Warholian repetition and the viewer’s affective response to artworks from his Death and Disaster Series

In his Death and Disaster Series, Andy Warhol repeated gruesome images of suicides and car crashes. The artist’s use of repetition has been discussed extensively but not in terms of the direct impact on the viewer’s perceptual and cognitive processing. This paper considers the viewer’s affective experience resulting from repeated exposure to negative images in artworks from the series. We put forward an account of the potential affective experience of Warholian repetition based on existing experimental findings and by way of the artist’s own remarks on the relationship between repetition and affect

It's all in the eyes: subcortical and cortical activation during grotesqueness perception in autism

Atypical face processing plays a key role in social interaction difficulties encountered by individuals with autism. In the current fMRI study, the Thatcher illusion was used to investigate several aspects of face processing in 20 young adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 20 matched neurotypical controls. “Thatcherized” stimuli were modified at either the eyes or the mouth and participants discriminated between pairs of faces while cued to attend to either of these features in upright and inverted orientation. Behavioral data confirmed sensitivity to the illusion and intact configural processing in ASD. Directing attention towards the eyes vs. the mouth in upright faces in ASD led to (1) improved discrimination accuracy; (2) increased activation in areas involved in social and emotional processing; (3) increased activation in subcortical face-processing areas. Our findings show that when explicitly cued to attend to the eyes, activation of cortical areas involved in face processing, including its social and emotional aspects, can be enhanced in autism. This suggests that impairments in face processing in autism may be caused by a deficit in social attention, and that giving specific cues to attend to the eye-region when performing behavioral therapies aimed at improving social skills may result in a better outcome

Adding depth to overlapping displays can improve visual search performance

Standard models of visual search have focused upon asking participants to search for a single target in displays where the objects do not overlap one another, and where the objects are presented on a single depth plane. This stands in contrast to many everyday visual searches wherein variations in overlap and depth are the norm, rather than the exception. Here, we addressed whether presenting overlapping objects on different depths planes to one another can improve search performance. Across four different experiments using different stimulus types (opaque polygons, transparent polygons, opaque real-world objects, and transparent X-ray images), we found that depth was primarily beneficial when the displays were transparent, and this benefit arose in terms of an increase in response accuracy. Although the benefit to search performance only appeared in some cases, across all stimulus types, we found evidence of marked shifts in eye-movement behavior. Our results have important implications for current models and theories of visual search, which have not yet provided detailed accounts of the effects that overlap and depth have on guidance and object identification processes. Moreover, our results show that the presence of depth information could aid real-world searches of complex, overlapping displays

Print Media Response to SARS in New Zealand

To examine the media response to severe acute respiratory syndrome, we reviewed New Zealand's major newspaper (261 articles for 3 months). While important accurate health messages were frequently included, some were missed (e.g., hand washing in only 2% of articles). No incorrect information was identified, and health spokespersons were accurately quoted

Parafoveal Previews and Lexical Frequency in Natural Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements and Fixation-Related Potentials

Participants’ eye movements and EEG signal were recorded as they read sentences displayed according to the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. Two target words in each sentence were manipulated for lexical frequency (high vs. low frequency) and parafoveal preview of each target word (identical vs. string of random letters vs. string of Xs). Eye movement data revealed visual parafoveal-on-foveal effects (POF), as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects and word frequency effects. Fixation-related potentials (FRPs) showed visual and orthographic PoF effects as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects. Our results replicated the early preview positivity effect (Dimigen et al., 2012) in the X-string preview condition, and revealed different neural correlates associated with a preview comprised of a string of random letters relative to a string of Xs. The former effects seem likely to reflect difficulty associated with the integration of parafoveal and foveal information, as well as feature overlap, while the latter reflect inhibition, and potentially disruption, to processing underlying reading. Interestingly, and consistent with Kretzschmar, Schlesewsky and Staub (2015), no frequency effect was reflected in the FRP measures. The findings provide insight into the neural correlates of parafoveal processing and written word recognition in reading and demonstrate the value of utilising ecologically valid paradigms to study well established phenomena that occur as text is read naturally

Using Eye Movements to Understand how Security Screeners Search for Threats in X-Ray Baggage.

