A prospective audit examining non-attendance at a surgical outpatients clinic in Mater Dei Hospital, Malta, and methods to reduce this problem

Non-attendance at hospital outpatient clinics is a longstanding issue that has potentially serious clinical implications, and contributes a significant financial burden to health care services. The aims of this study were to identify the rate of non-attendance at a surgical outpatients clinic in Mater Dei Hospital, Malta, ascertain the reasons for non-attendance, and to identify patients’ opinions on the implementation of a text-messaging reminder system as a means of reducing the non- attendance rate. Four outpatient clinics were observed over one month and the total number of appointments documented. Non-attenders were contacted via telephone call and asked to explain their non-attendance and whether a text-messaging reminder system may have increased their likelihood of attendance. Of the 266 appointments (217 females, 49 males, mean age 56 + 16 years), 80 patients failed to turn up, representing a 30% non-attendance rate. The main reasons for non-attendance were forgetfulness (53%), and unawareness of the appointment (26%). 90% of non-attenders stated that a text-messaging reminder might have prevented them missing their appointment, with 97% suggesting that such as system would be an acceptable method of trying to reduce this problem. Thus application of a text- messaging reminder system represents a potential solution for reducing the high rate of missed outpatient appointments, which is both cost effective and well accepted by patients.peer-reviewe

Body Form Modulates the Prediction of Human and Artificial Behaviour from Gaze Observation

The future of human–robot collaboration relies on people’s ability to understand and predict robots' actions. The machine-like appearance of robots, as well as contextual information, may influence people’s ability to anticipate the behaviour of robots. We conducted six separate experiments to investigate how spatial cues and task instructions modulate people’s ability to understand what a robot is doing. Participants observed goal-directed and non-goal directed gaze shifts made by human and robot agents, as well as directional cues displayed by a triangle. We report that biasing an observer's attention, by showing just one object an agent can interact with, can improve people’s ability to understand what humanoid robots will do. Crucially, this cue had no impact on people’s ability to predict the upcoming behaviour of the triangle. Moreover, task instructions that focus on the visual and motor consequences of the observed gaze were found to influence mentalising abilities. We suggest that the human-like shape of an agent and its physical capabilities facilitate the prediction of an upcoming action. The reported findings expand current models of gaze perception and may have important implications for human–human and human–robot collaboration

No evidence that autistic traits predict programming learning outcomes

With the increased importance of computer programming in society, researchers have been searching for ways to predict which students are most likely to succeed, as well as those who may have difficulty when beginning to learn to program. It has been suggested that autistic traits relate to increased interest and aptitude for abstract science, and that people with higher numbers of autistic traits have a stronger tendency to ‘systemize’, which can be advantageous for studying natural and manmade systems. This could also mean that higher autistic traits are associated with greater programming abilities. In this study, we therefore investigated whether autistic traits, measured with the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), predicted course grades and performance on an independent programming test at the end of an introductory undergraduate programming course. We also examined the relationship between AQ scores and five cognitive skills that were measured at the start of the programming course (logical reasoning, pattern recognition, algebra, vocabulary learning, grammar learning). We found that the participants scored higher on autistic traits than the general population. However, overall autistic traits did not predict programming skill at the end of the course. Similarly, no individual subscale of the AQ predicted programming skills, nor were there any correlations between cognitive skills and autistic traits. Therefore, there is no evidence to support autistic traits being reliably related to programming skill acquisition

No influence of eye gaze on emotional face processing in the absence of conscious awareness

The human brain has evolved specialised mechanisms to enable the rapid detection of threat cues, including emotional face expressions (e.g., fear and anger). However, contextual cues – such as gaze direction – influence the ability to recognise emotional expressions. For instance, anger paired with direct gaze, and fear paired with averted gaze are more accurately recognised compared to alternate conjunctions of these features. It is argued that this is because gaze direction conveys the relevance and locus of the threat to the observer. Here, we used continuous flash suppression (CFS) to assess whether the modulatory effect of gaze direction on emotional face processing occurs outside of conscious awareness. Previous research using CFS has demonstrated that fearful facial expressions are prioritised by the visual system and gain privileged access to awareness over other expressed emotions. We hypothesised that if the modulatory effects of gaze on emotional face processing occur also at this level, then the gaze-emotion conjunctions signalling self-relevant threat will reach awareness faster than those that do not. We report that fearful faces gain privileged access to awareness over angry faces, but that gaze direction does not modulate this effect. Thus, our findings suggest that previously reported effects of gaze direction on emotional face processing are likely to occur once the face is detected, where the self-relevance and locus of the threat can be consciously appraised

The effect of non-communicative eye movements on joint attention.

Eye movements provide important signals for joint attention. However, those eye movements that indicate bids for joint attention often occur among non-communicative eye movements. This study investigated the influence of these non-communicative eye movements on subsequent joint attention responsivity. Participants played an interactive game with an avatar which required both players to search for a visual target on a screen. The player who discovered the target used their eyes to initiate joint attention. We compared participants’ saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to the avatar’s joint attention bids when they were preceded by non-communicative eye movements that predicted the location of the target (Predictive Search), did not predict the location of the target (Random Search), and when there were no non-communicative eye gaze movements prior to joint attention (No Search). We also included a control condition in which participants completed the same task, but responded to a dynamic arrow stimulus instead of the avatar’s eye movements. For both eye and arrow conditions, participants had slower SRTs in Random Search trials than No Search and Predictive Search trials. However, these effects were smaller for eyes than for arrows. These data suggest that joint attention responsivity for eyes is relatively stable to the presence and predictability of spatial information conveyed by non-communicative gaze. Contrastingly, random sequences of dynamic arrows had a much more disruptive impact on subsequent responsivity compared with predictive arrow sequences. This may reflect specialised social mechanisms and expertise for selectively responding to communicative eye gaze cues during dynamic interactions, which is likely facilitated by the integration of ostensive eye contact cue

