Search

In the context of a lecture, the capacity to readily recognize and synthesize key concepts is crucial for comprehension and overall educational performance. In this paper, we introduce a tool, the Collaborative Lecture Annotation System (CLAS), which has been developed to make the extraction of important information a more collaborative and engaged process. The system relies on semantically constrained annotation, postannotation data amalgamation and transparent display of this amalgamated data. In addition to describing the CLAS, we report on a user experience study aimed at investigating students' perception of the utility of the tool.

A flickering light can be seen during a saccadic eye movement as a pattern of contours known as a phantom array. On repeated pairs of trials, observers made saccades across a narrow (1 arc minutes), bright (10−4 cd/m2) source of flickering light and were required to detect the phantom array. On one of each pair of trials, chosen at random, the light flickered at 60 kHz and on the other at a frequency chosen in the range 1–11 kHz. In two such studies, a few observers were reliably able to discriminate 11 kHz from 60 kHz on the basis of the visibility of the phantom array. The average threshold at which the array was visible was about 6 kHz and therefore double that previously obtained with larger targets. Those observers who were able to see the phantom array tended reliably to report more symptoms of visual discomfort in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human saccades and fixations have numerous functions in complex everyday tasks, which have sometimes been neglected in simple experimental situations. In this review I describe some of the characteristics of eye movement behaviour during real-world interactions with objects, while walking in natural environments and while holding a conversation. When performing real-world actions and walking around the world, we fixate relevant features at critical time points during the task. The eye movements between these fixations are planned and coordinated alongside head and body movements, often occurring a short time before the corresponding action. In social interactions, eye movements are both a mechanism for taking in information (for example, when looking at someone's face or following their gaze) and for signalling one's attention to another person. Thus eye movements are specific to a particular task context and subject to high-level planning and control during everyday actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avoiding distractors is crucial for our daily lives. Load theory argues that high perceptual load facilitates distractor avoidance, while high cognitive load impedes distractor avoidance (see, Lavie, 2005). Difficulty in avoiding distractors is one of the key symptoms of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD; APA, 2013). In a series of experiments, we investigated visual attention during the viewing of complex scenes (featuring social and non-social objects), while manipulating Working Memory Load (WM) in a concurrent task. We also explored the relationship between these tasks and ADHD-like traits. Fixations during scene viewing were investigated with reference to objects of high and low saliency with social area (a person) also imbedded in the image. We tested the hypothesis that high WM load would lead to increased capture by the salient distractor. In contrast, attending to the social item might require more top-down resources and so be disrupted by WM load. The pattern of results suggests that during image viewing the social object was fixated to a greater degree than the other object (regardless of salience). While, there was a relationship between the degree of ADHD-like traits and performance on the memory task, WM load did not seem to affect scanning in scenes. Such findings suggest that top-down resources are not needed to attend to a social area in complex stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Endophenotypes are intermediate variables in the hypothetical causal chain from observed behavior of a clinical disorder to its underlying genotype. Recent literature trends point to the potential etiological overlap between Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The present study aims to systematically compare these groups, by studying the potential endophenotypes of ASD (local-global processing; social cueing) and ADHD (Intra-Subject Variability (ISV)) in tandem. Methods: Three tasks, namely visual search, copying down and gaze cueing were administered to directly examine ASD- (ASD without co-morbid ADHD), ADHD and ASD+ (ASD with co-morbid ADHD) groups, in comparison to a typically developing (TD) group (N=100). Step-by-step process analysis and scan-path models were employed to analyze the oculomotor and behavioural data collected. Results: Results from the visual search task show that groups with ADHD symptoms (ADHD and ASD+) have increased intra-subject variability, whereas only the ASD- group showed signs of superior performance. Fixation durations during the copying down task can differentiate ASD- and ADHD groups on the strategies used. The gaze cueing task, shows the ASD+ group to use different strategies as compared to TD, and have slower and more variable saccadic RTs as compared to ADHD and ASD-. Conclusion: The present study gives evidence for a double dissociation between ADHD and ASD when no comorbid symptoms are present, on paradigms of local-global processing and social cueing. Oculomotor paradigms and analysis have successfully teased apart this interaction in the present study and can aid greatly in the quest for these endophenotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Peak velocities of saccadic eye movements are reduced after benzodiazepine administration. Even though this is an established effect, past research has only examined it in horizontal prosaccade tasks., Objectives: The spectrum of saccadic eye movements, however, is much larger. Therefore, we aimed to make a first attempt at filling this research gap by testing benzodiazepine effects on saccades under different experimental task conditions., Methods: 1 mg lorazepam or placebo was administered (within-subjects, double-blind, in randomised order) to n = 30 healthy adults. Participants performed an extended version of the prosaccade task, including vertical saccade directions and different stimulus eccentricities, as well as a free viewing task., Results: Results from the prosaccade task confirmed established effects of benzodiazepines as well as saccade direction on saccadic parameters but additionally showed that the drug effect on peak velocity was independent of saccade direction. Remarkably, in the free viewing task peak velocities as well as other saccade parameters were unaffected by lorazepam. Furthermore, exploration patterns during free viewing did not change under lorazepam., Conclusions: Overall, our findings further consolidate the peak velocity of prosaccades as a biomarker of sedation. Additionally, we suggest that sedative effects of low doses of benzodiazepines may be compensated in tasks that more closely resemble natural eye movement behaviour, possibly due to the lack of time constraints or via neurophysiological processes related to volition., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

