scholarly journals Search in Dynamic Scenes: Cueing by Body Parts Leads to Transient Covet Attention and Microsaccade Bias while Whole Silhouettes to Sustained

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole X Han ◽  
Miguel P. Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Covert Attention ◽  
Target Person ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Gaze Behavior ◽  
Dynamic Scenes ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Static Head

Gaze direction is an evolutionarily important mechanism in daily social interactions. It reflects a person’s internal cognitive state, spatial locus of interest, and predicts future actions. Studies have used static head images presented foveally and simple synthetic tasks to find that gaze orients attention facilitates target detection at the cued location in a sustained manner. Little is known about how people’s natural gaze behavior, including eyes, head, and body movements, jointly orient covert attention, microsaccades, and facilitate performance in more ecological dynamic scenes. Participants completed a target person detection task with videos of real scenes. The videos showed people looking toward (valid cue) or away from a target (invalid cue) location. We digitally manipulated the individuals in the videos directing gaze to create three conditions: intact (head+body movements), floating heads (only head movements), and headless bodies (only body movements). We assessed their impact on participants’ behavioral performance and microsaccades during the task. We show that, in isolation, an individual’s head or body orienting toward the target-person direction led to facilitation in detection that is transient in time (200 ms). In contrast, only whole silhouettes led to sustained facilitation (500 ms). Furthermore, observers executed microsaccades more frequently towards the cued direction for valid trials, but this bias was sustained in time only when full silhouettes were present. Together, the results differ from previous findings with foveally presented static heads. In more real-world scenarios and tasks, sustained attention requires the presence of the whole silhouettes of the individuals dynamically directing their gaze.

scholarly journals Search in Dynamic Scenes: Cueing by Body Parts Leads to Transient Covert Attention and Microsaccade Bias while Whole Silhouettes to Sustained

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole X Han ◽  
Miguel P. Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Covert Attention ◽  
Target Person ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Gaze Behavior ◽  
Dynamic Scenes ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Static Head

Gaze direction is an evolutionarily important mechanism in daily social interactions. It reflects a person’s internal cognitive state, spatial locus of interest, and predicts future actions. Studies have used static head images presented foveally and simple synthetic tasks to find that gaze orients attention facilitates target detection at the cued location in a sustained manner. Little is known about how people’s natural gaze behavior, including eyes, head, and body movements, jointly orient covert attention, microsaccades, and facilitate performance in more ecological dynamic scenes. Participants completed a target person detection task with videos of real scenes. The videos showed people looking toward (valid cue) or away from a target (invalid cue) location. We digitally manipulated the individuals in the videos directing gaze to create three conditions: intact (head+body movements), floating heads (only head movements), and headless bodies (only body movements). We assessed their impact on participants’ behavioral performance and microsaccades during the task. We show that, in isolation, an individual’s head or body orienting toward the target-person direction led to facilitation in detection that is transient in time (200 ms). In contrast, only whole silhouettes led to sustained facilitation (500 ms). Furthermore, observers executed microsaccades more frequently towards the cued direction for valid trials, but this bias was sustained in time only when full silhouettes were present. Together, the results differ from previous findings with foveally presented static heads. In more real-world scenarios and tasks, sustained attention requires the presence of the whole silhouettes of the individuals dynamically directing their gaze.

scholarly journals Age-Related Differences in Fixation Pattern on a Companion Robot

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (13) ◽  
pp. 3807
Author(s):  
Young Hoon Oh ◽  
Da Young Ju
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
The Body ◽  
Robot Design ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Gaze Behavior ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Companion Robots

Recent studies have addressed the various benefits of companion robots and expanded the research scope to their design. However, the viewpoints of older adults have not been deeply investigated. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the distinctive viewpoints of older adults by comparing them with those of younger adults. Thirty-one older and thirty-one younger adults participated in an eye-tracking experiment to investigate their impressions of a bear-like robot mockup. They also completed interviews and surveys to help us understand their viewpoints on the robot design. The gaze behaviors and the impressions of the two groups were significantly different. Older adults focused significantly more on the robot’s face and paid little attention to the rest of the body. In contrast, the younger adults gazed at more body parts and viewed the robot in more detail than the older adults. Furthermore, the older adults rated physical attractiveness and social likeability of the robot significantly higher than the younger adults. The specific gaze behavior of the younger adults was linked to considerable negative feedback on the robot design. Based on these empirical findings, we recommend that impressions of older adults be considered when designing companion robots.

