A perceptual comparison of empirical and predictive region-of-interest video

When viewing multimedia presentations, a user only attends to a relatively small part of the video display at any one point in time. By shifting allocation of bandwidth from peripheral areas to those locations where a user’s gaze is more likely to rest, attentive displays can be produced. Attentive displays aim to reduce resource requirements while minimizing negative user perception—understood in this paper as not only a user’s ability to assimilate and understand information but also his/her subjective satisfaction with the video content. This paper introduces and discusses a perceptual comparison between two region-of-interest display (RoID) adaptation techniques. A RoID is an attentive display where bandwidth has been preallocated around measured or highly probable areas of user gaze. In this paper, video content was manipulated using two sources of data: empirical measured data (captured using eye-tracking technology) and predictive data (calculated from the physical characteristics of the video data). Results show that display adaptation causes significant variation in users’ understanding of specific multimedia content. Interestingly, RoID adaptation and the type of video being presented both affect user perception of video quality. Moreover, the use of frame rates less than 15 frames per second, for any video adaptation technique, caused a significant reduction in user perceived quality, suggesting that although users are aware of video quality reduction, it does impact level of information assimilation and understanding. Results also highlight that user level of enjoyment is significantly affected by the type of video yet is not as affected by the quality or type of video adaptation—an interesting implication in the field of entertainment

The Mismeasure of Consciousness: A problem of coordination for the Perceptual Awareness Scale

As for most measurement procedures in the course of their development, measures of consciousness face the problem of coordination, i.e., the problem of knowing whether a measurement procedure actually measures what it is intended to measure. I focus on the case of the Perceptual Awareness Scale to illustrate how ignoring this problem leads to ambiguous interpretations of subjective reports in consciousness science. In turn, I show that empirical results based on this measurement procedure might be systematically misinterpreted

A Tripartite Framework for Leadership Evaluation

The Tripartite Framework for Leadership Evaluation provides a comprehensive examination of the leadership evaluation landscape and makes key recommendations about how the field of leadership evaluation should proceed. The chief concern addressed by this working paper is the use of student outcome data as a measurement of leadership effectiveness. A second concern in our work with urban leaders is the absence or surface treatment of race and equity in nearly all evaluation instruments or processes. Finally, we call for an overhaul of the conventional cycle of inquiry, which is based largely on needs analysis and leader deficits, and incomplete use of evidence to support recurring short cycles within the larger yearly cycle of inquiry