Neurodiverse Human-Machine Interaction and Collaborative Problem-Solving in Social VR

Social motor coordination is an important mechanism responsible for creating shared understanding but can be a challenge for Autistic individuals. Social virtual reality (VR) provides an opportunity to create a safe and inclusive environment for which interactions can be augmented to promote social interactivity. Due to the bi-directional nature of social interaction and adaptation, we created a framework to explore social motor coordination with a virtual artificial agent which can exhibit human-like behaviors. In this experiment, we assessed the interactive behaviors of participants completing a collaborative problem-solving task with the agent using multidimensional cross-recurrence quantification analysis (mdCRQA). Our results show that participants who discovered novel solutions to the task exhibited greater coupling to the artificial agent regardless of participant characteristics. Future work will explore how social VR environments can be augmented to promote social coordination

Should I Trust You? Autistic Traits Predict Reduced Appearance-Based Trust Decisions

Facial impressions of trustworthiness guide social decisions in the general population, as shown by financial lending in economic Trust Games. As an exception, autistic boys fail to use facial impressions to guide trust decisions, despite forming typical facial trustworthiness impressions (Ewing et al., 2015). Here, we tested whether this dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to neurotypical men with high levels of autistic traits. Forty-six Caucasian men completed a multi-turn Trust Game, a facial trustworthiness impressions task, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, and two Theory of Mind tasks. As hypothesized, participants’ levels of autistic traits had no observed effect on the impressions formed, but negatively predicted the use of those impressions in trust decisions. Thus, the dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to the broader autism phenotype. More broadly, our results identify autistic traits as an important source of individual variation in the use of facial impressions to guide behaviour. Interestingly, failure to use these impressions could potentially represent rational behaviour, given their limited validity

EPOCHS VIII. An Insight into MIRI-selected Galaxies in SMACS-0723 and the Benefits of Deep MIRI Photometry in Revealing AGN and the Dusty Universe

We present the analysis of the stellar population and star formation history of 181 MIRI selected galaxies at redshift 0-3.5 in the massive galaxy cluster field SMACS J0723.3-7327, commonly referred to as SMACS0723, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). We combine the data with the JWST Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) catalogue, in conjunction with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFC3/IR and ACS imaging. We find that the MIRI bands capture PAH features and dust emission, significantly enhancing the accuracy of photometric redshift and measurements of the physical properties of these galaxies. The median photo-z's of galaxies with MIRI data are found to have a small 0.1% difference from spectroscopic redshifts and reducing the error by 20 percent. With MIRI data included in SED fits, we find that the measured stellar masses are unchanged, while the star formation rate is systematically lower by 0.1 dex. We also fit the median SED of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and star forming galaxies (SFG) separately. MIRI data provides tighter constraints on the AGN contribution, reducing the typical AGN contributions by ~14 percent. In addition, we also compare the median SED obtained with and without MIRI, and we find that including MIRI data yields steeper optical and UV slopes, indicating bluer colours, lower dust attenuation, and younger stellar populations. In the future, MIRI/MRS will enhance our understanding by providing more detailed spectral information and allowing for the study of specific emission features and diagnostics associated with AGN.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures and 1 table, submitted to MNRA

Appearance-based trust processing in schizophrenia

Objectives: Schizophrenia is characterized by impaired social interactions and altered trust. In the general population, trust is often based on facial appearance, with limited validity but enormous social consequences. The aim was to examine trust processing in schizophrenia and specifically to examine how people with schizophrenia use facial appearance as well as actual partner fairness to guide trusting decisions. Design: An experimental economic game study. Methods: Here, we tested how patients with schizophrenia and control participants (each N = 24) use facial trustworthiness appearance and partner fairness behaviour to guide decisions in a multi-round Trust Game. In the Trust Game, participants lent money to ‘partners’ whose facial appearance was either untrustworthy or trustworthy, and who either played fairly or unfairly. Clinical symptoms were measured as well as explicit trustworthiness impressions. Results: Overall, the patients with schizophrenia showed unimpaired explicit facial trustworthiness impressions and unimpaired facial appearance biases in the Trust Game. Crucially, patients and controls significantly differed so that the patients with schizophrenia did not learn to discriminate in the Trust Game based on actual partner fairness, unlike control participants. Conclusion: A failure to discriminate trust has important implications for everyday functioning in schizophrenia, as forming accurate trustworthiness beliefs is an essential social skill. Critically, without relying on more valid trust cues, people with schizophrenia may be especially susceptible to the misleading effect of appearance when making trusting decisions. Practitioner points: Findings. People with schizophrenia made very similar facial trustworthiness impressions to healthy controls and also used facial appearance to guide trust decisions similarly to controls. However, the patient group were less able to explicitly distinguish between fair and unfair partners based on their behaviour compared with the control group. Moreover, people with schizophrenia failed to use actual partner fairness to guide their financial decisions in the Trust Game, unlike controls, and this impairment was specific to a social task. People with schizophrenia may be particularly reliant on facial appearance when trusting others, as they may struggle to incorporate more valid trustworthiness information in their decision-making, such as actual partner fairness