Spatial Items Research Articles

Modeling Location-Based User Rating Profiles for Personalized Recommendation

This article proposes LA-LDA, a location-aware probabilistic generative model that exploits location-based ratings to model user profiles and produce recommendations. Most of the existing recommendation models do not consider the spatial information of users or items; however, LA-LDA supports three classes of location-based ratings, namely spatial user ratings for nonspatial items, nonspatial user ratings for spatial items, and spatial user ratings for spatial items. LA-LDA consists of two components, ULA-LDA and ILA-LDA, which are designed to take into account user and item location information, respectively. The component ULA-LDA explicitly incorporates and quantifies the influence from local public preferences to produce recommendations by considering user home locations, whereas the component ILA-LDA recommends items that are closer in both taste and travel distance to the querying users by capturing item co-occurrence patterns, as well as item location co-occurrence patterns. The two components of LA-LDA can be applied either separately or collectively, depending on the available types of location-based ratings. To demonstrate the applicability and flexibility of the LA-LDA model, we deploy it to both top- k recommendation and cold start recommendation scenarios. Experimental evidence on large-scale real-world data, including the data from Gowalla (a location-based social network), DoubanEvent (an event-based social network), and MovieLens (a movie recommendation system), reveal that LA-LDA models user profiles more accurately by outperforming existing recommendation models for top- k recommendation and the cold start problem.

The change probability effect for high and low spatial frequency items accompanied by a shift in the allocation of attention during encoding

The change probability effect for high and low spatial frequency items accompanied by a shift in the allocation of attention during encoding

The change probability effect for high and low spatial frequency items accompanied by a shift in the allocation of attention during encoding

The Change Probability Effect • Probable changes are detected more accurately than improbable changes (Beck, Angelone, & Levin, 2004). • The Change Probability Effect occurs for everyday objects (Beck et al, 2008) and for novel objects after incidental learning of the probability information (Beck et al, 2004). • Biases at the retrieval and comparison stage (Beck et al, 2007) and at the decision stage (Yang, Chang, & Wu, 2013) have been implicated in the Change Probability Effect. • Current Research Question: Can participants learn to bias the allocation of visual attention during encoding toward probable changes?

LARS*: An Efficient and Scalable Location-Aware Recommender System

This paper proposes LARS*, a location-aware recommender system that uses location-based ratings to produce recommendations. Traditional recommender systems do not consider spatial properties of users nor items; LARS*, on the other hand, supports a taxonomy of three novel classes of location-based ratings, namely, spatial ratings for non-spatial items , non-spatial ratings for spatial items , and spatial ratings for spatial items . LARS* exploits user rating locations through user partitioning , a technique that influences recommendations with ratings spatially close to querying users in a manner that maximizes system scalability while not sacrificing recommendation quality. LARS* exploits item locations using travel penalty , a technique that favors recommendation candidates closer in travel distance to querying users in a way that avoids exhaustive access to all spatial items. LARS* can apply these techniques separately, or together, depending on the type of location-based rating available. Experimental evidence using large-scale real-world data from both the Foursquare location-based social network and the MovieLens movie recommendation system reveals that LARS* is efficient, scalable, and capable of producing recommendations twice as accurate compared to existing recommendation approaches.

LCARS

Newly emerging location-based and event-based social network services provide us with a new platform to understand users' preferences based on their activity history. A user can only visit a limited number of venues/events and most of them are within a limited distance range, so the user-item matrix is very sparse, which creates a big challenge to the traditional collaborative filtering-based recommender systems. The problem becomes even more challenging when people travel to a new city where they have no activity information. In this article, we propose LCARS, a location-content-aware recommender system that offers a particular user a set of venues (e.g., restaurants and shopping malls) or events (e.g., concerts and exhibitions) by giving consideration to both personal interest and local preference. This recommender system can facilitate people's travel not only near the area in which they live, but also in a city that is new to them. Specifically, LCARS consists of two components: offline modeling and online recommendation. The offline modeling part, called LCA-LDA, is designed to learn the interest of each individual user and the local preference of each individual city by capturing item cooccurrence patterns and exploiting item contents. The online recommendation part takes a querying user along with a querying city as input, and automatically combines the learned interest of the querying user and the local preference of the querying city to produce the top- k recommendations. To speed up the online process, a scalable query processing technique is developed by extending both the Threshold Algorithm (TA) and TA-approximation algorithm. We evaluate the performance of our recommender system on two real datasets, that is, DoubanEvent and Foursquare, and one large-scale synthetic dataset. The results show the superiority of LCARS in recommending spatial items for users, especially when traveling to new cities, in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency. Besides, the experimental analysis results also demonstrate the excellent interpretability of LCARS.

