Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Emotions in context: examining pervasive affective sensing systems, applications, and analyses

Pervasive sensing has opened up new opportunities for measuring our feelings and understanding our behavior by monitoring our affective states while mobile. This review paper surveys pervasive affect sensing by examining and considering three major elements of affective pervasive systems, namely; “sensing”, “analysis”, and “application”. Sensing investigates the different sensing modalities that are used in existing real-time affective applications, Analysis explores different approaches to emotion recognition and visualization based on different types of collected data, and Application investigates different leading areas of affective applications. For each of the three aspects, the paper includes an extensive survey of the literature and finally outlines some of challenges and future research opportunities of affective sensing in the context of pervasive computing

Low-Cost Assessment of User eXperience Through EEG Signals

EEG signals are an important tool for monitoring the brain activity of a person, but equipment, expertise and infrastructure are required. EEG technologies are generally expensive, thus few people are normally able to use them. However, some low-cost technologies are now available. One of these is OPENBCI, but it seems that it is yet to be widely employed in Human-Computer Interaction. In this study, we used OPENBCI technology to capture EEG signals linked to brain activity in ten subjects as they interacted with two video games: Candy Crush and Geometry Dash. The experiment aimed to capture the signals while the players interacted with the video games in several situations. The results show differences due to the absence/presence of sound; players appear to be more relaxed without sound. In addition, consistent analysis of the EEG data, meCue 2.0 and SAM data showed high consistency. The evidence demonstrates that interesting results are able to be gathered based on low-cost EEG (standard) signal-based technologies

Motivation and function of play in early childhood

It is argued that a classification of play which can be systematically related to motivation and function is a prerequisite for empirical studies. 'Arousal' theories have come closest to providing a framework for understanding motivation and function, but the term 'arousal' itself requires careful definition. Definitions of the terms 'play' and 'arousal' are made after review of relevant literature in Chapters 1 and 2. The behavioural sequences which distinguish different kinds of play axe shown to be amenable to quantitative analysis which confirms qualitative behavioural distinctions (Chapters 3 and 4), and to have different functions: ludic play is innovative, whereas exploratory play is more akin to a learning experience (Chapter 5). Chapters 6,7 and 8 draw attention to analogies between manipulative and symbolic play, and experimental investigations explore the relationship between symbolic play and cognitive abilities. No evidence is found for a unique role of symbolic play in cognitive development. The validity of arousal theories is specifically tested in three studies reported in Chapter 9. Theoretical predictions suggest that the motivational antecedents of play and day-dreaming will be similar: the physiological correlates of play and daydreaming are shown to be similar, and to reflect lower states of arousal than are found during exploration and problem-solving. Finally, a model of play is proposed which attempts to integrate the experimental findings within the terms of motivational systems theory. This permits a classification of play which can be directly related to functional outcomes