Applying psychological science to the CCTV review process: a review of cognitive and ergonomic literature

As CCTV cameras are used more and more often to increase security in communities, police are spending a larger proportion of their resources, including time, in processing CCTV images when investigating crimes that have occurred (Levesley & Martin, 2005; Nichols, 2001). As with all tasks, there are ways to approach this task that will facilitate performance and other approaches that will degrade performance, either by increasing errors or by unnecessarily prolonging the process. A clearer understanding of psychological factors influencing the effectiveness of footage review will facilitate future training in best practice with respect to the review of CCTV footage. The goal of this report is to provide such understanding by reviewing research on footage review, research on related tasks that require similar skills, and experimental laboratory research about the cognitive skills underpinning the task. The report is organised to address five challenges to effectiveness of CCTV review: the effects of the degraded nature of CCTV footage, distractions and interrupts, the length of the task, inappropriate mindset, and variability in people’s abilities and experience. Recommendations for optimising CCTV footage review include (1) doing a cognitive task analysis to increase understanding of the ways in which performance might be limited, (2) exploiting technology advances to maximise the perceptual quality of the footage (3) training people to improve the flexibility of their mindset as they perceive and interpret the images seen, (4) monitoring performance either on an ongoing basis, by using psychophysiological measures of alertness, or periodically, by testing screeners’ ability to find evidence in footage developed for such testing, and (5) evaluating the relevance of possible selection tests to screen effective from ineffective screener

The role of demonstrator familiarity and language cues on infant imitation from television

An imitation procedure was used to investigate the impact of demonstrator familiarity and language cues on infant learning from television. Eighteen-month-old infants watched two pre-recorded videos showing an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with two sets of stimuli. Infants' familiarity with the demonstrator and the language used during the demonstration varied as a function of experimental condition. Immediately after watching each video, infants' ability to reproduce the target actions was assessed. A highly familiar demonstrator did not enhance infants' performance. However, the addition of a narrative, developed from mothers' naturalistic description of the event, facilitated learning from an unfamiliar demonstrator. We propose that the differential effect of demonstrator familiarity and language cues may reflect the infants' ability to distinguish between important and less important aspects in a learning situation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

A network linking scene perception and spatial memory systems in posterior cerebral cortex

The neural systems supporting scene-perception and spatial-memory systems of the human brain are well-described. But how do these neural systems interact? Here, using fine-grained individual-subject fMRI, we report three cortical areas of the human brain, each lying immediately anterior to a region of the scene perception network in posterior cerebral cortex, that selectively activate when recalling familiar real-world locations. Despite their close proximity to the scene-perception areas, network analyses show that these regions constitute a distinct functional network that interfaces with spatial memory systems during naturalistic scene understanding. These “place-memory areas” offer a new framework for understanding how the brain implements memory-guided visual behaviors, including navigation

Simulating naturalistic instruction: the case for a voice mediated interface for assistive technology for cognition

A variety of brain pathologies can result in difficulties performing complex behavioural sequences. Assistive technology for cognition (ATC) attempts support of complex sequences with the aim of reducing disability. Traditional ATCs are cognitively demanding to use and thus have had poor uptake. A more intuitive interface may allow ATCs to reach their potential. Insights from psychological science may be useful to technologists in this area. We propose that an auditory-verbal interface is more intuitive than a visual interface and reduces cognitive demands on users. Two experiments demonstrate a novel ATC, the General User Interface for Disorders of Execution (GUIDE). GUIDE is novel because it simulates normal conversational prompting to support task performance. GUIDE provides verbal prompts and questions and voice recognition allows the user to interact with the GUIDE. Research with non-cognitively impaired participants and a single participant experiment involving a person with vascular dementia provide support for using interactive auditory-verbal interfaces. Suggestions for the future development of auditory-verbal interfaces are discussed

Neurophysiological correlates of face and identity learning through naturalistic exposure

Differential processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces is now well-established but surprisingly little is known about how familiarity develops over time. The aim of this thesis was to track the neural processes which accompany short- and long-term face and person learning, under more naturalistic conditions than those of previous, laboratory-based research. Using event-related brain potentials, the experiments examined how real-life learning affects the visual face representations (N250 familiarity effect) and the integration of person-related knowledge (Sustained Familiarity Effect, SFE). Chapter 2 revealed an increase in the N250 and the SFE from two to 14 months of familiarity but not afterwards, indicating that the first year of familiarity is critical for the development of the neural representations of visual familiarity and identity-specific knowledge. Chapter 3 tracked the development of these two effects during the first eight months of knowing a person and found a clear N250 and SFE at one month of knowing someone. While the N250 was fully established by five months of familiarity, indicating that the visual representations were fully developed substantially earlier than 14 months, no significant increase in the SFE was observed during the examined eight-month period, suggesting that the integration of identity-specific information needs longer to get fully established. Chapter 4 investigated face learning following a single brief real-life encounter and observed a significant N250 effect after a 10-minute interaction with an unfamiliar person, suggesting that 10 minutes are sufficient to establish initial visual representations. In sum, the present research suggests that image-independent visual face representations are initially established very quickly and get fully developed within the first five months of knowing a person. The integration of person-related knowledge, on the other hand, first emerges after one month of familiarity and gradually develops to the level of highly familiar identities by 14 months. These findings substantially improve our understanding of how we get to know people in everyday life by providing vital information about the time course of this process

