Items In Display Research Articles

You look familiar, but I don't care: Lure rejection in hybrid visual and memory search is not based on familiarity.

In "hybrid" search tasks, observers hold multiple possible targets in memory while searching for those targets among distractor items in visual displays. Wolfe (2012) found that, if the target set is held constant over a block of trials, reaction times (RTs) in such tasks were a linear function of the number of items in the visual display and a linear function of the log of the number of items held in memory. However, in such tasks, the targets can become far more familiar than the distractors. Does this "familiarity"- operationalized here as the frequency and recency with which an item has appeared-influence performance in hybrid tasks In Experiment 1, we compared searches where distractors appeared with the same frequency as the targets to searches where all distractors were novel. Distractor familiarity did not have any reliable effect on search. In Experiment 2, most distractors were novel but some critical distractors were as common as the targets while others were 4× more common. Familiar distractors did not produce false alarm errors, though they did slightly increase RTs. In Experiment 3, observers successfully searched for the new, unfamiliar item among distractors that, in many cases, had been seen only once before. We conclude that when the memory set is held constant for many trials, item familiarity alone does not cause observers to mistakenly confuse target with distractors.

Book Review: Socio-Economic Impacts of Bioenergy Production

Book Review: Socio-Economic Impacts of Bioenergy Production

Speakers of different languages process the visual world differently.

Language and vision are highly interactive. Here we show that people activate language when they perceive the visual world, and that this language information impacts how speakers of different languages focus their attention. For example, when searching for an item (e.g., clock) in the same visual display, English and Spanish speakers look at different objects. Whereas English speakers searching for the clock also look at a cloud, Spanish speakers searching for the clock also look at a gift, because the Spanish names for gift (regalo) and clock (reloj) overlap phonologically. These different looking patterns emerge despite an absence of direct language input, showing that linguistic information is automatically activated by visual scene processing. We conclude that the varying linguistic information available to speakers of different languages affects visual perception, leading to differences in how the visual world is processed.

Children’s mappings between number words and the approximate number system

Humans can represent number either exactly – using their knowledge of exact numbers as supported by language, or approximately – using their approximate number system (ANS). Adults can map between these two systems – they can both translate from an approximate sense of the number of items in a brief visual display to a discrete number word estimate (i.e., ANS-to-Word), and can generate an approximation, for example by rapidly tapping, when provided with an exact verbal number (i.e., Word-to-ANS). Here we ask how these mappings are initially formed and whether one mapping direction may become functional before the other during development. In two experiments, we gave 2–5year old children both an ANS-to-Word task, where they had to give a verbal number response to an approximate presentation (i.e., after seeing rapidly flashed dots, or watching rapid hand taps), and a Word-to-ANS task, where they had to generate an approximate response to a verbal number request (i.e., rapidly tapping after hearing a number word). Replicating previous results, children did not successfully generate numerically appropriate verbal responses in the ANS-to-Word task until after 4years of age – well after they had acquired the Cardinality Principle of verbal counting. In contrast, children successfully generated numerically appropriate tapping sequences in the Word-to-ANS task before 4years of age – well before many understood the Cardinality Principle. We further found that the accuracy of the mapping between the ANS and number words, as captured by error rates, continues to develop after this initial formation of the interface. These results suggest that the mapping between the ANS and verbal number representations is not functionally bidirectional in early development, and that the mapping direction from number representations to the ANS is established before the reverse.

Video Art: “A White Cube” or “A Black Box”?

Video art is a hybrid, combining features of both contemporary art as well as screen arts. It brings together different ways of perception working both in a manner of a movie which transfers the viewer into virtual daydreaming (Matthew Barney, Steeve McQueen), and in a manner of a painting or sculpture which gives a viewer some intense corporal experience (Tony Oursler). Accordingly, there are two ways of presenting video art: in a white cube and a black box. In 1970-s video art used to be presented in white cubes of contemporary art galleries where they nailed the screens right to the wall. In a white cube video comes into the viewers sight together with other items in display, therefore a show-piece comes into contact with other ones in a spectators minds eye. Moreover, a white cube gives visitors an opportunity to be in charge of their time of viewing, which implies, that the white cube perception appears rather chaotic and the final cut of a video in the spectators mind becomes unpredictable, what is characteristic of video. In 2000-s when both video and film technologies got replaced by the digital one, all the moving pictures started to resemble one another. A well-lit room of a white cube was not appropriate for high definition videos, whereas a black box is usually associated with a cinema hall and consequently a video presented in such a cinematic manner makes a viewer unconsciously expect to see a cinematic piece of art. Video today is an indispensable figurant of any significant exhibition of contemporary art and it is defined as an artistic (not cinematic) media. Traditionally video is being exhibited in a white cube of a gallery; however, there is now a distinct tendency to present video art in a black box, that is in a cinematic way. As a result its getting harder and harder to distinguish video art from experimental cinema. Nowadays the very strategy of presentation of video may help this media to retain identity or to lose it.

