Cue Usage Research Articles

Discursively Embedded Institutionalized Stigma in Canadian Judicial Decisions

The aim of this research was to explore how the concept of harm is constituted in case law judicial decisions pertaining to the importation, production, possession, and trafficking of drugs in Canada using critical discourse analysis methodology. The research was designed to uncover taken-for-granted assumptions about drugs and associated harms. The data source for this study is judicial decisions. These are published texts where judge(s) summarize details about the factors considered, provide a reasoned interpretation of sentencing principles relevant to the judicial decision, and explain the rationale for their decision. Initially, codes were identified deductively, using words related to drugs and harm. Codes were added when incidents of moralization language were observed to be high. Moralization language was defined as “the usage of language cues referencing moral values”. The selection process resulted in n = 129 judicial decisions meeting the inclusion criteria. Discourse analysis was guided by four tools described by Gee’s study: the significance tool, the why this way and not that way tool, the connections tool, and the intertextuality tool. Emergent themes are: (1) trafficking as an immoral enterprise; (2) scourge to society, (3) fentanyl and harm, and (4) constructing gravity. This study uncovers discursive practices in many judicial decisions that convey the (re)production of institutionalized stigma. High reliance on legal tropes about drug harms, harm of trafficking, moral culpability associated with distribution of some drugs, by some people, in some ways, and a lack of contextual awareness of social inequities that influence the lives of Canadians perpetuates legal interpretations that support rationales for sentence predicated on denunciation and deterrence.

Using olfactory cues in text materials benefits delayed retention and schemata construction

Olfactory cues are considered a new sensory medium that can enhance learning, but the lack of empirical data has hampered their widespread use in educational practice. This requires empirical research to explore the effects of olfactory cues on learning. To address this research need, an experimental research study was conducted among 87 fourth graders from a Chinese elementary school. It explored the innovative design of adding olfactory cues to text materials by examining their effects on retention and schemata construction as learning outcomes, as well as their influence on learners’ cognitive load and learning experience. In this between-subjects design experiment, the experimental group (n = 44) learned text materials with the introduction of olfactory cues, while the control group (n = 43) only learned text materials. After the learning activity, participants were asked to complete the questionnaires, immediate test, and delayed test. The results revealed that the usage of olfactory cues synchronized with text materials can enhance delayed retention, facilitate schemata construction, and improve learner experience without increasing cognitive load. This study confirms the potential of well-designed olfactory cues in educational practice and provides insights for designing and presenting multimedia learning resources.

Impact of early visual experience on later usage of color cues.

Human visual recognition is remarkably robust to chromatic changes. In this work, we provide a potential account of the roots of this resilience based on observations with 10 congenitally blind children who gained sight late in life. Several months or years following their sight-restoring surgeries, the removal of color cues markedly reduced their recognition performance, whereas age-matched normally sighted children showed no such decrement. This finding may be explained by the greater-than-neonatal maturity of the late-sighted children's color system at sight onset, inducing overly strong reliance on chromatic cues. Simulations with deep neural networks corroborate this hypothesis. These findings highlight the adaptive significance of typical developmental trajectories and provide guidelines for enhancing machine vision systems.

Relative cue precision and prior knowledge contribute to the preference of proximal and distal landmarks in human orientation

A prevailing argument posits that distal landmarks dominate over proximal landmarks as orientation cues. However, no studies have tested this argument or examined the underlying mechanisms. This project aimed to close this gap by examining the roles of relative cue precision and prior knowledge in cue preference. Participants learned object locations with proximal and distal landmarks in an immersive virtual environment. After walking a path without seeing objects or landmarks, participants disoriented themselves by spinning in place and pointed to the objects with the reappearance of a proximal landmark being rotated −50°, a distal landmark being rotated 50°, or both (Conflict). Heading errors were examined. Experiment 1 manipulated the relative cue precision. Results showed that in Conflict condition, the observed weight on the distal cue (exceeding 0.5) changed with but remained higher than the weight predicted by the relative cue precision. This indicates that besides the relative cue precision, prior knowledge of distal cue dominance also influences orientation cue usage. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants walked a path stopping at one object location. Participants were informed of it explicitly in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 3. Results showed that distal cue dominance still occurred in Experiment 3. However, in Experiment 2, proximal cue dominance appeared, and it was not predicted by the relative cue precision. These results suggest that prior knowledge of proximal cue dominance might have been invoked by the instruction of locations. Consistent with the Bayesian inference model, human cue usage in orientation is determined by relative cue precision and prior knowledge. The choice of prior knowledge can be influenced by instructions.

