Search

There is no conclusive evidence of any nonhuman animal using the sun as part of its predation strategy. Here, we show that the world's largest predatory fish-the white shark (Carcharodon carcharias)-exploits the sun when approaching baits by positioning the sun directly behind them. On sunny days, sharks reversed their direction of approach along an east-west axis from morning to afternoon but had uniformly distributed approach directions during overcast conditions. These results show that white sharks have sufficient behavioral flexibility to exploit fluctuating environmental features when predating. This sun-tracking predation strategy has a number of potential functional roles, including improvement of prey detection, avoidance of retinal overstimulation, and predator concealment.

Transitioning from medical residency to an operational role challenges junior medical officers as their leadership skills are put to the test. In the multifaceted role of Military Medical Corps Officers, patient care remains paramount, and effective leadership hinges on core values. From clinical competence and mentorship to modeling behavior and fostering adaptability, this article underscores the importance of leadership development for junior officers as they transition from the training centers into the operational environment. Effective junior officer leaders become force multipliers, empowering their teams and cultivating future leaders to uphold the values essential to mission success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research has focused on face recognition, and much is known about this topic. However, much of this work seems to be based on an assumption that faces are the most important aspect of person recognition. Here we test this assumption in two experiments. We show that when viewers are forced to choose, they "do" use the face more than the body, both for familiar (trained) person recognition and for unfamiliar person matching. However, we also show that headless bodies are recognized and matched with very high accuracy. We further show that processing style may be similar for faces and bodies, with inversion effects found in all cases (bodies with heads, faces alone and bodies alone), and evidence that mismatching bodies and heads causes interference. We suggest that recent findings of no inversion effect when stimuli are headless bodies may have been obtained because the stimuli led viewers to focus on nonbody aspects (e.g., clothes) or because pose and identity tasks led to somewhat different processing. Our results are consistent with holistic processing for bodies as well as faces. (Contains 3 figures and 6 footnotes.)

What happens to everyday social interactions when other‐race recognition fails? Here, we provide the first formal investigation of this question. We gave East Asian international students (N = 89) a questionnaire concerning their experiences of the other‐race effect (ORE) in Australia, and a laboratory test of their objective other‐race face recognition deficit using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). As a 'perpetrator' of the ORE, participants reported that their problems telling apart Caucasian people contributed significantly to difficulties socializing with them. Moreover, the severity of this problem correlated with their ORE on the CFMT. As a 'victim' of the ORE, participants reported that Caucasians' problems telling them apart also contributed to difficulties socializing. Further, 81% of participants had been confused with other Asians by a Caucasian authority figure (e.g., university tutor, workplace boss), resulting in varying levels of upset/difficulty. When compared to previously established contributors to international students' high rates of social isolation, ORE‐related problems were perceived as equally important as the language barrier and only moderately less important than cultural differences. We conclude that the real‐world impact of the ORE extends beyond previously identified specialized settings (eyewitness testimony, security), to common everyday situations experienced by all humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To determine the quality of published rheumatology‐focused continuing professional development (CPD) for primary care clinicians (PCCs) for improving the care of patients with rheumatic diseases. Methods: The authors conducted a systematic review of CPD focused on rheumatology topics for PCCs. A librarian systematically searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, ERIC, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and Sinico. Studies were limited to those conducted in North America after 1993. An extraction form that included the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument and the Kirkpatrick levels of learning outcomes was created through an iterative process and applied to the included articles. Results: In total, 725 articles were retrieved, of which 9 were included. Results showed that CPD was directed more at noninflammatory arthritis than inflammatory arthritis. Autoimmune diseases were underrepresented; 4 studies discussed rheumatoid arthritis, and 1 study examined rheumatologic topics broadly. Newer research tended to include multimodal approaches that combined didactic and active learning strategies, showing an evolution toward more active learning. Although online learning is increasingly popular, interventions were predominantly face‐to‐face, with only a single example of e‐learning. Studies were predominantly of moderate quality. Conclusion: Published studies of rheumatology‐focused CPD are moving toward more interactive teaching modalities and are typically conducted in person, although virtual options for rheumatology‐focused CPD should be explored to improve access to CPD. Autoimmune disease is an uncommon topic in CPD and represents an area for future expansion. Efficacy was difficult to assess given that most of the studies assessed for learner satisfaction, knowledge acquisition, or behavior change, whereas only 1 study focused on patient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We used opposing figural aftereffects to investigate whether there are at least partially separable representations of upright and inverted faces in patients who missed early visual experience because of bilateral congenital cataracts (mean age at test 19.5 years). Visually normal adults and 10-year-olds were tested for comparison. Adults showed the expected opposing aftereffects for upright and inverted faces. Ten-year-olds showed an adultlike aftereffect for upright faces but, unlike the adult group, no aftereffect for inverted faces. Patients failed to show an aftereffect for either upright or inverted faces. Overall, the results suggest that early visual input is necessary for the later development of (at least partially) separable representations of upright and inverted faces, a developmental process that takes many years to reach an adult-like refinement.