scholarly journals A naturalistic paradigm simulating gaze-based social interactions for the investigation of social agency

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 1044-1055
Author(s):  
Marie-Luise Brandi ◽  
Daniela Kaifel ◽  
Juha M. Lahnakoski ◽  
Leonhard Schilbach
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
Gaze Behavior ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Real Person

Abstract Sense of agency describes the experience of being the cause of one’s own actions and the resulting effects. In a social interaction, one’s actions may also have a perceivable effect on the actions of others. In this article, we refer to the experience of being responsible for the behavior of others as social agency, which has important implications for the success or failure of social interactions. Gaze-contingent eyetracking paradigms provide a useful tool to analyze social agency in an experimentally controlled manner, but the current methods are lacking in terms of their ecological validity. We applied this technique in a novel task using video stimuli of real gaze behavior to simulate a gaze-based social interaction. This enabled us to create the impression of a live interaction with another person while being able to manipulate the gaze contingency and congruency shown by the simulated interaction partner in a continuous manner. Behavioral data demonstrated that participants believed they were interacting with a real person and that systematic changes in the responsiveness of the simulated partner modulated the experience of social agency. More specifically, gaze contingency (temporal relatedness) and gaze congruency (gaze direction relative to the participant’s gaze) influenced the explicit sense of being responsible for the behavior of the other. In general, our study introduces a new naturalistic task to simulate gaze-based social interactions and demonstrates that it is suitable to studying the explicit experience of social agency.

The direction giving pointing gestures of the Malay Malaysian speech community

Gesture ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amal Mechraoui ◽  
Faridah Noor Binti Mohd Noor
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Manual Pointing ◽  
Pointing Gestures ◽  
A Chain ◽  
The Way

Abstract When we speak, we do not only produce a chain of words and utterances, but we also perform various body movements that convey information. These movements are usually made with the hands and are what McNeill (1992) terms gestures. Although gesturing is universal, the way we gesture and the meanings we associate with gestures vary cross-culturally. Using a qualitative approach, this paper describes and illustrates the forms and functions of pointing gestures used by Malay speakers. The data discussed is based on 10 video recorded direction-giving interactions. Findings show that pointing among Malay speakers is achieved through the use of various manual pointing gestures and other bodily actions involving gaze, torso and head movements, which communicate distinct functions. This study has indicated that although some gesture forms and functions are shared among Malay speakers and other cultural groups, some direction-giving pointing behaviors are Malay specific.

scholarly journals Noninformative Vision of Body Movements can Enhance Tactile Discrimination

i-Perception ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 204166952110592
Author(s):  
Yosuke Suzuishi ◽  
Souta Hidaka
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Dynamic Condition ◽  
Discrimination Performance ◽  
Static Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Enhancement Effect ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Tactile Discrimination ◽  
Noninformative Vision

Vision of the body without task cues enhances tactile discrimination performance. This effect has been investigated only with static visual information, although our body usually moves, and dynamic visual and bodily information provides ownership (SoO) and agency (SoA) sensations to body parts. We investigated whether vision of body movements could enhance tactile discrimination performance. Participants observed white dots without any textural information showing lateral hand movements (dynamic condition) or static hands (static condition). For participants experiencing the dynamic condition first, it induced a lower tactile discrimination threshold, as well as a stronger SoO and SoA, compared to the static condition. For participants observing the static condition first, the magnitudes of the enhancement effect in the dynamic condition were positively correlated between the tactile discrimination and SoO/SoA. The enhancement of the dynamic visual information was not observed when the hand shape was not maintained in the scrambled white dot images. Our results suggest that dynamic visual information without task cues can enhance tactile discrimination performance by feeling SoO and SoA only when it maintains bodily information.

