In this page you will find papers that are under editorial review. All publications that are either in press or have been published are accessible in the PEOPLE  page of this Web Site. Should you wish to access any of the papers listed below, then please email us (see PEOPLE pages for email addresses). We would be most grateful for any comments that you may have.

• Lanciano^, T., Curci, A. & Semin^, G. R. (under review). The Two Pathways of Flashbulb Memory Formation:  An Experimental Approach.
• ABSTRACT: For many years, researchers have debated whether Flashbulb memories (FBMs, Brown & Kulik, 1977) can be considered as a special class of autobiographical memories that persist vividly and unchanged, or alternatively are affected by social and reconstructive factors as an ordinary memory. Two pathways have been advanced to account for the formation of FBMs: One, the direct pathway involves emotional factors acting at the encoding level (special encoding hypothesis based on the Now Print! theory), and two, the indirect pathway, which involves social and reconstructive factors at a post-encoding level (reconstructive hypothesis). Two studies investigated the two pathways of FBM formation in an experimental context. Paralleling to FBM findings, the two studies revealed that memories of reception context are characterized by vividness and richness of details but, at the same time, they are also affected by reconstructive factors.
• Regenberg, N. F. E., & Semin, G. R. (under review). When picking sides becomes physical: How affordances drive preferences - If we pay attention to our body.
• ABSTRACT: Every situation has an affordance structure, which allows for particular actions in that situation (Gibson, 1979). More specifically, the physical features of a situation make some actions more likely than others. In two experiments, we showed that participants use the physical affordance structure of a situation to choose between two alternatives, even if the structural features of the situation were not actually relevant to the alternatives themselves. Furthermore, a novel finding for embodied cognition research was that the probability of choosing the afforded side depended on participants’ self-reported importance of their bodily appearance.
• Lakens, L., Semin, G. R. & Foroni, F. (under review). But for the bad, there would not be good. Conceptual opposition vs. Mere Association: Metaphoric Grounding of Valence.
• ABSTRACT: The embodiment orientation has focused on how we understand and communicate abstract concepts, by demonstrating how such concepts are grounded. This research has proceeded by demonstrating co-occurrences between abstract concepts and perceptual dimensions (e.g., vertical position) or perceptual features (e.g. color).  In a series of 5 experiments, we - for the first time - highlight the process involved in the experiential-perceptual grounding of abstract concepts. The first 4 experiments reveal that the grounding of valence (negative and positive) in color (black and white) is the result of a conceptual opposition where white acquires positive valence only as an emergent outcome of a conceptual opposition with black and negativity. White remains an evaluatively neutral color where such conceptual opposition is absent. In the final experiment, we highlight the responsible process (conceptual opposition) for the experiential-perceptual grounding of abstract concepts by means of a priming experiment. Implications for embodied grounding are discussed.
• Jiga-Boy, G. M., Clark, A. E., & Semin, G. R. (under review).  So much to do and so little time: Effort and perceived temporal distance
• ABSTRACT: It is argued that perceived temporal distance to a social event, similar to perceived spatial distance (Proffitt, 2006a), should be subject to the demands an event imposes upon a person’s capacities to act upon it. In three experiments, weexamined the hypothesis that the perception of temporal distance to future events is influenced by the effort required to realize them. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that perceived temporal distance is reduced as a function of the effort required to realize the event. When high versus low effort were primed independently (Experiment 3), the high effort condition was shown to reduce perceived temporal distance to the realization of an event compared to the low effort condition, providing causal confirmation for the hypothesis. The implications of these findings for temporal distance models are discussed.

• van Ulzen. N. R., Lamoth, C. J. C, Daffertshofer, A., Semin, G. R. and Beek, P. J. (Under Review). Stability and variability of acoustically specified coordination patterns
  while walking side-by-side: Does the sea-gull effect hold?

• van Ulzen. N. R., Oudejans, R. R. D., Semin, G. R. and Beek, P. J. (Under Review). The influence of affective stimulus properties on size perception is not attributable to
  low-level optical features.

• Ijzerman, H. & Semin, G. R. (under review). Social Proximity Manipulations Alter
  Temperature Perceptions.

• Fockenberg, D. A. Koole, S. L., Lakens, D. & Semin, G. R. (under review). Shifting
  Snapshots: Revisiting the Interplay of Forward and Backward Primes in Evaluative
  and Gender Decision Tasks

• Belopolsky, A. V., Koelewijn, T. Semin, G. R. & Theeuwes, J. (under review). Motor
  priming after observation of erroneous actions

• Klein, O, Ventura, P., Fernandes, T., Garcia-Marques,L. Licata,L., Semin, G. R. (Under
  Review). Effects of schooling and literacy on linguistic abstraction.

• Foroni, F. & Semin, G. R. (under review). A smile can enhance the quality of your joke:
  Automatic synchronization of facial muscles shapes our judgments. ,

• Regenberg, N. & Semin, G. R. (under review). When Picking Sides Becomes Physical:
  How Affordances Drive Preferences.

• Garrido, M. V. & Semin, G. R. (under review). How to forge an attractive personality
  impression: Recruit the right temperature, physical distance, and fragrance!