Belfast Without Sight: Exploring Geographies of Blindness

In this paper (he transformed spaces of visually impaired and blind people is explored through a detailed analysis of interview transcripts with twenty seven visually impaired people living in or around Belfast. Data were collected using a structured open-ended interview and were analysed within NUD-IST, a qualitative data analysis package. Analysis revealed that visually impaired people become spatially confused (e.g. lost or disorientated) for two primary reasons. "Self-produced" confusion is spatial confusion caused by the misperception/miscognition of a route (e.g. miscounting intersections). "Situational" confusion is spatial confusion caused by a permanent or temporary localised occurrences such as road works, vehicles parked on pavements, and street furniture. Both types of spatial confusion were found to induce feelings of fear and anxiety, leading to a loss of selfconfidence, embarrassment and frustration, which in turn led to less independent travel and exploration, and constrained patterns of spatial behaviour. Respondents detailed a number of strategies for coping with spatial confusion. In addition, they assessed methods to make Belfast more navigable including environmental modifications and orientation and mobility aid

Belfast Without Sight: Exploring Geographies of Blindness

In this paper (he transformed spaces of visually impaired and blind people is explored through a detailed analysis of interview transcripts with twenty seven visually impaired people living in or around Belfast. Data were collected using a structured open-ended interview and were analysed within NUD-IST, a qualitative data analysis package. Analysis revealed that visually impaired people become spatially confused (e.g. lost or disorientated) for two primary reasons. "Self-produced" confusion is spatial confusion caused by the misperception/miscognition of a route (e.g. miscounting intersections). "Situational" confusion is spatial confusion caused by a permanent or temporary localised occurrences such as road works, vehicles parked on pavements, and street furniture. Both types of spatial confusion were found to induce feelings of fear and anxiety, leading to a loss of selfconfidence, embarrassment and frustration, which in turn led to less independent travel and exploration, and constrained patterns of spatial behaviour. Respondents detailed a number of strategies for coping with spatial confusion. In addition, they assessed methods to make Belfast more navigable including environmental modifications and orientation and mobility aid

The Effect of Spatial Tasks on Visually Impaired Peoples' Wayfinding Abilities

Thirty-eight people with visual impairments learned a 483-meter novel route through a university campus in four groups: verbalization, modeling, pointing, and control. The performance of all four groups improved with greater experience of the route, but the modeling group improved more than did the control group

How green is children's television?

Purpose To meet stated waste reduction goals, the UK government via Defra (Department for environment, farming and rural affairs) is attempting to reduce household mainstream waste. One approach is to encourage children in environmentally-friendly behaviour. We take this as a starting point to document the environmental content of dedicated childrens channels, and to consider whether television could act as an ecological socialising agent for waste reduction behaviour. Approach Our content analysis of four childrens television channels over 168 hours recorded the extent to which the waste hierarchy (reduce, reuse and recycling behaviour) was included in all forms of broadcast output: programmes, advertisements, trailers, sponsorship and idents. Outcomes We found 6,921 instances of waste activity, distributed across 666 broadcasts which included eleven identifiable materials, such as plastic and cardboard. Whilst reuse behaviour was well represented (5,751), instances of reduction (406) and recycling were relatively infrequent (275) and there were 489 instances of materials being placed in refuse bins. Contribution By placing childrens television on the environmental agenda, we raise the possibility of channels examining their own broadcast material to assess its environmental content, and how that content is distributed across the waste hierarchy and in relation to broadcast output. Further research Our case study was based on four channels and within the specific context of waste. There are many more channels (e.g. available on cable/satellite) and more environmental behaviours that can be examined with a view to meeting other targets “ for example those connected to climate change such as travel, domestic energy consumption, and food choices, all of which are included on childrens television. The response of the intended audience to the environmental content can be assessed

The impact of investing in the good interviewers policy of practice (IGIpop) on police interviews with children

It is important to elicit the best evidence from children during investigative interviews. Many of recent improvements (such as extensive training) are costly to implement preventing police forces with small budgets from adopting them. A policy is needed that can benefit all forces irrespective of their financial resources. We assessed a new approach: Investing in the Good Interviewers: Policy of Practice (IGIpop). IGIpop suggests that all interviews should be conducted using 'good' interviewers. In 2016 we evaluated the performance of interviewers in a police force and identified the good interviewers. IGIpop was implemented in 2017 when five good interviewers were chosen to conduct all of the interviews with children alleging sexual abuse. We analysed 102 interviews and assessed how IGIpop impacted the quality of interviews. As expected, appropriate interviewing approaches increased and inappropriate interviewing approaches decreased after IGIpop. IGIpop achieved an important improvement in the quality of interviews with no additional training or costs

Rapid development of cognitive maps in people with visual impairments when exploring novel geographic spaces

'Cognitive' map is a term that refers to a person's environmental knowledge. Anyone experiencing a new environment will, over time, develop a cognitive representation of that environment, including information derived from that environment (e.g., about places, routes and spatial relationships) and information about personal experiences (e.g. memories about events at locations and attitudes towards places). There is now a great deal of research into the cognitive maps of sighted people (see Golledge, 1999; Kitchin & Freundschuh, 2000; Kitchin & Blades, in press), but there is comparatively little research into the cognitive maps of people with visual impairments

Using virtual environments to investigate wayfinding in 8- to 12-year-olds and adults

