scholarly journals Head turning is an effective cue for gaze following

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Rubio-Fernandez ◽  
Vishakha Shukla ◽  
Vrinda Bhatia ◽  
Shlomit Ben-Ami ◽  
Pawan Sinha

In referential communication, gaze is often interpreted as a social cue that facilitates comprehension and enables word learning. Here we investigated the degree to which head turning facilitates gaze following. We presented participants with static pictures of a man looking at a target object in a first and third block of trials, while they saw short videos of the same man turning towards the target in the second block. In Experiment 1, newly sighted individuals (recently treated for congenital cataracts) benefited from the motion cues, both when comparing their initial performance with static gaze cues to their performance with head turning, and their performance with static cues before and after the videos. In Experiment 2, neurotypical school children (ages 5-10 years) and adults also revealed improved performance with motion cues, although most participants had started to follow the static gaze cues by the end of the first block. Our results confirm that head turning is an effective social cue when interpreting new words, offering new insights for a pathways approach to development.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Ghadah Fahad Alzaidi

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of memory strategies (MSs)in improving students' ability to recall and spell newly learned vocabulary items. The researcheronly considered three types of MSs: grouping, placing new words in to a context and structuredreviewing. In addition, the study used a questionnaire that explored students' attitudes towardsMSs in general, and towards the specific MSs that they have been trained to use, as well as therelationship between MSs and motivation and between MSs and anxiety. intact groups (63 students in total) were selected from level three of the College of Languages and Translation (COLT) at King Saud University (KSU), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The two groups were assigned to the experimental group (36 students) and the control group(27students). The control group received traditional instruction that depended on the textbook without any MS training, whereas the experimental group received a combination of traditional instruction and MS training. A pre- and post-test were administered to both groups before and after the experiment to examine students' ability to recall the meaning of vocabulary items and their ability to spell them correctly. The experiment lasted for fourteen weeks through which the participants received seven MS training sessions. The study found out that MS training was effective in improving students' ability to recall the meaning of vocabulary items when needed and their ability to spell them correctly. Moreover, the results showed that the subjects of the experimental group showed positive attitude towards MSs and most of them agreed on the positive effect that MSs had on raising their motivation and reducing their anxiety while learning vocabulary.


Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Hanako Yoshida ◽  
Aakash Patel ◽  
Joseph Burling

This study evaluated two explanations for how learning of novel adjectives is facilitated when all the objects are from the same category (e.g., exemplar and testing objects are all CUPS) and the object category is a known to the children. One explanation (the category knowledge account) focuses on early knowledge of syntax–meaning correspondence, and another (the attentional account) focuses on the role of repeated perceptual properties. The first account presumes implicit understanding that all the objects belong to the same category, and the second account presumes only that redundant perceptual experiences minimize distraction from irrelevant features and thus guide children’s attention directly to the correct item. The present study tests the two accounts by documenting moment-to-moment attention allocation (e.g., looking at experimenter’s face, exemplar object, target object) during a novel adjective learning task with 50 3-year-olds. The results suggest that children’s attention was guided directly to the correct item during the adjective mapping and that such direct attention allocation to the correct item predicted children’s adjective mapping performance. Results are discussed in relation to their implication for children’s active looking as the determinant of process for mapping new words to their meanings.


2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
RECHELE BROOKS ◽  
ANDREW N. MELTZOFF

ABSTRACTWe found that infant gaze following and pointing predicts subsequent language development. At ages 0 ; 10 or 0 ; 11, infants saw an adult turn to look at an object in an experimental setting. Productive vocabulary was assessed longitudinally through two years of age. Growth curve modeling showed that infants who gaze followed and looked longer at the target object had significantly faster vocabulary growth than infants with shorter looks, even with maternal education controlled; adding infant pointing strengthened the model. We highlight the role of social cognition in word learning and emphasize the communicative-referential functions of early gaze following and pointing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. 1457-1468
Author(s):  
Péter Pongrácz ◽  
András Péter ◽  
Ádám Miklósi

A central problem of behavioural studies providing artificial visual stimuli for non-human animals is to determine how subjects perceive and process these stimuli. Especially in the case of videos, it is important to ascertain that animals perceive the actual content of the images and are not just reacting to the motion cues in the presentation. In this study, we set out to investigate how dogs process life-sized videos. We aimed to find out whether dogs perceive the actual content of video images or whether they only react to the videos as a set of dynamic visual elements. For this purpose, dogs were presented with an object search task where a life-sized projected human was hiding a target object. The videos were either normally oriented or displayed upside down, and we analysed dogs’ reactions towards the projector screen after the video presentations, and their performance in the search task. Results indicated that in the case of the normally oriented videos, dogs spontaneously perceived the actual content of the images. However, the ‘Inverted’ videos were first processed as a set of unrelated visual elements, and only after some exposure to these videos did the dogs show signs of perceiving the unusual configuration of the depicted scene. Our most important conclusion was that dogs process the same type of artificial visual stimuli in different ways, depending on the familiarity of the depicted scene, and that the processing mode can change with exposure to unfamiliar stimuli.


