The benefits and costs of explainable artificial intelligence in visual quality control: Evidence from fault detection performance and eye movements

Visual inspection tasks often require humans to cooperate with AI-based image classifiers. To enhance this cooperation, explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) can highlight those image areas that have contributed to an AI decision. However, the literature on visual cueing suggests that such XAI support might come with costs of its own. To better understand how the benefits and cost of XAI depend on the accuracy of AI classifications and XAI highlights, we conducted two experiments that simulated visual quality control in a chocolate factory. Participants had to decide whether chocolate moulds contained faulty bars or not, and were always informed whether the AI had classified the mould as faulty or not. In half of the experiment, they saw additional XAI highlights that justified this classification. While XAI speeded up performance, its effects on error rates were highly dependent on (X)AI accuracy. XAI benefits were observed when the system correctly detected and highlighted the fault, but XAI costs were evident for misplaced highlights that marked an intact area while the actual fault was located elsewhere. Eye movement analyses indicated that participants spent less time searching the rest of the mould and thus looked at the fault less often. However, we also observed large interindividual differences. Taken together, the results suggest that despite its potentials, XAI can discourage people from investing effort into their own information analysis

No Advantage for Separating Overt and Covert Attention in Visual Search

We move our eyes roughly three times every second while searching complex scenes, but covert attention helps to guide where we allocate those overt fixations. Covert attention may be allocated reflexively or voluntarily, and speeds the rate of information processing at the attended location. Reducing access to covert attention hinders performance, but it is not known to what degree the locus of covert attention is tied to the current gaze position. We compared visual search performance in a traditional gaze-contingent display, with a second task where a similarly sized contingent window is controlled with a mouse, allowing a covert aperture to be controlled independently by overt gaze. Larger apertures improved performance for both the mouse- and gaze-contingent trials, suggesting that covert attention was beneficial regardless of control type. We also found evidence that participants used the mouse-controlled aperture somewhat independently of gaze position, suggesting that participants attempted to untether their covert and overt attention when possible. This untethering manipulation, however, resulted in an overall cost to search performance, a result at odds with previous results in a change blindness paradigm. Untethering covert and overt attention may therefore have costs or benefits depending on the task demands in each case

Medium versus difficult visual search: How a quantitative change in the functional visual field leads to a qualitative difference in performance

The dominant theories of visual search assume that search is a process involving comparisons of individual items against a target description that is based on the properties of the target in isolation. Here, we present four experiments that demonstrate that this holds true only in difficult search. In medium search it seems that the relation between the target and neighbouring items is also part of the target description.We used two sets of oriented lines to construct the search items. The cardinal set contained horizontal and vertical lines, the diagonal set contained left diagonal and right diagonal lines. In all experiments, participants knew the identity of the target and the line set used to construct it. In difficult search this knowledge allowed performance to improve in displays where only half of the search items came from the same line set as the target (50% eligibility), relative to displays where all items did (100% eligibility). However, in medium search, performance was actually poorer for 50% eligibility, especially on target-absent trials.This opposite effect of ineligible items in medium search and difficult search is hard to reconcile with theories based on individual items. It is more in line with theories that conceive search as a sequence of fixations where the number of items processed during a fixation depends on the difficulty of the search task: When search is medium, multiple items are processed per fixation. But when search is difficult only a single item is processed

No advantage for separating overt and covert attention in visual search

Funding: This study was funded, in part, by an National Research University Higher School of Economics Lab grant for the Vision Modelling Lab (author MacInnes); grants #152427 and IRF #173947-052 from the Icelandic Research Fund; and the research fund of the University of Iceland (Author Kristjánsson). Publisher Copyright: © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.We move our eyes roughly three times every second while searching complex scenes, but covert attention helps to guide where we allocate those overt fixations. Covert attention may be allocated reflexively or voluntarily, and speeds the rate of information processing at the attended location. Reducing access to covert attention hinders performance, but it is not known to what degree the locus of covert attention is tied to the current gaze position. We compared visual search performance in a traditional gaze-contingent display, with a second task where a similarly sized contingent window is controlled with a mouse, allowing a covert aperture to be controlled independently by overt gaze. Larger apertures improved performance for both the mouse-and gaze-contingent trials, suggesting that covert attention was beneficial regardless of control type. We also found evidence that participants used the mouse-controlled aperture somewhat independently of gaze position, suggesting that participants attempted to untether their covert and overt attention when possible. This untethering manipulation, however, resulted in an overall cost to search performance, a result at odds with previous results in a change blindness paradigm. Untethering covert and overt attention may therefore have costs or benefits depending on the task demands in each case.Peer reviewe

In-between pleats: Pleats, pleating and 'pliable logic'

In-Between Pleats is a research project constituted by a series of case studies, historical research, a short intensive pleating apprenticeship, and live performances. The research objective emerged through the exploratory making of pleats. It is to create new thinking about pleats by examining the dynamics of handmade and digital technology, and the potential of those pleats on the body and movement, interrogating three research questions: ‘What is a pleat?’, ‘What is in a pleat?’, ‘What do pleats do?’. Pleating is a type of fabric manipulation and so this research refers to ‘textile thinking’ for analytical thinking. The research starts with an understanding of pleating history and techniques. A selection of materials, including cotton, silk, and synthetic fibres, are tested, recognising that the quality of pleats and pleating is directly affected by the specific fibre and forming structure. It is these differences that offer a range of perspectives to this study. These explorations, led by textile thinking, help to anchor my practice among other practitioners, and position this study in the research context. The experiments to reproduce Mariano Fortuny and Issey Miyake pleats establish a fundamental understanding of pleating techniques, which form the first layer of analysis for this study, and lead to a methodology for the next layer of research. I propose a new methodology: ‘pliable logic’, derived from my making and thinking, evolving from Pennina Barnett’s ‘soft logic’, Sarat Maharaj’s ‘think-speak-write’, and Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘plica ex plica’, to interrogate and revisit the research questions. A new pleating method – fabric mould – is originated from my research into materials and techniques; new types of pleats emerge from the application of 3D printing technology. Using these newly produced pleats in live performances, a space to rethink the relationship between garments, textiles, body and movement, offered new perspectives of what pleats and pleating are. Pliable logic provides innovation for both the creation and interpretation of pleats and pleating, through an oscillation between making and theory. The research proposes a new taxonomy of pleats based on my making experiences. A speculative proposition of what future pleats will look like and be made of, builds a perspective that reinvigorates the way in which pleats and pleating are perceived

Intrusive memories of trauma: A target for research bridging cognitive science and its clinical application.

Intrusive memories of a traumatic event can be distressing and disruptive, and comprise a core clinical feature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Intrusive memories involve mental imagery-based impressions that intrude into mind involuntarily, and are emotional. Here we consider how recent advances in cognitive science have fueled our understanding of the development and possible treatment of intrusive memories of trauma. We conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed, selecting articles published from 2008 to 2018 that used the terms "trauma" AND ("intrusive memories" OR "involuntary memories") in their abstract or title. First, we discuss studies that investigated internal (neural, hormonal, psychophysiological, and cognitive) processes that contribute to intrusive memory development. Second, we discuss studies that targeted these processes using behavioural/pharmacological interventions to reduce intrusive memories. Third, we consider possible clinical implications of this work and highlight some emerging research avenues for treatment and prevention, supplemented by new data to examine some unanswered questions. In conclusion, we raise the possibility that intrusive memories comprise an alternative, possibly more focused, target in translational research endeavours, rather than only targeting overall symptoms of disorders such as PTSD. If so, relatively simple approaches could help to address the need for easy-to-deliver, widely-scalable trauma interventions