Non-human Participants Research Articles

Target color and shape can control contextual saccadic adaptation

Saccade adaptation is a form of motor learning that maintains saccade accuracy when facing new sensorimotor contingencies. Researchers have shown that distinct saccade gain states can be adapted simultaneously in a double-step paradigm depending on contexts acting on the motor command (e.g. velocity or direction of target motion, head tilt, orbital eccentricity, or vergence). However, purely visual cues such as target color or shape consistently failed to drive different gain states during saccadic adaptation. Since Deubel's work in 1995, this question has remained unsolved despite extensive research in both human and non-human participants. The present work investigates whether this lack of contextual control might be due to a lack of relevance of the contextual cue to the saccadic system. We modified the conventional intrasaccadic step paradigm by displaying a distractor at the back-stepped location when the target stepped forward and vice-versa. In a first experiment the pre-saccadic target color (red or green) indicated its intra-saccadic step (backward or forward) and a distractor (green or red) was displayed after the saccade landed (at the forward-stepped or back-stepped location). We observed contextual control of saccade adaptation, which did not occur when the distractor was not displayed. In two other experiments we found the same effect using shape or shape and color as contextual features. We conclude that feature-based selection of the target promotes contextual adaptation. Three additional experiments further confirmed that i) when two features of the context cues are conflicting, contextual adaptation is blocked, ii) the spatial reference provided by the distractor is not responsible for our contextual adaptation and iii) removing the distractor during the adaptation phase induces a progressive decrease in adaptation. These results indicate that any context could potentially control contextual saccadic adaptation provided that the relation between the context cue and the saccadic response is made relevant. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016

Runaway Train: Ex Machina and the Rebel Girls

Courtship is a fertile setting for culturally defined strategies. A common form of competition is criticizing the other group for being inadequate mates. Stories about romance between human beings and non-human participants allow such criticism. Movies about men finding mechanical partners are common. Non-human females are seen as more satisfactory than women, especially when women are transforming their roles to be less subservient.

Teatralność jako doświadczenie proteuszowe w hybrydycznych formach sztuki najnowszej

Celem artykułu jest sformułowanie modelu teatralności opisującego hybrydyczne formy sztuki najnowszej, czyli zjawiska artystyczne, które łączą nie tylko różne media artystyczne, lecz także odmienne od siebie dyskursy artystyczne, naukowe czy polityczne. W pierwszej części artykuły autor wykorzystuje ustalenia niemieckiej teoretyczki sztuki Juliane Rebentisch, by krytycznie przeanalizować tradycyjną koncepcję teatralności sztuki jako hierarchicznej relacji ludzkiego podmiotu i nie-ludzkiego przedmiotu artystycznego (Fried). W drugiej części, powołując się na współczesny nowy materializm (Barad, DeLanda, Sabolius), autor przedstawia koncepcję teatralności jako doświadczenia proteuszowego, której zasadą jest ciągła zmiana statusu wszystkich, ludzkich i nie-ludzkich, uczestników hybrydycznych form sztuki najnowszej.

Theatricality as the Protean Experience in Hybridised Forms of Contemporary Art

This paper puts forward a model of theatricality as the protean experience in hybridized forms of contemporary art. The author focuses on artistic events that fuse not only different artistic media but also scientific and political discourses and practices of designing new technologies. In the first part of the article, the author employs the theoretical findings of the German art theorist Juliane Rebentisch to critically examine the concept of theatricality as establishing a hierarchical relation between human subjects and non-human objects of aesthetic experience (Fried). As Rebentisch succinctly observes, the theatricality of installation art becomes an open space of experience in which experimental relations between subjects and objects emerge without any pre-established hierarchy. In the second part of the article, the author problematizes the question of spectatorial experience by referring to new materialist philosophies (Barad, DeLanda, Sabolius) which posit a non-anthropocentric model of experience as an assemblage of different human and non-human elements. From this perspective, the author formulates a concept of theatricality as the protean experience which entails the constant change of status of all human and non-human participants of the artistic events. Theoretical findings are illustrated not only by analyses of particular artistic strategies but rather by experiences of participants in contemporary installation art.

