Customisation's impact on strengthening affective bonds and decision-making with socially assistive robots.

This study aims to fill a gap in understanding how customising robots can affect how humans interact with them, specifically regarding human decision-making and robot perception. The study focused on the robot's ability to persuade participants to follow its suggestions within the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), where participants were challenged to balance the risk of bursting a virtual balloon against the potential reward of inflating it further. A between-subjects design was used, involving 62 participants divided evenly between customised or non-customised robot conditions.

Nature benefits revisited: Differences in gait kinematics between nature and urban images disappear when image types are controlled for likeability.

Exposure to urban environments requires more cognitive processing than exposure to nature; an effect that can even be measured analysing gait kinematics whilst people walk towards photographic images. Here, we investigated whether differences in cognitive load between nature and urban scenes are still present when scenes are matched for their liking scores. Participants were exposed to images of nature and urban scenes that had been matched a priori for their liking scores by an independent participant sample (n = 300).

Walking on Visual Illusions.

In nature, sensory and physical characteristics of the environment tend to match; for example, a surface that looks bumpy is bumpy. In human-built environments, they often don't. Here, we report observations from people exploring if mismatch between visual and physical characteristics affected their perceived walking experience.

Avoidance of tobacco health warnings? An eye-tracking approach.

Aims: Among three eye-tracking studies, we examined how cigarette pack features affected visual attention and self-reported avoidance of and reactance to warnings.

Design: Study 1: smoking status × warning immediacy (short-term versus long-term health consequences) × warning location (top versus bottom of pack). Study 2: smoking status × warning framing (gain-framed versus loss-framed) × warning format (text-only versus pictorial).

Using smartphone accelerometry to assess the relationship between cognitive load and gait dynamics during outdoor walking.

Research has demonstrated that an increase in cognitive load can result in increased gait variability and slower overall walking speed, both of which are indicators of gait instability. The external environment also imposes load on our cognitive systems; however, most gait research has been conducted in a laboratory setting and little work has demonstrated how load imposed by natural environments impact gait dynamics during outdoor walking. Across four experiments, young adults were exposed to varying levels of cognitive load while walking through indoor and outdoor environments.

A method for detecting characteristic patterns in social interactions with an application to handover interactions.

Social interactions are a defining behavioural trait of social animals. Discovering characteristic patterns in the display of such behaviour is one of the fundamental endeavours in behavioural biology and psychology, as this promises to facilitate the general understanding, classification, prediction and even automation of social interactions. We present a novel approach to study characteristic patterns, including both sequential and synchronous actions in social interactions.

Neural mechanisms underlying visual attention to health warnings on branded and plain cigarette packs.

Aims: To (1) test if activation in brain regions related to reward (nucleus accumbens) and emotion (amygdala) differ when branded and plain packs of cigarettes are viewed, (2) test whether these activation patterns differ by smoking status and (3) examine whether activation patterns differ as a function of visual attention to health warning labels on cigarette packs.

Design: Cross-sectional observational study combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with eye-tracking. Non-smokers, weekly smokers and daily smokers performed a memory task on branded and plain cigarette packs with pictorial health warnings presented in an event-related design.

Iconic Gestures for Robot Avatars, Recognition and Integration with Speech.

Co-verbal gestures are an important part of human communication, improving its efficiency and efficacy for information conveyance. One possible means by which such multi-modal communication might be realized remotely is through the use of a tele-operated humanoid robot avatar. Such avatars have been previously shown to enhance social presence and operator salience.

How visual perceptual grouping influences foot placement.

Everybody would agree that vision guides locomotion; but how does vision influence choice when there are different solutions for possible foot placement? We addressed this question by investigating the impact of perceptual grouping on foot placement in humans. Participants performed a stepping stone task in which pathways consisted of target stones in a spatially regular path of foot falls and visual distractor stones in their proximity. Target and distractor stones differed in shape and colour so that each subset of stones could be easily grouped perceptually.

Selection in spatial working memory is independent of perceptual selective attention, but they interact in a shared spatial priority map.

We examined the relationship between the attentional selection of perceptual information and of information in working memory (WM) through four experiments, using a spatial WM-updating task. Participants remembered the locations of two objects in a matrix and worked through a sequence of updating operations, each mentally shifting one dot to a new location according to an arrow cue. Repeatedly updating the same object in two successive steps is typically faster than switching to the other object; this object switch cost reflects the shifting of attention in WM.

Treacherous Pavements: Paving Slab Patterns Modify Intended Walking Directions.

Current understanding in locomotion research is that, for humans, navigating natural environments relies heavily on visual input; in contrast, walking on even ground in man-made obstacle and hazard-free environments is so highly automated that visual information derived from floor patterns should not affect locomotion and in particular have no impact on the direction of travel. The vision literature on motion perception would suggest otherwise; specifically that oblique floor patterns may induce substantial veering away from the intended direction of travel due to the so-called aperture problem. Here, we tested these contrasting predictions by letting participants walk over commonly encountered floor patterns (paving slabs) and investigating participants' ability to walk "straight ahead" for different pattern orientations.

Effects of first exposure to plain cigarette packaging on smoking behaviour and attitudes: a randomised controlled study.

