Human walking behavior: the effect of density on walking speed and direction

Humans have a natural desire to keep a certain physical distance from other humans. This distance is called personal space (or personal distance). Edward T. Hall (1966) describes it as a distance of 45 to 120cm kept from each other, a which people can touch if they extend their arms and see each other clearly, but not asa whole. Humans always try to keep this minimum distance to strangers, but might let familiar people closer, depending on their relationship. If personal space isinvaded without consent it comes to physical reactions such as increased heart rate, sweating and increased blood pressure (Middlemist and Knowles, 1976). We simply feel uncomfortable when others come too close. Personal space is well described for standing and seated test subjects (e.g. Newman and Pollack, 1973; Thompson et al., 1979;Hayduk and Mainprize, 1980; Hayduk, 1981; Strube and Werner, 1984; Evans and Wener, 2007; Robson, 2008), but not for walking people. Gérin-Lajoie and his colleagues (Gérin-Lajoie et al., 2006; Gérin-Lajoie et al., 2008) described minimum distances that pedestrians keep from stationary and moving obstacles, which were used as a basis for this study. Using a newly developed system called CCB Analyser the walking patterns of pedestrians in an Austrian shopping center were recorded. Data included number and frequency of people,average speed, speed changes and number of speed changes, direction changes and number of direction changes, and two different measures for personal space, one being personal space in circles around stationary recording frames and the other being personal space for pedestrians that plan their paths ahead. The tested hypothesis was that high density and low interpersonal distance leads to a change of walking behavior – increasing walking speed because of stress (Konečni et al., 1975) and making people change their speed and directions whenwalking. The results of the present study show that all measured variables seem to highly depend on each other. We could at least partly confirm the hypothesis ofpeople walking faster when personal space is 51 invaded. People changed their walking speed and direction to a higher degree at high densities, however the percentage of people changing their walking behavior was the same or even smaller. These results offer a first insight into the relationship of human walking behavior and personal space, but much more research needs to be done on this topic

Human walking behavior: the effect of pedestrian flow and personal space invasions on walking speed and direction

Humans have a natural desire to keep a certain spatial distance to other humans, called personal space (Hall, 1966). If personal space is invaded without consent physiological reactions such as increased heart rate, sweating, and increased blood pressure are triggered (Middlemist et al., 1976). Using a newly developed system called CCB Analyser the walking pa!erns of pedestrians in an Austrian shopping center were recorded. Data included number of people, average speed, speed changes, direction changes, and two different measures for personal space, one being personal space in circles around stationary #ames and the other being personal space for pedestrians integrating the paths ahead. Results show that people walk faster when personal space is invaded, and walking speed and direction are changed to a higher degree at high pedestrian $ow. %ese results show how crowded situations require behavioral changes and offer an important insight into the relationship of human walking behavior and personal space

Using robots to understand animal cognition

In recent years, robotic animals and humans have been used to answer a variety of questions related to behavior. In the case of animal behavior, these efforts have largely been in the field of behavioral ecology. They have proved to be a useful tool for this enterprise as they allow the presentation of naturalistic social stimuli whilst providing the experimenter with full control of the stimulus. In interactive experiments, the behavior of robots can be controlled in a manner that is impossible with real animals, making them ideal instruments for the study of social stimuli in animals. This paper provides an overview of the current state of the field and considers the impact that the use of robots could have on fundamental questions related to comparative psychology: namely, perception, spatial cognition, social cognition, and early cognitive development. We make the case that the use of robots to investigate these key areas could have an important impact on the field of animal cognition

Picture-object recognition in a comparative approach: performance of humans (Homo sapiens) and pigeons (Columba livia) in a rotational invariance and a complementary information task