Author(s):  
Fady Girgis ◽  
Jonathan P. Miller

AbstractIntroduction: Engaging residents across a multiyear training spectrum is challenging given the heterogeneity of experience and limited time available for educational activities. A “flipped classroom” model, in which residents prepare ahead of time for mentored topic discussions, has potential advantages. Methods: We implemented a curriculum consisting of topics distributed across the specialty. Weekly, each resident was randomly assigned to research a specific aspect of an assigned topic appropriate to his or her level of experience: junior residents about what characterizes each clinical entity, midlevel residents about when to intervene, and chief residents about how to administer treatment. Residents completed an anonymous survey 6 months after implementation. Board examination performance was assessed before and after implementation. Results: A total of 12 residents participated in the program. Weekly, 1.75±0.40 hours were spent in preparation, with senior residents reporting less time than junior residents. All residents indicated that the accumulation of experience across 7 years of residency was a major advantage of this program, and all preferred it to lectures. Performance on the board examination significantly increased after implementation (from 316±36 to 468±45, p<0.05). Conclusions: The flipped classroom is a viable approach to resident education and is associated with increased engagement and improved performance using validated knowledge-assessment tools.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 170349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Duranton ◽  
Friederike Range ◽  
Zsófia Virányi

Dogs are renowned for being skilful at using human-given communicative cues such as pointing. Results are contradictory, however, when it comes to dogs' following human gaze, probably due to methodological discrepancies. Here we investigated whether dogs follow human gaze to one of two food locations better than into distant space even after comparable pre-training. In Experiments 1 and 2, the gazing direction of dogs was recorded in a gaze-following into distant space and in an object-choice task where no choice was allowed, in order to allow a direct comparison between tasks, varying the ostensive nature of the gazes. We found that dogs only followed repeated ostensive human gaze into distant space, whereas they followed all gaze cues in the object-choice task. Dogs followed human gaze better in the object-choice task than when there was no obvious target to look at. In Experiment 3, dogs were tested in another object-choice task and were allowed to approach a container. Ostensive cues facilitated the dogs’ following gaze with gaze as well as their choices: we found that dogs in the ostensive group chose the indicated container at chance level, whereas they avoided this container in the non-ostensive group. We propose that dogs may perceive the object-choice task as a competition over food and may interpret non-ostensive gaze as an intentional cue that indicates the experimenter's interest in the food location she has looked at. Whether ostensive cues simply mitigate the competitive perception of this situation or they alter how dogs interpret communicative gaze needs further investigation. Our findings also show that following gaze with one's gaze and actually choosing one of the two containers in an object-choice task need to be considered as different variables. The present study clarifies a number of questions related to gaze-following in dogs and adds to a growing body of evidence showing that human ostensive cues can strongly modify dog behaviour.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melis Çetinçelik ◽  
Caroline F. Rowland ◽  
Tineke M. Snijders

Eye gaze is a ubiquitous cue in child–caregiver interactions, and infants are highly attentive to eye gaze from very early on. However, the question of why infants show gaze-sensitive behavior, and what role this sensitivity to gaze plays in their language development, is not yet well-understood. To gain a better understanding of the role of eye gaze in infants' language learning, we conducted a broad systematic review of the developmental literature for all studies that investigate the role of eye gaze in infants' language development. Across 77 peer-reviewed articles containing data from typically developing human infants (0–24 months) in the domain of language development, we identified two broad themes. The first tracked the effect of eye gaze on four developmental domains: (1) vocabulary development, (2) word–object mapping, (3) object processing, and (4) speech processing. Overall, there is considerable evidence that infants learn more about objects and are more likely to form word–object mappings in the presence of eye gaze cues, both of which are necessary for learning words. In addition, there is good evidence for longitudinal relationships between infants' gaze following abilities and later receptive and expressive vocabulary. However, many domains (e.g., speech processing) are understudied; further work is needed to decide whether gaze effects are specific to tasks, such as word–object mapping or whether they reflect a general learning enhancement mechanism. The second theme explored the reasons why eye gaze might be facilitative for learning, addressing the question of whether eye gaze is treated by infants as a specialized socio-cognitive cue. We concluded that the balance of evidence supports the idea that eye gaze facilitates infants' learning by enhancing their arousal, memory, and attentional capacities to a greater extent than other low-level attentional cues. However, as yet, there are too few studies that directly compare the effect of eye gaze cues and non-social, attentional cues for strong conclusions to be drawn. We also suggest that there might be a developmental effect, with eye gaze, over the course of the first 2 years of life, developing into a truly ostensive cue that enhances language learning across the board.


