Biased memory retrieval in the service of shared reality with an audience: The role of cognitive accessibility

After communicators have tuned a message about a target person’s behaviors to their audience’s attitude, their recall of the target’s behaviors is often evaluatively consistent with their audience’s attitude. This audience-tuning effect on recall has been explained as resulting from the communicators’ creation of a shared reality with the audience, which helps communicators to achieve epistemic needs for confident judgments and knowledge. Drawing on the ROAR (Relevance Of A Representation) model, we argue that shared reality increases the cognitive accessibility of information consistent (vs. inconsistent) with the audience’s attitude, due to enhanced truth relevance of this information. We tested this prediction with a novel reaction-time task in three experiments employing the saying-is-believing paradigm. Faster reactions to audience-consistent (vs. audience-inconsistent) information were found for trait information but not for behavioral information. Thus, audience-congruent accessibility bias emerged at the level at which impressions and judgments of other persons are typically organized. Consistent with a shared-reality account, the audience-consistent accessibility bias was correlated with perceived shared reality about the target person and with epistemic trust in the audience. Among possible explanations, the findings are best reconciled with the view that the creation of shared reality with an audience triggers basic and "automatic" (spontaneous, low-level) cognitive mechanisms that facilitate the retrieval of audience-congruent (vs. audience-incongruent) trait information about a target person.

How information affects attributions for ambiguous behaviours resulting from stroke

<p>Research has shown that when people see young survivors of stroke, they often misattribute the person’s symptoms to other factors (Wainwright et al., 2013). Consequently, these stroke survivors may suffer feelings of resentment towards, and from their acquaintances. They may also struggle to obtain or retain a job. This thesis examines whether these misattributions for stroke survivors’ symptoms are affected by the information people have about the stroke survivor and the rapidity of the change in their behaviours. Experiment 1 investigated if the stroke survivor’s age (72, 32 or unstated) and the level of information (no information, implied stroke or explicit stroke) for their behaviours influenced people’s attributions. Experiment 1 showed that people attributed the behavioural changes to factors other than stroke when no additional information is present, and they attributed the behaviours to stroke when stroke was explicitly described. When stroke was implied, participants rated stroke as the best explanation but only when the target person was 72. Experiment 2 manipulated the rapidity of the stroke survivor’s behavioural changes to assess the effect on attributions. Experiment 2 showed that people attributed the behaviours to stroke more if only one week had passed, and if the target person was 72, but not when he was 32. It was concluded that young stroke survivors may need to disclose their stroke in order for others to correctly attribute their behaviours, as this could improve their rehabilitation.</p>

How information affects attributions for ambiguous behaviours resulting from stroke

<p>Research has shown that when people see young survivors of stroke, they often misattribute the person’s symptoms to other factors (Wainwright et al., 2013). Consequently, these stroke survivors may suffer feelings of resentment towards, and from their acquaintances. They may also struggle to obtain or retain a job. This thesis examines whether these misattributions for stroke survivors’ symptoms are affected by the information people have about the stroke survivor and the rapidity of the change in their behaviours. Experiment 1 investigated if the stroke survivor’s age (72, 32 or unstated) and the level of information (no information, implied stroke or explicit stroke) for their behaviours influenced people’s attributions. Experiment 1 showed that people attributed the behavioural changes to factors other than stroke when no additional information is present, and they attributed the behaviours to stroke when stroke was explicitly described. When stroke was implied, participants rated stroke as the best explanation but only when the target person was 72. Experiment 2 manipulated the rapidity of the stroke survivor’s behavioural changes to assess the effect on attributions. Experiment 2 showed that people attributed the behaviours to stroke more if only one week had passed, and if the target person was 72, but not when he was 32. It was concluded that young stroke survivors may need to disclose their stroke in order for others to correctly attribute their behaviours, as this could improve their rehabilitation.</p>

Effects of Disease Threat and Attitude Similarity on Willingness to Help: The Mediating Role of Disgust

The current research tested the hypothesis that an increase in perceived disease vulnerability would create more feelings of disgust and a reduced willingness to help persons with dissimilar attitudes. To test these hypotheses, two studies were performed. In the first study, 173 university undergraduates indicated their willingness to help a target person who held similar or dissimilar attitudes. Then the participants’ feelings of disgust about helping, and perceived vulnerability to disease were measured. In the second study, 127 university undergraduates read materials designed to make a disease threat or a non-disease threat salient then indicated their willingness to help a target person with similar or dissimilar attitudes. As predicted a concern about disease and attitude similarity interacted to influence willingness to help and this effect was mediated by feelings of disgust.