Pigeons and humans are two highly visual species that have evolved separately for about 310 million years (Kumar and Hedges, 1998) and developed largely convergent visual systems due to similar visual needs. To investigatepigeon vision and cognitive abilities twodimensional pictorial stimuli are often used. However, it is not entirely clear, how pigeons perceive such stimuli and whether or not they can associate photographs with real objects. In the present study nine pigeons and eleven humans were trained to discriminate between photographs of two biologically irrelevant objects (“Greebles”). The pigeons were housed in an aviary containing the real Greebles and were trained in wooden chambers where they had to peck on a Plexiglas disk when positive stimuli were presented, thus obtaining food. Humans were trained with the same stimuli presented on a computer screen and had to click with a computer mouse on positive stimuli. Results showed that humans were much faster at learning to discriminate the two Greebles. In the first test, pigeons and humans had to discriminate new rotational views of the Greebles. Humans performed equally well on interpolated test views (i.e. views that lay between the training views) and extrapolated views (i.e. views outside of training range), while pigeons performed better on interpolated than on extrapolated test views. Therefore, it can be concluded that object recognition was viewpointindependent for humans and viewpoint-dependent for pigeons. In the second test, following a procedure by Aust and Huber (2006), pigeons were presented with parts of the Greebles that were not included in training and the first test to see whether they formed associations between the 2D images and the 3D objects in their aviary. They did not discriminate these parts correctly. The test was repeated with three of the test views already used in the second test but presented in different sizes. Discrimination seemed to depend on the visibility of the appendages and might have been based on visual features of the pictures themselves without 71 recognition of what they portrayed. The results of this study were compared to a previous study in which pigeons were trained to discriminate either real Greebles, holograms, or computer images of them. There, too, the real Greebles were installed in the pigeons’ aviary; however, the pigeons trained and tested on computerimages lived in the adjacent aviary and thus only had limited visual contact to them. We wanted to find out whether the more extensive visual contact to the Greebles had any influence on the pigeons’ performance. However, there was no difference in performance between the two groups. This is evidence that the result of the previous study — better performance with real objects and holograms than with computer images — was not based on the fact that pigeons trained with the latter stimulus type had only limited visual access to thereal 3D objects

Waiting for the better reward: Comparison of delay of gratification in young children across two cultures.

Delay of gratification-a form of self-control-is the ability to forsake immediately available rewards in order to obtain larger-valued outcomes in future, which develops throughout the pre-school years. The majority of previous research in this area has been conducted with Western populations, therefore knowledge of Eastern children's performance is scarcer. Here, utilising on a recently published dataset of British children (n = 61), we further tested delay of gratification in 3 to 5-year-old Chinese children (n = 75) using Bramlett et al.'s (2012) delay choice paradigm. The paradigm was previously used in non-human primates and it featured a mechanized rotating tray that sequentially moves rewards within reach. Additionally, we administered 3 inhibitory control tasks and 1 standardised delay choice task to Chinese pre-schoolers (British children were not tested). We aimed to investigate the influence of culture, reward type and reward visibility on pre-schoolers' ability to delay gratification. We found significant age-related improvements in delay of gratification ability in both countries and children performed better when presented with rewards varying in quality than quantity. Consistent with previous cross-cultural literature, Chinese children showed better overall performance than their British peers when reward visibility was manipulated (though reward visibility itself had no significant effect on performance). There were significant correlations in Chinese children's performance in Bramlett et al.'s (2012) delay choice paradigm and performance in some (though not all tested) inhibitory control tasks. We discuss these results in relation to task demands and the broader social orientation of self-control. We concluded that the intuitive comparative assessment of self-control task taps into children's delay of gratification ability. Our results emphasize the importance of testing for socio-cultural influences on children's cognitive development

Perception of artificial conspecifics by bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps)

Artificial animals are increasingly used as conspecific stimuli in animal behavior research. However, researchers often have an incomplete understanding of how the species under study perceives conspecifics, and hence which features needed for a stimulus to be perceived appropriately. To investigate the features to which bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) attend, we measured their lateralized eye use when assessing a successive range of stimuli. These ranged through several stages of realism in artificial conspecifics, to see how features such as color, the presence of eyes, body shape and motion influence behavior. We found differences in lateralized eye use depending on the sex of the observing bearded dragon and the artificial conspecific, as well as the artificial conspecific's behavior. Therefore, this approach can inform the design of robotic animals that elicit biologically-meaningful responses in live animals. [Abstract copyright: This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Lateralized eye use towards video stimuli in bearded dragons

