Anna Schroeger
Anna Schröger
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About me - Anna Schröger
About me - Anna Schröger
My name is Anna Schroeger. I work as a postdoc at Justus Liebig University Giessen at the Department of Experimental Psychology (Prof. Dr. Karl Gegenfurtner). I am part of the project 'The Adaptive Mind'.
I am fascinated by errors in human perception and performance, for instance, in the context of visual and auditory illusions and biases. My work is focused on spatial, temporal and motion processing, eye-hand-head coordination, and face perception. I love to explore complex statistics and new methods.
Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/hwtz2/
Python code for automatic mapping of gaze data from SMI glasses on screen
For Matlab code for automatic mapping of gaze data from Tobii Glasses on iPad please contact me
Current projects (selection)
Current projects (selection)
Pong
(with Alexander Goettker, Doris Braun, & Karl Gegenfurtner)Pong
When we watch a moving object, like a flying ball, we continuously predict how it will continue its movement (e.g., it might bounce from a wall, get caught, start falling due to gravity). Those predictions are based on our experience and often linked with certain conditions in the environment. But what happens if the conditions under which we gained our experience suddenly change?
The aim of this project is to investigate the underlying processes of adaptation vs. stability in human behavior. To do so, we track eye and hand movements during watching or when interacting with a moving object. Participants play a computer game (‘Pong’) on an iPad while we manipulate parameters of the ball’s movement, contextual cues, or the interaction of the participant with the touchscreen. Predictive eye movements help us to understand how humans react towards unforeseen events and under which conditions and how fast they adapt to new conditions or maintain available/probed strategies.
Available publications/preprints in this project (for posters see below):
Schroeger, A., Goettker, A., Braun, D. I., & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2025). Keeping your eye, head, and hand on the ball: Rapidly orchestrated visuomotor behavior in a continuous action task. Journal of Vision, 25(12), 20–20. Journal of Vision 2025;25(12):20. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.25.12.20
Schroeger, A., Gerharz, L., Voudouris, D. (2025). Adaptive Eye Movement Behavior for Actions in Younger and Older Adults. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.06.674432
How loud is a white dot?
(with Alexander Goettker)How loud is a white dot?
In two pilot studies we examined whether sounds could compete with visual stimuli for processing resources. Participants made fast saccades to either a sound or a gaussian blob presented simultaneously but at opposite locations to the left or right from the center. In one experiment we systematically manipulated the sound volume. In the second experiment we manipulated the timing of presentation of the auditory vs. visual stimulus with stimulus onset asynchronies ranging from -300 ms (sound earlier) to 100 ms. We found that saccades are more likely to land on the auditory compared to the visual stimulus, the earlier the sound was presented while sound volume had no effect. Importantly, saccade latencies were faster when they were directed to auditory stimuli compared to visual stimuli, but saccade error was smaller for visual stimuli. These results illustrate that visual orientation and processing resources are not only driven by visual signals but can be focused on auditory information instead which might provide temporal benefits. This shows that sounds can compete for resources even within the highly visually dominated spatial domain. If sound locations impact where we orient gaze, this builds a first foundation to hypothesize that also motion stimuli (e.g. moving sound sources) can drive eye movements and related processes including motion perception, other motor responses, and the allocation of attention.
Spatial Biases
(with Simon Merz)Spatial Biases
Human perception of space, time and motion is subject to several biases. Lab studies showed such effects in psychophysical judgements of location, but also in action-tasks, like predicting motion and intercepting. Given that similar underlying processes have been proposed for some of these biases, we tested for a shared mechanism by correlating them across observers. Using the classical implied motion sequence, participants either indicated the remembered location of an intermittently presented dot consistently ‘moving’ from one location to the next, or intercepted a predicted future location of the same intermittently presented dot. We examined whether the errors in those tasks are associated by correlating i) the overall amount of overshooting, and ii) the effect of temporal manipulations of the ‘jump’ duration on these biases across participants. We found two medium correlations indicating that these two biases are indeed related to each other. Participants who show a larger effect in one task also show a larger effect in the other task, and participants with larger proneness to temporal features show them consistently across both tasks. This suggests a shared underlying mechanism, and theoretical implications are discussed.
Available preprint in this project (for poster, see below):
Schroeger, A., Merz, S. (2025). Spatiotemporal biases in localization and interception: common underlying mechanisms? BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.25.650604
CV
CV
2023: 3rd Dissertation Prize of the General and Cognitive Psychology section of the German Psychological Society (DGPs)
since Feb 2022: research staff at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, as part of the program 'The Adaptive Mind' at the Department for Experimental Psychology (Prof. Dr. Karl Gegenfurtner)
2022: PhD 'Spatiotemporal biases in manual interception - effects of visual and auditory information processing'
2018 - 2021: research staff and doctoral candidate at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, at the Department for the Psychology of Human Movement and Sport, Institute of Sports Science (Prof. Dr. Rouwen Cañal-Bruland); until December 2020 as part of the DFG project 'Moving in time and space - Do (a)symmetric time-space mappings depend on modality-specific processing?' (co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Dr. Markus Raab)
2015 - 2018: Master of Science, Studies of Psychology with focus on clinical psychology, psychotherapy and health, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
2012 - 2015: Bachelor of Science, Studies of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
Publications
Publications
Preprints
Schroeger, A., Merz, S. (2025). Spatiotemporal biases in localization and interception: common underlying mechanisms? BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.25.650604
Schroeger, A., Gerharz, L., Voudouris, D. (2025). Adaptive Eye Movement Behavior for Actions in Younger and Older Adults. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.06.674432
Peer-reviewed
Schroeger, A., Goettker, A., Braun, D. I., & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2025). Keeping your eye, head, and hand on the ball: Rapidly orchestrated visuomotor behavior in a continuous action task. Journal of Vision, 25(12), 20–20. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.25.12.20
Steinhof, V., Schroeger, A., Liepelt, R., Sperl, L. (2025). Time and video speed perception: a comprehensive investigation of the relation between estimated video speed, clip duration and original duration. Cogn. Research, 10, 36. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-025-00637-2
Ficco L., Ramon M., Schroeger A., Kaufmann J.M., Schweinberger S.R. (2025). The role of expansion and adaptability of face-space for individual differences in face identity processing. R. Soc. Open Sci. 12: 240879. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240879
Sperl, L., Schroeger, A., Kaufmann, J. M., & Kreysa, H. (2024). Mental representation of words and concepts in late multilingualism: A replication and extension of the Revised Hierarchical Model. The Mental Lexicon, https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.23018.spe
Tolentino-Castro, J. W., Schroeger, A., Cañal-Bruland, R., & Raab, M. (2024). Increasing auditory intensity enhances temporal but deteriorates spatial accuracy in a virtual interception task. Experimental Brain Research, 242(4), 937–947. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-024-06787-x
Schroeger, A.*, Ficco, L.*, Wuttke, S. J., Kaufmann, J. M., & Schweinberger, S. R. (2023). Differences between high and low performers in face recognition in electrophysiological correlates of face familiarity and distance-to-norm. Biological Psychology, 182, 108654. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108654
Kreyenmeier, P. *, Schroeger, A. *, Cañal-Bruland, R., Raab, M., & Spering, M. (2023). Rapid Audiovisual Integration Guides Predictive Actions. ENeuro, 10(8). https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0134-23.2023
Hüttner, N., Sperl, L., Schroeger, A. (2023). Slow motion bias: Exploring the relation between time overestimation and increased perceived intentionality. Perception, 52(2), 77–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/03010066221139943
Schroeger, A., Kaufmann, J. M., Zäske, R., Kovács, G., Klos, T., & Schweinberger, S. R. (2022). Atypical prosopagnosia following right hemispheric stroke: A 23-year follow-up study with M.T. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 39(3-4), 196–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2022.2119838
Schroeger, A., Grießbach, E., Raab, M., & Cañal-Bruland, R. (2022). Spatial distances affect temporal prediction and interception. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 15786. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18789-2
Schroeger, A., Raab, M., & Cañal-Bruland, R. (2022). Tau and kappa in interception - how perceptual spatiotemporal interrelations affect movements. Attention, perception & psychophysics, 84(6), 1925–1943. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-022-02516-0
Tolentino-Castro, J. W., Schroeger, A., Cañal-Bruland, R., & Raab, M. (2022). The Impact of Pitch on Tempo-Spatial Accuracy and Precision in Intercepting a Virtually Moving Ball. Journal of Motor Behavior, 54(2), 158–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222895.2021.1933886
Schroeger, A., Tolentino-Castro, J. W., Raab, M., & Cañal-Bruland, R. (2021). Effects of visual blur and contrast on spatial and temporal precision in manual interception. Experimental Brain Research, 239(11), 3343–3358. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-021-06184-8
Sperl, L., Hüttner, N., & Schroeger, A. (2021). Why Do Actions in Slow Motion Appear to Last Longer? On the Effect of Video Speed Information. Perception, 50(1), 69–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006620982212
Loeffler, J., Cañal-Bruland, R., Schroeger, A., Tolentino-Castro, W. & Raab, M. (2018). Interrelations between temporal and spatial cognition and movement: The role of modality-specific processing. Frontiers in Psychology: Cognition, 9:2609. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02609
Other publications
Schröger, A. (2019). Hören in Ballsportarten – schneller und genauer als visuelle Wahrnehmung? Zeitschrift Für Sportpsychologie, 26(4), 169. https://doi.org/10.1026/1612-5010/a000276
Poster collection
Poster collection
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