Effectiveness of trigger point dry needling for multiple body regions: a systematic review

Background: Trigger point dry needling (TDN) is commonly used to treat musculoskeletal pain related to myofascial trigger points (MTrPs). To date, no systematic review of high-quality randomised controlled trials (RCTs) investigating TDN to multiple body regions exists.Purpose: The aim of this review is to determine the effectiveness of TDN based on high-quality RCTs for all body regions.Methods: To ensure thorough reporting, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed as the methodological basis for this systematic review. PubMed, Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro), Cinahl, Cochrane and reference lists were searched for the years 2000–2014 and the terms ‘TDN’, ‘dry needling NOT trigger point’, ‘functional dry needling’ and ‘intramuscular manual therapy’. Inclusion criteria: RCTs with PEDro scores 6–10 investigating TDN. Exclusion criteria: duplicates, non-human participants, non-English language, exclusive focus on acupuncture or medicinal injections. Three investigators searched databases, applied criteria, read and assigned PEDro scores to every RCT. Nineteen studies met the criteria. As compared to either baseline or control groups, significant differences were found for pain (14 studies), range of motion (ROM) (five studies) and at least one item on function and quality of life measures (six studies).Limitations: This review was limited by inclusion criteria, timeframe, language and databases searched.Conclusion: The majority of high-quality studies included in this review show measured benefit from TDN for MTrPs in multiple body areas, suggesting broad applicability of TDN treatment for multiple muscle groups. Further high-quality research is warranted to standardise TDN methods to determine clinical applicability.

Gollum—Disassemble the Monster to Reassemble the Hybrid Actor

This article aims to outline the distributed agency within the creation of computer-generated characters for live-action movies that use Motion Capture techniques. This technique requires a tight interplay between human actors, technical artefacts and digital processes. With the help of ANT the relationships within this heterogeneous collective can be presented more precisely in order to assign agency to human and non-human participants. Considerations concerning a combined interplay of humans and computer-driven actions result in the figure of the hybrid actor. Gollum, a computer-generated character from Peter Jackson's adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, serves as case example to carve out the attributes of this composite agent. The aim of the article is to show how these types of agents tackle the film industry's inherent ontology revolving around human actors and their products. The article contributes an insight how the mentioned network reacts to the emerging problem of crediting in the context of Motion Capture as technical innovation and how the involved community preserves their notion of artistry.

Intraperirhinal cortex administration of the synthetic cannabinoid, HU210, disrupts object recognition memory in rats.

Cannabinoids disrupt learning and memory in human and nonhuman participants. Object recognition memory, which is particularly susceptible to the impairing effects of cannabinoids, relies critically on the perirhinal cortex (PRh); however, to date, the effects of cannabinoids within PRh have not been assessed. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of localized administration of the synthetic cannabinoid, HU210 (0.01, 1.0 μg/hemisphere), into PRh on spontaneous object recognition in Long-Evans rats. Animals received intra-PRh infusions of HU210 before the sample phase, and object recognition memory was assessed at various delays in a subsequent retention test. We found that presample intra-PRh HU210 dose dependently (1.0 μg but not 0.01 μg) interfered with spontaneous object recognition performance, exerting an apparently more pronounced effect when memory demands were increased. These novel findings show that cannabinoid agonists in PRh disrupt object recognition memory.

Ethics and Dualism in Contemporary Psychology: From Avicenna and Descartes to Neuroscience

From Avicenna and Descartes a long debate on the role of mind-body dilemma has left a huge impact on ethics of psychological research. That is especially applicable on researches that include both human and non-human participants, as well as their limitations and constraints that are connected to ethical principles. However, these principles are closely related to the interpretation of mind-body dilemma, which depends on different understandings of connection between soul and senses. The purpose of this paper is to examine the major impact of well-known “mind-body” dualism on ethics in psychological researches, with special emphasis on neuropsychology and neuroscience in general, as well as major constraints related to that dillema. The thought experiment has been recognized as a precursor to Rene Descartes’ famous ‘Cogito ergo sum’, as well as his body-mind dilemma. However, Avicenna's argument is more intended to demonstrate conceptually that Aristotle’s empirical axiom “ there is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses ” is mistaken, since there is at least one thing in the mind which is not contingent upon experience, and that is self-awareness. The major contribution of this paper is the inclusion of two philosophical debates on mind-body dilemma while considering ethical approaches to neuropsychological research on both human and non-human participants.

