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

Is The Personal Theoretical? A Critical Incident Analysis of Student Theory Journals

Journal entries from 23 masters students enrolled in a counseling theories course were analyzed using Critical Incident methodology to identify students’ self-disclosures and connection to counseling theories. Seven different patterns of connecting theoretical information to personal experiences emerged. The authors present a discussion of how the findings and resulting framework can contribute to the teaching of counseling theory and the reflective process of identifying theoretical orientation

Sexually size dimorphic brains and song complexity in passerine birds

Neural correlates of bird song involve the volume of particular song nuclei in the brain that govern song development, production, and perception. Intra- and interspecific variation in the volume of these song nuclei are associated with overall brain size, suggesting that the integration of complex songs into the brain requires general neural augmentation. In a comparative study of passerine birds based on generalized least square models, we tested this hypothesis by exploring the interspecific relationship between overall brain size and repertoire size. We found no significant association between song complexity of males and brain size adjusted for body size. However, species in which males produced complex songs tended to have sex differences in overall brain size. This pattern became stronger when we controlled statistically for female song complexity by using sex differences in song complexity. In species with large differences in song complexity, females evolved smaller brains than did males. Our results suggest no role for the evolution of extended neural space, as reflected by total brain size, owing to song complexity. However, factors associated with sexual selection mirrored by sex differences in song complexity were related to sexual dimorphism in overall brain size

Genetic Covariance Structure of Reading, Intelligence and Memory in Children

This study investigates the genetic relationship among reading performance, IQ, verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) and short-term memory (STM) in a sample of 112, 9-year-old twin pairs and their older siblings. The relationship between reading performance and the other traits was explained by a common genetic factor for reading performance, IQ, WM and STM and a genetic factor that only influenced reading performance and verbal memory. Genetic variation explained 83% of the variation in reading performance; most of this genetic variance was explained by variation in IQ and memory performance. We hypothesize, based on these results, that children with reading problems possibly can be divided into three groups: (1) children low in IQ and with reading problems; (2) children with average IQ but a STM deficit and with reading problems; (3) children with low IQ and STM deficits; this group may experience more reading problems than the other two

A Machine Learning Technique for Detection of Social Media Fake News

publishedVersio

Navigating the multifaceted landscape of culture and social work A qualitative evidence synthesis of cultural competence and cultural sensitivity in practice

Faced with increased global migration, there is a growing concern that social workers need more training in- and knowledge of culture and ethnicity. These understandings have come to influence research, education, practice, codes of ethics and organizational policy, constituting a multicultural discourse within the field of social work. Social workers are expected to have cultural competence, and exercise cultural sensitivity in their practice. However, a clear and consistent understanding of what it means to be culturally competent or culturally sensitive is missing, and there seems to be little consensus in how to define and apply these concepts, both within research and practice. The aim of this qualitative evidence synthesis is to synthesize what previous empirical research reports about social workers’ understandings and experiences when operationalizing the concepts into practice. Through data-based and a manual journal search, 12 qualitative empirical studies were included in the synthesis. Our analysis describes four main challenges in the studies’ efforts to operationalize the cultural concepts in social work practice: 1) Who to define as culturally diverse service-users; 2) What aspects of culture to consider in the encounters with culturally diverse service-users; 3) How to consider and approach these aspects of culture, and 4) the capacity to work in a culturally appropriate manner within the organizational context where this work is undertaken. The literature acknowledges these challenges to varying degrees. We summarize the four challenges in a model, and argue that the model can be useful in further awareness-raising, development and integration of our understandings of cross-cultural social work. By depicting the essential questions of who, what, how and where to employ the concepts into practice, we aim to assist scholars, practitioners and educators to help navigate the multifaceted landscape of culture and social work.publishedVersio

