The Role of Auditory-Visual Synchrony in Capture of Attention and Induction of Attentional State in Infancy

This study was designed to examine the types of events that are most effective in capturing infant attention and whether these attention-getting events also effectively elicit an attentional state and facilitate perception and learning. Despite the frequent use of attention-getters (AGs) - presenting an attention-grabbing event between trials to redirect attention and reduce data loss due to fussiness - relatively little is known about the influence of AGs on attentional state. A recent investigation revealed that the presentation of AGs not only captures attention, but also produces heart rate decelerations during habituation and faster dishabituation in a subsequent task, indicating changes in the state of sustained attention and enhanced stimulus processing (Domsch, Thomas, & Lohaus, 2010). Attention-getters are often multimodal, dynamic, and temporally synchronous; such highly redundant properties generally guide selective attention and are thought to coordinate multisensory information in early development. In the current study, 4-month-old infants were randomly assigned to one of three attention-getter AG conditions: synchronous AG, asynchronous AG, and no AG. Following the AG, infants completed a discrimination task with a partial-lag design, which allowed for the assessment of infants' ability to discriminate between familiar and novel stimuli while controlling for spontaneous recovery. Analyses indicated that the AG condition captured and induced an attentional state, regardless of the presence of temporal synchrony. Although the synchronous and asynchronous AG conditions produced similar patterns of attention in the AG session, during familiarization infants in the asynchronous AG condition showed a pattern of increasing HR across the task and had higher overall HR compared to the synchronous AG and no AG conditions. Implications of the effect of attention-getters and temporal synchrony on infant performance are discussed

Improving On-Time Delivery at an Automotive Components Manufacturer

The research of this Praxis investigated the relationship between overall equipment effectiveness, its factors (availability, performance, and quality), and other internal hidden losses as predictors of on-time delivery at an automotive components manufacturer. This work attempts to solve the problem of poor overall equipment effectiveness and hidden losses contributing to zero percent on-time delivery capability by applying the Recognize (strategic), Define (strategic), define (tactical), measure (tactical), analyze (tactical), improve (tactical), control (tactical), Standardize (systems), and Integrate (systems) (RDdmaicSI) improvement methodology. Regression analysis revealed that improving overall equipment effectiveness by itself would not be sufficient to attain the required daily production schedule. This research introduces the Lean Effective Asset Performance (LEAP) metric, which led to identifying statistically significant predictors which were not previously visible to the management team, but were within the control of the organization. This finding enabled decision makers at an automotive components manufacturer to improve overall equipment effectiveness from 76.4% to 87.5%, while simultaneously improving schedule attainment from 82.8% to 115.1%, improving delivery capability from 0.0 sigma to 4.3 sigma, improving the shipment fill rate from 42.8% to 76.3%, and improving on-time delivery from 0.0% to 100%, while also reducing first year costs by more than $825,000. As a result of these findings, automotive components manufacturers are encouraged to identify and quantify hidden losses beyond overall equipment effectiveness to improve on-time delivery

Effects of multimodal synchrony on infant attention and heart rate during events with social and nonsocial stimuli

Attention is a state of readiness or alertness, associated with behavioral and psychophysiological responses, that facilitates learning and memory. Multisensory and dynamic events have been shown to elicit more attention and produce greater sustained attention in infants than auditory or visual events alone. Such redundant and often temporally synchronous information guides selectivity and facilitates perception, learning, and memory of properties of events specified by redundancy. In addition, events involving faces or other social stimuli provide an extraordinary amount of redundant information that attracts and sustains attention. In the current study, 4- and 8-month-old infants were shown 2-min multimodal videos featuring social or nonsocial stimuli to determine the relative roles of synchrony and stimulus category in inducing attention. Behavioral measures included average looking time and peak look duration, and convergent measurement of heart rate (HR) allowed for the calculation of HR-defined phases of attention: Orienting (OR), sustained attention (SA), and attention termination (AT). The synchronous condition produced an earlier onset of SA (less time in OR) and a deeper state of SA than the asynchronous condition. Social stimuli attracted and held attention (longer duration of peak looks and lower HR than nonsocial stimuli). Effects of synchrony and the social nature of stimuli were additive, suggesting independence of their influence on attention. These findings are the first to demonstrate different HR-defined phases of attention as a function of intersensory redundancy, suggesting greater salience and deeper processing of naturalistic synchronous audiovisual events compared with asynchronous ones