Abnormal Perceptual Sensitivity in Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors

Objective Several compulsive grooming habits such as hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting are collectively known as body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs). Although subclinical BFRBs are common and benign, more severe and damaging manifestations exist that are difficult to manage. Researchers have suggested that BFRBs are maintained by various cognitive, affective, and sensory contingencies. Although the involvement of cognitive and affective processes in BFRBs has been studied, there is a paucity of research on sensory processes. Methods The current study tested whether adults with subclinical or clinical BFRBs would report abnormal patterns of sensory processing as compared to a healthy control sample. Results Adults with clinical BFRBs (n = 26) reported increased sensory sensitivity as compared to persons with subclinical BFRBs (n = 48) and healthy individuals (n = 33). Elevations in sensation avoidance differentiated persons with clinical versus subclinical BFRBs. Sensation seeking patterns were not different between groups. Unexpectedly, BFRB severity was associated with lower registration of sensory stimuli, but this finding may be due to high psychiatric comorbidity rates in the BFRB groups. Conclusions These findings suggest that several sensory abnormalities may underlie BFRBs. Implications for the etiology and treatment of BFRBs are discussed

Robust and Efficient Online Auditory Psychophysics

Most human auditory psychophysics research has historically been conducted in carefully controlled environments with calibrated audio equipment, and over potentially hours of repetitive testing with expert listeners. Here, we operationally define such conditions as having high 'auditory hygiene'. From this perspective, conducting auditory psychophysical paradigms online presents a serious challenge, in that results may hinge on absolute sound presentation level, reliably estimated perceptual thresholds, low and controlled background noise levels, and sustained motivation and attention. We introduce a set of procedures that address these challenges and facilitate auditory hygiene for online auditory psychophysics. First, we establish a simple means of setting sound presentation levels. Across a set of four level-setting conditions conducted in person, we demonstrate the stability and robustness of this level setting procedure in open air and controlled settings. Second, we test participants' tone-in-noise thresholds using widely adopted online experiment platforms and demonstrate that reliable threshold estimates can be derived online in approximately one minute of testing. Third, using these level and threshold setting procedures to establish participant-specific stimulus conditions, we show that an online implementation of the classic probe-signal paradigm can be used to demonstrate frequency-selective attention on an individual-participant basis, using a third of the trials used in recent in-lab experiments. Finally, we show how threshold and attentional measures relate to well-validated assays of online participants' in-task motivation, fatigue, and confidence. This demonstrates the promise of online auditory psychophysics for addressing new auditory perception and neuroscience questions quickly, efficiently, and with more diverse samples. Code for the tests is publicly available through Pavlovia and Gorilla

Job Satisfaction Indicators and Their Correlates

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67361/2/10.1177_000276427501800303.pd

Peripheral visual cues and their effect on the perception of egocentric depth in virtual and augmented environments

The underestimation of depth in virtual environments at mediumield distances is a well studied phenomenon. However, the degree by which underestimation occurs varies widely from one study to the next, with some studies reporting as much as 68% underestimation in distance and others with as little as 6% (Thompson et al. [38] and Jones et al. [14]). In particular, the study detailed in Jones et al. [14] found a surprisingly small underestimation effect in a virtual environment (VE) and no effect in an augmented environment (AE). These are highly unusual results when compared to the large body of existing work in virtual and augmented distance judgments [16, 31, 36–38, 40–43]. The series of experiments described in this document attempted to determine the cause of these unusual results. Specifically, Experiment I aimed to determine if the experimental design was a factor and also to determine if participants were improving their performance throughout the course of the experiment. Experiment II analyzed two possible sources of implicit feedback in the experimental procedures and identified visual information available in the lower periphery as a key source of feedback. Experiment III analyzed distance estimation when all peripheral visual information was eliminated. Experiment IV then illustrated that optical flow in a participant’s periphery is a key factor in facilitating improved depth judgments in both virtual and augmented environments. Experiment V attempted to further reduce cues in the periphery by removing a strongly contrasting white surveyor’s tape from the center of the hallway, and found that participants continued to significantly adapt even when given very sparse peripheral cues. The final experiment, Experiment VI, found that when participants’ views are restricted to the field-of-view of the screen area on the return walk, adaptation still occurs in both virtual and augmented environments

Team synergies in sport: theory and measures

Individual players act as a coherent unit during team sports performance, forming a team synergy. A synergy is a collective property of a task-specific organization of individuals, such that the degrees of freedom of each individual in the system are coupled, enabling the degrees of freedom of different individuals to co-regulate each other. Here, we present an explanation for the emergence of such collective behaviors, indicating how these can be assessed and understood through the measurement of key system properties that exist, considering the contribution of each individual and beyond These include: to (i) dimensional compression, a process resulting in independent degree of freedom being coupled so that the synergy has fewer degrees of freedom than the set of components from which it arises; (ii) reciprocal compensation, if one element do not produce its function, other elements should display changes in their contributions so that task goals are still attained; (iii) interpersonal linkages, the specific contribution of each element to a group task; and (iv), degeneracy, structurally different components performing a similar, but not necessarily identical, function with respect to context. A primary goal of our analysis is to highlight the principles and tools required to understand coherent and dynamic team behaviors, as well as the performance conditions that make such team synergies possible, through perceptual attunement to shared affordances in individual performers. A key conclusion is that teams can be trained to perceive how to use and share specific affordances, explaining how individual’s behaviours self-organize into a group synergy.Ecological dynamics explanations of team behaviors can transit beyond mere ratification of sport performance, providing a comprehensive conceptual framework to guide the implementation of diagnostic measures by sport scientists, sport psychologists and performance analysts