Objects as locations in English and Mainland Scandinavian

This article discusses the spatial particles/prepositions up, down, in and out in four languages: English, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. These spatial items can select directly for a DP complement in English and Norwegian, thus looking like regular prepositions; they require a complement preceded by a light preposition in Danish and Swedish, thus looking more like particles. We will argue that in none of the four languages under discussion can the relevant spatial items directly select a DP ground element, but require either an overt or a null P head that converts a DP object to a path location.

Spatial Short-Term Memory in Children With Nonverbal Learning Disabilities: Impairment in Encoding Spatial Configuration

ABSTRACT The authors investigated whether impaired spatial short-term memory exhibited by children with nonverbal learning disabilities is due to a problem in the encoding process. Children with or without nonverbal learning disabilities performed a simple spatial test that required them to remember 3, 5, or 7 spatial items presented simultaneously in random positions (i.e., spatial configuration) and to decide if a target item was changed or all items including the target were in the same position. The results showed that, even when the spatial positions in the encoding and probe phases were similar, the mean proportion correct of children with nonverbal learning disabilities was 0.58 while that of children without nonverbal learning disabilities was 0.84. The authors argue with the results that children with nonverbal learning disabilities have difficulty encoding relational information between spatial items, and that this difficulty is responsible for their impaired spatial short-term memory.

Computer game play as an imaginary stage for reading: implicit spatial effects of computer games embedded in hard copy books

This study compared books with embedded computer games (via pentop computers with microdot paper and audio feedback) with regular books with maps, in terms of fifth graders' comprehension and retention of spatial details from stories. One group read a story in hard copy with embedded computer games, the other group read it in regular book format with a map. Students received no reading directions, or notification of upcoming post‐tests. Dependent measures included a post‐test of spatial questions about the story. Some questions addressed story items in both text and games. Other questions addressed spatial items in the text, but not in games. Participants who read books with embedded games scored significantly higher on all the post‐test questions, including spatial questions not addressed in games. This suggests that game play helped readers to create a mental model of the story setting, used in subsequent reading to visualise spatial propositions.

Beyond “A&OX3”: What Temporal and Spatial Orientation Questions Tell Clinicians about Cognitive Dysfunction in Alzheimer's Disease

Orientation to time and place is frequently assessed in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Despite the ubiquitous nature of orientation screening in mental status examinations, relatively little is known about the psychometric properties of orientation subscales. This article seeks to provide detailed psychometric information about the orientation items on the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) in individuals with AD. Orientation responses from 1,238 patients with AD (mean age = 75.5 years, SD = 8.4, range = 39 to 94) were examined within an item response theory (IRT) framework. Responses revealed that orientation items on the MMSE functioned differently across the spectrum of cognitive ability, with spatial orientation items tapping the breadth of cognitive impairment better than temporal items, which tended to have overlapping properties. Key clinical implications such as choosing appropriate items for different clinical purposes are highlighted.

THE PROCESSING-STORAGE RELATIONSHIP IN WORKING MEMORY SPAN: FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF A REPRESENTATION-BASED INTERFERENCE VIEW

Recent studies using working memory (WM) span tests have reported that processing activities negatively affected memory performance on the one hand and storage activities adversely affected processing efficiency on the other hand. We examined this processing-storage relationship in two WM span tests that required participants to maintain spatial or verbal memory items while engaging in mental letter rotation, focusing on an interference effect derived from this visuospatial processing task. Results showed that the mental letter rotation task interfered with memory of verbal as well as spatial items, indicating the similarity of these two span tests. Furthermore, the two span tests produced a proportional slowdown in processing speed toward the end of each span list. We discussed possible mechanisms in which the processing and maintenance activities disturb each other from the perspectives of domain-specific representation-based interference and domain-general attentional switching in working memory.