Reward associations impact both iconic and visual working memory

Reward plays a fundamental role in human behavior. A growing number of studies have shown that stimuli associated with reward become salient and attract attention. The aim of the present study was to extend these results into the investigation of iconic memory and visual working memory. In two experiments we asked participants to perform a visual-search task where different colors of the target stimuli were paired with high or low reward. We then tested whether the pre-established feature-reward association affected performance on a subsequent visual memory task, in which no reward was provided. In this test phase participants viewed arrays of 8 objects, one of which had unique color that could match the color associated with reward during the previous visual-search task. A probe appeared at varying intervals after stimulus offset to identify the to-be-reported item. Our results suggest that reward biases the encoding of visual information such that items characterized by a reward-associated feature interfere with mnemonic representations of other items in the test display. These results extend current knowledge regarding the influence of reward on early cognitive processes, suggesting that feature-reward associations automatically interact with the encoding and storage of visual information, both in iconic memory and visual working memory.

Visual search for singleton targets redundantly defined in two feature dimensions: Coactive processing of color-motion targets?

In 2 visual search experiments, the role of feature contrast/saliency signals in generating detection responses to singleton feature targets in visual search was investigated using the redundant-target paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that coactive integration of dimensional signals is not restricted to targets defined on the color and orientation dimensions; rather, targets involving any of the combinations of color, orientation, and motion, are integrated coactively, as evidenced by violations of Miller's (1982) race model inequality. Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1 for color-motion targets, with the target items' luminance adjusted, individually for each observer, to that of the distractors. The evidence for coactive processing of motion (saliency) with color and, respectively, orientation (saliency) signals suggests that, at variance with a recent suggestion by Li (2002; Koene & Zhaoping, 2007), signal integration in feature search tasks occurs at a stage following initial feature coding in primary visual cortex (V1), even though feature contrast computations in V1 may well contribute to saliency coding. In sum, the results suggest that detection responses were based on an integrated, overall-saliency representation indicating the presence of an odd-one-out item in the display, consistent with the dimension-weighting account of visual search (Müller et al., 1995, 2003).

Geospatial spreadsheets with microscale air quality visualization and synchronization for supporting multiple-scenario visual collaboration

A major obstacle of the interdisciplinary communications for decision-making is that each participant prefers the solution from their own area because current collaboration systems cannot effectively mediate among many alternatives. If a visual collaboration system could display multiple alternatives in a single visual presentation, users would be able to compare alternatives with only a few variables, where all other parameters are fixed, at least from a visual perspective. In this study, we developed a visualization tool to support a microscale air quality (MSAQ) management group, the members of which often need to compare the effects of many alternative control methods. The main achievements of this study are: (1) three-dimensional (3D) visualization of the MSAQ using a 3D city model and (2) development of a geospatial spreadsheet (GS) to facilitate visual comparisons, thereby improving decision-making by making it easy to compare differences based on realistic visual display items. A questionnaire-based survey showed that use of the GS could generate a shared perspective and provide a spatiotemporal context for the participants, thereby making it easy to compare, mediate and reach decisions when confronted with many alternatives.