There has been an increasing drive to understand failures in searches for weapons and explosives in X-ray baggage screening. Tracking eye movements during the search has produced new insights into the guidance of attention during the search, and the identification of targets once they are fixated. Here, we review the eye-movement literature that has emerged on this front over the last fifteen years, including a discussion of the problems that real-world searchers face when trying to detect targets that could do serious harm to people and infrastructure

The Influence of Culture on the Viewing of Western and East Asian Paintings

The influence of British and Chinese culture on the viewing of paintings from Western and East Asian traditions was explored in an old/new discrimination task. Accuracy data were considered alongside signal detection measures of sensitivity and bias. The results showed participant culture and painting tradition interacted but only with respect to response bias and not sensitivity. Eye movements were also recorded during encoding and discrimination. Paintings were split into regions of interest defined by faces, or the theme and context in order to analyse the eye movement data. With respect to the eye movement data, the results showed that a match between participant culture and painting tradition increased the viewing of faces in paintings at the expense of the viewing of other locations, an effect interpreted as a manifestation of the Other Race Effect on the viewing of paintings. There was, however, no evidence of broader influence of culture on the eye movements made to paintings as might be expected if culture influenced the allocation of attention more generally. Taken together, these findings suggest culture influences the viewing of paintings but only in response to challenges to the encoding of faces

Adjuvant endocrine therapy after breast cancer: a qualitative study of factors associated with adherence.

INTRODUCTION: Despite evidence of the efficacy of adjuvant endocrine therapy (AET) in reducing the risk of recurrence and mortality after treatment for primary breast cancer, adherence to AET is suboptimal. This study aimed to explore factors that influence adherence and nonadherence to AET following breast cancer to inform the development of supportive interventions. METHODS: Interviews were conducted with 32 women who had been prescribed AET, 2-4 years following their diagnosis of breast cancer. Both adherers (n=19) and nonadherers (n=13) were recruited. The analysis was conducted using the Framework approach. RESULTS: Factors associated with adherence were as follows: managing side effects including information and advice on side effects and taking control of side effects, supportive relationships, and personal influences. Factors associated with nonadherence were as follows: burden of side effects, feeling unsupported, concerns about long-term AET use, regaining normality, including valuing the quality of life over length of life, and risk perception. CONCLUSION: Provision of timely information to prepare women for the potential side effects of AET and education on medication management strategies are needed, including provision of timely and accurate information on the efficacy of AET in reducing breast cancer recurrence and on potential side effects and ways to manage these should they arise. Trust in the doctor-patient relationship and clear patient pathways for bothersome side effects and concerns with AET are important. Training and education on AET for GPs should be considered alongside novel care pathways such as primary care nurse cancer care review and community pharmacist follow-up

Assessing the benefits of stereoscopic displays to visual search: methodology and initial findings

Visual search is a task that is carried out in a number of important security and health related scenarios (e.g., X-ray baggage screening, radiography). With recent and ongoing developments in the technology available to present images to observers in stereoscopic depth, there has been increasing interest in assessing whether depth information can be used in complex search tasks to improve search performance. Here we outline the methodology that we developed, along with both software and hardware information, in order to assess visual search performance in complex, overlapping stimuli that also contained depth information. In doing so, our goal is to foster further research along these lines in the future. We also provide an overview with initial results of the experiments that we have conducted involving participants searching stimuli that contain overlapping objects presented on different depth planes to one another. Thus far, we have found that depth information does improve the speed (but not accuracy) of search, but only when the stimuli are highly complex and contain a significant degree of overlap. Depth information may therefore aid real-world search tasks that involve the examination of complex, overlapping stimuli

The role of configurality in the Thatcher illusion: an ERP study.

The Thatcher illusion (Thompson in Perception, 9, 483-484, 1980) is often explained as resulting from recognising a distortion of configural information when 'Thatcherised' faces are upright but not when inverted. However, recent behavioural studies suggest that there is an absence of perceptual configurality in upright Thatcherised faces (Donnelly et al. in Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 74, 1475-1487, 2012) and both perceptual and decisional sources of configurality in behavioural tasks with Thatcherised stimuli (Mestry, Menneer et al. in Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 456, 2012). To examine sources linked to the behavioural experience of the illusion, we studied inversion and Thatcherisation of faces (comparing across conditions in which no features, the eyes, the mouth, or both features were Thatcherised) on a set of event-related potential (ERP) components. Effects of inversion were found at the N170, P2 and P3b. Effects of eye condition were restricted to the N170 generated in the right hemisphere. Critically, an interaction of orientation and eye Thatcherisation was found for the P3b amplitude. Results from an individual with acquired prosopagnosia who can discriminate Thatcherised from typical faces but cannot categorise them or perceive the illusion (Mestry, Donnelly et al. in Neuropsychologia, 50, 3410-3418, 2012) only differed from typical participants at the P3b component. Findings suggest the P3b links most directly to the experience of the illusion. Overall, the study showed evidence consistent with both perceptual and decisional sources and the need to consider both in relation to configurality