Publications by authors named "Erin Austen"

Objective: Mental illness is a common medical condition to onset during adolescence. Young people who leave for postsecondary life are at an especially challenging period of lifetime when many will leave home and familiar environments for prolonged periods of time. These new circumstances may put young people at risk of developing mental health problems or disorders or exacerbate existing mental disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: North Americans are not meeting the World Health Organization's breastfeeding recommendations. Young adults understand that breastfeeding is healthy but are uncomfortable seeing breastfeeding. Research aim: The aim of the current project was to determine if a music video parody promoting breastfeeding is perceived by young adults to be an effective means of promotion and if exposure to such a video could increase comfort levels.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Young adults' reactions to breastfeeding images were assessed using varied approaches. In Study 1, participants viewed posters from a breastfeeding campaign; many anticipated negative reaction to the campaign. In Study 2, participants viewed novel infant-feeding posters; breastfeeding posters were viewed for less time than bottle-feeding posters, regardless of the task assigned.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study tested whether multiple-object tracking-the ability to visually index objects on the basis of their spatiotemporal history-is scene based or image based. Initial experiments showed equivalent tracking accuracy for objects in 2-D and 3-D motion. Subsequent experiments manipulated the speeds of objects independent of the speed of the scene as a whole.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Observers can mislocalize a tactile target delivered to an unseen hand if a visible rubber glove is positioned next to a pair of distractor lights that flash in correlation with the tactile target (Pavani, Spence, & Driver, 2000). In the present study, we explored visual, tactile, and postural factors that influence this fake hand effect. Comparison with baseline conditions revealed that the fake hand effect was larger than a general spatial congruity effect but weaker than the effect obtained when tactile and visual stimuli were actually in the same locations (Experiment 1).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sensitivity to a scene change during a brief interruption depends critically on a match between what the observer expects to see and the kind of change that occurs (Austen & Enns, 2000). The present study tested the generality of this conclusion using human faces, which are both socially more relevant and perceptually more configural than the compound letters tested previously. An experiment using the flicker technique examined sensitivity to two types of change: facial identity and emotional expression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF