{"id":963,"date":"2025-01-27T17:34:12","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T16:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/?page_id=963"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:27:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T17:27:58","slug":"projects","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/?page_id=963","title":{"rendered":"Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Acquired knowledge – mechanisms of flexible integration and impact of context and framing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2025 – 2028<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It has been widely proposed that space serves as a mental scaffold for organizing semantic structures, including concepts like quantity (Eccher et al., 2025), time (Bonato et al., 2012), and learned order (Luyckx et al., 2019). These concepts are often represented along a unidimensional spatial axis, typically left-to-right, with spatial effects like the symbolic distance effect (SDE) supporting this view. However, the orientation of such spatial mappings can vary. While numerical magnitudes often show left-to-right mapping, other domains (e.g., dominance) reverse this orientation (von Hecker & Klauer, 2021). This variation highlights the need to explore contextual and individual factors more systematically. Despite supporting evidence, both SDEs and SSAs can be explained by non-spatial theories. For example, SDEs may arise from semantic similarity or familiarity (Krajcsi, 2017), while SSAs may follow polarity correspondence (Proctor & Cho, 2006). To directly test spatial coding, we investigate the role of spatial attention, a known spatial process. Additionally, we explore how mental structures adapt when new items are added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space in Mind and Brain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2025 – 2028<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"anr.jpg\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How do we organize knowledge in our minds? Our brains often use space\u2014like a mental map\u2014to structure and connect ideas, even when those ideas aren\u2019t inherently spatial. For example, we might imagine numbers as a line from left (small) to right (large), or remember a series of events in a specific order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project explores how our brains use space to organize and understand new information. Whether it\u2019s learning a new sequence, comparing quantities, or making decisions, space seems to play a key role in how we think. It aims to uncover how our brains represent and access newly learned knowledge. By studying how people process sequences and make judgments, researchers want to find out if our minds rely on spatial „maps“ to structure information\u2014even for abstract concepts like numbers or rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why does it matter?
Understanding how we organize knowledge can help us learn more effectively, design better educational tools, and even improve technologies like AI that mimic human thinking. It also sheds light on how our brains adapt to new challenges, using familiar spatial strategies to handle unfamiliar tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boundary conditions of conceptual spaces (Bounces)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2023 \u2013 2026<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
\"anr.jpg\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The topographical structure underlying the representations of conceptual knowledge remains vividly debated. Two main accounts can be distinguished: the spatial account and the non-spatial account. We hypothesise that contextual factors determine the topographical structure at the cognitive and neural level. This proposal aims to delineate the conditions that define the topography of conceptual knowledge. Two major questions will be addressed:
1. What is the impact of contextual factors on the architecture of conceptual knowledge and its behavioural and neural expression?
2. What role do other potential boundary factors such as expertise and familiarity with concepts play in the construction of conceptual representations?
We will manipulate the transitivity of a set of elements as well as the flexibility of the architecture when learning and combining several sets in behavioural experiments and using functional imaging. The project investigates these questions in healthy adults.
The project is part of an international grant, involving the University of York (S. Goebel & T. Hartley) and the University of Potsdam (M. Fischer). Our partner in York will focus on developmental aspects while our partner in Potsdam will focus on the question whether the organizational principles of conceptual knowledge transgress to the motor level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Cognitive principles underlying operational biases in the temporal domain.<\/strong>
2022-2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"anr.jpg\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Space, time and number are intertwined dimensions at the cognitive and neural level. Recent evidence suggests that numerical and temporal information is projected onto a spatially organized conceptual dimension (i.e. a conceptual space). The Operational Momentum Effect (OME) is a consequence of the spatial character of the mental magnitude representation and describes the tendency to overestimate the outcome of additions and underestimate the outcome of subtractions. An analog effect has been described in the temporal domain (Bonato, Fias & Zorzi, 2021). Compared to a baseline condition without arithmetic combination, participants overestimated the duration of addition and underestimated the duration of subtraction (Temporal Momentum Effect, TME). The current project further characterizes the underlying functional principles of the TME in a number of psychophysical experiments with healthy adults. The results will provide important information about the generalizability of the TME and will finally help understand how humans code and operate on temporal information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Acquired knowledge – mechanisms of flexible integration and impact of context and framing 2025 – 2028 It has been widely proposed that space serves as a mental scaffold for organizing semantic structures, including concepts like quantity (Eccher et al., 2025), time (Bonato et al., 2012), and learned order (Luyckx et al., 2019). These concepts are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-963","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/963\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andreknops.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}