The use of Museums for Educational Purposes Using Drama Method

Museums with rich artefacts inside them set the stage for understanding culture, art and history, therefore contribute for education. Instead of visiting like a spectator only, museums should be reviewed as locations to interact with items in display. Museums as being buildings rich in historical and cultural items where a community can display its past, culture and way of life, are new places that can be used for educational purposes in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). The goal of our research project is to draw attention to the importance of teaching by using drama-methods in museums, to emphasize the effective and diverse use of museums for education. In our applied activities, we followed a methodology where personal observations, interviewing individuals and the review of documents were used. For this reason our study can be categorized as a factual study rather than a conceptual one. Within the framework of our study, in order to gather our data we used review- of- literature. In addition to this, our study was also based on the interviews made with people in activities. We also followed a keen observation of the performed activities and tried to make an accurate evaluation of them. We believe, the information gathered in our study and in our sample activities would especially be useful for the teachers. Greater importance should be attached to school-museum relationship. Greater education should be provided to the teachers about importance of the museums. We should make better use of our museums for educational purposes with more sample activities about their importance and there should be a greater support for museum-education. The teachers should go through an applied-education to learn and to understand the use of museums in education.

Onsets do not override top-down goals, but they are responded to more quickly

Do onsets automatically capture attention? Spatial-cuing experiments often reveal no capture by onset cues in searches for color targets. However, recent experiments have shown faster responses to an uncued color target presented as an abrupt onset than as a change to an existing item, which has been argued to reflect capture by the onset. In the present experiment, we tested whether this onset advantage reflects the capture of attention or processing independent of shifts of attention. In a modified spatial-cuing paradigm, noninformative color precues were paired with color targets presented as abrupt onsets or as no-onset characters. Critically, the number of other onset items in the target display was manipulated, which has previously been shown to disrupt attention allocation to any particular item. It was reasoned that if the onset advantage for uncued color targets reflects attentional capture, then the appearance of additional onsets should eliminate this advantage. The results showed that even with multiple onsets on the target display, the onset advantage remained additive with cue validity. The additive effects are inconsistent with automatic capture by onsets, suggesting instead that the onset advantage arises from an independent source.

Contralateral delay activity reveals dimension-based attentional orienting to locations in visual working memory

In research on visual working memory (WM), a contentiously debated issue concerns whether or not items are stored independently of one another in WM. Here we addressed this issue by exploring the role of the physical context that surrounds a given item in the memory display in the formation of WM representations. In particular, we employed bilateral memory displays that contained two or three lateralized singleton items (together with six or five distractor items), defined either within the same or in different visual feature dimensions. After a variable interval, a retro-cue was presented centrally, requiring participants to discern the presence (vs. the absence) of this item in the previously shown memory array. Our results show that search for targets in visual WM is determined interactively by dimensional context and set size: For larger, but not smaller, set sizes, memory search slowed down when targets were defined across rather than within dimensions. This dimension-specific cost manifested in a stronger contralateral delay activity component, an established neural marker of the access to WM representations. Overall, our findings provide electrophysiological evidence for the hierarchically structured nature of WM representations, and they appear inconsistent with the view that WM items are encoded in isolation.

Positional priming of pop-out is nested in visuospatial context

The present study investigated facilitatory and inhibitory positional priming using a variant of Maljkovic and Nakayama's (1996) priming of pop-out task. Here, the singleton target and the distractors could be presented in different visuospatial contexts—but identical screen locations—across trials, permitting positional priming based on individual locations to be disentangled from priming based on interitem configural relations. The results revealed both significant facilitatory priming, i.e., faster reaction times (RTs) to target presented at previous target relative to previously empty locations, and inhibitory priming, i.e., slower RTs to target at previous distractor relative to previously empty locations. However, both effects were contingent on repetitions versus changes of stimulus arrangement: While facilitation of target locations was dependent on the repetition of the exact item configuration (e.g., T-type followed by T-type stimulus arrangement), the inhibitory effect was more “tolerant,” being influenced by repetitions versus changes of the item's visuospatial category (T-type followed by Z-type pattern; cf. Garner & Clement, 1963). The results suggest that facilitatory and inhibitory priming are distinct phenomena (Finke et al., 2009) and that both effects are sensitive to subtle information about the arrangement of the display items (Geyer, Zehetleitner, & Muller, 2010). The results are discussed with respect to the stage(s) of visual pop-out search that are influenced by positional priming.