When time does not matter: cultures differ in their use of temporal cues to infer agency over action effects.

Sense of agency (SoA) is the sense of having control over one's own actions and through them events in the outside world. Sometimes temporal cues, that is temporal contiguity between action and effect, or temporal expectation regarding the occurrence of the effect are used to infer whether one has agency over an effect. This has mainly been investigated in Western cultures. However, Western and Eastern cultures differ in their time concepts and thus their usage of temporal cues may also differ. We investigated whether Western and Eastern cultures (Austrian vs. Mongolian students) use temporal cues differently. Participants performed adaption blocks in which actions were followed by immediate (immediate effect group) or by delayed (delayed effect group) effects. In subsequent test blocks the action-effect delay was varied and participants' SoA over the effect was assessed. In Austrian students, the immediate effect group experienced more SoA for short action-effect delays, whereas the reverse was true for the delayed effect group. Thus, temporal expectation rather than temporal contiguity is used as predominant agency cue. In Mongolian students, SoA did not significantly differ between different action-effect delays in both groups, indicating that Mongolian students hardly rely on temporal cues. In conclusion, due to linear time concepts in Western cultures, the timing of an effect may be an important agency cue in Austrian students. However, due to cyclical time concepts in some Eastern cultures, it may be a less important agency cue in Mongolian students. Thus, the use of temporal agency cues is culture-dependent.

Frame by frame, attitude by attitude – The effect of information framing in videos on consumers’ acceptance of sustainable food production innovations

Innovations in the agricultural sector were identified as key drivers for the transition towards more sustainable food production. To achieve consumer acceptance, it is necessary to communicate about innovations and sustainable food production processes effectively. This study investigates the effect of loss- and gain-framing on consumers’ implicit and explicit attitudes towards, and purchase intentions of, agricultural innovations, using the example of beneficial soil-microbes in tomato production. We conducted a pre-registered, online, experimental study with a between-subjects design among German consumers (n = 754). To test the effect of communication, three video clips were created: a control video, a loss-frame video and a gain-frame video. The control video described the innovation on a technical level without specific framing. Through the usage of videos, visual and linguistic framing cues could be applied. Group comparisons of the different types of framing did not result in significant differences. Results of a serial mediation analysis show that explicit attitudes play an important role in the model. The effect of both loss- and gain-framing in relation to the control video resulted in a significant effect on explicit attitudes, and these in turn had a significant effect on purchase intentions. Findings from this study suggest that information videos that describe the consequences of innovation application (loss- or gain-framing) contribute more strongly towards innovation acceptance than more technical and neutral accounts (our control video) of the innovation.

Expert goalkeepers' and coaches' views on anticipation and cue utilisation facing backcourt throws in handball goalkeeping.

Handball goalkeepers have to act under severe spatio-temporal pressure in both standardised (e.g., 7 m penalty) and non-standardised situations (e.g., backcourt throws) which require them to predict action outcome before ball flight is visible. So far, research on goalkeepers' cue utilisation for anticipation of an opponent's action has mainly focused on 7 m throw situations whereas little attention has been paid to the latter, more complex and far more frequently occurring backcourt throw situations. To address this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with N = 6 expert handball goalkeepers and goalkeeper coaches [all of whom were (former) expert handball goalkeepers] on anticipation and cue utilisation when facing backcourt throws. The interviews were subsequently transcribed, coded and results were inductively as well as deductively categorised by means of a thematic analysis. Results reveal a variety of kinematic and contextual cues relevant for action anticipation that become available before the game and before or during the throw. Participants reported to use information from the offence (e.g., thrower's jump; opposing team's task distribution) and the defence (e.g., defensive players' strategies, block position) for anticipation in backcourt throw situations. Additionally, we identified several factors that influence cue availability and utilisation. Our findings provide a thorough basis to (a) guide future research that yields questions on kinematic and contextual cue integration and in-situ cue usage as well as (b) inform the development of training programs to foster goalkeepers' anticipatory skill.

