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To monitor adherence to diets and to design and evaluate nutritional interventions, it is essential to obtain objective knowledge about eating behavior. In most research, measures of eating behavior are based on self-reporting, such as 24-h recalls, food records (food diaries) and food frequency questionnaires. Self-reporting is prone to inaccuracies due to inaccurate and subjective recall and other biases. Recording behavior using nonobtrusive technology in daily life would overcome this. Here, we provide an up-to-date systematic overview encompassing all (close-to) publicly or commercially available technologies to automatically record eating behavior in real-life settings. A total of 1328 studies were screened and, after applying defined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 122 studies were included for in-depth evaluation. Technologies in these studies were categorized by what type of eating behavior they measure and which type of sensor technology they use. In general, we found that relatively simple sensors are often used. Depending on the purpose, these are mainly motion sensors, microphones, weight sensors and photo cameras. While several of these technologies are commercially available, there is still a lack of publicly available algorithms that are needed to process and interpret the resulting data. We argue that future work should focus on developing robust algorithms and validating these technologies in real-life settings. Combining technologies (e.g., prompting individuals for self-reports at sensed, opportune moments) is a promising route toward ecologically valid studies of eating behavior.

We examined the effects of an informative pitch and multisensory contexts as potential factors influencing individuals’ experience of tofu with soy sauce and the amount consumed outside the lab. Two hundred and sixteen participants watched one of two pitches (promoting either vegetarian diets or exercise) and were guided into one of three multisensory contexts (‘sustainable’, ‘meat’, or ‘neutral’ theme). Participants rated the aroma and appearance of soy sauce and the taste of tofu dipped in it using the intuitive ‘one touch’ EmojiGrid valence and arousal measuring tool. Our results showed that the ‘meat’ context increased arousal ratings for soy sauce and the tendency to consume more tofu relative to the other contexts. Pitch did not influence affective ratings or amounts consumed. We conclude that the multisensory context has the potential to positively affect peoples’ choices and perceptions of plant-based and sustainable food and promote its consumption.

Introduction: Understanding how food neophobia affects food experience may help to shift toward sustainable diets. Previous research suggests that individuals with higher food neophobia are more aroused and attentive when observing food-related stimuli. The present study examined whether electrodermal activity (EDA), as index of arousal, relates to food neophobia outside the lab when exposed to a single piece of food.Methods: The EDA of 153 participants was analyzed as part of a larger experiment conducted at a festival. Participants completed the 10-item Food Neophobia Scale. Subsequently, they saw three lids covering three foods: a hotdog labeled as “meat”, a hotdog labeled as “100% plant-based”, and tofu labeled as “100% plant-based”. Participants lifted the lids consecutively and the area-under-the-curve (AUC) of the skin conductance response (SCR) was captured between 20 s before and 20 s after each food reveal.Results: We found a significant positive correlation between food neophobia and AUC of SCR during presentation of the first and second hotdog and a trend for tofu. These correlations remained significant even when only including the SCR data prior to the food reveal (i.e., an anticipatory response).Discussion: The association between food neophobia and EDA indicates that food neophobic individuals are more aroused upon the presentation of food. We show for the first time that the anticipation of being presented with food already increased arousal for food neophobic individuals. These findings also indicate that EDA can be meaningfully determined using wearables outside the lab, in a relatively uncontrolled setting for single-trial analysis.

Recent improvements in Extended Reality (XR) technology created an increase in XR products and solutions in the industry, while raising new requirements for new or improved architectural concepts. This need can be particularly complex as XR applications often relate both to 3D geometric rendering and multimedia paradigms. This paper outlines the main concepts relevant to XR, both from a game engineering and multimedia streaming system perspective. XR requires new metadata and media/game orchestration to allow complex interaction between users, objects, and (volumetric) multimedia content, which also results in new requirements on synchronisation (i.e., for global object state and positioning). Furthermore, the paper presents the functional blocks needed in new XR system architectures and how they will glue both (game and media) spaces together. The discussion of functional components and architecture relates to the ongoing activities in relevant standardisation bodies like Khronos, MPEG, and 3GPP. To make XR successful on the long term, the industry needs to agree on interoperable solutions and how to merge both game and media paradigms to allow complex multi-user XR applications.