Hybrid search in the temporal domain: Evidence for rapid, serial logarithmic search through memory

In hybrid search, observers memorize a number of possible targets and then search for any of these in visual arrays of items. Wolfe (2012) has previously shown that the response times in hybrid search increase with the log of the memory set size. What enables this logarithmic search of memory? One possibility is a series of steps in which subsets of the memory set are compared to all items in the visual set simultaneously. In the present experiments, we presented single visual items sequentially in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) display, eliminating the possibility of simultaneous testing of all items. We used a staircasing procedure to estimate the time necessary to effectively detect the target in the RSVP stream. Processing time increased in a log-linear fashion with the number of potential targets. This finding eliminates the class of models that require simultaneous comparison of some memory items to all (or many) items in the visual display. Experiment 3 showed that, similar to visual search, memory search efficiency in this paradigm is influenced by the similarity between the target set and the distractors. These results indicate that observers perform separate memory searches on each eligible item in the visual display. Moreover, it appears that memory search for one item can proceed while other items are being categorized as "eligible" or "not eligible."

Positional priming of pop-out is nested in visuospatial context

The present study investigated facilitatory and inhibitory positional priming using a variant of Maljkovic and Nakayama's (1996) priming of pop-out task. Here, the singleton target and the distractors could be presented in different visuospatial contexts-but identical screen locations-across trials, permitting positional priming based on individual locations to be disentangled from priming based on interitem configural relations. The results revealed both significant facilitatory priming, i.e., faster reaction times (RTs) to target presented at previous target relative to previously empty locations, and inhibitory priming, i.e., slower RTs to target at previous distractor relative to previously empty locations. However, both effects were contingent on repetitions versus changes of stimulus arrangement: While facilitation of target locations was dependent on the repetition of the exact item configuration (e.g., T-type followed by T-type stimulus arrangement), the inhibitory effect was more "tolerant," being influenced by repetitions versus changes of the item's visuospatial category (T-type followed by Z-type pattern; cf. Garner & Clement, 1963). The results suggest that facilitatory and inhibitory priming are distinct phenomena (Finke et al., 2009) and that both effects are sensitive to subtle information about the arrangement of the display items (Geyer, Zehetleitner, & Müller, 2010). The results are discussed with respect to the stage(s) of visual pop-out search that are influenced by positional priming.

A Saliency-Based Search Model

Driver distraction is a leading cause of motor vehicle crashes. As more in-vehicle systems are developed, they represent increasing potential for distraction. Designers of these systems require a quantitative way to assess their distraction potential that does not involve time-consuming test track or simulator testing. A critical contribution to driver distraction concerns the search time for items in an in-vehicle system display. This study tests the saliency map’s ability to predict search time, and proposes a potential application of the saliency map in assessing driver distraction. Empirical data for search tasks were collected and used to test a modified driver model based on the saliency map. The results show that the modified saliency map can predict search time, and suggest that the driver model could be used to understand how design features influence the bottom-up visual search process. More broadly, such a model can complement guidelines and user testing to help designers to incorporate human factors considerations earlier in the design process.

The effects of task difficulty on visual search strategy in virtual 3D displays

Analyzing the factors that determine our choice of visual search strategy may shed light on visual behavior in everyday situations. Previous results suggest that increasing task difficulty leads to more systematic search paths. Here we analyze observers' eye movements in an "easy" conjunction search task and a "difficult" shape search task to study visual search strategies in stereoscopic search displays with virtual depth induced by binocular disparity. Standard eye-movement variables, such as fixation duration and initial saccade latency, as well as new measures proposed here, such as saccadic step size, relative saccadic selectivity, and x-y target distance, revealed systematic effects on search dynamics in the horizontal-vertical plane throughout the search process. We found that in the "easy" task, observers start with the processing of display items in the display center immediately after stimulus onset and subsequently move their gaze outwards, guided by extrafoveally perceived stimulus color. In contrast, the "difficult" task induced an initial gaze shift to the upper-left display corner, followed by a systematic left-right and top-down search process. The only consistent depth effect was a trend of initial saccades in the easy task with smallest displays to the items closest to the observer. The results demonstrate the utility of eye-movement analysis for understanding search strategies and provide a first step toward studying search strategies in actual 3D scenarios.

Analysis of components of the Main Page in the SOHO Internet Apparel Shopping Malls - Comparative Analysis of Women's and Men's Malls -

The purpose of this study is to do a detailed analysis of the layouts and components of the main pages of the SOHO malls, which serve as its display window, and in turn, find a successful strategy for SOHO malls in the over saturated Internet shopping mall market. To analyze the components and layout of the main page of the SOHO Internet apparel shopping malls, top 50 Internet apparel shopping malls for woman and top 50 Internet apparel shopping malls for man, ranked within Internet shopping mall 10) were selected. Data were collected from the coding sheets surveyed on the Internet apparel shopping malls for one month (September 2012). The result showed different patterns in various aspects between women's and men's malls. 1) The men’s malls used product pictures more frequently in their main pages than the women’s malls 2)The sections for jewelry and beauties were usually included in men’s apparel shopping malls. 3) Men’s malls usually had a rather crowded layout with numerous banners in order to expose their promotional items to the fullest. 4) men’s malls provided a more detailed promotional and product information regarding the display items on its main pages. 5) Women’s malls had a wider range of price distribution and generally higher prices.

The power of pooling in high dimensions

Evidence suggests that crowding results from "forced texture processing," involving excessive feature integration or compulsory averaging over each local pooling region. A number of experiments have tested a simple version of this hypothesis. In this simple pooling model, each pooling region yields the mean of some (often unspecified) feature. To a first approximation, this predicts worse performance the more one fills the pooling region with irrelevant flankers. For a given amount of "flanker stuff", performance should not depend on the perceptual organization of the flankers, nor on the flanker identities, except insofar as they affect the informativeness of the mean feature value. This impoverished model cannot explain performance improvements with larger flankers (Levi & Carney 2009; Manassi et al 2012), or when flankers group with one another (Saarela et al. 2009; Sayim et al 2010; Manassi et al. 2012). It cannot predict worse performance with increasing target-flanker similarity (Andriessen & Bouma 1976; Kooi et al 1994; Saarela et al. 2009), unless one hypothesizes that averaging occurs only within a narrow feature band. And why do observers not merely report the mean? These results seem to bode ill for pooling models of crowding. However, the model being rejected is a straw man. Realistic texture processing models are high-dimensional, and bear little resemblance to their low-dimensional brethren. High-dimensional models behave fundamentally differently, and intuitions do not simply "scale up" from low-dimensional models. More measurements per patch provide increasingly good representation of that patch. I will demonstrate simple techniques for gaining intuitions about high-dimensional models. Such models can capture the "objectness" and numerosity of display items, aspects of their feature distributions (not just their mean), differences between target and flankers, and flanker grouping. Such information can facilitate decision-making about the target in ways not predicted by a "simple pooling model". Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013

Western Database of Lipid Variants (WDLV): A Catalogue of Genetic Variants in Monogenic Dyslipidemias

BackgroundNext-generation sequencing (NGS) is nearing routine clinical application, especially for diagnosis of rare monogenic cardiovascular diseases. But NGS uncovers so much variation in an individual genome that filtering steps are required to streamline data management. The first step is to determine whether a potential disease-causing variant has been observed previously in affected patients. MethodsTo facilitate this step for lipid disorders, we developed the Western Database of Lipid Variants (WDLV) of 2776 variants in 24 genes that cause monogenic dyslipoproteinemias, including conditions characterized primarily by either high or low low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high or low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high triglyceride, and some miscellaneous disorders. We incorporated quality-control steps to maximize the likelihood that a listed mutation was disease causing. ResultsThe details of each mutation found in a dyslipidemia, together with a mutation map of the causative genes, are shown in graphical display items. ConclusionsWDLV will help clinicians and researchers determine the potential pathogenicity of mutations discovered by DNA sequencing of patients or research participants with lipid disorders.

Functional brain connectivity and cognition: effects of adult age and task demands

Previous neuroimaging research has documented that patterns of intrinsic (resting state) functional connectivity (FC) among brain regions covary with individual measures of cognitive performance. Here, we examined the relation between intrinsic FC and a reaction time (RT) measure of performance, as a function of age group and task demands. We obtained filtered, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging data, and RT measures of visual search performance, from 21 younger adults (19–29 years old) and 21 healthy, older adults (60–87 years old). Age-related decline occurred in the connectivity strength in multiple brain regions, consistent with previous findings. Among 8 pairs of regions, across somatomotor, orbitofrontal, and subcortical networks, increasing FC was associated with faster responding (lower RT). Relative to younger adults, older adults exhibited a lower strength of this RT-connectivity relation and greater disruption of this relation by a salient but irrelevant display item (color singleton distractor). Age-related differences in the covariation of intrinsic FC and cognitive performance vary as a function of task demands.