Vowel perception under prominence: Examining the roles of F0, duration, and distributional information.

This study investigates how prosodic prominence mediates the perception of American English vowels, testing the effects of F0 and duration. In Experiment 1, the perception of four vowel continua varying in duration and formants (high: /i-ɪ/, /u-ʊ/, non-high: /ɛ-ae/, /ʌ-ɑ/), was examined under changes in F0-based prominence. Experiment 2 tested if cue usage varies as the distributional informativity of duration as a cue to prominence is manipulated. Both experiments show that duration is a consistent vowel-intrinsic cue. F0-based prominence affected perception of vowels via compensation for peripheralization of prominent vowels in the vowel space. Longer duration and F0-based prominence further enhanced the perception of formant cues. The distributional manipulation in Experiment 2 exerted a minimal impact. Findings suggest that vowel perception is mediated by prominence in a height-dependent manner which reflects patterns in the speech production literature. Further, duration simultaneously serves as an intrinsic cue and serves a prominence-related function in enhancing perception of formant cues.

Information overload research in accounting: a systematic review of the literature

This paper reviews literature in the domain of information overload in accounting. The underlying psychological concepts of information load (as applied in accounting research) are summarized, and a framework to discuss findings in a structured way is proposed. This framework serves to make causes, consequences, and countermeasures transparent. Variables are further clustered into major categories from information processing research: input, process, and output. The main variables investigated are the characteristics of the information set, especially the number of information cues as an input variable; the experience of the decision-maker, the decision time, decision rule, and cue usage as process variables; and measures related to decision quality (i.e., accuracy, consensus, consistency) and related to selfinsight (calibration, confidence, feeling of overload) as output variables. The contexts of the respective research papers are described, and the operationalization of variables detailed and compared. We employ the method of stylized facts to evaluate the strength of the links between variables (number of links, direction and significance of relationship). The findings can be summarized as follows: most articles focus on individual decision-making in the domain of external accounting, with financial distress predictions constituting a large part of these. Most papers focus on input and output variables with the underlying information processing receiving less attention. The effects observed are dependent on the type of information input and the task employed. Decision accuracy is likely to decrease once information load passes a certain threshold, while decision time and a feeling of overload increase with increasing information load. While experience increases decision accuracy, the results on decision time and consensus are conflicting. Most articles have not established a significant link between changes in information load and changes in decision confidence. Relative cue usage, consensus, consistency, and calibration decline with increasing information load. Available time has a rather positive effect on decision accuracy and consensus. Based on these findings, implications for practice and future research are derived.

Is the uncertain self good at detecting lies? The influence of personal uncertainty on deception detection

AbstractFive experiments (total number of judging participants = 1309, four different kinds of stimulus materials with a total of 464 messages, total number of judgements = 19,634) investigated the influence of personal uncertainty on the process of lie detection in social relationships. Building on and extending basic assumptions of uncertainty management models, we reasoned that uncertainty about themselves motivates people to evaluate the quality of their relationships. A crucial aspect of the quality of relationships with other people is the truthfulness with which they communicate verbally with you and anyone else. We proposed that if these assumptions are valid, reminding people of their personal uncertainties should lead them to use valid verbal cues in veracity judgements more. This enhanced usage of valid verbal cues should result in better accuracy in deception detection. An internal meta‐analysis of the five experiments reveals only a small, not significant, overall effect of uncertainty salience on detection accuracy with larger effect sizes for experiments conducted in the laboratory than for those conducted online. Hence, if personal uncertainty plays a role in the process of deception detection, it seems to be subject to moderators such as methodological or motivational factors.