When free-viewing scenes, participants tend to preferentially fixate social elements (e.g., people). In the present study, we tested whether this bias would be disrupted by increasing the demands of a secondary dual-task: holding a set of (one or six) spatial locations in memory, presented either simultaneously or sequentially. Following a retention interval, participants judged whether a test location was present in the to-be-remembered stimuli. During the retention interval participants free-viewed scenes containing a social element (a person) and a non-social element (an object) that served as regions of interest. In order to assess the impact of physical salience, the non-social element was presented in both an unaltered baseline version, and in a version where its salience was artificially increased. The results showed that the preference to look at social elements decreased when the demands of the spatial memory task were increased from one to six locations, regardless of presentation mode (simultaneous or sequential). The high-load condition also resulted in more central fixations and reduced exploration of the scene. The results indicate that the social prioritisation effect, and scene viewing more generally, can be affected by a concurrent memory load., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Linguistic syntax has often been claimed as uniquely complex due to features like anaphoric relations and distance dependencies. However, visual narratives of sequential images, like those in comics, have been argued to use sequencing mechanisms analogous to those in language. These narrative structures include "refiner" panels that "zoom in" on the contents of another panel. Similar to anaphora in language, refiners indexically connect inexplicit referential information in one unit (refiner, pronoun) to a more informative "antecedent" elsewhere in the discourse. Also like in language, refiners can follow their antecedents (anaphoric) or precede them (cataphoric), along with having either proximal or distant connections. We here explore the constraints on visual narrative refiners created by modulating these features of order and distance. Experiment 1 examined participants' preferences for where refiners are placed in a sequence using a force-choice test, which revealed that refiners are preferred to follow their antecedents and have proximal distances from them. Experiment 2 then showed that distance dependencies lead to slower self-paced viewing times. Finally, measurements of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in Experiment 3 revealed that these patterns evoke similar brain responses as referential dependencies in language (i.e., N400, LAN, Nref). Across all three studies, the constraints and (neuro)cognitive responses to refiners parallel those shown to anaphora in language, suggesting domain-general constraints on the sequencing of referential dependencies., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Individuals high in autistic traits can have difficulty understanding verbal and non-verbal cues, and may display atypical gaze behaviour during social interactions. The aim of this study was to examine differences among neurotypical individuals with high and low levels of autistic traits with regard to their gaze behaviour and their ability to assess peers' social status accurately. Fifty-four university students who completed the 10-item Autism Quotient (AQ-10) were eye-tracked as they watched six 20-second video clips of people ("targets") involved in a group decision-making task. Simulating natural, everyday social interactions, the video clips included moments of debate, humour, interruptions, and cross talk. Results showed that high-scorers on the AQ-10 (i.e., those with more autistic traits) did not differ from the low-scorers in either gaze behaviour or assessing the targets' relative social status. The results based on this neurotypical group of participants suggest that the ability of individuals high in autistic traits to read social cues may be preserved in certain tasks crucial to navigating day-to-day social relationships. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory of mind, weak central coherence, and social motivation theories of autism., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Forby et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Autism Spectrum Disorder is characterised by profound challenges with social communication and social interaction. Currently, there are few therapeutic interventions that successfully target some of the functionally impairing traits associated with autism. Furthermore, many of these interventions comprise a variety of limitations; including, limited accessibility, extensive durations, or the requirement of a trained professional to deliver the intervention. New research suggests that instead of targeting all traits associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder with a single solution, scientific research should focus on providing therapeutic tools that alleviate functionally impairing facets specific to the individual. Owing to the nature of physical activity, sports, and dance (coordinated movement) these activities could provide opportunities to enhance communication skills and social development in autistic children. Therefore, this paper gives a narrative overview of the literature surrounding communication and coordinated movement; outlining what is meant by communication challenges, exploring the benefits of coordinated movement for traits associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and delineating how coordinated movement elicits positive outcomes for autistic children., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Crown Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In this paper, we present a review of how the various aspects of any study using an eye tracker (such as the instrument, methodology, environment, participant, etc.) affect the quality of the recorded eye-tracking data and the obtained eye-movement and gaze measures. We take this review to represent the empirical foundation for reporting guidelines of any study involving an eye tracker. We compare this empirical foundation to five existing reporting guidelines and to a database of 207 published eye-tracking studies. We find that reporting guidelines vary substantially and do not match with actual reporting practices. We end by deriving a minimal, flexible reporting guideline based on empirical research (Section "An empirically based minimal reporting guideline")., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