Monkeys Wait to Begin a Computer Task when Waiting Makes Their Responses More Effective

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) performed a co mputerized inhibitory control modeled after an escalating interest task fro m a recent human study (Young, Webb, & Jacobs, 2011). In the orig inal study, which utilized a first-person shooter game, hu man part icipants learned to inhib it firing their simu lated weapon long enough for the weapons damage potential to grow in effect iveness (up to 10 seconds in duration). In the present study, monkeys earned food pellets for eliminating arrays of target objects using a digital eraser. We assessed whether monkeys could suppress trial-in itiating joystick movements long enough for the eraser to grow in size and speed, thereby making their eventual responses more effective. Monkeys of both species learned to inhibit mov ing the eraser for as long as 10 seconds, and they allo wed the eraser to gro w larger for successively larger target arrays. This study demonstrates an interesting parallel in behavioral inhibition between human and nonhuman participants and provides a method for future comparat ive testin g of human and nonhuman test groups.

Cultivating hybrid collectives: research methods for enacting community food economies in Australia and the Philippines

Across the globe, groups are experimenting with initiatives to create alternatives to the dominant food system. What role might research play in helping to strengthen and multiply these initiatives? In this paper we discuss two research projects in Australia and the Philippines in which we have cultivated hybrid collectives of academic researchers, lay researchers and various non-human others with the intention of enacting community food economies. We feature three critical interactions in the “hybrid collective research method”: gathering, which brings together those who share concerns about community food economies; reassembling, in which material gathered is deliberatively rebundled to amplify particular insights; and translating, by which reassembled ideas are taken up by other collectives so they may continue to “do work”. We argue that in a climate-changing world, the hybrid collective research method fosters opportunities for a range of human and non-human participants to act in concert to build community food economies.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) Based Visualisation of Socio-Technical Facets of RFID Technology Translation

In the early 2000s, Information Systems researchers in Australia had begun to emphasise socio-technical approaches in innovation adoption of technologies. The ‘essentialist' approaches to adoption (for example, Innovation Diffusion or TAM), suggest an essence is largely responsible for rate of adoption (Tatnall, 2011) or a new technology introduced may spark innovation. The socio-technical factors in implementing an innovation are largely flouted by researchers and hospitals. Innovation Translation is an approach that purports that any innovation needs to be customised and translated in to context before it can be adopted. Equally, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is an approach that embraces the differences in technical and human factors and socio-professional aspects in a non-deterministic manner. The research reported in this paper is an attempt to combined the two approaches in an effective manner, to visualise the socio-technical factors in RFID technology adoption in an Australian hospital. This research investigation demonstrates RFID technology translation in an Australian hospital using a case approach (Yin, 2009). Data was collected using a process of focus groups and interviews, analysed with document analysis and concept mapping techniques. The data was then reconstructed in a ‘movie script' format, with Acts and Scenes funnelled to ANT informed abstraction at the end of each Act. The information visualisation at the end of each Act using ANT informed Lens reveal the re-negotiation and improvement of network relationships between the people (factors) involved including nurses, patient care orderlies, management staff and non-human participants such as equipment and technology. The paper augments the current gaps in literature regarding socio-technical approaches in technology adoption within Australian healthcare context, which is transitioning from non-integrated nearly technophobic hospitals in the last decade to a tech-savvy integrated era. More importantly, the ANT visualisation addresses one of the criticisms of ANT i.e. its insufficiency to explain relationship formations between participants and over changes of events in relationship networks (Greenhalgh & Stones, 2010).