Background: Plain packaging requires tobacco products to be sold in packs with a standard shape, method of opening and colour, leaving the brand name in a standard font and location. We ran a randomised controlled trial to investigate the impact of plain packaging on smoking behaviour and attitudes.

Methods: In a parallel group randomised trial design, 128 daily smokers smoked cigarettes from their usual UK brand, or a plain Australian brand that was closely matched to their usual UK brand for 24 hours.

Plain packaging of cigarettes and smoking behavior: study protocol for a randomized controlled study.

Background: Previous research on the effects of plain packaging has largely relied on self-report measures. Here we describe the protocol of a randomized controlled trial investigating the effect of the plain packaging of cigarettes on smoking behavior in a real-world setting.

Methods/design: In a parallel group randomization design, 128 daily cigarette smokers (50% male, 50% female) will attend an initial screening session and be assigned plain or branded packs of cigarettes to smoke for a full day.

Avoidance of cigarette pack health warnings among regular cigarette smokers.

Background: Previous research with adults and adolescents indicates that plain cigarette packs increase visual attention to health warnings among non-smokers and non-regular smokers, but not among regular smokers. This may be because regular smokers: (1) are familiar with the health warnings, (2) preferentially attend to branding, or (3) actively avoid health warnings. We sought to distinguish between these explanations using eye-tracking technology.

Abnormal inhibition of return in mild cognitive impairment: is it specific to the presence of prodromal dementia?

Although there is some evidence that amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) can be characterized by significant deficits in visuospatial function, the cross-sectional design of the majority of these studies renders it impossible to determine whether such deficits occur in aMCI as a result of, or accompany, amnestic dysfunction per se or whether they are the result of disproportionately poorer performance in a sub-group of patients for whom aMCI represents prodromal dementia. Similarly, whether the absence of aMCI-related functional deficit stems from the masking of dementia-specific abnormality by the preserved performance of those with a different cause of aMCI cannot be ascertained. Here we report the outcome of a cross-sectional and 2.

Line bisection by eye and by hand reveal opposite biases.

The vision-for-action literature favours the idea that the motor output of an action-whether manual or oculomotor-leads to similar results regarding object handling. Findings on line bisection performance challenge this idea: healthy individuals bisect lines manually to the left of centre and to the right of centre when using eye fixation. In case that these opposite biases for manual and oculomotor action reflect more universal compensatory mechanisms that cancel each other out to enhance overall accuracy, one would like to observe comparable opposite biases for other material.

Using eye movements to explore switch costs in working memory.

Updating object locations in working memory (WM) is faster when the same object is updated twice in a row compared to updating another object. In analogy to repetition priming effects in perceptual attention, this object-switch cost in WM is thought of as being due to the necessity to shift attention internally from one object to another. However, evidence for this hypothesis is only indirect.

Dealing with illumination in visual scenes: effects of ageing and Alzheimer's disease.

Various visual functions decline in ageing and even more so in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here we investigated whether the complex visual processes involved in ignoring illumination-related variability (specifically, cast shadows) in visual scenes may also be compromised. Participants searched for a discrepant target among items which appeared as posts with shadows cast by light-from-above when upright, but as angled objects when inverted.

Visual attention to health warnings on plain tobacco packaging in adolescent smokers and non-smokers.

Aims: Previous research with adults indicates that plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings in adult non-smokers and weekly smokers, but not daily smokers. The present research extends this study to adolescents aged 14-19 years.

Design: Mixed-model experimental design, with smoking status as a between-subjects factor and pack type (branded or plain pack) and eye gaze location (health warning or branding) as within-subjects factors.

Intra-individual reaction time variability in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: a precursor to dementia?

We used an exogenous target detection cueing paradigm to examine whether intra-individual reaction time variability (IIV) or phasic alerting varied significantly between patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) (n = 45) and healthy older adult controls (n = 31) or between those with aMCI who, within a 2.5 year follow-up period, developed dementia (n = 13) and those who did not (n = 26). Neither IIV, nor simple reaction time, differentiated aMCI from healthy aging, indicating that raised IIV and overall response slowing are not general characteristics of aMCI.

Plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings on cigarette packs in non-smokers and weekly smokers but not daily smokers.

Aims: To assess the impact of plain packaging on visual attention towards health warning information on cigarette packs.

Design: Mixed-model experimental design, comprising smoking status as a between-subjects factor, and package type (branded versus plain) as a within-subjects factor.

Setting: University laboratory.

The neural mechanisms of learning from competitors.

Learning from competitors poses a challenge for existing theories of reward-based learning, which assume that rewarded actions are more likely to be executed in the future. Such a learning mechanism would disadvantage a player in a competitive situation because, since the competitor's loss is the player's gain, reward might become associated with an action the player should themselves avoid. Using fMRI, we investigated the neural activity of humans competing with a computer in a foraging task.

What makes cast shadows hard to see?

Visual search is slowed for cast shadows lit from above, as compared to the same search items inverted and so not interpreted as shadows (R. A. Rensink & P.

Schizotypal personality traits influence idiosyncratic initiation of saccadic face exploration.

Visual face exploration is usually biased to the left half of a presented face. Recent findings now indicate that the first saccade in face exploration has a strong idiosyncratic component with around 30% of healthy individuals showing a consistent rightward bias. We investigated in a random sample of 64 right-handed healthy participants whether this rightward bias might relate to individual differences, i.