We report two experiments investigating the effect of working memory (WM) load on selective attention. Experiment 1 was a modified version of Lavie et al. and confirmed that increasing memory load disrupted performance in the classic flanker task. Experiment 2 used the same manipulation of WM load to probe attention during the viewing of complex scenes while also investigating individual differences in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits. In the image-viewing task, we measured the degree to which fixations targeted each of two crucial objects: (1) a social object (a person in the scene) and (2) a non-social object of higher or lower physical salience. We compared the extent to which increasing WM load would change the pattern of viewing of the physically salient and socially salient objects. If attending to the social item requires greater default voluntary top-down resources, then the viewing of social objects should show stronger modulation by WM load compared with viewing of physically salient objects. The results showed that the social object was fixated to a greater degree than the other object (regardless of physical salience). Increased salience drew fixations away from the background leading to slightly increased fixations on the non-social object, without changing fixations on the social object. Increased levels of ADHD-like traits were associated with fewer fixations on the social object, but only in the high-salient, low-load condition. Importantly, WM load did not affect the number of fixations on the social object. Such findings suggest rather surprisingly that attending to a social area in complex stimuli is not dependent on the availability of voluntary top-down resources.

Compositionality is a primary feature of language, but graphics can also create combinatorial meaning, like with items above faces (e.g., lightbulbs to mean inspiration). We posit that these "upfixes" (i.e., upwards affixes) involve a productive schema enabling both stored and novel face-upfix dyads. In two experiments, participants viewed either conventional (e.g., lightbulb) or unconventional (e.g., clover-leaves) upfixes with faces which either matched (e.g., lightbulb/smile) or mismatched (e.g., lightbulb/frown). In Experiment 1, matching dyads sponsored higher comprehensibility ratings and faster response times, modulated by conventionality. In Experiment 2, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed conventional upfixes, regardless of matching, evoked larger N250s, indicating perceptual expertise, but mismatching and unconventional dyads elicited larger semantic processing costs (N400) than conventional-matching dyads. Yet mismatches evoked a late negativity, suggesting congruent novel dyads remained construable compared with violations. These results support that combinatorial graphics involve a constrained productive schema, similar to the lexicon of language., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The presence of other people, whether real or implied, can have a profound impact on our behaviour. However, it is argued that autistic individuals show decreased interest in social phenomena, which leads to an absence of these effects. In this study, the agency of a cue was manipulated such that the cue was either described as representing a computer program or the eye movements of another participant. Both neurotypical and autistic participants demonstrated a social facilitation effect and were significantly more accurate on a prediction task when they believed the cue represented another participant. This demonstrates that whilst autistic adults may show difficulties in interpreting social behaviour this does not necessarily arise from a lack of sensitivity to social agency., (© 2020. The Author(s).)

