Familiarity Factors of Street Features in Pedestrian Wayfindings

From an origin point to a destination point, good wayfinding process requires familiar recognition on the street environment. However, the unclear reasons of identifying street features to determine a route to the destination influences a pedestrian to select the wrong turn, walk in longer distance, and lost his direction. This paper aims to identify the factors that influence pedestrian familiarity, familiar or unfamiliar, in people wayfinding. Two hundred questionnaires were collected in Teluk Intan, Perak, Malaysia. Quotations from 30 interviews were used to triangulate the findings. Factor analysis available in IBM SPSS version 21 was used in exploring the familiarity factors for wayfinding. The finding suggests three factors influenced pedestrian to familiar with the street environment, which the factors are characteristic, attraction, and interest of street features. While, the duplication design of street features, error in defining the position of street features and form similarity of street features influence pedestrian to become unfamiliar with the street environment. This paper implies that the physical form of street features gives impact to pedestrian familiarity. Consideration of the three factors that influence pedestrian to familiar with the environment can improve how pedestrian experience in street network especially wayfinding.

Image Re-presentation in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega

While technological advancement and artistic creations have amazingly diversified the (re-)presentation of images, infinite image proliferation becomes an irresistible trend. To resist the subsuming power of the image-laden society, the renewed perceptions and interpretations of the image presentation are explored both in artistic presentation and in literary writing. Point Omega is a convergence of such an attempt. The paper explores how the time-featured image in Point Omega activates new idea, sensuous responses, and self-perception. Point Omega represents Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho which is an adaptation of Hitchcock’s Psycho. By reframing the running speed to two frames a second, Gordon drastically challenges the familiar recognition and interpretation. Writing about Gordon’s work, DeLillo stresses the emergence of various perceptions, imaginations, and association in the video-watching process. No longer resting on the cultural critique on the media society as what has been done in his earlier works, DeLillo marks time as the prominent variable for the emergence of the new and the unknown. Moreover, DeLillo’s image representation highlights the physical condition which is both an essential feature of Gordon’s video installation and the hinge for DeLillo’s distinct writing. For one thing, the emergence of the new and the unthought lies in the interweaving between the spectator’s awareness and imagination of the physicality and his responses to the reframed image. For another, the physicality of the time-reframed image resonates with the desert underscored in the main story. In the story, DeLillo contends about the relation between the time-featured space and the transient self. The desert mirroring the time-featured image renders the distinctive conditions for different self-perception. Hence, the image representation in Point Omega proffers the condition for the unexpected and unthought, reconfigures the selfhood, and, significantly, enacts the alternative writing which trespasses from the filmic to the fictional, from the visual to the verbal.

Does Pathological Aging Affect Musical Learning and Memory?

the effect of pathological aging on explicit memory is very well documented, but relatively few studies have addressed this issue in the musical domain. To examine learning and consolidation of melodies, we designed a melodic recognition task involving immediate and delayed recognition of 16 target melodies (8 familiar and 8 unfamiliar). Seventeen patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 17 age-matched controls were tested. During the initial presentation of the targets, the participant had to decide whether or not the melody was familiar. Recognition was tested after one and three presentations of the target melodies using a yes/no recognition paradigm. Delayed recognition was tested after 24 hours to evaluate consolidation. In keeping with the findings of Bartlett, Halpern, and Dowling (1995), age-matched controls showed better recognition of familiar than unfamiliar melodies. Controls also showed improved performance with multiple presentations for both familiar and unfamiliar melodies, without forgetting after 24-hour delay. In contrast, patients with AD showed impaired learning and recognition of both unfamiliar and familiar melodies with no benefit of familiarity on recognition. Nevertheless, the familiarity decision-based ratings of patients was in keeping with controls. These findings suggest that musical recognition memory is impaired in AD, but the musical lexicon (as assessed by familiarity ratings) is preserved. These findings highlight the need to use both familiar and unfamiliar music in experimental tasks to study the different processes underlying recognition memory.

Delirium and parkinsonic syndrome in elderly

Delirium is an acute or subacute syndrome characterized by a fluctuating global disorder of cognition, impairment of attention and awareness, disorganization of thought and speech, perceptual disturbances, hallucinations, as well as hypo or hyperactivity.We present a case report of a 76-year-old woman who developed disorientation, lack of familiar recognition and functional impairment, three days before admission. She was admitted to a Medicine Department and submitted to several laboratory and imaging studies.During this period she presented attention, consciousness fluctuations and agitation that required several treatments, including neuroleptics. Like these symptoms were linked to an important life even that triggered reactive depression, she was transferred to a psychiatric ward. Progressively her clinical state worsened, she became permanently bedridden and was observed by Neurology. She presented moderate to severe parkinsonian signs, namely akinesia and rigidity, predominantly on her left side. Reviewing her clinical past, she had suffered these symptoms during the two years before this episode (apathy, small stepped gait, flexed posture, and left hand rest tremor). Treatment with antiparkinsonic drugs produced a dramatic improvement in the patient’s mental and physical status. A I-Ioflupane-SPECT (DaTscan) confirmed striatal presynaptic dopaminergic degeneration, more on the right side, which was the proof of the presence of a degenerative parkinsonian syndrome.The present clinical case shows Delirium with degenerative Parkinsonism comorbidity, worsened by the use of neuroleptics. We emphasize the importance previously undiagnosed Parkinsonism in old age which is highlighted by usefulness of dopamine transporter imaging in this scenery.