58 research outputs found
Previous attentional set can induce an attentional blink with task-irrelevant initial targets
Identification of a second target is often impaired by the requirement to process a prior target in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). This is termed the attentional blink. Even when the first target is task-irrelevant an attentional blink may occur providing this first target shares similar features with the second target (contingent capture). An RSVP experiment was undertaken to assess whether this first target can still cause an attentional blink when it did not require a response and did not share any features with the following target. The results revealed that such task-irrelevant targets can induce an attentional blink providing that they were task-relevant on a previous block of trials. This suggests that irrelevant focal stimuli can distract attention on the basis of a previous attentional set
How âSustainableâ are Post-disaster Measures? Lessons to Be Learned a Decade After the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean
Good vibrations, bad vibrations: Oscillatory brain activity in the attentional blink
The attentional blink (AB) is a deficit in reporting the second
(T2) of two targets (T1, T2) when presented in close temporal succession and
within a stream of distractor stimuli. The AB has received a great deal of
attention in the past two decades because it allows to study the mechanisms that
influence the rate and depth of information processing in various setups and
therefore provides an elegant way to study correlates of conscious perception in
supra-threshold stimuli. Recently evidence has accumulated suggesting that
oscillatory signals play a significant role in temporally coordinating
information between brain areas. This review focuses on studies looking into
oscillatory brain activity in the AB. The results of these studies indicate that
the AB is related to modulations in oscillatory brain activity in the theta,
alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands. These modulations are sometimes
restricted to a circumscribed brain area but more frequently include several
brain regions. They occur before targets are presented as well as after the
presentation of the targets. We will argue that the complexity of the findings
supports the idea that the AB is not the result of a processing impairment in
one particular process or brain area, but the consequence of a dynamic interplay
between several processes and/or parts of a neural network
Vulnerability and its discontents: the past, present, and future of climate change vulnerability research
The concept of vulnerability is well established in the climate change literature, underpinning significant research effort. The ability of vulnerability research to capture the complexities of climate-society dynamics has been increasingly questioned, however. In this paper, we identify, characterize, and evaluate concerns over the use of vulnerability approaches in the climate change field based on a review of peer-reviewed articles published since 1990 (n = 587). Seven concerns are identified: neglect of social drivers, promotion of a static understanding of human-environment interactions, vagueness about the concept of vulnerability, neglect of cross-scale interactions, passive and negative framing, limited influence on decision-making, and limited collaboration across disciplines. Examining each concern against trends in the literature, we find some of these concerns weakly justified, but others pose valid challenges to vulnerability research. Efforts to revitalize vulnerability research are needed, with priority areas including developing the next generation of empirical studies, catalyzing collaboration across disciplines to leverage and build on the strengths of divergent intellectual traditions involved in vulnerability research, and linking research to the practical realities of decision-making
Community variations in social vulnerability to Cascadia-related tsunamis in the U.S. Pacific Northwest
Reviewing the use of resilience concepts in forest sciences
Purpose of the review Resilience is a key concept to deal with an uncertain future in forestry. In recent years, it has received increasing attention from both research and practice. However, a common understanding of what resilience means in a forestry context, and how to operationalise it is lacking. Here, we conducted a systematic review of the recent forest science literature on resilience in the forestry context, synthesising how resilience is defined and assessed.
Recent findings Based on a detailed review of 255 studies, we analysed how the concepts of engineering resilience, ecological resilience, and social-ecological resilience are used in forest sciences. A clear majority of the studies applied the concept of engineering resilience, quantifying resilience as the recovery time after a disturbance. The two most used indicators for engineering resilience were basal area increment and vegetation cover, whereas ecological
resilience studies frequently focus on vegetation cover and tree density. In contrast, important social-ecological resilience indicators used in the literature are socio-economic diversity and stock of natural resources. In the context of global change, we expected an increase in studies adopting the more holistic social-ecological resilience concept, but this was not the observed trend. Summary Our analysis points to the nestedness of these three resilience concepts, suggesting that they are complementary rather than contradictory. It also means that the variety of resilience approaches does not need to be an obstacle for operationalisation of the concept. We provide guidance for choosing the most suitable resilience concept and indicators based on the management, disturbance and application context
Spatial quantification of community resilience in contexts where quantitative data are scarce: The case of Muzarabani district in Zimbabwe
There has been an upsurge in tools for measuring resilience of the past decade. Despite this progress, we argue, there are few studies focusing on the spatial quantification of resilience in the context of multiple hazards, particularly in developing countries. Placing a particular emphasis on the contribution of geography to resilience studies, this paper examines the spatial variation of community resilience to disasters in Muzarabani, Zimbabwe. Placeâspecific resilience variables are selected from the 2012 national census report to develop a disaster resilience index for Muzarabani district. A principal component analysis technique was used to analyse the overall and subcomponents of resilience to identify wards that needed policy intervention. Using the Geographical Information Systems tool to model the spatial variation of community resilience and its subcomponents, we found a geographic variation in community resilience across Muzarabani district, with the majority of the wards scoring low to below low levels of overall resilience. Although we view this study as being complementary to qualitative studies, it would appear quantifying and visualising resilience provide possible explanations and actions required for decisionâmakers to address the resilience gaps and disaster risk reduction broadly
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