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in research on mediated communication via social touch. Previous studies indicated that mediated social touch (MST) can induce similar positive outcomes to interpersonal touch. However, studies investigating the user experience of MST technology predominantly involve brief experiments that are performed in well-controlled laboratory conditions. Hence, it is still unknown how MST affects the relationship and communication between physically separated partners in a romantic relationship, in a naturalistic setting and over a longer period of time. In a longitudinal explorative field study, the effects of MST on social connectedness and longing for touch among geographically separated romantic couples were investigated in a naturalistic setting. For 2 weeks, 17 couples used haptic bracelets, that were connected via the internet, to exchange mediated squeeze-like touch signals. Before and after this period, they reported their feelings of social connectedness and longing for touch through questionnaires. The results show that the use of haptic bracelets (1) enhanced social connectedness among geographically separated couples but (2) did not affect their longing for touch. Interviews conducted at the end of the study were analyzed following the thematic analysis method to generate prominent themes and patterns in using MST technology among participant couples. Two main themes were generated that captured (a) the way the bracelets fostered a positive one-to-one connection between partners and (b) the way in which participants worked around their frustrations with the bracelets. Detailed findings and limitations of this longitudinal field study are further discussed, and suggestions are made for future research., Human Information Communication Design

Introduction: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the overall relation between the mean (at the nomothetic or group level) subjective valence and arousal ratings for odors. Although well established in other sensory modalities (e.g., visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile), this relation has not previously been investigated for odors covering a large range of the valence dimension. In addition, we evaluated the EmojiGrid (a recently introduced intuitive graphical affective self-report tool) for the affective appraisal of odors. Methods: Young and healthy participants (N = 56, 32 females) used the EmojiGrid to rate the perceived valence and arousal for 40 different and randomly presented odors, ranging in valence from unpleasant to pleasant. Results: The overall relation between mean valence and arousal can be described by a U-shaped (quadratic) form; odors scoring near neutral on mean valence have the lowest mean arousal ratings, while odors scoring either high (pleasant) or low (unpleasant) on mean valence show higher mean arousal ratings. The results for odors that were also used in previous studies in the literature agree with their earlier reported values. Conclusion: Mean arousal ratings increase with (positive or negative) emotional valence. Participants intuitively used the EmojiGrid to report their affective appraisal of odors without any verbal labels or written instructions. Implications: The current findings are relevant for various applications and environments (e.g., public, retail, entertainment) where odors are used to induce desired emotional states (e.g., relaxation, arousal) and behaviors. The EmojiGrid can efficiently be applied to assess whether specific odors evoke the desired subjective affective experiences.

We investigated how different graphical representations convey the underlying uncertainty distribution in ensemble predictions. In ensemble predictions, a set of forecasts is produced, indicating the range of possible future states. Adopting a use case from life sciences, we asked non-expert participants to compare ensemble predictions of the growth distribution of individual children to that of the normal population. For each individual child, the historical growth data of a set of 20 of its best matching peers was adopted as the ensemble prediction of the child’s growth curve. The ensemble growth predictions were plotted in seven different graphical formats (an ensemble plot, depicting all 20 forecasts and six summary representations, depicting the peer group mean and standard deviation). These graphs were plotted on a population chart with a given mean and variance. For comparison, we included a representation showing only the initial part of the growth curve without any future predictions. For 3 months old children that were measured at four occasions since birth, participants predicted their length at the age of 2 years. They compared their prediction to either (1) the population mean or to (2) a “normal” population range (the mean ± 2(standard deviation)). Our results show that the interpretation of a given uncertainty visualization depends on its visual characteristics, on the type of estimate required and on the user’s numeracy. Numeracy correlates negatively with bias (mean response error) magnitude (i.e. people with lower numeracy show larger response bias). Compared to the summary plots that yield a substantial overestimation of probabilities, and the No-prediction representation that results in quite variable predictions, the Ensemble representation consistently shows a lower probability estimation, resulting in the smallest overall response bias. The current results suggest that an Ensemble or “spaghetti plot” representation may be the best choice for c

 Cognitive biases and heuristics are pervasive simplifications and distortions in judgement and reasoning that systematically affect human decision making. Knowledge in this area may enable us to foresee and reduce detrimental effects of biases or to influence others more effectively. We therefore performed a literature study to assess the influence of personal characteristics (cognitive abilities, expertise, personality, cultural background) on the occurrence of cognitive biases. We found that each of the aforementioned factors can affect cognitive biases, though not much is known about the effects of culture. Also, factors that appear to reduce a cognitive bias may in fact mitigate (suppress or override) its behavioral effect rather than preventing the bias from occurring at all. The general picture that arises is that bias susceptibility and the occurrence of biases depend on thinking style (heuristic versus deliberate), where thinking style is associated with an individual’s personal characteristics. In general, biases are reduced when a deliberate (analytical) thinking style is applied. However, whether a specific (heuristic or deliberate) thinking style actually reduces or enhances a given type of bias also depends on the context.Â