The Time is Space metaphor: some linguistic evidence that its end is near

In this paper the author deals with what he believes is something of a misconception, namely that there is a contemporarily viable TIME IS SPACE metaphor which allows spatial expressions to be interpreted as conveying temporal or aspectual notions. These latter notions have become too routinized to be still considered the outcome of such an 'online' mapping operation. Taking verbal particles with aspectual meanings as his material, the author argues that these meanings cannot obviously be treated as being metaphorically linked to the spatial meanings of these particles and that, moreover, the temporal uses have syntactic properties that their spatial counterparts do not have, necessitating their separate storage in the lexicon. These linguistic arguments complement some recent psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic findings about the distinctness of spatial and temporal language items.

Working memory in Parkinson's disease patients: clinical features and response to levodopa

To evaluate the clinical features of the working memory (WM) in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and to test the effect of levodopa on WM. The paradigm was based on the 'n-back' tasks, which enables to study the level of executive demand (three levels of difficulty) and the domain of the information being processed (spatial items, faces and letters). The effect of levodopa was studied by testing PD patients in "on" and "off" states. PD patients performed less well in WM tasks than controls. There was no interaction between groups and complexity. Levodopa therapy had a positive effect only on spatial WM tasks but no effect on complexity. Our results suggest that impairment observed may result from a maintenance deficit within WM regardless the level of processing and levodopa therapy presents a positive effect on spatial WM.

A TCML-based spatiotemporal chaotic one-way Hash function with changeable-parameter

A TCML-based spatiotemporal chaotic one-way Hash function with changeable parameter was constructed based on the analysis of sensitivity to initial value and parameters of one-way and two-way coupled map Lattice(TCML) systems.The approach is implemented by employing part of the initial values of coupled map system as the secret key, and the parameters of two-way coupled map system in each iteration is dynamically determined by the value of the last iteration and the corresponding message bit in different positions，and then making message with multigrid embedded in spatiotemporal chaos track in parallel. Choosing some suitable spatial items of the result of the final iteration, the Hash value was obtained by means of linear transform limited with 128 bits.Iteration process has very strong irreversibility and sensitivity to initial values and parameters. Each bit of Hash value has very sensitive, complex and strongly nonlinear coupling relation with the corresponding message and secret key because of the bidirectional diffusion and confusion characteristics. Simulation and analysis demonstrate that the algorithm satisfies all the performance requirements of Hash function and is reliable，secure and efficient.

Benefits of Fitting One Versus Two Hearing Aids

Benefits of Fitting One Versus Two Hearing Aids

THE EPIC OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE MYSTERY OF SMALL WORKING MEMORY

Abstract. A partial analogy exists between the lifespan neuropsychological development of individuals and the biological evolution of species: In both of these major categories of growth, progressive emergence of wholes transcends inherently limited part‐processes. The remarkably small purview of each moment of consciousness experienced by an individual may be a crucial aspect of maintaining organization in that individual's cognitive development, protecting it from combinatorial chaos. In this essay I summarize experimental psychology research showing that working memory capacity comprises the so‐called magical number 7±2 items, not only for words and digits but for spatial items and other sorts of cognitive materials, and not only in humans but also in other species. This is so to such an extent that 7±2 may be a “constant of nature.” The small quantity range 7±2 independent items, which builds upon a more elementary, instantaneous working memory capacity of three or four items, is surprisingly independent of the time duration of a cognitive task. Moreover, it is largely independent of ontogeny. Explanations of these powerful facts about working memory are offered here within both a functionalistic framework and a framework of hypothetical neural processes. At the neural level, working memory dynamics may comprise certain brain wave harmonics or topological relationships in the sheetlike cortex. Within the functionalistic framework, I suggest an additional analogy, pertaining to cultural evolution, with Tom Gilbert's work on risk analysis and “the global problematic” that follows from unforeseen consequences of the expansiveness of human ambition. Several connections are drawn with ideas presented by participants in the Chicago Religion and Science Group about how theologies and sciences try to understand the possibility of adaptive exercises of human freedom in the face of the extreme finiteness of each human individual.