Inducing Self-Motion Sensations With Haptic Feedback: State-of-The-Art and Perspectives on "Haptic Motion".

While virtual reality applications flourish, there is a growing need for technological solutions to induce compelling self-motion, as an alternative to cumbersome motion platforms. Haptic devices target the sense of touch, yet more and more researchers managed to address the sense of motion by means of specific and localized haptic stimulations. This innovative approach constitutes a specific paradigm that can be called "haptic motion". This article aims to introduce, formalize, survey and discuss this relatively new research field. First, we summarize some core concepts of self-motion perception, and propose a definition of the haptic motion approach based on three criteria. Then, we present a summary of existing related literature, from which we formulate and discuss three research problems that we estimate key for the development of the field: the rationale to design a proper haptic stimulus, the methods to evaluate and characterize self-motion sensations, and the usage of multimodal motion cues.

Comparing the effects of scattered and specular sound reflections on speech intelligibility in rooms

Speech intelligibility in rooms is assumed to depend on the amount of reverberation, and on the distribution of sound energy in the impulse response between early and later reflections, the former being considered beneficial, the latter detrimental. This assumption is based on the analysis of a single channel, which is monaural. When the binaural capacities of the auditory system are considered, other phenomena come into play, supporting speech recognition mainly by comparing signal levels and times of arrival at the ears. Starting from these basic mechanisms, the present work shows that, for given monaural conditions, binaural cues are influenced by the type of sound reflections in a room via the correlations they produce on the signals at the ears. A fully scattering scenario, and a totally flat boundary scenario were used to investigate listeners’ performance in a speech intelligibility task in a virtual room with spatialized noise conditions. The amount of correlation at the ears of the listener of the signals coming from both the source and the masker were found to affect speech intelligibility - the stronger either correlation, the greater the speech intelligibility - and their joint effect was larger than the two effects taken separately. A specular setting for the sound reflections was associated with both better reception thresholds and a better usage of spatial cues when deciphering speech. The implications for the acoustic design of rooms with a view to facilitating speech intelligibility are discussed.

The expanding influence of Thai and its effects on cue redistribution in Kuy

Abstract The effect of ability in a tonal language on shifting cue weights in a non-tonal language is explored through a production and perception experiment carried out with speakers of Kuy (Katuic, Austroasiatic) in Ban Khi Nak, Sisaket Province, in Northeast Thailand. Specifically, the realization of a modal-breathy voice quality contrast is analyzed through observing the effects of language ability and usage-related sociolinguistic factors. The results show increased usage of F0 and CPP cues in production and of F0 cues in perception of the voice quality contrast with greater ability and usage of a tonal language. Tonal language ability and usage also affects other acoustic correlates of voice quality, but does not uniformly weaken them. Degree of integration into Thai society shows mixed effects, only somewhat correlating with decay of voice quality cues. The results have bearing on the role of larger national and regional languages in restructuring of phonological contrasts and in phonological attrition, and provide insight into the relationship between multilingualism and sound change.

Analysis of Empathic Dialogue in Actual Doctor-Patient Calls and Implications for Design of Embodied Conversational Agents

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are virtual agents that exhibit humanlike verbal and non-verbal behaviours. When it comes to eHealth, ECAs can provide vital support to patients by being more reachable. In order to make ECAs more effective, humanlike empathy expressed during conversation through relational cues is essential. Empathy revolves around a wide range of verbal and non-verbal behaviours that include, for example, the choice of words in social dialogues. Owing to the COVID-19 situation, there was an opportunity to record online consultations in the Incontinence Clinic and Sleep Clinic at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Australia. The present study analysed these human dialogues using qualitative research methods to understand the role of empathic dialogue used by the medical team. The qualitative analysis of the live calls used psychology-based relational cues derived from conversational characteristics of humans to build a coding framework around the most relevant themes. Statistical analysis was used to compare relational cue usage between healthcare roles. Finally, using the framework dialogues of the medical team and two ECAs known as Dr Evie (eVirtual Agent for Incontinence and Enuresis) and SAM (Sleep Adherence Mentor) were compared to provide recommendations for health practitioners and future ECA dialogue development.

