Effects of Physical Exercise and Virtual Training on Visual Attention Levels in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study compared the effects of physical exercise (PE) and virtual training (VT) on the improvement of the visual attention mechanism in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). One hundred eighty-nine children with ASD were recruited from Orphan School in Liaoning Province, China. After screening, 100 children ultimately participated in the experiment. Children with ASD were randomly assigned to VT (VT, n = 34), PE (PE, n = 33) and control group (CG, n = 33). The VT group experiment was performed in a virtual environment through the game FIFA21 three times per week for 6 weeks. The PE group played physical football matches three times per week for 6 weeks. Children with ASD in the CG group did not receive VT or PE but only received psychological counseling. Visual attention of children with ASD is evaluated by using the multiple object tracking paradigm (MOT). After 6 weeks of observation, although none of the three groups saw improvements in the correct rate of ring tracking, the observations of the VT and PE groups were significant (p < 0.05) compared to the CG group in finding detection rate of probe stimulus. Through MOT tests, VT and PE improved the detection rate of probe stimulus in children with ASD. Therefore, this paper indicates that VT and PE can improve the visual attention ability of children with ASD.

The Effect of Cognitive Load on Auditory Susceptibility During Automated Driving

Objective We experimentally test the effect of cognitive load on auditory susceptibility during automated driving. Background In automated vehicles, auditory alerts are frequently used to request human intervention. To ensure safe operation, human drivers need to be susceptible to auditory information. Previous work found reduced susceptibility during manual driving and in a lesser amount during automated driving. However, in practice, drivers also perform nondriving tasks during automated driving, of which the associated cognitive load may further reduce susceptibility to auditory information. We therefore study the effect of cognitive load during automated driving on auditory susceptibility. Method Twenty-four participants were driven in a simulated automated car. Concurrently, they performed a task with two levels of cognitive load: repeat a noun or generate a verb that expresses the use of this noun. Every noun was followed by a probe stimulus to elicit a neurophysiological response: the frontal P3 (fP3), which is a known indicator for the level of auditory susceptibility. Results The fP3 was significantly lower during automated driving with cognitive load compared with without. The difficulty level of the cognitive task (repeat or generate) showed no effect. Conclusion Engaging in other tasks during automated driving decreases auditory susceptibility as indicated by a reduced fP3. Application Nondriving task can create additional cognitive load. Our study shows that performing such tasks during automated driving reduces the susceptibility for auditory alerts. This can inform designers of semi-automated vehicles (SAE levels 3 and 4), where human intervention might be needed.

Rapid Communication: The loss of residual visual memories over the passage of time

There has been extensive discussion of the causes of short-term forgetting. Some accounts suggest that time plays an important role in the loss of representations, whereas other models reject this notion and explain all forgetting through interference processes. The present experiment used the recent-probes task to investigate whether residual visual information is lost over the passage of time. On each trial, three unusual target objects were displayed and followed by a probe stimulus. The task was to determine whether the probe matched any of the targets, and the next trial commenced after an intertrial interval lasting 300 ms, 3.3 s, or 8.3 s. Of critical interest were recent negative (RN) trials, on which the probe matched a target from the previous trial. These were contrasted against nonrecent negative (NRN) trials, in which the probe had not been seen in the recent past. RN trials damaged performance and slowed reaction times in comparison to NRN trials, highlighting interference. However, this interfering effect diminished as the intertrial interval was lengthened, suggesting that residual visual information is lost as time passes. This finding is difficult to reconcile with interference-based models and suggests that time plays some role in forgetting.

Orientation Selectivity of Motion-Boundary Responses in Human Visual Cortex

Motion boundaries (local changes in visual motion direction) arise naturally when objects move relative to an observer. In human visual cortex, neuroimaging studies have identified a region (the kinetic occipital area [KO]) that responds more strongly to motion-boundary stimuli than to transparent-motion stimuli. However, some functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggest that KO may encompass multiple visual areas and single-unit studies in macaque visual cortex have identified neurons selective for motion-boundary orientation in areas V2, V3, and V4, implying that motion-boundary selectivity may not be restricted to a single area. It is not known whether fMRI responses to motion boundaries are selective for motion-boundary orientation, as would be expected if these responses reflected the population activity of motion-boundary–selective neurons. We used an event-related fMRI adaptation protocol to measure orientation-selective responses to motion boundaries in human visual cortex. On each trial, we measured the response to a probe stimulus presented after an adapter stimulus (a vertical or horizontal motion-boundary grating). The probe stimulus was either a motion-boundary grating oriented parallel or orthogonal to the adapter stimulus or a transparent-motion stimulus. Orientation-selective adaptation for motion boundaries—smaller responses for trials in which test and adapter stimuli were parallel to each other—was observed in multiple extrastriate visual areas. The strongest adaptation, relative to the unadapted responses, was found in V3A, V3B, LO1, LO2, and V7. Most of the visual areas that exhibited orientation-selective adaptation in our data also showed response preference for motion boundaries over transparent motion, indicating that most of the human visual areas previously shown to respond to motion boundaries are also selective for motion-boundary orientation. These results suggest that neurons selective for motion-boundary orientation are distributed across multiple human visual cortical areas and argue against the existence of a single region or area specialized for motion-boundary processing.

Orienting Attention to Locations in Internal Representations

Three experiments investigated whether it is possible to orient selective spatial attention to internal representations held in working memory in a similar fashion to orienting to perceptual stimuli. In the first experiment, subjects were either cued to orient to a spatial location before a stimulus array was presented (pre-cue), cued to orient to a spatial location in working memory after the array was presented (retro-cue), or given no cueing information (neutral cue). The stimulus array consisted of four differently colored crosses, one in each quadrant. At the end of a trial, a colored cross (probe) was presented centrally, and subjects responded according to whether it had occurred in the array. There were equivalent patterns of behavioral costs and benefits of cueing for both pre-cues and retro-cues. A follow-up experiment used a peripheral probe stimulus requiring a decision about whether its color matched that of the item presented at the same location in the array. Replication of the behavioral costs and benefits of pre-cues and retro-cues in this experiment ruled out changes in response criteria as the only explanation for the effects. The third experiment used event-related potentials (ERPs) to compare the neural processes involved in orienting attention to a spatial location in an external versus an internal spatial representation. In this task, subjects responded according to whether a central probe stimulus occurred at the cued location in the array. There were both similarities and differences between ERPs to spatial cues toward a perception versus an internal spatial representation. Lateralized early posterior and later frontal negativities were observed for both preand retro-cues. Retro-cues also showed additional neural processes to be involved in orienting to an internal representation, including early effects over frontal electrodes.

The Adaptive Significance of Sexual Conditioning: Pavlovian Control of Sperm Release

Male quail received Pavlovian conditioning trials that consisted of placement in a distinctive experimental chamber (the conditioned stimulus) paired with the opportunity to copulate with a female (the unconditioned stimulus). For control subjects, exposures to the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli were unpaired. After four and six trials, each subject was placed in the experimental chamber with a probe stimulus that included some of the visual cues of a female's head and neck. Pavlovian conditioning increased how much time subjects spent near the probe stimulus. Conditioned subjects also released greater volumes of semen and greater numbers of spermatozoa than the control subjects. Significant differences were not obtained in serum testosterone levels or in other measures of sperm quality. These results demonstrate that sexual Pavlovian conditioning can affect reflexes involved in sperm release and thereby modulate reproductive fitness.