Accessibility of 3D Game Environments for People with Aphasia: An Exploratory Study

People with aphasia experience difficulties with all aspects of language and this can mean that their access to technology is substantially reduced. We report a study undertaken to investigate the issues that confront people with aphasia when interacting with technology, specifically 3D game environments. Five people with aphasia were observed and interviewed in twelve workshop sessions. We report the key themes that emerged from the study, such as the importance of direct mappings between users’ interactions and actions in a virtual environment. The results of the study provide some insight into the challenges, but also the opportunities, these mainstream technologies offer to people with aphasia. We discuss how these technologies could be more supportive and inclusive for people with language and communication difficulties

“TOT” phenomena: Gesture production in younger and older adults

This study explored age-related changes in gesture in order to better understand the relationship between gesture and word retrieval from memory. The frequency of gestures during “Tip-of-the-Tongue” (TOT) states highlights this relationship. There is a lack of evidence describing the form and content of iconic gestures arising spontaneously in such TOT states, and a parallel gap addressing age-related variations. In this study, TOT states were induced in 45 participants from two age groups (older and younger adults) using a pseudoword paradigm. The type and frequency of gestures produced was recorded during two experimental conditions (single-word retrieval/ narrative task). We found that both groups experienced a high number of TOT states, during which they gestured. Iconic co-TOT gestures were more common than non-iconic gestures. Whilst there was no age-effect on the type of gestures produced, there was a significant, task-specific, age difference in the amount of gesturing. That is, younger adults gestured more in the narrative task, whereas older adults generated more gestures on the single-word retrieval task. Task-specific age differences suggest that there are age-related differences in terms of the cognitive operations involved in TOT gesture production

Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: a test of attentional control theory

We tested the assumptions of Attentional Control Theory (ACT) by examining the impact of anxiety on anticipation using a dynamic, time-constrained task. Moreover, we examined the involvement of high- and low-level cognitive processes in anticipation and how their importance may interact with anxiety. Skilled and less-skilled tennis players anticipated the shots of opponents under low- and high-anxiety conditions. Participants viewed three types of video stimuli, each depicting different levels of contextual information. Performance effectiveness (response accuracy) and processing efficiency (response accuracy divided by corresponding mental effort) were measured. Skilled players recorded higher levels of response accuracy and processing efficiency compared to less-skilled counterparts. Processing efficiency significantly decreased under high- compared to low-anxiety conditions. No difference in response accuracy was observed. When reviewing directional errors, anxiety was most detrimental to performance in the condition conveying only contextual information, suggesting that anxiety may have a greater impact on high-level (top-down) cognitive processes, potentially due to a shift in attentional control. Our findings provide partial support for ACT; anxiety elicited greater decrements in processing efficiency than performance effectiveness, possibly due to predominance of the stimulus-driven attentional system

Emulating Solid-State Physics with a Hybrid System of Ultracold Ions and Atoms

We propose and theoretically investigate a hybrid system composed of a crystal of trapped ions coupled to a cloud of ultracold fermions. The ions form a periodic lattice and induce a band structure in the atoms. This system combines the advantages of scalability and tunability of ultracold atomic systems with the high fidelity operations and detection offered by trapped ion systems. It also features close analogies to natural solid-state systems, as the atomic degrees of freedom couple to phonons of the ion lattice, thereby emulating a solid-state system. Starting from the microscopic many-body Hamiltonian, we derive the low energy Hamiltonian including the atomic band structure and give an expression for the atom-phonon coupling. We discuss possible experimental implementations such as a Peierls-like transition into a period-doubled dimerized state.Comment: 5 pages + appendi

Parity Doubling Among the Baryons

We study the evidence for and possible origins of parity doubling among the baryons. First we explore the experimental evidence, finding a significant signal for parity doubling in the non-strange baryons, but little evidence among strange baryons. Next we discuss potential explanations for this phenomenon. Possibilities include suppression of the violation of the flavor singlet axial symmetry ($U(1)_{A}$) of QCD, which is broken by the triangle anomaly and by quark masses. A conventional Wigner-Weyl realization of the $SU(2)_{L}\times SU(2)_{R}$ chiral symmetry would also result in parity doubling. However this requires the suppression of families of \emph{chirally invariant} operators by some other dynamical mechanism. In this scenario the parity doubled states should decouple from pions. We discuss other explanations including connections to chiral invariant short distance physics motivated by large $N_{c}$ arguments as suggested by Shifman and others, and intrinsic deformation of relatively rigid highly excited hadrons, leading to parity doubling on the leading Regge trajectory. Finally we review the spectroscopic consequences of chiral symmetry using a formalism introduced by Weinberg, and use it to describe two baryons of opposite parity.Comment: 32 pages, 8 figures; v2 revised and expanded; submitted to Phys. Re