The objects of e-learning

The implementation of learning technology systems in universities tends to be associated with perennial debates about e-learning effectiveness. These debates are phrased in a variety of ways, such as a gap between policy and practice, or outcomes and expectations, or as a mismatch between institutional technology systems and the emergence of Web 2.0. Such characterisations derive from a legacy of huge investment in e-learning systems and strategies that herald great promise for elusive outcomes, attended by a record of compromise and breakdown. This paper draws on this legacy to reflect critically on the pervasive deployment of learning technology systems in universities that has emerged from the brief but vexed history of e-learning, focusing on the arrangements for implementation of a new learning management system in one university. I argue that although this instance of implementation was successful in achieving its purposes, it nevertheless embedded aspects of historical human-technology interactions that reproduced troublesome effects for institutional e-learning. I draw on actor-network theory (ANT) concepts to examine the nonhuman participants of implementation, in particular the "objects" that are the focus of implementation: how these objects entail networks and relations that act prior to and at a distance from the implementation, how they are enacted in technologies and processes of institutional change, and their consequences for teaching and learning practices. Implementation, in this instance, did not fit with an understanding of the LMS as a single object. Rather it involved the enactment of the LMS in multiple forms: as a technological system requiring constant testing and reporting, as a vehicle for organisational change in the form of subject migration and staff adoption, and as a site for situated practices of e-learning. The implications of the study are that where an institution-wide technology is implemented as a singular entity, with a single narrative, there are potential consequences for teaching and learning practices. Understanding organisational change involving e-learning means reappraising the objects that merit such attention and resources, and approaching them as materialised effects of multiple and extensive social and technological relations. I propose that early intervention in the assembly of such objects, at the outset of their implementation, is critical to the construction of a learning-centred e-learning environment.

The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic (review)

Reviewed by: The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic Elizabeth Bush Wolf, Allan. The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic. Candlewick, 2011. [480p]. ISBN 978-0-7636-3703-3 $21.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7–10. You’ve devoured the books, perused the exhibits, and wept over the movie, but your Titanic jones remains unsated? Wolf’s poetic recreation of the epic disaster is the next big thing, giving fictional voice to a score of real life passengers, an undertaker who helped retrieve bodies from the sea, and a pair of non-human participants in the catastrophe. Wolf allows readers to experience the tragedy from all decks, fairly portraying the viewpoints of Captain Smith and White Star Line honcho Bruce Ismay within the context of their time, and interweaving plausible stories among the lesser-known passengers and crew. The commentary of undertaker John Snow, which closes each chronologically sequential section (or, in nautical terms, a “watch”), is particularly chilling in its clinical objectivity as it steadily refocuses readers’ attention from personal stories to the inexorable conclusion. The voice of a ship’s rat, caught up in its single-minded pursuit of food, is an effective agent of irony, more poignant than some prescient remarks by doomed passengers. The anthropomorphized iceberg however, is an unnecessarily histrionic voice, imbued with both motive and omniscience out of keeping in a novel so carefully aligned with fact. Titanic enthusiasts will, no doubt, overlook or forgive those few lapses into cheesiness, and will certainly revel in the extensive end matter, comprising trivia about the ship itself, specific details about featured players in Wolf’s drama, lists of the lost and saved whose names appear anywhere in the text, and a bibliography of resources in multiple formats, with indications of where to begin for further reading. Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A behavioral-economic analysis of the essential value of brands

Recently, Hursh and Silberberg (2008) have advanced a behavior-economic approach to measure the value of reinforcers, in which demand elasticity is measured relative to the point at which price is zero, a technique that allows for comparisons across reinforcers that show different consumption patterns or across different dosages or magnitudes of the same reinforcer. The authors have proposed an exponential model in which the elasticity coefficient measures the essential value of reinforcers. The application of the exponential model in various experiments has shown that it provided a good fit to the data and supplied different theoretically consistent results. Considering that this previous research has either been experimentally based or has involved nonhuman participants, the present work examined the application of the model to the analysis of changes in consumption of brands with changes in prices, employing data from actual consumers buying brands of food products in grocery shopping, differing in the level of informational (i.e., socially mediated) and utilitarian (i.e., product mediated) reinforcement they offered. Purchase information concerning two products was obtained from a consumer panel, which included data related to purchases of more than 1600 consumers during 52 weeks. The model, calculated for different brands, fitted the data only moderately, but its parameters showed good reliability across stores. The essential value of brands showed significant increases with increases in brand informational reinforcement. The results indicate the reliability of the measure of essential value as its application is extended from the closed setting of the laboratory to the open settings of the marketplace and to symbolic secondary reinforcers.