A novel tracking system for human following robots with fusion of MMW radar and monocular vision

Purpose This paper aims to develop a robust person tracking method for human following robots. The tracking system adopts the multimodal fusion results of millimeter wave (MMW) radars and monocular cameras for perception. A prototype of human following robot is developed and evaluated by using the proposed tracking system. Design/methodology/approach Limited by angular resolution, point clouds from MMW radars are too sparse to form features for human detection. Monocular cameras can provide semantic information for objects in view, but cannot provide spatial locations. Considering the complementarity of the two sensors, a sensor fusion algorithm based on multimodal data combination is proposed to identify and localize the target person under challenging conditions. In addition, a closed-loop controller is designed for the robot to follow the target person with expected distance. Findings A series of experiments under different circumstances are carried out to validate the fusion-based tracking method. Experimental results show that the average tracking errors are around 0.1 m. It is also found that the robot can handle different situations and overcome short-term interference, continually track and follow the target person. Originality/value This paper proposed a robust tracking system with the fusion of MMW radars and cameras. Interference such as occlusion and overlapping are well handled with the help of the velocity information from the radars. Compared to other state-of-the-art plans, the sensor fusion method is cost-effective and requires no additional tags with people. Its stable performance shows good application prospects in human following robots.

Correlation between Class Evaluation of University Students and Procrastination

The purpose of this study is to clarify how the characteristics of class evaluation are related to the time of submission of the assignments by university students. Specifically, this paper considered class evaluation based on the three interactions of value of use, value of interest, and expectation and examined the correlation between each factor and the interaction of the factors and the submission time of the assignments. 47 (22 boys and 25 girls) who received responses to the class evaluation questionnaire and agreed to use the data were analyzed. As a result, it was shown that the value of interest and the interaction of value of use and value of interest influenced the timing of submission of the assignments. On the other hand, when the value of interest was low even if it was useful, there was a tendency to delay the submission of the assignments. Interestingly, the assignments were submitted faster when they were less useful and less interest. Using this result as a starting point for clarifying the mechanism of procrastination and pre-crastination and demonstrate the reproducibility of whether the same tendency can be seen even if the scene or target person is changed in the future.

Is Men's Heterosexuality Perceived as More Precarious than Women's? An Intersectional, Race-by-Gender Analysis

In the United States, people perceive men’s masculinity to be more precarious, or easier to lose, than women’s femininity. In the present manuscript, we investigated (1) whether men’s heterosexuality is likewise perceived to be more precarious than women’s, and if so, (2) whether this effect is exaggerated when the targets in question are Black rather than White. To investigate these questions, we conducted a large-scale (N = 3,010), nationally representative experiment in which participants read about a target person who either did or did not engage in a single same-sex sexual behavior. Results revealed that participants questioned the heterosexuality of men more than the heterosexuality of women when they engaged (vs. did not engage) in a same-sex sexual behavior. Surprisingly, these effects were not moderated by whether targets were Black vs. White. In other words, men’s heterosexuality was indeed perceived to be more precarious than women’s, irrespective of targets’ race.

Development of Air Conditioner Robot Prototype That Follows Humans in Outdoor Applications

According to Robert McSweeney, in light of a new study: “Conditions in the GCC could become so hot and humid in the coming years that staying outside for more than six hours will become difficult”. He is a climate analyst at CARBON BRIEF, a nonprofit temperature and climate analysis group. He also states that changes there can help give us an idea of what the rest of the world can expect if we do not reduce the emissions that pollute homes and factories. Because of the high temperatures in GCC countries, the effect of heat stress is very high there, which discourages shoppers and pedestrians from shopping in the open area due to the physical exertion and high risks faced by people and workers. Heat stress peaks in most Arab Gulf countries from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. during the summer season. Heat stress is increasingly an obstacle to economic efficiency in these countries. This work designs and develops a robot that tracks shoppers and provides a cool stream of air directly around them during shopping in open areas to reduce the effect of heat stress. The robot enables us to cool the temperature around customers in the market to increase comfort. In this project, a robot was designed and manufactured to track a specific person and cool the air around him through a cool stream of air generated by the air conditioner installed inside the robot. We used a Raspberry Pi camera sensor to detect the target person and interact with a single-board computer (Raspberry Pi 3) to accomplish this design and the prototype. Raspberry Pi controls the air-conditioning robot to follow the movement of the target person. We used image processing to discover the target shopper, the control system, and then guide the bot. In the meantime, the robot must also bypass any potential obstacles that could prevent its movement and cause a collision. We made a highly efficient design that can synchronize between the software algorithm and the mechanical platform of the robot. This work is merely the combination of a cool stream of air and a robot that follows a human.

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

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.