Assessing the role of shape and label in the misleading packaging of food imitating products: from empirical evidence to policy recommendation

Food imitating products are chemical consumer items used frequently in the household for cleaning and personal hygiene (e.g., bleach, soap, and shampoo), which resemble food products. Their containers replicate elements of food package design such as possessing a shape close in style to drinking product containers or bearing labels that depict colorful fruits. In marketing, these incongruent forms are designed to increase the appeal of functional products, leading to chemical consumer product embellishment. However, due to the resulting visual ambiguity, food imitating products may expose consumers to the risk of being poisoned from ingestion. Thus, from a public health perspective, food imitating products are considered dangerous chemical products that should not be sold, and may merit being recalled for the safety of consumers. To help policymakers address the hazardous presence of food imitating products, the purpose of this article is to identify the specific design features that generate most ambiguity for the consumer, and therefore increase the likelihood of confusion with foodstuffs. Among the visual elements of food packaging, the two most important features (shape and label) are manipulated in a series of three lab studies combining six Implicit Association Tests (IATs) and two explicit measures on products' drinkability and safety. IATs were administered to assess consumers' implicit association of liquid products with tastiness in a within-subject design in which the participants (N = 122) were presented with two kinds of food imitating products with a drink shape or drink label compared with drinks (experiential products with congruent form) and classic chemical products (hygiene products) (functional products with congruent form). Results show that chemical consumer products with incongruent drink shapes (but not drink labels) as an element of food package design are both implicitly associated with tastiness and explicitly judged as safe and drinkable. These results require confirmation in other studies involving different shapes and labels. Notwithstanding, due to the misleading effect of this ambiguity, public health authorities are thus well advised to focus their market surveillance on chemical products emulating a food or drink shape

Agentivité dans les systèmes fortement automatisés

In our increasingly technological world, automation has improved many aspects of our lives. But automation can also have negative sides. Indeed, human operators seem often helpless to takeover an automated system in case of failure. This "out-of-the-loop" problem occurs when an operator is unable to understand the intentions and to predict the outcome of actions of the system, causing a decrease of control.The goal of this thesis was to study how the theoretical framework of agency can help identifying and evaluating the information required to make supervision of fully automated systems more efficient, to restore an appropriate sense of control and to increase the user acceptance of what the system is doing. To achieve this goal, we tested participants in four aircraft supervision tasks. We first showed that providing greater information about the system’s intentions increased the participants’ sense of control. However, this condition did not produce any change in a frequently-used implicit marker of the sense of agency, the so-called "intentional binding effect" (Experiment 1). We also found that this information led to better performances in detecting when the system’s decisions were non-optimal (Experiment 2, 3, and 4), to a change in the way participants allocated their attentional resources (Experiment 2 and 3) and also to increase the level of user acceptance (Experiment 3 and 4). Interestingly, we also showed in the last experiment that the delay between prime messages providing information about the system’s intentions and the system’s actions impacted differently the performance and the operator’s levels of control and acceptance.Finally, in the last section, we discuss the implications of our results for the field of human-machine interaction. We claim that the science of agency may be useful to elaborate concrete recommendations for designing automatic systems in which operators remain "in the loop" of control.Le développement des systèmes automatisés a permis d’améliorer de nombreux aspects de notre vie quotidienne. Toutefois, les bénéfices engendrés par l’utilisation croissante de l’automatisation masquent un problème fondamental. En effet, en cas de pannes ou de situations imprévues, les opérateurs présentent souvent des difficultés dans la reprise en main de tels systèmes. Ce phénomène de « sortie de boucle de contrôle » se produit lorsque l’opérateur est incapable de comprendre les intentions du système et de prédire ses actions futures, entraînant ainsi une perte de contrôle.Le but de cette thèse était d’étudier comment le cadre théorique de l’agentivité pouvait nous aider à identifier et évaluer les informations requises pour rendre la supervision de systèmes fortement automatisés plus efficace, pour restaurer un sentiment de contrôle approprié et pour augmenter l’acceptabilité du système par les opérateurs. Pour y parvenir, nous avons réalisé quatre expériences lors desquelles les participants devaient superviser le vol d’un avion sous pilote automatique. Dans un premier temps, nous avons montré que fournir des informations sur les intentions du système augmentait le sentiment de contrôle des participants. Cependant, ce gain d’information ne nous a pas permis d’observer le phénomène de liage intentionnel (Intentional Binding), fréquemment utilisé comme marqueur implicite de l’agentivité (Expérience 1). Nous avons également trouvé que cette information entraînait de meilleures performances pour détecter des décisions non-optimales du système (Expériences 2, 3 et 4), conduisait à un changement dans la façon dont les participants allouaient leurs ressources attentionnelles (Expériences 2 et 3) et aussi augmentait le niveau d’acceptabilité du système (Expériences 3 et 4). De façon intéressante, nous avons également montré dans la dernière expérience que le délai entre l’apparition de l’information sur les intentions du système et l’implémentation de son action impactait différemment la performance et les sentiments de contrôle et d’acceptabilité des opérateurs.Pour finir, dans la dernière partie, nous avons discuté des implications de nos résultats dans le champ des interactions homme-machine. Nous avançons l’idée que le cadre théorique de l’agentivité peut être utile pour élaborer des recommandations concrètes pour la conception de systèmes fortement automatisés permettant à l’opérateur de rester dans la « boucle de contrôle »

The primacy order effect in complex decision making

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Influence of the solvent, structure and substituents of ruthenium(II) polypyridyl complexes on their electrochemical and photo-physical properties