Use of global trait cues helps to explain older adults’ decrements in detecting children’s lies

PurposePrevious research has established that lie‐detection accuracy decreases with age; however, various mechanisms for this effect have yet to be explored, particularly when examining the detection of children’s lies. The present study investigated if younger and older adults detect children’s lies using different cues (verbal content, verbal auditory, non‐verbal, global traits) to explore if cue usage may help to explain this age‐related decline.MethodA total of 100 younger (18–30 years) and 100 older adults (66–89 years) watched child interview videos (half were truth‐tellers; half were lie‐tellers coached to conceal a transgression). Participants provided veracity judgements (truth vs. lie) and described the cues that they relied on to make their judgements.ResultsOlder adults used marginally significantly fewer verbal content and significantly more global trait cues compared to younger adults. The use of global trait cues partially mediated the age‐related decline in detection accuracy.ConclusionThese results present a partial mechanism for the age‐related decline in deception detection. This can inform psychological theory on how ageing affects perceptions of child witnesses and deception detection abilities.

Facilitating Exercise Habit Formation among Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial.

Background: The importance of promoting exercise adherence among individuals with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is imperative. However, challenges in maintaining behavior among ACS patients are also well-documented. Emerging findings in the general population have supported the use of habit-formation techniques, which include incorporating routine consistency and cues, to be effective for facilitating exercise behavior. The effectiveness of habit formation approaches, however, has not been tested on participants with ACS. The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of facilitating physical activity habits among patients with ACS in a two-arm, parallel design, randomized controlled pilot trial. Methods: Participants (n = 13) were older adult patients (M age = 64.20, SD = 5.35) with ACS who were referred to a cardiac rehabilitation center. The experimental group attended monthly group meetings from months 1–3 and received phone call follow-ups from months 4–6. Conclusions: The experimental group showed an increase in weekly moderate-to-vigorous level physical activity, M = 228.20 mins (SD = 112.45), compared with the control group, M = 151.17 (SD = 112.22), d = 0.61. The experimental condition also showed greater use of routine consistency (experimental: M = 4.60 (SD = 0.548); control: M = 3.76 (SD = 1.62)) and cue usage (experimental: M = 3.60 (SD = 0.471); control: M= 2.60 (SD = 0.398)) over the control condition at the six-month mark. The study supports the effectiveness of habit-building techniques among patients with ACS, with effect sizes ranging from a medium to large magnitude. Findings from this pilot study support a full clinical trial with larger sample size.

Information Overload Research in Accounting – A Systematic Review of the Literature

This paper reviews literature in the domain of information overload in accounting. The underlying psychological concepts of information load (as applied in accounting research) are summarized, and a framework to discuss findings in a structured way is proposed. This framework serves to make causes, consequences, and countermeasures transparent. Variables are further clustered into major categories from information processing research: input, process, and output. The main variables investigated are the characteristics of the information set, especially the number of information cues as an input variable; the experience of the decision-maker, the decision time, decision rule, and cue usage as process variables; and measures related to decision quality (i.e., accuracy, consensus, consistency) and related to self-insight (calibration, confidence, feeling of overload) as output variables. The contexts of the respective research papers are described, and the operationalization of variables detailed and compared. I employ the method of stylized facts to evaluate the strength of the links between variables (number of links, direction and significance of relationship). The findings can be summarized as follows: most articles focus on individual decision-making in the domain of external accounting, with financial distress predictions constituting a large part of these. Most papers focus on input and output variables with the underlying information processing receiving less attention. The effects observed are dependent on the type of information input and the task employed. Decision accuracy is likely to decrease once information load passes a certain threshold, while decision time and a feeling of overload increase with increasing information load. While experience increases decision accuracy, the results on decision time are conflicting. Most articles have not established a significant link between changes in information load and changes in decision confidence. Relative cue usage, consensus, consistency, and calibration decline with increasing information load. Based on these findings, implications for practice and future research are derived.

Parameter-Specific Morphing Reveals Contributions of Timbre and Fundamental Frequency Cues to the Perception of Voice Gender and Age in Cochlear Implant Users.

