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
Fading Appetite: Desaturation of food images reduces cravings but not approach biases

Fading Appetite: Desaturation of food images reduces cravings but not approach biases

The colour of food serves as a highly salient visual cue, helping us to assess its freshness and quality. In Experiment 1, we investigated how partial and complete (i.e., greyscale) desaturation of food images influenced explicit evaluations of perishable and preserved food items. We found that both self-reported cravings and perceived palatability decreased with decreasing image saturation, with larger effects observed for perishable food items compared to preserved ones. These results suggest that colour plays an important role in food evaluation, especially for perishable items, which may rely more heavily on visual cues of freshness. Furthermore, previous research has shown that attentional biases towards food images are eliminated when the images are grey-scaled. However, it remains unclear whether colour desaturation also affects behavioural/motivational responses, such as approach biases. To address this, we conducted Experiments 2 and 3, using a stimulus-response compatibility task to assess the influence of colour desaturation on approach behaviour towards perishable and preserved food images. Contrary to the previous findings on attentional biases, we observed robust approach biases for all food images, with no significant differences across saturation conditions or food types. Our findings suggest that while attentional biases are sensitive to low-level perceptual features, such as colour saturation, approach biases may be less influenced by variations in perceptual stimulus properties. This implies that motivational approach responses are primarily driven by learned associations with food rewards rather than basic stimulus saliency, highlighting a potential dissociation between attentional and motivational processes in healthy eaters.

Daniela Ruseva
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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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Recent Publications
Daniela Ruseva, Martin Giesel, Constanze Hesse (2025). Fading Appetite: Desaturation of food images reduces cravings but not approach biases. Appetite.
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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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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.