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Agency modulates interactions with automation technologies

International audienceThe increasing presence of automation between operators and automated systems tends to disrupt operators from action outcomes, leading them to leave the control loop. The theoretical framework of agency suggests that priming the operator about the system’s upcoming behaviour could help restore an appropriate sense of control and increase user acceptance of what the system is doing. In a series of two experiments, we test whether providing information about what the system is about to do next leads to an increase in the level of user acceptance, concomitant with an increase in control and performance. Using an aircraft supervision task, we demonstrated the benefit of prime messages regarding system acceptance and performance. Taken together, our results indicate that the principles proposed by this framework could be used to improve human–machine interaction and maintain a high level of sense of control in supervisory tasks

Effect of the instar of the pear psyllid Cacopsylla pyri (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) on the behaviour and fitness of the parasitoid Trechnites insidiosus (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae)

Improved methods of integrated pest management of the pear psyllid Cacopsylla pyri (L.), the primary pest of pear in Europe and North America, are needed. Trechnites insidiosus (Crawford) is the most abundant parasitoid of C. pyri in pear orchards, where it is present early in the psyllid infestation period. However, little is known about its general biology, interaction with its host and potential as a control agent. The objective of this laboratory study was to evaluate the behaviour of a specialist parasitoid when presented with different larval instars of C. pyri, and assess the quality of the next generation of parasitoids. T. insidiosus was able to insert its ovipositor into all host instars. However, the fourth instar of the host appeared to be the most suitable in terms of behavioural acceptance, time spent walking, antennal activity and progeny development (mummy formation, development time and tibial length). In addition, we report a low frequency of host-feeding behaviour by this parasitoid. From a biological control perspective, we suggest that favouring T. insidiosus, either through mass releases or conservation of naturally present populations, when the first generation of psyllids reach the fourth instar, would maximize the chance of controlling psyllid populations in pear orchards

Ecology and biology of the parasitoid Trechnites insidiosus and its potential for biological control of pear psyllids

Pear cultivation accounts for a large proportion of worldwide orchards, but its sustainability is controversial because it relies on intensive use of pesticides. It is therefore crucial and timely to find alternative methods to chemical control in pear orchards. The psyllids Cacopsylla pyri and Cacopsylla pyricola are the most important pests of pear trees in Europe and North America, respectively, because they infest all commercial varieties, causing damage directly through sap consumption or indirectly through the spread of diseases. A set of natural enemies exists, ranging from generalist predators to specialist parasitoids. Trechnites insidiosus (Crawford) is undoubtedly the most abundant specialist parasitoid of psyllids. In our literature review, we highlight the potential of this encyrtid species as a biological control agent of psyllid pests by first reviewing its biology and ecology, and then considering its potential at regulating psyllids. We show that the parasitoid can express fairly high parasitism rates in orchards, and almost perfectly matches the phenology of its host and is present early in the host infestation season, which is an advantage for controlling immature stages of psyllids. We propose new research directions and innovative approaches that would improve the use of T. insidiosus in integrated pest management strategies in the future, regarding both augmentative and conservation biocontrol. We conclude that T. insidiosus has many advantages and should be included as part of integrated biological control strategies of pear psyllids, along with predators, in-field habitat conservation, and the rational use of compatible chemicals. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry

Brain correlates of phonological recoding of visual symbols

International audienceLearning to read involves setting up associations between meaningless visual inputs (V) and their phonological representations (P). Here, we recorded the brain signals (ERPs and fMRI) associated with phonological recoding (i.e., V-P conversion processes) in an artificial learning situation in which participants had to learn the associations between 24 unknown visual symbols (Japanese Katakana characters) and 24 arbitrary monosyllabic names. During the learning phase on Day 1, the strength of V-P associations was manipulated by varying the proportion of correct and erroneous associations displayed during a two-alternative forced choice task. Recording event related potentials (ERPs) during the learning phase allowed us to track changes in the processing of these visual symbols as a function of the strength of V-P associations. We found that, at the end of the learning phase, ERPs were linearly affected by the strength of V-P associations in a time-window starting around 200 ms post-stimulus onset on right occipital sites and ending around 345 ms on left occipital sites. On Day 2, participants had to perform a matching task during an fMRI session and the strength of these V-P associations was again used as a probe for identifying brain regions related to phonological recoding. Crucially, we found that the left fusiform gyrus was gradually affected by the strength of V-P associations suggesting that this region is involved in the brain network supporting phonological recoding processes

Comprehensive catalog of variants potentially associated with hidradenitis suppurativa, including newly identified variants from a cohort of 100 patients

International audienceHidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic skin disease characterized by painful, recurrent abscesses, nodules, and scarring, primarily in skin folds. The exact causes of HS are multifactorial, involving genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors. It is associated with systemic diseases such as metabolic syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. Genetic studies have identified mutations in the γ-secretase complex that affect Notch signaling pathways critical for skin cell regulation. Despite its high heritability, most reported HS cases do not follow a simple genetic pattern. In this article, we performed whole-exome sequencing (WES) on a cohort of 100 individuals with HS, and we provide a comprehensive review of the variants known to be described or associated with HS. 91 variants were associated with the γ-secretase complex, and 78 variants were associated with other genes involved in the Notch pathway, keratinization, or immune response. Through this new genetic analysis, we have added ten new variants to the existing catalogs. All variants are available in a .vcf file and are provided as a resource for future studies