Author(s):  
Tue A.H. Lassen ◽  
Lars Lindstrøm ◽  
Simon Lønbro ◽  
Klavs Madsen

The present study investigated individualized sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3−) supplementation in elite orienteers and its effects on alkalosis and performance in a simulated sprint orienteering competition. Twenty-one Danish male and female elite orienteers (age = 25.2 ± 3.6 years, height = 176.4 ± 10.9 cm, body mass = 66.6 ± 7.9 kg) were tested twice in order to identify individual time to peak blood bicarbonate (HCO3− peak) following supplementation of 0.3 g/kg body mass NaHCO3 with and without warm-up. The athletes also performed two 3.5 km time-trial runs (TT-runs) following individualized timing of NaHCO3 supplementation (SBS) or placebo (PLA) on separate days in a randomized, double-blind, cross-over design. The occurrence of individual peak HCO3− and pH ranged from 60 to 180 min. Mean HCO3− and pH in SBS were significantly higher compared with PLA 10 min before and following the TT-run (p < .01). SBS improved overall performance in the 3.5 km TT-run by 6 s compared with PLA (775.5 ± 16.2 s vs. 781.4 ± 16.1 s, respectively; p < .05). SBS improved performance in the last half of the TT-run compared with PLA (p < .01). In conclusion, supplementation with NaHCO3 followed by warm-up resulted in individualized alkalosis peaks ranging from 60 to 180 min. Individualized timing of SBS in elite orienteers induced significant alkalosis before and after a 3.5 km TT and improved overall performance time by 6 s, which occurred in the last half of the time trial. The present data show that the anaerobic buffer system is important for performance in these types of endurance events lasting 12–15 min.


Author(s):  
S.I.I Rychkova ◽  

Purpose. To study the dynamics of interhemispheric interactions in children with friendly strabismus as a result of functional treatment. Material and methods. The study included 135 children aged 6 to 8 (average 6.8±0.1) years with convergent non-paralytic operated strabismus in combination with hypermetropic refraction and 96 children of the same age in the control group (average 7.1±0.1 years) without ophthalmic pathology. In children with strabismus, the leading hand and dominant eye were determined before and after functional treatment. Characteristics of spatial perception were evaluated by copying of complex geometric shapes which were Taylor's (right-handed) and Ray-Osterritz's (lefthanded). Results. After functional treatment in the group of children with non-paralytic strabismus, along with improved binocular functions and improved performance of the Taylor and Ray-Osterritz tests, there was an increase in the number of ambidextrous children and a significant decrease in the number of left-handers (p<0.001). Conclusion. The increase in the number of symmetrical lateral phenotypes against the background of improved binocular functions and spatial perception characteristics as a result of functional treatment of children with non-paralytic strabismus indicates an improvement of their interhemispheric interactions and can be an additional criterion for the ef fectiveness of treatment. Key words: lateral phenotypes, interhemispheric asymmetry, functional treatment of strabismus


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hayom Kim ◽  
Sung Hoon Kang ◽  
Soon Ho Kim ◽  
Seong Hwan Kim ◽  
Jihyeon Hwang ◽  
...  

Abstract The purpose of this study was to identify the mechanisms underlying effects of coffee on cognition in the context of brain networks. Here we investigated functional connectivity before and after drinking coffee using graph theoretical analysis of electroencephalography (EEG). Twenty-one healthy adults voluntarily participated in this study. The neuropsychological tests were consecutively performed at the start of the EEG recording and 30 min after coffee consumption. Graph analyses were performed and compared before and after coffee consumption. Correlation analyses were conducted to assess the relationship between changes in graph measures and those in cognitive function tests. FC was reorganized toward more efficient network properties after coffee consumption. Performance in Digit Span tests and Trail Making Test Part B improved after coffee consumption, and the improved performance in executive function was correlated with changes in graph measures, reflecting a shift toward efficient network properties. The beneficial effects of coffee on cognitive function might be attributed to the reorganization of FC toward more efficient network properties. Based on our findings, the patterns of network reorganization could be used as quantitative markers to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of coffee on cognition, especially executive function.


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