Currency rating: Participants held a light clipboard (approximately 400 g) and a heavy clipboard (approximately 1250 g). On the clipboards were lists of currencies, participants rated the value of the currencies. Jostmann, Lakens, and Schubert (2009) found that participants rated currencies as having more value when they were holding a heavier clipboard. Figure 4. Iconicity X Semantic Relatedness interaction. Figure 5. Iconicity X Clipboard Task interaction. • Individual differences: • Participants scoring in the top and bottom thirds on each individual difference measure were compared using t-tests. 1t(53) = 2.22, p = .03, 2t(55) = 1.72, p = .09, 3t(54) = 2.45, p = .02, 4t(51) = -2.24, p = .03 • Discussion • Task differences: • There is reason to suspect that the different embodiment tasks are tapping into different mechanisms. (The stimulus variables need to be incorporated into this analysis.) • Individual differences: • There were surprisingly few relationships between individual difference measures and embodiment tasks. In part, this could be due to the relatively low power (88 total participants). However, out of the 136 possible correlations between the various individual difference measures, 41 were significant. • The differences that we did find are consistent with aspects of the embodiment tasks (e.g., an input driven task like iconicity is related to absorption). • Individual differences measures: • Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ): Measures emotion regulation strategies with two subscales: reappraisal (six items) and suppression (four items), rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (Gross & John, 2003). • Five Factor Personality Scale (FFP): Taken from the IPIP website (http://ipip.ori.org) described in Goldberg, Johnson, Eber, Hogan, Ashton, Cloninger, and Gough (2006). A 50-item scale from the “Big Five 5 broad domains” (http://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm) measuring five subscales: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, intellect; 10 items per subscale, rated from 1 (very inaccurate) to 5 (very accurate). • Locus of Control (LOC): Measures the extent to which participants ascribe events to internal or external control; 29 items, participants choose a or b indicating internal or external control (Rotter, 1966). • Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS): Measures positive and negative affect; 20 adjectives (10 positive, 10 negative), judged as to how participants “feel this way now,” rated from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely) (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). • Private Body Consciousness (PBC): Measures the extent to which people attend to private aspects of their body available only to them; five items, rated from 1 (disagree strongly) to 6 (agree strongly) (Miller, Murphy, & Buss, 1981). • Questionnaire upon Mental Imagery (QMI): Measures imagery on seven subscales: visual, auditory, cutaneous, kinesthetic, gustatory, olfactory, organic; five items per subscale, rated from 1 (no image present at all) to 7 (perfectly clear and as vivid as the actual experience) (Sheehan, 1967; Betts, 1909). • Self-Consciousness Scale (SCS): Measures public and private self-consciousness. Three subscales: private self-consciousness (10 items), public self-consciousness (seven items), and social anxiety (six items), rated from 1 (extremely uncharacteristic of me) to 5 (extremely characteristic of me) (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975). • Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS): Measures sensation seeking, “a personality trait…that expresses as a need for physiological arousal, novel experience, and a willingness to take social, physical, and financial risks to obtain such arousal” (Stephenson, Hoyle, Palmgreen, & Slater, 2003, p. 279). The BSSS-4 contained one item for each of four subscales summed to produce a total score; items were rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). • Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS): Measures absorption experiences characterized by “a special attentional object relationship which can be described by such terms as ‘absorption’ and ‘fascination.’ These terms suggest a state of ‘total attention’ during which the available representational apparatus seems to be entirely dedicated to experiencing and modeling the attentional object” (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974, p. 274). There are 29 items rated as true or false. (Used with permission; http://www.upress.umn.edu/test-division/to-order) References Betts, G. H. (1909). The Distribution and Functions of Mental Imagery. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books/download/The_distribution_and_functions_of_mental.pdf?id=fvQ_cob18_0C&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U3yt9vfKIwOkekxrY4elI-XzJ0gXQ Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522-527. doi: 10.1037/h0076760 Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84-96. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2005.08.007 Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348-362. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348 Jostmann, N. B., Lakens, D., & Schubert, T. W. (2009). Weight as an embodiment of importance. Psychological Science, 20, 1169-1174. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02426.x Louwerse, M. M., & Jeuniaux, P. (2010). The linguistic and embodied nature of conceptual processing. 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