Display Duration Research Articles

Designing a Digital Flash Reading Test for Data-Based Decisions in Inclusive Classrooms: Duration and Word Length as Difficulty-Generating-Item Characteristics

Standardized assessment tools are essential for informed, data-driven decision-making. Reading speedily is a crucial early skill that all students should have the opportunity to develop in inclusive classrooms. To facilitate classroom-based reading diagnostics in this area of reading, we developed a flash reading test that reliably measures the performance of students with and without learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities. This test can be administered in the classroom and completed independently by students, taking only a few minutes, without requiring them to read aloud. The test is designed to provide an accurate assessment of the speed of lexical recall for all students. To evaluate the difficulty-generating-item characteristics of the new instrument, 400 primary and special school students participated in the test. The results indicate that students with low abilities and disabilities are particularly differentiated by the combination of a short display duration and short words. We provide information for test developers interested in designing similar assessments and teachers who can use this instrument to make informed decisions in the classroom.

The effect of object perception on event integration and segregation.

The perceptual system must integrate information from various points in time and space to interpret continuous sensory input into meaningful units, such as visual objects or events. To explore the relationship between the perception of spatial objects and temporal events, we modified the missing element task, a typical temporal integration task, by inserting a simple spatial object. The aim was to determine whether the perceptual processing of the object would have an impact on the frequency of temporal integration and segregation. Temporal integration was most successful when the missing element was located within the object, less successful when there was no object, and least successful when the missing element appeared outside the object. The advantage of the location of the missing element within the object was observed at display durations from 30 ms to 150 ms. Interestingly, the object provided the same benefit for integration and segregation despite their opposing perceptual demands. This study demonstrates the relationship that exists between the processing of temporal events and spatial objects, and shows how such spatial information can facilitate temporal integration.

Large and interactive pipefish females display ornaments for longer with many males around

Why do animals display sexual ornaments – to attract mates, to compete for access to them, or both? In the broad-nosed pipefish (Syngnathus typhle), ornamented females commonly compete for access to males, whereas choosy males provide uniparental care. During courtship, females show a dynamic ornament, consisting of a row of dark B-shaped signs along the sides of their trunk. Here, we focus on the social context of female ornamentation and mating success (egg transfer) under experimentally female and male biased adult sex ratios. We found that the duration of female B-sign displays was not explained by adult sex ratios alone, but rather by sex ratios in combination with female body length and the number of female interactions. In detail, duration of B-sign display increased more steeply with the number of female-female interactions under the male biased adult sex ratio: that is, when more mating opportunities were available. Similarly, display duration increased with female body length, but only under the male biased adult sex ratio. In addition, successful egg transfer occurred more often in the male biased treatment and correlated significantly with female display duration in the same treatment. Taken together, these results suggest that in the context of the broad-nosed pipefish, the ornamental B-signs in females primarily serve as a sexually selected attractive signal. Our results highlight the importance of an interactive mating environment, male availability, and female size.

Synaptic Facilitation: A Key Biological Mechanism for Resource Allocation in Computational Models of Working Memory

Working memory (WM) is a crucial cognitive function required to maintain and manipulate information that is no longer present through the senses. Two key features of WM are its limited capacity and the emergence of serial order effects. This study investigates how synaptic facilitation and diverse display dynamics influence the encoding and retention of multiple items in WM. A biophysically inspired attractor model of WM, endowed with synaptic facilitation, is considered in this study. The investigation delves into the behaviour of the model under both sequential and simultaneous display protocols. Synaptic facilitation plays a crucial role in establishing the response of the WM system by regulating resource allocation during the encoding stage. It boosts WM capacity and is a key mechanism in the emergence of serial order effects. The synaptic facilitation time constant (τF\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\ au _F$$\\end{document}) is critical in modulating these effects, and its heterogeneity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) may contribute to the combination of primacy and recency effects observed experimentally. Additionally, we demonstrate that the WM capacity exhibited by the network is heavily influenced by factors such as the stimuli nature, and their display duration. Although the network connectivity determines the WM capacity by regulating the excitation-inhibition balance, the display protocol modulates its effective limit. Our findings shed light on how different stimulation protocol dynamics affect WM, underscoring the importance of synaptic facilitation and experimental protocol design in modulating WM capacity.