Wayfinding is the ability to learn and recall a route through an environment. Theories of wayfinding suggest that for children to learn a route successfully, they must have repeated experience of it, but in this experiment we investigated whether children could learn a route after only a single experience of the route. A total of 80 participants from the United Kingdom in four groups of 20 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults were shown a route through a 12-turn maze in a virtual environment. At each junction, there was a unique object that could be used as a landmark. Participants were ‘‘walked” along the route just once (without any verbal prompts) and then were asked to retrace the route from the start without any help. Nearly three quarters of the 12-year-olds, half of the 10-year-olds, and a third of the 8-year-olds retraced the route without any errors the first time they traveled it on their own. This finding suggests that many young children can learn routes, even with as many as 12 turns, very quickly and without the need for repeated experience. The implications for theories of wayfinding that emphasize the need for extensive experience are discussed

Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment

Wayfinding is defined as the ability to learn and remember a route through an environment. Previous researchers have shown that young children have difficulties remembering routes. However, very few researchers have considered how to improve young children’s wayfinding abilities. Therefore, we investigated ways to help children increase their wayfinding skills. In two studies, a total of 72 5-year olds were shown a route in a six turn maze in a virtual environment and were then asked to retrace this route by themselves. A unique landmark was positioned at each junction and each junction was made up of two paths: a correct path and an incorrect path. Two different strategies improved route learning performance. In Experiment 1, verbally labeling on-route junction landmarks during the first walk reduced the number of errors and the number of trials to reach a learning criterion when the children retraced the route. In Experiment 2, encouraging children to attend to on-route junction landmarks on the first walk reduced the number of errors when the route was retraced. This was the first study to show that very young children can be taught route learning skills. The implications of our results are discusse

Learning A Complex Urban Route Without Sight: Comparing Naturalistic versus Laboratory Measures

In this paper we report some of the results from a study of how people with severe visual impairments learn a complex route through an urban environment. Ten totally blind, ten partially sighted and ten sighted people learned a route 1600 meters long through a suburb of Belfast over four trials. On the first trial respondents were guided around the route. On the second, third and fourth trials respondents led the way around the route, pointing to the start, end, and three locations enroute from these locations. On completion of each trial respondents built a model of the route using magnetic pieces. Analyses of these tasks found no significance differences in pointing or model building between groups. Visually impaired and blind people did however make more errors when retracing the route although by the fourth trial the majority could retrace without error. The results, in combination, reveal that people with severe visual impairments can learn complex routes through a geographic environment both quickly and efficiently. The combined use of laboratory and naturalistic tasks indicated that levels of spatial knowledge do not necessarily predict the ability to use those knowledges effectively in everyday spatial behaviour. As such, the navigation problems facing visually impaired and blind people lie in learning new environments independently and in articulating their knowledges in wayfinding practice. These results led to the adoption of the difference theory of spatial cognition. This suggests that the cognitive map knowledge of adventitiously blind individuals are different from the sighted rather than underdeveloped or used inefficiently

Increased circulating levels and salivary gland expression of interleukin-18 in patients with Sjögren's syndrome: relationship with autoantibody production and lymphoid organization of the periductal inflammatory infiltrate

IL-18, an immunoregulatory and proinflammatory cytokine, has been shown to play an important pathogenic role in Th1-driven autoimmune disorders. In this study, we evaluated the circulating levels and salivary-gland expression of IL-18 in patients with Sjögren's syndrome (SS), a mainly Th1-mediated disease. IL-18 serum levels were measured by ELISA in 37 patients with primary SS, 42 with rheumatoid arthritis, and 21 normal controls. We demonstrated high IL-18 serum levels in SS, similar to those in rheumatoid arthritis patients and significantly higher than in controls (P < 0.01). In addition, IL-18 serum concentrations were significantly higher in anti-SSA/Ro(+ )and anti-SSB/La(+ )than in anti-SSA/Ro(- )and anti-SSB/La(- )SS patients (respectively, P = 0.01, P < 0.01). Serum IL-18 correlated strongly with anti-SSA/Ro (P = 0.004) and anti-SSB/La (P = 0.01) titers. Salivary gland IL-18 expression was investigated by single/double immunohistochemistry in 13 patients with primary SS and in 10 with chronic sialoadenitis, used as controls. The expression of IL-18 was also examined in periductal inflammatory foci in relation to the acquisition of features of secondary lymphoid organs such as T–B compartmentalization, formation of follicular dendritic cell networks, and presence of germinal-center-like structures. IL-18 expression in SS salivary glands was detected in 28 of 32 periductal foci of mononuclear cells (87.5%), while no IL-18 production by infiltrating cells was detected in patients with chronic sialoadenitis. Within the inflammatory foci, IL-18 immunoreactivity co-localized almost exclusively with CD68(+ )macrophages. In addition, IL-18 was found in 15 of 19 foci (78.9%) with no evidence of T–B cell compartmentalization (nonsegregated) but in 100% of the segregated aggregates, both in T- and B-cell-rich areas. Strikingly, IL-18 was strongly expressed by CD68(+ )tingible body macrophages in germinal-centre-like structures both in SS salivary glands and in normal lymph nodes. IL-18 expression was observed in the ducts of all SS biopsies but in only 4 of 10 patients with nonspecific chronic sialoadenitis (P < 0.01). This study provides the first evidence of increased circulating levels and salivary gland expression of IL-18 in SS, suggesting an important contribution of this cytokine to the modulation of immune inflammatory pathways in this condition