Developing an interactive social-emotional toolkit for autism spectrum disorders

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-67).A development process consisting of participatory design and iterative implementation was carried out to create a framework for interactive emotion-learning, the Interactive Social-Emotional Toolkit (iSET). iSET is a novel intervention consisting of live video recording and annotation software for use during social interactions as well as video review and discussion components. It is suitable for persons diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) including Autistic Disorder (AD) and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), the target groups for the intervention, as well as for persons with Asperger's Syndrome (AS). The iSET intervention was tested with a group of AD/PDD-NOS participants (n=20) with mean age 22.7 ± 8.55 years; these students were divided into an experimental group to test the iSET paradigm (n=10) and a control group following Golan and Baron-Cohen's Mind Reading DVD intervention approach (n=10). An age- and sex-matched group of neurotypical participants (n=20) were also tested with the pretest measures. Preliminary results show an increasing ability to use the iSET materials and to capture videos that neurotypical teachers considered "good examples" of emotions considered in the intervention.by Miriam A. Madsen.M.Eng

Familiarization through Ambient Images Alone

The term “ambient images” has begun to show up in much of the current literature on facial recognition. Ambient images refer to naturally occurring views of a face that captures the idiosyncratic ways in which a target face may vary (Ritchie & Burton, 2017). Much of the literature on ambient images have concluded that exposing people to ambient images of a target face can lead to improved facial recognition for that target face. Some studies have even suggested that familiarity is the result of increased exposure to ambient images of a target face (Burton, Kramer, Ritchie, & Jenkins, 2016). The current study extended the literature on ambient images. Using the face sorting paradigm from Jenkins, White, Van Montfort, and Burton (2011), the current study served three purposes. First, this study captured whether there was an incremental benefit in showing ambient images. Particularly, we observed whether performance improved as participants were shown a low, medium, or high number of ambient images. Next, this study attempted to provide a strong enough manipulation that participant would be able to perform the face sorting task perfectly, after being exposed to a high number (45 total) of ambient images. Lastly, this study introduced time data as a measure of face familiarity. The results found support for one aim of this study and partial support for another aim of this study. Time data were found to be an effective quantitative measure of familiarity. Also, there was some evidence of an incremental benefit of ambient images, but that benefit disappeared after viewing around 15 unique exemplar presentations of a novel identity’s face. Lastly, exposing participants to 45 ambient images alone did not cause them to reach perfect performance. The paper concludes with a discussion on the need to extend past ambient images to understand how to best mimic natural familiarity in a lab setting

The role of route familiarity in traffic participants’ behaviour and transport psychology research:A systematic review

Studies of how transport behaviour (e.g., driving, cycling, and walking) is affected by practice and familiarity are not commonplace, in spite of the fact that much of our travel takes place on familiar, well-practiced routes. In other areas, it is well-established that repetition affects cognition, particularly memory and attention. The goals of the current systematic literature review were 1) to explore how researchers have described and examined the effects of people’s familiarity with routes and road types, and 2) to obtain a better insight into the cognitive processes, and behaviour that occur in familiar road environments. The systematic review was conducted based on the principles described in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). Scopus’ database was searched systematically using predefined search combinations which involved (1) the transport modes of driving, cycling, and walking; (2) research methods that typically involve route- or situation-familiar participants (e.g., naturalistic studies, observational studies and field operational tests); and (3) various words associated with route familiarity (e.g., familiar, everyday, and commute). Ninety-four studies met all inclusion criteria. Results were analysed in terms of the cognitive and behavioural changes associated with familiarity, as reported in the studies. Route familiarity was typically reported to reduce the amount of cognitive control used to process the immediate environment and to increase mind wandering, compared to unfamiliar situations. Familiarity also increased recall accuracy and opportunities for self-regulatory behaviour, and decreased task difficulty. Familiarity appears to have large effects on how people attend to and process the environment. Given the proportion of time people spend travelling in familiar situations, this low attention, high familiarity state should be considered the default mode and as a more integral context for experimental, naturalistic and observational research in transport psychology

Prospective Person Memory in the Case of Missing Persons: A Coffee Shop Study

Prospective person memory (PPM) is the process of remembering to perform some action after encountering a target individual, such as identifying and reporting a missing person sighting after viewing a missing person alert (Moore et al., 2021). Research has shown that identification rates generally tend to be low in simulated missing person studies (Lampinen & Moore, 2016b). The purpose of the current research is to determine how to improve missing person recognition rates. This project explores the potential effects of using videos in missing person reports as compared to using static images. We also consider differences between rigid and non-rigid facial movements. The study conformed to a 2 (Format: Video, Static) x 2 (Motion Type: Rigid, NonRigid) factorial design. Our hypotheses propose a) the video conditions will outperform the static image conditions, and b) non-rigid movements will yield greater identification accuracy than rigid movements. However, our hypotheses were not supported as our results showed the rigid static stimulus condition had the best identification performance overall. These findings provide future researchers insight into the process of encoding and recollecting human faces and provide authorities information on the stimuli that is most advantageous to use for real-world missing person cases