Roles of the 5-HT2C receptor on zebrafish sociality

Serotonin (5-HT) receptors have been implicated in social behavior in vertebrates. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) have been increasingly being used behavioral neuroscience to study the neurobiological correlates of behavior, including sociality. Nonetheless, the role of 5-HT2C receptors in different social functions were not yet studied in this species. Zebrafish were treated with the agonist MK-212 (2 mg/kg) or the antagonist RS-102221 (2 mg/kg) and tested in the social interaction and social novelty tests, conditional approach test, or mirror-induced aggressive displays. MK-212 increased preference for an unknown conspecific in the social investigation test, but also increased preference for the known conspecific in the social novelty test; RS-102221, on the other hand, decreased preference in the social investigation test but increased preference for the novel conspecific in the social novelty test. MK-212 also decreased predator inspection in the conditional approach test. While RS-102221 decreased time in the display zone in the mirror-induced aggressive display test, it increased display duration. Overall, these results demonstrate the complex role of 5-HT2C receptors in different social contexts in zebrafish, revealing a participation in social plasticity in vertebrates.

Is the approximate number system capacity limited? Extended display duration does not increase the limits of linear number estimation.

The approximate number system (ANS) is widely regarded as handling numbers beyond the subitizing range. However, a review of a variety of historical data suggests there is a sharp break in the estimation of visuospatial number at about 20 items. Estimates below 20 tend to be unbiased. Those above 20 tend to show underestimation that can be well-fit by a power function with an exponent less than one. Here we manipulate display duration between subjects to confirm that this break is not simply an artifact of brief displays, but seems to reflect a shift in perceptual magnitude estimation from an ANS (unbiased estimation) to a correlated numerosity system (with log scaling). Detailed analysis of both response time and variability suggests that the sharp break at 20 observed here may reflect a capacity limitation in a linear accumulator system, which gives way to alternative magnitude information beyond 20. Implications for studies of number comparison and math performance are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Intraspecific variation in audience effects during outgroup conflict in a cooperatively breeding fish

Conspecific audiences have frequently been shown to affect behaviour during competitive interactions. However, research on audience effects has focused almost exclusively on how individual observers influence dyadic contests. Few studies have investigated more complex social scenarios, such as when groups defending a collective territory against outsiders can be monitored by neighbours. We used groups of the cooperatively breeding cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher to test experimentally how the presence of neighbours influences group and individual level defence behaviour towards a female intruder, as well as associated within-group interactions. In the presence of neighbours, groups performed more defensive acts and spent more time defending their territory, but the nature of the response to neighbour presence differed between group members. Dominant females attacked intruders more, while subordinate females produced aggressive displays of longer mean duration; dominant males also tended to increase mean display duration. Despite the significant audience effects on defence behaviour, neighbour presence did not lead to any discernible changes in within-group aggression, affiliation or submission during the intrusions. Our study expands the small current literature on audience effects in group-living species and thus contributes to a fuller understanding of within- and between-group social dynamics. • We assessed audience effects on collective defence and within-group interactions. • Groups increased their defensive efforts in the presence of neighbours. • The type of defensive behaviour that increased differed between group members. • Within-group behaviour during the intrusion was not affected by neighbour presence.

A horizontal–vertical anisotropy in spatial short-term memory

ABSTRACT Visual perception and saccadic eye-movements are more precise when directed at isoeccentric locations along the horizontal compared to vertical meridian. This effect is known as horizontal-vertical anisotropy (HVA). Given that the eye-movement system plays an important role in spatial short-term memory (STM) it was hypothesized that spatial STM would also show a horizontal-vertical anisotropy. Consistent with this hypothesis an online experiment revealed a significant HVA in spatial STM (Experiment 1). This effect persisted even when eye-movements were precluded by using very short display durations (Experiment 2). However, there was no HVA in a colour span or orientation change detection task. It is argued that the HVA in spatial STM may result from greater imprecision in the representation of spatial locations along the vertical meridian relative to the horizontal meridian in the spatial maps underpinning spatial STM, a bilateral field advantage, or some combination of these mechanisms.