Solutions to Detect and Analyze Online Radicalization : A Survey

Online Radicalization (also called Cyber-Terrorism or Extremism or Cyber-Racism or Cyber- Hate) is widespread and has become a major and growing concern to the society, governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Research shows that various platforms on the Internet (low barrier to publish content, allows anonymity, provides exposure to millions of users and a potential of a very quick and widespread diffusion of message) such as YouTube (a popular video sharing website), Twitter (an online micro-blogging service), Facebook (a popular social networking website), online discussion forums and blogosphere are being misused for malicious intent. Such platforms are being used to form hate groups, racist communities, spread extremist agenda, incite anger or violence, promote radicalization, recruit members and create virtual organi- zations and communities. Automatic detection of online radicalization is a technically challenging problem because of the vast amount of the data, unstructured and noisy user-generated content, dynamically changing content and adversary behavior. There are several solutions proposed in the literature aiming to combat and counter cyber-hate and cyber-extremism. In this survey, we review solutions to detect and analyze online radicalization. We review 40 papers published at 12 venues from June 2003 to November 2011. We present a novel classification scheme to classify these papers. We analyze these techniques, perform trend analysis, discuss limitations of existing techniques and find out research gaps

"You Tube and I Find" - personalizing multimedia content access

Recent growth in broadband access and proliferation of small personal devices that capture images and videos has led to explosive growth of multimedia content available everywhereVfrom personal disks to the Web. While digital media capture and upload has become nearly universal with newer device technology, there is still a need for better tools and technologies to search large collections of multimedia data and to find and deliver the right content to a user according to her current needs and preferences. A renewed focus on the subjective dimension in the multimedia lifecycle, fromcreation, distribution, to delivery and consumption, is required to address this need beyond what is feasible today. Integration of the subjective aspects of the media itselfVits affective, perceptual, and physiological potential (both intended and achieved), together with those of the users themselves will allow for personalizing the content access, beyond today’s facility. This integration, transforming the traditional multimedia information retrieval (MIR) indexes to more effectively answer specific user needs, will allow a richer degree of personalization predicated on user intention and mode of interaction, relationship to the producer, content of the media, and their history and lifestyle. In this paper, we identify the challenges in achieving this integration, current approaches to interpreting content creation processes, to user modelling and profiling, and to personalized content selection, and we detail future directions. The structure of the paper is as follows: In Section I, we introduce the problem and present some definitions. In Section II, we present a review of the aspects of personalized content and current approaches for the same. Section III discusses the problem of obtaining metadata that is required for personalized media creation and present eMediate as a case study of an integrated media capture environment. Section IV presents the MAGIC system as a case study of capturing effective descriptive data and putting users first in distributed learning delivery. The aspects of modelling the user are presented as a case study in using user’s personality as a way to personalize summaries in Section V. Finally, Section VI concludes the paper with a discussion on the emerging challenges and the open problems

Alcohol use and alcohol-use disorders among older adults in India: a literature review.

OBJECTIVES: With changing attitudes to alcohol and an increasing life span in India, the prevalence of alcohol use and misuse in successive cohorts of older people is likely to increase. In this paper, we attempt to review the most recent evidence covering alcohol use and alcohol-use disorders in the Indian elderly. METHODS: PubMed, PsycINFO and Indmed databases were searched using relevant keywords. Papers meeting eligibility criteria were selected through a sequential process of screening title, abstract and full text. Data were extracted into Excel sheets. RESULTS: There was a dearth of pan-national studies. There were several methodological issues with many studies especially related to measurement. A substantial proportion of individuals above the age of 50 years are current consumers of alcohol and the prevalence is generally higher in urban compared to rural areas. Older women are generally likely to be alcohol abstainers. The general trend appears to be a reduction in current drinking among successive age cohorts over the age of 50. Alcohol consumption in the older adults is associated with educational status, health status, chronic morbidity, employment status, socioeconomic status, auditory/locomotor impairment and asthma. CONCLUSION: Alcohol use and misuse is a problem among the Indian older adults. With socio-demographic changes that will further increase longevity, this problem is likely to increase and policy-makers need to plan for it. Future research needs to improve validity and reliability in study methodology, as well as add to the current evidence base