People are drawn to social, animate things more than inanimate objects. Previous research has also shown gaze following in humans, a process that has been linked to theory of mind (ToM). In three experiments, we investigated whether animacy and ToM are involved when making judgements about the location of a cursor in a scene. In Experiment 1, participants were told that this cursor represented the gaze of an observer and were asked to decide whether the observer was looking at a target object. This task is similar to that carried out by researchers manually coding eye-tracking data. The results showed that participants were biased to perceive the gaze cursor as directed towards animate objects (faces) compared to inanimate objects. In Experiments 2 and 3 we tested the role of ToM, by presenting the same scenes to new participants but now with the statement that the cursor was generated by a 'random' computer system or by a computer system designed to seek targets. The bias to report that the cursor was directed toward faces was abolished in Experiment 2, and minimised in Experiment 3. Together, the results indicate that people attach minds to the mere representation of an individual's gaze, and this attribution of mind influences what people believe an individual is looking at., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Introduction: The coronavirus pandemic has swept across the United Kingdom (UK). Given the ever-evolving situation, little is known about the repercussions of coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Therefore, this study explores the social-communicative impact of the first lockdown (March 2020 - July 2020) in the UK and the return to school period (September 2020 - October 2020), following prolonged disruption to routine, in children diagnosed with ASD. Methods : Parents of autistic children completed 2 separate online surveys following the first lockdown in the UK ( n  = 176) and also when children returned to school following the summer break ( n  = 54). Results : The results suggested that self-regulation skills ( p < .05) and co-operation skills ( p < .05) were most affected over the course of the lockdown. Children's physical activity levels were perceived to significantly increase during the return to school ( p < .0001), which was associated with better social-communication outcomes ( p < .05). Conclusion : Future work is needed to confirm and explore the findings. Such work could be implemented to protect and improve the social-communicative outcomes of autistic children., Competing Interests: All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript., (© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

The comprehension of visual narratives requires paying attention to certain elements and integrating them across a sequence of images. To study this process, we developed a new approach that modified comic strips according to where observers looked while viewing each sequence. Across three self-paced experiments, we presented sequences of six panels that were sometimes automatically "zoomed-in" or re-framed in order to highlight parts of the image that had been fixated by another group of observers. Fixation zoom panels were rated as easier to understand and produced viewing times more similar to the original comic than panels modified to contain non-fixated or incongruous regions. When a single panel depicting the start of an action was cropped to show only the most fixated region, viewing times were similar to the original narrative despite the reduced information. Modifying such panels also had an impact on the viewing time on subsequent panels, both when zoomed in and when regions were highlighted through an "inset" panel. These findings demonstrate that fixations in a visual narrative are guided to informative elements, and that these elements influence both the current panel and the processing of the sequence.