The Intention to Conceal Does Not Always Affect Time Perception.

The display duration of stimuli is overestimated due to the increase in phasic arousal induced by the stimuli or high levels of background arousal. A previous study demonstrated that display duration of items (2 s) was overestimated when a participant attempted to conceal one of the items so as not to be detected in the concealed information test (CIT). As the time perception remained the same between the item to be concealed and the other items, the overestimation was thought to be due to the high level of background arousal under the conceal condition. Duration of 2 s may be too long to examine the phasic arousal effect induced by the concealed item. The present study conducted three online experiments with shorter durations, that is, each of three items was presented with duration of 1, 0.5, and 2 s in Experiments 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The participants were instructed to conceal one of the three items under the conceal condition and did not conceal any item in the innocent condition. The difference in time perception between the conceal and innocent conditions or between items under the conceal condition was observed in none of the three experiments. The result indicates that temporal overestimation does not occur when a participant is only concealing an object. Rather, temporal overestimation would occur only when the level of background arousal is amplified by the concealment.

Realistic precision and accuracy of online experiment platforms, web browsers, and devices

Due to increasing ease of use and ability to quickly collect large samples, online behavioural research is currently booming. With this popularity, it is important that researchers are aware of who online participants are, and what devices and software they use to access experiments. While it is somewhat obvious that these factors can impact data quality, the magnitude of the problem remains unclear. To understand how these characteristics impact experiment presentation and data quality, we performed a battery of automated tests on a number of realistic set-ups. We investigated how different web-building platforms (Gorilla v.20190828, jsPsych v6.0.5, Lab.js v19.1.0, and psychoJS/PsychoPy3 v3.1.5), browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari), and operating systems (macOS and Windows 10) impact display time across 30 different frame durations for each software combination. We then employed a robot actuator in realistic set-ups to measure response recording across the aforementioned platforms, and between different keyboard types (desktop and integrated laptop). Finally, we analysed data from over 200,000 participants on their demographics, technology, and software to provide context to our findings. We found that modern web platforms provide reasonable accuracy and precision for display duration and manual response time, and that no single platform stands out as the best in all features and conditions. In addition, our online participant analysis shows what equipment they are likely to use.

Time Passes Slowly When You Are Concealing Something

The item to be concealed elicits greater physiological arousal than other items. Since high physiological arousal causes an overestimation of time, the display duration of an item is expected to be perceived as longer when people intend to conceal it. After stealing and concealing one item, 36 university students were asked to judge the display duration of an item as shorter than, equal to, or longer than a memorised duration of 2 s. Pictures of three items including the stolen item were presented in the guilty condition, whereas pictures of three items that had not been stolen were presented in the innocent condition. The display of all items in the guilty condition was perceived as longer than in the innocent condition without difference between the concealed and other items. The intention to conceal increases tonic arousal reflected in a higher skin conductance level and leads to a non-specific temporal overestimation.

Feature-specificity in visual statistical summary processing.

Visual statistical summary processing enables people to extract the average feature of a set of items rapidly and accurately. Previous studies have demonstrated independent mechanisms for summarizing low (e.g. color, orientation) and high-level (facial identity, emotion) visual information. However, no study to date has conclusively determined whether there are feature-specific summarization mechanisms for low-level features or whether there are low-level, feature agnostic summarization mechanisms. To address this issue, we asked participants to report either the average orientation or the average size from a set of lines where both features varied. Participants completed these tasks either in single-task or mixed-task conditions; in the latter, successful performance required extraction of both summaries concurrently. If there were feature-specific summarization mechanisms that could operate in parallel, then errors in mean size and mean orientation tasks should be independent, in both single and mixed task conditions. On the other hand, a central domain-general mechanism for low-level summarization would imply a correlation between errors for both features and greater error in the mixed than single task trials. In Experiment 1, we found that there was no correlation between the mean size and mean orientation errors and performance was similar across single and mixed-task conditions, suggesting that there may be independent summarization mechanisms for size and orientation features. To further test the feature-specificity account, in Experiment 2 and 3 (with mask), we manipulated the display duration to determine whether there were any differences in the summarization of earlier (orientation) vs. later (size) features. While these experiments replicated the pattern of results observed in Experiment 1, at shorter display durations, no differences emerged across features. We argue that our data is consistent with independent, multi-level feature-specific statistical summary mechanisms for low-level visual features.