The accuracy of Influenza A (H1N1) “swine flu” laboratory testing: A systematic review of diagnostic test accuracy.

The accuracy of Influenza A (H1N1) “swine flu” laboratory testing: A systematic review of diagnostic test accuracy.

Degrees of Anthropocentrism in Accounts of Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions

AbstractAn investigation of language use in news stories about collisions involving vehicles and nonhuman animals in the wild reveals that reports of bird-airplane collisions tend to focus on the safety of the humans involved, even to the point of constructing the bird as a projectile, rather than a victim. Reports of land vehicles and boats colliding with larger nonhuman animals tend to demonstrate a greater concern for nonhuman participants, attributing greater responsibility to humans for the collisions, although they are more dangerous to humans. Although similar patterns are found in news reports in several languages and in several English-speaking countries, anthropocentrism alone does not fully explain the patterns in journalists’ choice of expressions and structures in these news stories.

Student trajectories in physics: the need for analysis through a socio-cultural lens

An analysis of student connections through time and space relative to the core discipline of physics is attempted, as viewed through the lens of actor-network-theory, by Antonia Candela. Using lenses of cultural realities, networks, and perceived power in the discourse of one specific university in the capital city of Mexico and one undergraduate physics classroom, the trajectories and itineraries of students are analyzed, relative to a physics professor’s pedagogical practices. This ethnographic study then yields comparisons between Mexican undergraduate students and students from the United States. Actor network theory recognizes that the symbiotic relationship existing between an actor and a continuum of space and time is defined by the symbiotic yet interdependent relationships and networks of practice (Lemke in Downward causation: Minds, bodies, and matter 2000). As part of this study and in line with actor-network-theory, human actors and non-human participants were viewed in relation to how subjects acted and were acted upon within networks of practice. Through this forum I reflect on this work with particular focus on the issues of situatedness of actors from a sociocultural perspective and how established networks viewed within this perspective frame and subsequently impact student trajectories and itineraries. In essence I argue for a need to look at a myriad of further complexities driving the symbiotic relationships being analyzed.

The accuracy of Influenza A (H1N1) “swine flu” laboratory testing: A systematic review of diagnostic test accuracy.

The accuracy of Influenza A (H1N1) “swine flu” laboratory testing: A systematic review of diagnostic test accuracy.

The Mediating Role of Objects in Recollections of Adult Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Recollection of child sexual abuse involves complex issues of agency—both in the past and in the present. Adult women survivors face the further obstacle of ingrained cultural tendencies to question women’s testimony. Ambiguity and ambivalence are found in adult women’s accounts of their past abuse and present particular dilemmas. Drawing on social remembering approaches developed in memory studies, it is argued that recollections have to negotiate issues of incidence and intentionality in the past as well as the potential contribution made by non-human participants (e.g. objects, spaces, bodies). Using examples from interviews with survivors of child sexual abuse, we illustrate how objects (largely domestic objects and spaces) emerge in the memories as a way of posing and subsequently disposing ambiguity. Objects, as well as humans, ‘modify the state of affairs’ (Latour, 2005) and serve as the means to punctualize recollected episodes. An analytic approach sensitive to the role of objects in recollection, which is grounded in material-semiotics, is offered.

How Buildings 'Surprise'

Can old buildings faithfully transmit social meaning? Conservation studies have taught us for decades that buildings are valuable for their historical substance and symbolic value gradually acquired with time. Drawing on an Actor-Network-Theory-inspired perspective to tackle buildings, this article questions the philosophy of preservation studies and their definitions of building and agency. Following the process of renovation of the 17th century Alte Aula in Vienna, I explore its dynamics and unpredictable drifts. Renovating is not about transforming a passive and subservient object; it rather offers an experimental situation in which one can witness the building recalcitrance, i.e., its capacity to manifest itself as disobedient as possible to the protocol of renovation, to resist the attempts of control and to ‘surprise’ its makers. A building is, I argue here, a complex mediator that skilfully redistributes the agency among human and nonhuman participants in renovation, provokes contextual mutations and transforms social meanings.