Adults are expert at recognizing faces, in part because of exquisite sensitivity to the spacing of facial features. Children are poorer than adults at recognizing facial identity and less sensitive to spacing differences. Here we examined the specificity of the immaturity by comparing the ability of 8-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adults to discriminate houses differing in the spacing between features versus those differing in the shape of the features themselves. By 8 years of age, children were more accurate for discriminations involving the feature set compared with the spacing set, and the difference in accuracy compared with adults was greater for the spacing set than for the feature set. Importantly, when sets were matched in difficulty for adults, this greater immaturity on the spacing set than on the feature set remained. The results suggest that, at least by age 8, immaturities in sensitivity to the spacing of features may be related to immaturities in general perceptual mechanisms rather than face-specific mechanisms.

Adaptation to distorted faces is commonly interpreted as a shift in the face-space norm for the adapted attribute. This article shows that the size of the aftereffect varies as a function of the distortion level of the adapter. The pattern differed for different facial attributes, increasing with distortion level for symmetric deviations of eye height and decreasing for asymmetric deviations. These results are interpreted in terms of different coding ranges for the 2 facial attributes, arising from differences in eye-height variability in natural face images (large for symmetric, small for asymmetric). Neural models developed in low-level vision also are applied to facial attributes, contrasting a 2-pool (norm-based) and a multichannel (exemplar-based) model. The adapter position effects generally support a norm-based model, as did a finding that perception of stimuli further from the norm than the adapter was shifted in the direction of the norm, rather than repulsed away from the adapter.

In Robbins, R. & McKone, E. (2006). No face-like processing for object-of-expertise in three behavioural tasks. "Cognition" this issue, we showed face-like holistic/configural processing does not occur for objects-of-expertise on standard paradigms including inversion, part-whole, part-in-configurally-transformed-whole, and the standard composite task. In this reply to the discussion by Gauthier, I., & Bukach, C. (2006). Should we reject the expertise hypothesis? "Cognition", this issue, we focus on several issues: the fact that they do not dispute our review of previous data; the strength of null effects obtained from multiple studies and paradigms; the evidence for domain-specificity of the neural substrate supporting face processing; the difference between the expertise hypothesis (as a theory about the origin of face processing) and studies of how experience affects object processing in general; and the problems with G&B's proposed alteration to the standard composite paradigm. We argue that overwhelming evidence suggests the expertise hypothesis should be put to rest so that researchers can focus on what the origin of "special" processing for faces actually is, and investigate the many interesting changes to object recognition that "do" occur with experience.

In the debate between expertise and domain-specific explanations of "special" processing for faces, a common belief is that behavioural studies support the expertise hypothesis. The present article refutes this view, via a combination of new data and review. We tested dog experts with confirmed good individuation of exemplars of their breed-of-expertise. In all experiments, standard results were confirmed for faces. However, dog experts showed no face-like processing for dogs on three behavioural tasks (inversion; the "composite paradigm"; and sensitivity to contrast reversal). The lack of holistic/configural processing, indicated in the first two of these tests, is shown by review to be consistent rather than inconsistent with previous studies of objects-of-expertise.

The origin of "special" processing for upright faces has been a matter of ongoing debate. If it is due to generic expertise, as opposed to having some innate component, holistic processing should be learnable for stimuli other than upright faces. Here we assess inverted faces. We trained subjects to discriminate identical twins using up to 1100 exposures to each twin in different poses and images. In the upright orientation, twin discrimination was supported by holistic processing. Removal of a single face feature had no effect on performance, and a composite effect (Young, A. W., Hellawell, D., & Hay, D.C. (1987). Configurational information in face perception. "Perception" 16 (6), 747-759) was obtained. In the inverted orientation, however, above chance identification ability relied on (a) image specific learning, or (b) tiny local feature differences not noticed in the upright faces. The failure to learn holistic processing for inverted faces indicates that, in contrast to the situation for objects (Tarr, M.J., & Pinker, S. (1989). Mental rotation and orientation-dependence in shape recognition. "Cognitive Psychology" 21 (2), 233-282), orientation specificity of face processing is highly stable against practice.

The desire for load leveling in interlibrary loans arises from a concern for fairness most often expressed by net lending institutions, libraries that lend more than they borrow. This article examines interlibrary loans; strategies for load leveling; and "best lending partner," a total quality management model for load leveling. (PEN)

Adaptation to distorted faces is commonly interpreted as a shift in the face-space norm for the adapted attribute. This article shows that the size of the aftereffect varies as a function of the distortion level of the adapter. The pattern differed for different facial attributes, increasing with distortion level for symmetric deviations of eye height and decreasing for asymmetric deviations. These results are interpreted in terms of different coding ranges for the 2 facial attributes, arising from differences in eye-height variability in natural face images (large for symmetric, small for asymmetric). Neural models developed in low-level vision also are applied to facial attributes, contrasting a 2-pool (norm-based) and a multichannel (exemplar-based) model. The adapter position effects generally support a norm-based model, as did a finding that perception of stimuli further from the norm than the adapter was shifted in the direction of the norm, rather than repulsed away from the adapter. Keywords: face recognition, face space, adaptation, neural models, aftereffects