Using the flicker task to estimate visual working memory storage capacity.

Studies of visual working memory (VWM) typically have used a "one-shot" change detection task to arrive at a capacity estimate of three to four objects, with additional limits imposed by the precision of the information needed for each object. Unlike the one-shot task, the flicker change detection task permits measurement of VWM capacity over time and with larger numbers of objects present in the scene, but it has rarely been used to assess the capacity of VWM. We used the flicker task to examine (a) whether capacity is close to the typical three to four items when using subtly different stimuli; (b) which dependent measure provides the most meaningful estimate of the capacity of VWM in the flicker task (response time or number of changes viewed); (c) whether capacity remains fixed at three to four items for displays containing many more objects; and (d) how VWM operates over time, with repeated opportunities to encode, retain, and compare elements in a display. Four experiments using grids of simple items varying only in luminance or color revealed a range for VWM capacity limits that was largely impervious to changes in display duration, interstimulus intervals, and array size. This estimate of VWM capacity was correlated with an estimate from the more typical one-shot task, further validating the flicker task as a tool for measuring the capacity of VWM.

Conflict of interest disclosure slides at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2016 in Rome: are they displayed long enough to assess their content? A cross-sectional study

ObjectivesTo assess the duration of display of conflict of interest (COI) disclosure slides of presentations at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2016, and to identify factors associated with...

Acute fluoxetine differently affects aggressive display in zebrafish phenotypes.

Zebrafish have been introduced as a model organism in behavioral neuroscience and biological psychiatry, increasing the breadth of findings using fish to study the neurobiology of aggression. Phenotypic differences between leopard and longfin zebrafish were exploited in order to elucidate the role of phasic serotonin in aggressive displays on this species. The present study, revealed differences in aggressive display between leopard and longfin zebrafish, and a discrepant effect of acute fluoxetine in both populations. In mirror-induced aggression, leopard animals showed higher display latencies than longfin, as well as lower display duration and frequency (Experiment 1). Moreover, 2.5 mg/kg fluoxetine decreased the duration and frequency of display in longfin, but not leopard; and 5 mg/kg fluoxetine increased display frequency in leopard, but not longfin (Experiment 2). It is suggested that zebrafish from the longfin phenotype show more aggressive motivation and readiness in the mirror-induced aggression test than leopard, and that acute fluoxetine increases aggression in leopard and decreased it in longfin zebrafish.

Display Configuration and Duration Effects in Redundancy Gain for a Categorization Task

Display Configuration and Duration Effects in Redundancy Gain for a Categorization Task

Synchronized stimuli are perceived to be shorter

PURPOSE: Processing and telling time, or time perception, is vital for the survival of any organism. A variety of spatial cues have been found to be effective in modulating observers’ time perception. Here, we investigated the effect of synchronization, a form of temporal cue, on the perceived duration of visual stimuli in which spatial cues were largely controlled. METHODS AND RESULTS: Stimuli were 100 non-overlapping Gabor patches moving in one of two directions that orthogonal to their orientations. Synchronization of Gabor patches were defined by entropy and correlation; entropy refers to the probability of moving direction change and correlation refers to the likelihood that all Gabor elements reverse their motion directions simultaneously. In Experiment 1, nineteen observers performed a duration discrimination task that included four pairs of stimuli that differed in entropy and correlation and found that stimuli with high synchronization were perceived significantly shorter (by ~50ms) than random but otherwise identical stimuli of the same duration. This contraction effect couldn’t be explained by change in perceived speed (Experiment 2). Varying the display duration from 350 to 1050ms didn’t significantly affect the magnitude of perceived contraction (Experiment 3). Furthermore, we found no significant difference in both appearance and disappearance detection times to stimuli (Experiment 4), ruling out the possibility of different detection time with stimuli of different synchronization factors. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our findings suggest that synchronization can also effectively modulate time perception, possibly acting via slowing down the pacemaker, an essential part of the internal clock.