Lateralized eye use is thought to increase brain efficiency, as the two hemispheres process different information perceived by the eyes. It has been observed in a wide variety of vertebrate species and, in general, information about conspecifics appear to elicit a left eye preference whilst information about prey elicits the opposite. In reptiles, this phenomenon has only been investigated using live conspecifics in agonistic contexts, and so it is not clear whether it can be found when using video stimuli. Here, bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) were presented with videos of female conspecifics and prey that either moved or were stationary, along with a control video of an empty background. Females exhibited a left eye bias towards conspecifics but males did not, however, both sexes looked at conspecifics significantly longer than prey. Further, animals used their left eye significantly longer when viewing moving stimuli of both categories. These results suggest that, in lizards, lateralized eye use when viewing conspecifics may be controlled by sex, and strongly influenced by stimulus movement. This study therefore provides important insights into the role of lateralized processing in lizard perception, and sets the scene for future work investigating the role of sex on perception of conspecifics and the role of motion in lateralized eye use

Delayed gratification in New Caledonian crows and young children: influence of reward type and visibility

Funder: FP7 Ideas: European Research Council; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100011199; Grant(s): 3399933Funder: Royal Society of New Zealand Rutherford Discovery FellowshipAbstract: Self-control underlies cognitive abilities such as decision making and future planning. Delay of gratification is a measure of self-control and involves obtaining a more valuable outcome in the future by tolerating a delay or investing a greater effort in the present. Contextual issues, such as reward visibility and type, may influence delayed gratification performance, although there has been limited comparative investigation between humans and other animals, particularly non-primate species. Here, we adapted an automated ‘rotating tray’ paradigm used previously with capuchin monkeys to test for delay of gratification ability that requires little pre-test training, where the subject must forgo an immediate, less preferred reward for a delayed, more preferred one. We tested New Caledonian crows and 3–5-year-old human children. We manipulated reward types to differ in quality or quantity (Experiments 1 and 2) as well as visibility (Experiment 2). In Experiments 1 and 2, both species performed better when the rewards varied in quality as opposed to quantity, though performed above chance in both conditions. In Experiment 1, both crows and children were able to delay gratification when both rewards were visible. In Experiment 2, 5-year-old children outperformed 3- and 4-year olds, though overall children still performed well, while the crows struggled when reward visibility was manipulated, a result which may relate to difficulties in tracking the experimenters’ hands during baiting. We discuss these findings in relation to the role of contextual issues on self-control when making species comparisons and investigating the mechanisms of self-control

Decision-making flexibility in New Caledonian crows, young children and adult humans in a multi-dimensional tool-use task.

The ability to make profitable decisions in natural foraging contexts may be influenced by an additional requirement of tool-use, due to increased levels of relational complexity and additional work-effort imposed by tool-use, compared with simply choosing between an immediate and delayed food item. We examined the flexibility for making the most profitable decisions in a multi-dimensional tool-use task, involving different apparatuses, tools and rewards of varying quality, in 3-5-year-old children, adult humans and tool-making New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides). We also compared our results to previous studies on habitually tool-making orangutans (Pongo abelii) and non-tool-making Goffin's cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana). Adult humans, cockatoos and crows, but not children and orangutans, did not select a tool when it was not necessary, which was the more profitable choice in this situation. Adult humans, orangutans and cockatoos, but not crows and children, were able to refrain from selecting non-functional tools. By contrast, the birds, but not the primates tested, struggled to attend to multiple variables-where two apparatuses, two tools and two reward qualities were presented simultaneously-without extended experience. These findings indicate: (1) in a similar manner to humans and orangutans, New Caledonian crows and Goffin's cockatoos can flexibly make profitable decisions in some decision-making tool-use tasks, though the birds may struggle when tasks become more complex; (2) children and orangutans may have a bias to use tools in situations where adults and other tool-making species do not

Self‐control in crows, parrots and nonhuman primates

Self‐control is critical for both humans and nonhuman animals because it underlies complex cognitive abilities, such as decision‐making and future planning, enabling goal‐directed behavior. For instance, it is positively associated with social competence and life success measures in humans. We present the first review of delay of gratification as a measure of self‐control in nonhuman primates, corvids (crow family) and psittacines (parrot order): disparate groups that show comparable advanced cognitive abilities and similar socio‐ecological factors. We compare delay of gratification performance and identify key issues and outstanding areas for future research, including finding the best measures and drivers of delayed gratification. Our review therefore contributes to our understanding of both delayed gratification as a measure of self‐control and of complex cognition in animals