Visual narratives like comics and films often shift between showing full scenes and close, zoomed-in viewpoints. These zooms are similar to the "spotlight of attention" cast across a visual scene in perception. We here measured ERPs to visual narratives (comic strips) that used zoomed-in and full-scene panels either throughout the whole sequence context or at specific critical panels. Zoomed-in panels were automatically generated on the basis of fixations from prior participants' eye movements to the crucial content of panels (Foulsham & Cohn, 2020). We found that these fixation panels evoked a smaller N300 than full-scenes, indicative of reduced cost for object identification, but that they also evoked a slightly larger amplitude N400 response, suggesting a greater cost for accessing semantic memory with constrained content. Panels in sequences where fixation panels persisted across all positions of the sequence also evoked larger posterior P600s, implying that constrained views required more updating or revision processes throughout the sequence. Altogether, these findings suggest that constraining a visual scene to its crucial parts triggers various processes related not only to the density of its information but also to its integration into a sequential context., (Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Research investigating gaze in natural scenes has identified a number of spatial biases in where people look, but it is unclear whether these are partly due to constrained testing environments (e.g., a participant with their head restrained and looking at a landscape image framed within a computer monitor). We examined the extent to which image shape (square vs. circle), image rotation, and image content (landscapes vs. fractal images) influence eye and head movements in virtual reality (VR). Both the eyes and head were tracked while observers looked at natural scenes in a virtual environment. In line with previous work, we found a bias for saccade directions parallel to the image horizon, regardless of image shape or content. We found that, when allowed to do so, observers move both their eyes and head to explore images. Head rotation, however, was idiosyncratic; some observers rotated a lot, whereas others did not. Interestingly, the head rotated in line with the rotation of landscape but not fractal images. That head rotation and gaze direction respond differently to image content suggests that they may be under different control systems. We discuss our findings in relation to current theories on head and eye movement control and how insights from VR might inform more traditional eye-tracking studies.

Purpose: The influence of interdependency between competitors on pacing decision-making and information-seeking behavior has been explored. This has been done by only altering instructions, and thereby action possibilities, while controlling environment (i.e., competitor behavior) and exercise task., Methods: Twelve participants performed a 4-km time trial on a Velotron cycle ergometer in a randomized, counterbalanced order alone with no virtual opponent (NO), against a virtual opponent with no restrictions (low athlete-opponent interdependency [OP-IND]), or against a virtual opponent who the participant was permitted to overtake only once during the trial (high athlete-opponent interdependency [OP-DEP]). Information-seeking behavior was evaluated using an SMI eye tracker. Differences in pacing, performance, and information-seeking behavior were examined using repeated-measures ANOVA (P < 0.05)., Results: Neither mean power output (NO, 298 ± 35 W; OP-IND, 297 ± 38 W; OP-DEP, 296 ± 37 W) nor finishing time (NO, 377.7 ± 17.4 s; OP-IND, 379.3 ± 19.5 s; OP-DEP, 378.5 ± 17.7 s) differed between experimental conditions. However, power output was lower in the first kilometer of OP-DEP compared with the other experimental conditions (NO, 332 ± 59 W; OP-IND, 325 ± 62 W; OP-DEP, 316 ± 58 W; both P < 0.05), and participants decided to wait longer before they overtook their opponent (OP-IND, 137 ± 130 s; OP-DEP, 255 ± 107 s; P = 0.040). Moreover, total fixation time spent on the avatar of the virtual opponent increased when participants were only allowed to overtake once (OP-IND, 23.3 ± 16.6 s; OP-DEP, 55.8 ± 32.7 s; P = 0.002)., Conclusion: A higher interdependency between athlete and opponent altered pacing behavior in terms of in-race adaptations based on opponent's behavior, and it induced an increased attentional focus on the virtual opponent. Thus, in the context of exercise regulation, attentional cues are likely to be used in an adaptive way according to their availability and situational relevance, consistent with a decision-making framework based on the interdependence of perception and action.