The different roles of category- and feature-specific attentional control settings on attentional enhancement and inhibition.

Contingent attentional capture suggests that top-down attentional control settings (ACS) can enhance attentional processing of task-relevant properties and inhibit attentional processing of task-irrelevant properties. However, it remains unclear how ACS operates when a distractor has both task-relevant and task-irrelevant characteristics. In the present study, two lateralized ERP components, N2pc and distractor positivity (Pd), were employed as markers of attentional enhancement and inhibition, respectively. The degree of matching between a distractor and a conjunctively defined target was manipulated to illustrate attentional guidance by category-specific ACS (cACS) and feature-specific ACS (fACS), and the relative position between the distractor and the target was manipulated to isolate the processing of the distractor and the target. Experiment 1 showed that, with a long display duration for searching, a reliable N2pc component was elicited by a distractor that was feature-matched but category-mismatched (C-F+) relative to the target-defined properties, suggesting an enhancing effect of fACS. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that, with a short display duration, a Pd component was elicited by a distractor that was feature-mismatched but category-matched (C+F-) relative to the target-defined properties, suggesting an inhibitory effect of fACS. Moreover, both attentional enhancement and inhibition were only triggered by fACS but not by cACS. In summary, ACS can enhance target-relevant properties or inhibit target-irrelevant properties in response to the display duration, and fACS affects both enhancement and inhibition more than cACS.

Dynamic cues to binocular depth

Aim: Subjects with no clinically measurable stereoacuity report compelling ‘pop-out’ depth effects when viewing a 3D stereoscopic video. The purpose of this study was to systematically investigate the effectiveness of static and dynamic stereoscopic stimuli, by isolating cues to depth present in stereoscopic 3D entertainment media. Methods: Stereoscopic stimuli were developed that either featured or lacked changes of disparity and/or of stimulus pattern. A PC-controlled 4-alternativeforced-choice (4AFC) task was used to assess the depth detection thresholds of visually normal subjects, with stimuli presented on a passive polarised stereoscopic monitor at 3 m. Thresholds were determined in four conditions: baseline STATIC (fixed disparity level), STATIC PATTERN CHANGE (fixed disparity level with a change in stimulus pattern), Z-LOCATION CHANGE (disparity increase towards target level with a fixed pattern) and CDOT (disparity increase with pattern change). Results: In total 32 subjects aged 18–41 years were recruited from the University of Liverpool. The mean(SD) thresholds were: STATIC 183@(101), Z-LOCATION CHANGE 120@(60), CDOT 167@(111) and STATIC PATTERN CHANGE 241@(129). The conditions which contained a change in z-location yielded a significantly lower threshold than those with fixed disparity ( p > 0.01), whereas the presence of a pattern change resulted in a statistically significant reduction in threshold ( p > 0.05). There was no significant interaction between the factors. Conclusion: By directly comparing thresholds for static and dynamic conditions using stimuli presented on the same device with the same settings (such as display duration, size, contrast, colour, display method, luminance, testing protocol), we can conclude that it is the dynamic nature of the disparity information that confers a benefit on individuals’ depth detection. The dynamic facet of stereopsis may contribute to the compelling ‘pop-out’ effect described when viewing 3D entertainment media.

Constructing representations of spatial location from briefly presented displays.

Spatial memory and reasoning rely heavily on allocentric (often map-like) representations of spatial knowledge. While research has documented many ways in which spatial information can be represented in allocentric form, less is known about how such representations are constructed. For example: Are the very early, pre-attentive parts of the process hard-wired, or can they be altered by experience? We addressed this issue by presenting sub-saccadic (53ms) masked stimuli consisting of a target among one to three reference features. We then shifted the location of the feature array, and asked participants to identify the target's new relative location. Experience altered feature processing even when the display duration was too short to allow attention re-allocation. The results demonstrate the importance of early perceptual processes in the creation of representations of spatial location, and the malleability of those processes based on experience and expectations.