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Parafoveal load of word N+1 modulates preprocessing effectiveness of word N+2 in chinese reading
(2010)
As Chinese is written without orthographical word boundaries (i.e., spaces), it is unclear whether saccade targets are selected on the basis of characters or words and whether saccades are aimed at the beginning or the centre of words. Here, we report an experiment where 30 Chinese readers read 150 sentences while their eye movements were monitored. They exhibited a strong tendency to fixate at the word centre in single-fixation cases and at the word beginning in multiple-fixation cases. Different from spaced alphabetic script, initial fixations falling at the end of words were no more likely to be followed by a refixation than initial fixations at word centre. Further, single fixations were shorter than first fixations in two-fixation cases, which is opposite to what is found in Roman script. We propose that Chinese readers dynamically select the beginning or centre of words as saccade targets depending on failure or success with segmentation of parafoveal word boundaries.
Objectives: This study investigated the psychological as well as neuroendocrine stress response across one week before an important sport competition, introducing the cortisol awakening response (CAR) to sport psychological research. Methods: On three days in the week before the German Nationals, martial artists (N = 17) reported their competitive state anxiety and collected five samples of salivary cortisol during the first hour after awakening. Results: Hierarchic-linear models and multiple regressions were conducted. Despite a significant rise in "somatic anxiety" (p < .05), the increment of CAR across the week remained non-significant. A moderator function of competitive anxiety on the released amount of cortisol in the morning was not found significant. Results did not show any significant regression of changes in the neuroendocrine response on changes in state anxiety. Conclusion: Non- significant increments of CAR with a closer proximity to the competition may be interpreted as a possible habituation of basal hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal activity. Moreover, athletes appear to have a lower CAR than found in norm studies, which points to further investigation of interindividual and situational effects on the temporal pattern of the neuroendocrine response to sport competitions.
We consider the specific transformation of a Wiener process {X(t), t >= 0} in the presence of an absorbing barrier a that results when this process is "time-locked" with respect to its first passage time T-a through a criterion level a, and the evolution of X(t) is considered backwards ( retrospectively) from T-a. Formally, we study the random variables defined by Y(t) = X(T-a - t) and derive explicit results for their density and mean, and also for their asymptotic forms. We discuss how our results can aid interpretations of time series "response-locked" to their times of crossing a criterion level.
Comparing continuous and discrete birthday coincidences : "Same-Day" versus "Within 24 Hours"
(2010)
In its classical form the famous birthday problem (Feller 1968; Mosteller 1987) addresses coincidences within a discrete sample space, looking at births that fall on the same calendar day. However, coincidence phenomena often arise in situations in which it is more natural to consider a continuous-time parameter. We first describe an elementary variant of the classical problem in continuous time, and then derive and illustrate close approximate relations that exist between the discrete and the continuous formulations.
In research on eye-movement control during reading, the importance of cognitive processes related to language comprehension relative to visuomotor aspects of saccade generation is the topic of an ongoing debate. Here we investigate various eye-movement measures during reading of randomly shuffled meaningless text as compared to normal meaningful text. To ensure processing of the material, readers were occasionally probed for words occurring in normal or shuffled text. For reading of shuffled text we observed longer fixation times, less word skippings, and more refixations than in normal reading. Shuffled-text reading further differed from normal reading in that low-frequency words were not overall fixated longer than high-frequency words. However, the frequency effect was present on long words, but was reversed for short words. Also, consistent with our prior research we found distinct experimental effects of spatially distributed processing over several words at a time, indicating how lexical word processing affected eye movements. Based on analyses of statistical linear mixed-effect models we argue that the results are compatible with the hypothesis that the perceptual span is more strongly modulated by foveal load in the shuffled reading task than in normal reading. Results are discussed in the context of computational models of reading.
Objective: We investigated in a high-risk sample the differential impact of biological and psychosocial risk factors on antisocial behaviour pathways. Method: One hundred and thirty-eight boys and 155 girls born at differing degrees of obstetric and psychosocial risk were examined from birth until adolescence. Childhood temperament was assessed by a highly-structured parent-interview and standardized behavioural observations, adolescent temperament was measured by self-report. Neurodevelopmental variables were assessed by age-specific developmental tests. Emotional and behaviour problems were measured at the ages of 8 and 15 by the Achenbach scales. Results: In both genders, psychosocial adversity and early self-control temperament were strongly associated with early-onset persistent (EOP) antisocial behaviour. Psychosocial adversity and more severe externalizing problems differentiated the EOP from childhood-limited (CL) pathway. In girls, adolescent-onset (AO) antisocial behaviour was strongly associated with novelty seeking at 15 years. Conclusion: Our findings emphasize the need for early support and intervention in psychosocially disadvantaged families.
Eye-movement control during scene viewing can be represented as a series of individual decisions about where and when to move the eyes. While substantial behavioral and computational research has been devoted to investigating the placement of fixations in scenes, relatively little is known about the mechanisms that control fixation durations. Here, we propose a computational model (CRISP) that accounts for saccade timing and programming and thus for variations in fixation durations in scene viewing. First, timing signals are modeled as continuous-time random walks. Second, difficulties at the level of visual and cognitive processing can inhibit and thus modulate saccade timing. Inhibition generates moment-by-moment changes in the random walk's transition rate and processing-related saccade cancellation. Third, saccade programming is completed in 2 stages: an initial, labile stage that is subject to cancellation and a subsequent, nonlabile stage. Several simulation studies tested the model's adequacy and generality. An initial simulation study explored the role of cognitive factors in scene viewing by examining how fixation durations differed under different viewing task instructions. Additional simulations investigated the degree to which fixation durations were under direct moment-to-moment control of the current visual scene. The present work further supports the conclusion that fixation durations, to a certain degree, reflect perceptual and cognitive activity in scene viewing. Computational model simulations contribute to an understanding of the underlying processes of gaze control.