Le fattezze dell’appartenenza. Ispirato alla performance "Loro mi hanno detto" (2014)

In cosa consiste il senso di appartenenza? Il saggio indaga questo delicato tema attraverso una fantasmatica conversazione tra artisti e psicoanalisti, che l’autrice media sulle tracce di alcune immagini. Il risultato è un luogo sospeso nel tempo dove le esperienze della sua performance "Loro mi hanno detto" (2014). dell’autrice incontrano le parole e le musiche di grandi personaggi del passato e del presente, creando un dibattito sugli itinerari delle relazioni e le caratteristiche universali dell’amore. Una performance visiva quindi, ma anche un testo psicologico che mira a osservare l’appartenenza da diverse prospettive: da quella dell’analisi-tr ansazionale che prende in considerazione principi teorici quali “copioni”, “giochi” e “ingiunzioni”, a quella prettamente creativa ed emotiva di poeti e musicisti tra i più intensi dei nostri tempi. “The substance of belonging”. What does the sense of belonging consist of? The essay explores this delicate creating a debate subject through an imaginary conversation among artists and psychoanalysts, that the author mediates on the trails of some sequences of her performance "They told me" (2014). The result is a place suspended in time where the author’s experiences meet words and music by great characters of the past and the present, about the relationships and the universal characteristics of love. A visual performance, but also a psychological text which aims to observe this sense of belonging from different perspectives. From the transactional analytical perspective that takes into theoretical principles such as scripts, games and “injunctions” and also from the strictly creative and emotional perspective expressed by the most intense poets and musicians of our times

Here today, gone tomorrow - adaptation to change in memory-guided visual search

Visual search for a target object can be facilitated by the repeated presentation of an invariant configuration of nontargets ('contextual cueing'). Here, we tested adaptation of learned contextual associations after a sudden, but permanent, relocation of the target. After an initial learning phase targets were relocated within their invariant contexts and repeatedly presented at new locations, before they returned to the initial locations. Contextual cueing for relocated targets was neither observed after numerous presentations nor after insertion of an overnight break. Further experiments investigated whether learning of additional, previously unseen context-target configurations is comparable to adaptation of existing contextual associations to change. In contrast to the lack of adaptation to changed target locations, contextual cueing developed for additional invariant configurations under identical training conditions. Moreover, across all experiments, presenting relocated targets or additional contexts did not interfere with contextual cueing of initially learned invariant configurations. Overall, the adaptation of contextual memory to changed target locations was severely constrained and unsuccessful in comparison to learning of an additional set of contexts, which suggests that contextual cueing facilitates search for only one repeated target location

Rational Convolution Roots of Isobaric Polynomials

In this paper, we exhibit two matrix representations of the rational roots of generalized Fibonacci polynomials (GFPs) under convolution product, in terms of determinants and permanents, respectively. The underlying root formulas for GFPs and for weighted isobaric polynomials (WIPs), which appeared in an earlier paper by MacHenry and Tudose, make use of two types of operators. These operators are derived from the generating functions for Stirling numbers of the first kind and second kind. Hence we call them Stirling operators. To construct matrix representations of the roots of GFPs, we use the Stirling operators of the first kind. We give explicit examples to show how the Stirling operators of the second kind appear in the low degree cases for the WIP-roots. As a consequence of the matrix construction, we have matrix representations of multiplicative arithmetic functions under the Dirichlet product into its divisible closure.Comment: 13 page