The Relationship Between Bilingualism and the Performance of Spatial Tasks

The well-documented evidence that bilinguals demonstrate cognitive advantages over monolinguals is used as a foundation for the hypothesis that bilinguals will be better able to solve certain spatial tasks, and a theoretical framework for this hypothesis is constructed. The paper describes an experiment to explore this hypothesis. A series of spatial test items involving the comparison of diagrams of like and unlike pairs of knotted and unknotted ropes at varying orientations was given to 41 subjects. The subjects were 11 balanced bilingual Welsh/English and 30 monolingual English speakers. Bilinguals performed the tasks more quickly than monolinguals. The tasks were intended to stimulate the use of mental imagery in their execution. There was a difference in complexity across the 72 test items and some of the tasks were processed more slowly than others by all subjects. For example, rotation of one of the pair increased the processing time for both monolinguals and bilinguals. The results indicate that, as well as showing greater proficiency overall, bilinguals were better able to deal with the more complex tasks. The findings are taken to show a relationship between some aspects of spatial ability, mental imagery and bilingual language processing.

Comparing performance of pupils with high spatial-low numerical and high numerical-low spatial scores on a standardized mathematics test in the United Kingdom.

Questions from a national mathematics test taken by over a 1,000 12- and 13-yr.-olds in the United Kingdom were perused for heavily loaded spatial and numerical items. Pupils' answers to the two types of item were examined, and those who answered well in one of the categories but poorly in the other were selected to form two groups, those high in spatial thinking but low in numerical thinking and those high in numerical thinking but low in spatial thinking to assess whether the approaches to solve the item used by each group were different. The two groups did indeed utilize different thinking strategies to solve the questions. For example, questions involving angle and volume, items thought to require a high spatial facility, were answered correctly by the predominantly numerical thinkers as often as by the predominantly spatial thinkers. This would indicate that one of the samples, i.e., numerical thinkers, used a different strategy than the other, i.e., spatial thinkers. This was verified by examination of students' work in the test booklets and personal interviews of them. Also, the same proportion of boys in each group was recorded, but a higher percentage of girls was recorded in the spatial group than in the numerical. This reflected the large number of boys who scored high on the spatial measures also doing moderately well on the numerical items and so, being moved out of the solely spatial group. Since the tests used by mathematics educators to assess learning are so heavily laden with linguistic/analytical rather than holistic/spatial types of questions, pupils high in spatial but low in numerical thinking face a severe handicap in schools.

Temporal–spatial memory: retrieval of spatial information does not reduce recency

Factors influencing the shape of serial position curves in non-verbal serial short-term memory were examined, using a task testing memory for the position of dots. Similar recency slopes were found when both position and order were recalled (Experiment 1A) and when order only was required (Experiment 1B). This observation was confirmed and tested further in conditions requiring the same encoding but different amounts of spatial information at retrieval (Experiment 2). However, Experiment 2 also revealed an effect of spatial information retrieval on the overall level of memory for recency items. Overall, the results indicate that spatial items produce bow-shaped serial positions curves in tasks requiring the maintenance of order information and that recency is affected by the demand on spatial information retrieval in terms of the overall level of performance but not in terms of the recency slope. These findings are contrary to what is found in the literature on serial verbal recall when both item and order information are required.

The prefrontal cortex: response selection or maintenance within working memory?

It is controversial whether the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in the maintenance of items in working memory or in the selection of responses. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the performance of a spatial working memory task by humans. We distinguished the maintenance of spatial items from the selection of an item from memory to guide a response. Selection, but not maintenance, was associated with activation of prefrontal area 46 of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, maintenance was associated with activation of prefrontal area 8 and the intraparietal cortex. The results support a role for the dorsal prefrontal cortex in the selection of representations. This accounts for the fact that this area is activated both when subjects select between items on working memory tasks and when they freely select between movements on tasks of willed action.

Mental Unknotting

21 subjects were given a series of spatial test items involving the comparison of diagrams of interlaced ropes or knots at varying orientations. Knots were chosen because they are deformable and the manipulative tasks form a contrast to previous work on rigid objects and also because there is a mathematical structure to the study of their properties. Results are compared with previous work on the mental manipulation of rigid and semirigid objects. Certain knot shapes are easier to process than others and, as with rigid objects, rotation of one of the deformable objects increases the processing time. The nature and deformability of the knots allow strategies other than mental rotation, and these strategies are reported.