The Effect of Visual Distinctiveness on Multiple Object Tracking Performance

Observers often need to attentively track moving objects. In everyday life, such objects are often visually distinctive. Previous studies have shown that tracking accuracy is increased when the targets contain a visual feature (e.g. a colour) not possessed by the distractors. Conversely, a gain in tracking accuracy was not observed when the targets differed from the distractors by only a conjunction of features (Makovski & Jiang, Visual Cognition, 17(1/2), 180). In this study we confirm that some conjunction targets have relatively little effect on tracking accuracy, but show that other conjunction targets can significantly aid tracking. For example, tracking accuracy is relatively high when the targets are small red squares and half the distractors are large red squares while the remaining distractors are small green squares. This seems to occur because the targets have a set of features (small and red) not shared by any one distractor. Attending to these features directs attention more to the targets than the distractors, thereby making the targets easier to track. Existing theories of attentive tracking cannot explain these results

Global Cue Inconsistency Diminishes Learning of Cue Validity

We present a novel two-stage probabilistic learning task that examines the participants’ ability to learn and utilize valid cues across several levels of probabilistic feedback. In the first stage, participants sample from one of three cues that gives predictive information about the outcome of the second stage. Participants are rewarded for correct prediction of the outcome in stage two. Only one of the three cues gives valid predictive information and thus participants can maximise their reward by learning to sample from the valid cue. The validity of this predictive information, however, is reinforced across several levels of probabilistic feedback. A second manipulation involved changing the consistency of the predictive information in stage one and the outcome in stage two. The results show that participants, with higher probabilistic feedback, learned to utilise the valid cue. In inconsistent task conditions, however, participants were significantly less successful in utilising higher validity cues. We interpret this result as implying that learning in probabilistic categorization is based on developing a representation of the task that allows for goal-directed action

Evaluation of the allocated resources of the Greek NSRF 2007-2013 in sectoral and regional level

<p>The broken line shows that chance performance is 25%. Error bars are within-observers standard error. **Significantly different at <i>p</i><0.001.</p

Do Changes in the Pace of Events Affect One-Off Judgments of Duration?

Five experiments examined whether changes in the pace of external events influence people’s judgments of duration. In Experiments 1a–1c, participants heard pieces of music whose tempo accelerated, decelerated, or remained constant. In Experiment 2, participants completed a visuo-motor task in which the rate of stimulus presentation accelerated, decelerated, or remained constant. In Experiment 3, participants completed a reading task in which facts appeared on-screen at accelerating, decelerating, or constant rates. In all experiments, the physical duration of the to-be-judged interval was the same across conditions. We found no significant effects of temporal structure on duration judgments in any of the experiments, either when participants knew that a time estimate would be required (prospective judgments) or when they did not (retrospective judgments). These results provide a starting point for the investigation of how temporal structure affects one-off judgments of duration like those typically made in natural settings

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Effect of remote ischaemic conditioning on clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI): a single-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Remote ischaemic conditioning with transient ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm has been shown to reduce myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). We investigated whether remote ischaemic conditioning could reduce the incidence of cardiac death and hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months. METHODS: We did an international investigator-initiated, prospective, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI) at 33 centres across the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Serbia. Patients (age >18 years) with suspected STEMI and who were eligible for PPCI were randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre with a permuted block method) to receive standard treatment (including a sham simulated remote ischaemic conditioning intervention at UK sites only) or remote ischaemic conditioning treatment (intermittent ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm through four cycles of 5-min inflation and 5-min deflation of an automated cuff device) before PPCI. Investigators responsible for data collection and outcome assessment were masked to treatment allocation. The primary combined endpoint was cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02342522) and is completed. FINDINGS: Between Nov 6, 2013, and March 31, 2018, 5401 patients were randomly allocated to either the control group (n=2701) or the remote ischaemic conditioning group (n=2700). After exclusion of patients upon hospital arrival or loss to follow-up, 2569 patients in the control group and 2546 in the intervention group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 12 months post-PPCI, the Kaplan-Meier-estimated frequencies of cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure (the primary endpoint) were 220 (8·6%) patients in the control group and 239 (9·4%) in the remote ischaemic conditioning group (hazard ratio 1·10 [95% CI 0·91-1·32], p=0·32 for intervention versus control). No important unexpected adverse events or side effects of remote ischaemic conditioning were observed. INTERPRETATION: Remote ischaemic conditioning does not improve clinical outcomes (cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure) at 12 months in patients with STEMI undergoing PPCI. FUNDING: British Heart Foundation, University College London Hospitals/University College London Biomedical Research Centre, Danish Innovation Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, TrygFonden

Detecting unidentified changes.

Does becoming aware of a change to a purely visual stimulus necessarily cause the observer to be able to identify or localise the change or can change detection occur in the absence of identification or localisation? Several theories of visual awareness stress that we are aware of more than just the few objects to which we attend. In particular, it is clear that to some extent we are also aware of the global properties of the scene, such as the mean luminance or the distribution of spatial frequencies. It follows that we may be able to detect a change to a visual scene by detecting a change to one or more of these global properties. However, detecting a change to global property may not supply us with enough information to accurately identify or localise which object in the scene has been changed. Thus, it may be possible to reliably detect the occurrence of changes without being able to identify or localise what has changed. Previous attempts to show that this can occur with natural images have produced mixed results. Here we use a novel analysis technique to provide additional evidence that changes can be detected in natural images without also being identified or localised. It is likely that this occurs by the observers monitoring the global properties of the scene

Reversing the endowment effect

When given a desirable item, people have a tendency to value this owned item more than an equally-desirable, unowned item. Conversely, when the endowed item is undesirable, in some circumstances people have a tendency to swap it for an equally undesirable item, a phenomenon known as the reversed endowment effect. The fact that the endowment effect can reverse for undesirable items has been taken as evidence against loss aversion being the underlying cause of the endowment effect. This study represents the first time that the reversed endowment effect has been observed for choices with real consequences. However, we find that the reversed endowment effect occurs only when participants' ability to compare the available choice options is limited. We further show that these endowment reversals can also be induced for choices between desirable options and removed for choices between undesirable options by manipulating the expectations participants have when making a choice. Finally, we show that our data, including endowment reversals, can in principle be explained by loss aversion