Purpose Using naturalistic synthesized speech, we determined the relative importance of acoustic cues in voice gender and age perception in cochlear implant (CI) users. Method We investigated 28 CI users' abilities to utilize fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre in perceiving voice gender (Experiment 1) and vocal age (Experiment 2). Parameter-specific voice morphing was used to selectively control acoustic cues (F0; time; timbre, i.e., formant frequencies, spectral-level information, and aperiodicity, as defined in TANDEM-STRAIGHT) in voice stimuli. Individual differences in CI users' performance were quantified via deviations from the mean performance of 19 normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Results CI users' gender perception seemed exclusively based on F0, whereas NH listeners efficiently used timbre. For age perception, timbre was more informative than F0 for both groups, with minor contributions of temporal cues. While a few CI users performed comparable to NH listeners overall, others were at chance. Separate analyses confirmed that even high-performing CI users classified gender almost exclusively based on F0. While high performers could discriminate age in male and female voices, low performers were close to chance overall but used F0 as a misleading cue to age (classifying female voices as young and male voices as old). Satisfaction with CI generally correlated with performance in age perception. Conclusions We confirmed that CI users' gender classification is mainly based on F0. However, high performers could make reasonable usage of timbre cues in age perception. Overall, parameter-specific morphing can serve to objectively assess individual profiles of CI users' abilities to perceive nonverbal social-communicative vocal signals.

Effects of Age and Cochlear Implantation on Spectrally Cued Speech Categorization.

Purpose Weighting of acoustic cues for perceiving place-of-articulation speech contrasts was measured to determine the separate and interactive effects of age and use of cochlear implants (CIs). It has been found that adults with normal hearing (NH) show reliance on fine-grained spectral information (e.g., formants), whereas adults with CIs show reliance on broad spectral shape (e.g., spectral tilt). In question was whether children with NH and CIs would demonstrate the same patterns as adults, or show differences based on ongoing maturation of hearing and phonetic skills. Method Children and adults with NH and with CIs categorized a /b/-/d/ speech contrast based on two orthogonal spectral cues. Among CI users, phonetic cue weights were compared to vowel identification scores and Spectral-Temporally Modulated Ripple Test thresholds. Results NH children and adults both relied relatively more on the fine-grained formant cue and less on the broad spectral tilt cue compared to participants with CIs. However, early-implanted children with CIs better utilized the formant cue compared to adult CI users. Formant cue weights correlated with CI participants' vowel recognition and in children, also related to Spectral-Temporally Modulated Ripple Test thresholds. Adults and child CI users with very poor phonetic perception showed additive use of the two cues, whereas those with better and/or more mature cue usage showed a prioritized trading relationship, akin to NH listeners. Conclusions Age group and hearing modality can influence phonetic cue-weighting patterns. Results suggest that simple nonlexical categorization tests correlate with more general speech recognition skills of children and adults with CIs.

How humans discriminate acoustically among bottlenose dolphin signature whistles with and without masking by boat noise.

Anthropogenic noise in the world's oceans is known to impede many species' ability to perceive acoustic signals, but little research has addressed how this noise affects the perception of bioacoustic signals used for communication in marine mammals. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) use signature whistles containing identification information. Past studies have used human participants to gain insight into dolphin perception, but most previous research investigated echolocation. In Experiment 1, human participants were tested on their ability to discriminate among signature whistles from three dolphins. Participants' performance was nearly errorless. In Experiment 2, participants identified signature whistles masked by five different samples of boat noise utilizing different signal-to-noise ratios. Lower signal-to-noise ratio and proximity in frequency between the whistle and noise both significantly decreased performance. Like dolphins, human participants primarily identified whistles using frequency contour. Participants reported greater use of amplitude in noise-present vs noise-absent trials, but otherwise did not vary cue usage. These findings can be used to generate hypotheses about dolphins' performance and auditory cue use for future research. This study may provide insight into how specific characteristics of boat noise affect dolphin whistle perception and may have implications for conservation and regulations.