scholarly journals Wireless recording from unrestrained monkeys reveals motor goal encoding beyond immediate reach in frontoparietal cortex

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Berger ◽  
Naubahar S. Agha ◽  
Alexander Gail
Keyword(s):  
Broad Band ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Movement Planning ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
Frontoparietal Network ◽  
Markerless Motion Capture ◽  
System Neuroscience ◽  
Reach Movements

AbstractSystem neuroscience of motor cognition regarding the space beyond immediate reach mandates free, yet experimentally controlled movements. We present an experimental environment (Reach Cage) and a versatile visuo-haptic interaction system (MaCaQuE) for investigating goal-directed whole-body movements of unrestrained monkeys. Two rhesus monkeys conducted instructed walk-and-reach movements towards targets flexibly positioned in the cage. We tracked 3D multi-joint arm and head movements using markerless motion capture. Movements show small trial-to-trial variability despite being unrestrained. We wirelessly recorded 192 broad-band neural signals from three cortical sensorimotor areas simultaneously. Single unit activity is selective for different reach and walk-and-reach movements. Walk-and-reach targets could be decoded from premotor and parietal but not motor cortical activity during movement planning. The Reach Cage allows systems-level sensorimotor neuroscience studies with full-body movements in a configurable 3D spatial setting with unrestrained monkeys. We conclude that the primate frontoparietal network encodes reach goals beyond immediate reach during movement planning.

scholarly journals Multiscale modeling of mechanotransduction in the utricle

2019 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong-Hoon Nam ◽  
J. W. Grant ◽  
M. H. Rowe ◽  
E. H. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Numerical Models ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Hair Bundle ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Natural Behavior ◽  
Hair Bundles ◽  
Static Head

We review recent progress in using numerical models to relate utricular hair bundle and otoconial membrane (OM) structure to the functional requirements imposed by natural behavior in turtles. The head movements section reviews the evolution of experimental attempts to understand vestibular system function with emphasis on turtles, including data showing that accelerations occurring during natural head movements achieve higher magnitudes and frequencies than previously assumed. The structure section reviews quantitative anatomical data documenting topographical variation in the structures underlying macromechanical and micromechanical responses of the turtle utricle to head movement: hair bundles, OM, and bundle-OM coupling. The macromechanics section reviews macromechanical models that incorporate realistic anatomical and mechanical parameters and reveal that the system is significantly underdamped, contrary to previous assumptions. The micromechanics: hair bundle motion and met currents section reviews work based on micromechanical models, which demonstrates that topographical variation in the structure of hair bundles and OM, and their mode of coupling, result in regional specializations for signaling of low frequency (or static) head position and high frequency head accelerations. We conclude that computational models based on empirical data are especially promising for investigating mechanotransduction in this challenging sensorimotor system.

Comparing Violinists’ Body Movements While Standing, Sitting, and in Sitting Orientations to the Right or Left of a Music Stand

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Spahn ◽  
Céline Wasmer ◽  
Franziska Eickhoff ◽  
Manfred Nusseck
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Stress ◽  
Movement Patterns ◽  
The Body ◽  
Upper Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Weight Distributions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Stress And Health ◽  
3D Motion Capture

OBJECTIVES: For violinists, it is common practice to play while standing or sitting. When playing in an orchestra, generally two persons share one music stand, with one sitting to the right and the other to the left of the stand. The present study investigated specific movement patterns while playing in these different positions. METHODS: Using a posturographic device and 3D motion capture, the body weight distributions and specific body movements of 19 violinists were analyzed. RESULTS: Results showed unbalanced weight distributions while sitting in front of or oriented to the right of the music stand compared to the almost even distributions while standing or oriented to the left of the stand. Analyses of movement patterns showed significant differences between standing and sitting, mainly in the upper body parts with less movability while sitting. While sitting in front of or oriented to the right of the music stand, the right bowing arm showed more restricted movements compared to other positions. CONCLUSION: The playing positions are discussed with regard to possible physiological stress and health risks. The study emphasizes the importance of different playing positions and offers starting points for discussion of postural influences and sensible handling of the instrument in performance and practice for violinists.

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