Constanze Hesse 🐕
Constanze Hesse

Principal Investigator

University of Aberdeen
School of Psychology

About Me

Welcome to the Grasper Lab! We explore how perception, cognition, and the motor system interact to shape the way we plan and control our actions.

My research focuses on how visual and cognitive factors influence motor behaviour, as well as how physical and emotional properties of materials affect our intentions to act. I primarily use experimental behavioural methods (psychophysics) and occasionally collaborate on neuropsychological studies involving patients with specific visual or spatial impairments (such as hemianopia and visual neglect).

Interests
  • Perception and Action
  • Tactile and Haptic Perception
  • Attention and Motor Control
  • Multisensory Perception
  • Food Perception
Education

  • Professor in Psychology

    University of Aberdeen

  • PhD in Experimental Psychology

    Justus Liebig University Giessen

  • Diploma in Psychology

    TU-Dresden

📚 Featured Publications
From discomfort to danger: Exploring how affective obstacle properties influence avoidance in stepping

From discomfort to danger: Exploring how affective obstacle properties influence avoidance in stepping

Stepping over obstacles requires adjusting the foot trajectory to avoid contact with surfaces that may be hazardous or unpleasant to step on. While it is well established that obstacle height and stability influence stepping behaviour, little is known about how perceptual affective evaluations, such as dangerousness, unpleasantness, and painfulness, modulate avoidance strategies. In Experiment 1 (N = 20), participants stepped over obstacles covered with stones varying in size and density while rating their perceived unpleasantness. Visual uncertainty was manipulated by comparing monocular and binocular viewing. Lead minimum foot clearance (MFC) was initially higher under monocular vision but decreased to binocular levels over trials. While obstacle unpleasantness did not systematically affect MFC or crossing step length, perceived unpleasantness ratings correlated weakly with crossing step length. However, because dangerousness and painfulness ratings were not collected, it remained unclear whether unpleasantness directly influenced avoidance behaviour or served as a proxy for perceived risk. To address this, Experiment 2 (N = 22) introduced obstacles covered with metal stud spikes or smooth surfaces, with additional ratings of dangerousness and painfulness. Results showed that MFC was higher for spiky than smooth obstacles. Crucially, in this experiment, ratings of perceived dangerousness, not unpleasantness, correlated positively with crossing step length, after controlling for other perceptual ratings. These findings suggest that perceptual affective properties modulate avoidance parameters. However, the nature of those modulations is stimulus specific and highly depends on task demands.

Zhong Jian Chee
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Obstacle avoidance of physical, stereoscopic, and pictorial objects

Obstacle avoidance of physical, stereoscopic, and pictorial objects

Simulated environments, e.g., virtual or augmented reality environments, are becoming increasingly popular for the investigation and training of motor actions. Yet, so far it remains unclear if results of research and training in those environments transfer in the expected way to natural environments. Here, we investigated the types of visual cues that are required to ensure naturalistic hand movements in simulated environments. We compared obstacle avoidance of physical objects with obstacle avoidance of closely matched 2D and 3D images of the physical objects. Participants were asked to reach towards a target position without colliding with obstacles of varying height that were placed in the movement path. Using a pre-test post-test design, we tested obstacle avoidance for 2D and 3D images of obstacles both before and after exposure to the physical obstacles. Consistent with previous findings, we found that participants initially underestimated the magnitude differences between the obstacles, but after exposure to the physical obstacles avoidance performance for the 3D images became similar to performance for the physical obstacles. No such change was found for 2D images. Our findings highlight the importance of disparity cues for naturalistic motor actions in personal space. Furthermore, they suggest that the observed change in obstacle avoidance for 3D images resulted from a calibration of the disparity cues in the 3D images using an accurate estimate of the egocentric distance to the obstacles gained from the interaction with the physical obstacles.

Martin Giesel
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Recent Publications
Zhong Jian Chee, Martin Giesel, Constanze Hesse (2025). From discomfort to danger: Exploring how affective obstacle properties influence avoidance in stepping. Perception.
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Martin Giesel, Daniela Ruseva, Constanze Hesse (2025). Obstacle avoidance of physical, stereoscopic, and pictorial objects. Virtual Reality.
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Martin Giesel, Federico De Filippi, Constanze Hesse (2024). Grasping tiny objects. Psychological Research.
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Róisı́n Elaine Harrison, Martin Giesel, Constanze Hesse (2024). No evidence for top-down expertise effects on action perception in sprinters using static images. Neuropsychologia.
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Róisı́n E Harrison, Martin Giesel, Constanze Hesse (2023). Action perception in athletes: Expertise facilitates perceptual discrimination. Perceptual and motor skills.
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News

📍 Visit to Collaborators in Marseille.

As part of our joint ora (open-research-area) grant, we (Keith and Constanze) and our German collaborators Prof Knut Drewing and Dr Müge Cavdan from Giessen visited Dr Rochelle Ackerley’s lab in Marseille.

🍺 Pint of Science 2025

The Grasper Lab took part in the 2025 Pint of Science festival — a global celebration of science held not in lecture theatres, but in pubs and cafes!

🧠 NCM Meeting - Panama City

The Neural Control of Movement (NCM) 2025 meeting took place in Panama City from April 28 to May 2, and Martin and Constanze were there to present some of our latest research.