Global scene layout modulates contextual learning in change detection

Change in the visual scene often goes unnoticed – a phenomenon referred to as “change blindness.” This study examined whether the hierarchical structure, i.e., the global–local layout of a scene can influence performance in a one-shot change detection paradigm. To this end, natural scenes of a laid breakfast table were presented, and observers were asked to locate the onset of a new local object. Importantly, the global structure of the scene was manipulated by varying the relations among objects in the scene layouts. The very same items were either presented as global-congruent (typical) layouts or as global-incongruent (random) arrangements. Change blindness was less severe for congruent than for incongruent displays, and this congruency benefit increased with the duration of the experiment. These findings show that global layouts are learned, supporting detection of local changes with enhanced efficiency. However, performance was not affected by scene congruency in a subsequent control experiment that required observers to localize a static discontinuity (i.e., an object that was missing from the repeated layouts). Our results thus show that learning of the global layout is particularly linked to the local objects. Taken together, our results reveal an effect of “global precedence” in natural scenes. We suggest that relational properties within the hierarchy of a natural scene are governed, in particular, by global image analysis, reducing change blindness for local objects through scene learning

Verification of the reflective model of first order factors for reward and empowerment constructs based on questionnaires derived from Lawler et al. (1991)

Purpose: High involvement practices have traditionally been classified in four main categories: training, communication, rewards and empowerment. In order to measure the degree of implementation of these programs, different questionnaires have been developed. In this paper, we have identified 3 types of questionnaires and we have deeply analyzed the psychometrical properties of one of these types: questionnaires derived from Lawler et al. (1991). The most recent investigation seems to show that psychometrical properties of both training and communication constructs are appropriate. However, it is necessary to work on rewards and empowerment scales. This research analyzes, by means of confirmatory factorial, two reflective measurement models, already present in the previous literature of rewards and empowerment scales. Design/methodology/approach: Spanish samples from 1997 (n=105), as well as United States ones (n=212 dating 1996 and n=143 dating 1999) have been used. Convergent and discriminant validity were tested. Findings and Originality/value: None of the models presents and acceptable adjustment in the used samples. Therefore, a possible future line of investigation in order to check whether the measurement model of rewards and empowerment constructs is formative instead of reflective, has been opened. Practical implications: Practitioners can profit from the results of this research because questionnaires validity will allow companies to have measurement and good practices diagnosis tools that can be used either for internal benchmarking or for the comparison with reference groups of companies. Originality/value: Our paper identifies three questionnaire typologies used in the field of investigations of rewards and empowerment practices. We show that the point of view with which the scales of theses questionnaires have been treated has always been reflective. Moreover, this is one of the few papers that have checked the validity of the measurement model of questionnaires derived from Lawler et al. (1991). It questions the validity of a single questionnaire with similar samples, of different years, and simultaneously, with samples from same years but from different countries.Peer Reviewe

The role of unique color changes and singletons in attention capture

Previous studies have shown that a sudden color change is typically less salient in capturing attention than the onset of a new object. Von Mühlenen, Rempel, and Enns (Psychological Science 16: 979-986, 2005) showed that a color change can capture attention as effectively as the onset of a new object given that it occurs during a period of temporal calm, where no other display changes happen. The current study presents a series of experiments that further investigate the conditions under which a change in color captures attention, by disentangling the change signal from the onset of a singleton. The results show that the item changing color receives attentional priority irrespective of whether this change goes along with the appearance of a singleton or not

Automatic Synchronization of Multi-User Photo Galleries

In this paper we address the issue of photo galleries synchronization, where pictures related to the same event are collected by different users. Existing solutions to address the problem are usually based on unrealistic assumptions, like time consistency across photo galleries, and often heavily rely on heuristics, limiting therefore the applicability to real-world scenarios. We propose a solution that achieves better generalization performance for the synchronization task compared to the available literature. The method is characterized by three stages: at first, deep convolutional neural network features are used to assess the visual similarity among the photos; then, pairs of similar photos are detected across different galleries and used to construct a graph; eventually, a probabilistic graphical model is used to estimate the temporal offset of each pair of galleries, by traversing the minimum spanning tree extracted from this graph. The experimental evaluation is conducted on four publicly available datasets covering different types of events, demonstrating the strength of our proposed method. A thorough discussion of the obtained results is provided for a critical assessment of the quality in synchronization.Comment: ACCEPTED to IEEE Transactions on Multimedi