In Phase 1 (2011-12) of this study we successfully collected both static and dynamic multimodal nighttime imagery of military relevant scenarios in the field. In addition, we registered and fused this imagery using our newly developed color image fusion schemes. In Phase 2 (2012-13) of this study we used the image sets previously collected in Phase 1 to assess the operational effectiveness of different sensor modalities and image fusion schemes for the enhancement of observer SA in complex (urban) scenarios. This knowledge is essential for the effective operational deployment of night vision sensors in civilian and military surveillance scenarios, and for the further development of new image fusion and representation schemes. The capability of the different imaging modalities to enhance a user s SA was investigated in three different experimental paradigms: Experiment 1: Testing the ability of observers to quickly grasp the gist of the scenes; Experiment 2: Investigating eye movements of observers inspecting the images; and Experiment 3: Estimating the perceived depth in the scenes. In Experiment 1 we determined how much information observers can pick up from brief image presentations (in a glance). Observers briefly (for 500ms) viewed either daytime color photographs, or LWIR, II, and color fused nighttime imagery of a given set of military relevant scenarios. After seeing each image they reported all details they had perceived in the scene. We quantified observer performance through the precision and recall measures (precision is the fraction of detections that are true positives, while recall is the fraction of true positives that are detected).The results of the first experiment show that both precision and recall are higher for daytime photographs and fused colorized nighttime imagery, compared to LWIR or II imagery., The original document contains color images.

TNO has completed the construction of the TRICLOBS 3-band night vision system. This newly developed system consists of two digital image intensifiers (Photonis ICUs) and an uncooled longwave infrared microbolometer (XenICS Gobi 384). This night vision sensor suite registers the visual (400-700 nm), the near-infrared (700-1000 nm) and the longwave infrared bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The optical axes of the three cameras are aligned, using two dichroic beam splitters (an ITO filter to reflect the LWIR part of the incoming radiation into the thermal camera, and a B43-958 hot mirror to split the transmitted radiation into a visual and NIR part). The field-of-view of the cameras is nearly the same, and any rotations between camera images has been be minimized. The registration of the individual images therefore requires only a minimal amount of computational effort. Software has been developed to register the signals from all 3 cameras simultaneously, display the images, and write them to a hard disk. The system was tested and multiband video was registered during a preliminary pilot field trial in a Dutch MOUT village. The imagery was used to make final adjustments to the camera system before registering imagery in the last phase of this project. The raw imagery has now been registered and fused into a false-color representation, suitable for input to sensor fusion algorithms., Grant No. FA8655-06-1-3017-P00001. The original document contains color images.

In this effort we acquired and registered a multi-spectral dynamic image test set with the intent of using the imagery to assess the operational effectiveness of static and dynamic image fusion techniques for a range of relevant military tasks. This paper describes the image acquisition methodology, the planned human visual performance task approach, the lessons learned during image acquisition and the plans for a future, improved image set, resolution assessment methodology and human visual performance task., Prepared in collaboration with TNO Defence, Security and Safety, Soesterberg, The Netherlands and Task Consulting, Tucson, AZ.

This report results from a contract tasking TNO Defence, Security and Safety as follows: The grantee will acquire and register a multimodal dynamic target image test set that can be used to assess the operational effectiveness of static and dynamic image fusion techniques for a range of relevant military tasks. TNO originally developed the TOD (Triangle Orientation Detection) method to predict human target detection and identification performance from static imagery. The TOD method produces a TOD-curve that resembles an MTF or MRTD (commonly used to evaluate thermal sensors). However, the TOD-method is more directly related to the target recognition task, and is better suited at capturing nonlinear effects of the kind that typically occur in image fusion methods, such as sampling and (local) contrast enhancement. In the proposed project grantee collected dynamic nighttime and daytime imagery using sensors with various spectral sensitivities. The sensors were thermal, SWIR, NIR, and visible wavelength cameras that will be mounted on a common base plate. The sensor suite as a whole will be placed in a vehicle, allowing one to register approach sequences to the targets. The targets were military relevant targets such as personnel or, if possible, military vehicles. Included with each target sequence will also be triangles with a range of different sizes, thermal and visual contrasts. This will allow TOD-measurements (characterizing object recognition performance) on the resulting set of multimodal images that can be compared with human task performance using the same imagery. At total of 16 runs were successfully registered, partly in dry and partly in rainy conditions. The imagery collected during this study, together with the GPS data and all other documentary material, was made available to the Air Force Research Laboratory organization at the end of the field trials. Researchers from both the Air Force Research Laboratory and TNO Human Factors will write a joint pa, The original document contains color images.