Tactile Change Blindness Induced by Tactile and Visual Distractors

Change blindness studies have revealed people's inability to detect changes between two consecutively presented scenes when they are separated by a distractor. This failure has been reported within vision, audition, and touch but also crossmodally. In particular, participants' performance in detecting changes in position between two tactile scenes is impaired not only when a tactile mask is introduced between the two to-be-compared displays but also when a visual mask is used instead. Interestingly, with similar procedure, there is no effect of auditory masks on a tactile task or of tactile masks on a visual task (Auvray et al., 2007, 2008; Gallace et al., 2006). Such crossmodal change blindness effect also occurs when participants perform a different task. In a recent experiment, participants had to detect changes in the frequency of presentation of tactile stimuli. The two to-be-compared sequences of three tactile stimuli were presented either at a same or at a different rate. They were presented either consecutively, separated by an empty interval, a tactile, visual, or auditory mask. The visual and tactile masks significantly impaired participants' performance whereas the auditory mask had no effect on performance. These findings are discussed in relation to the crossmodal nature of attention

a touch of gastronomy

The last few years have seen a rapid growth of research interest in the study of the role of touch and oral-somatosensation in the experience of eating and drinking. The various ways in which the sense of touch can be used to enhance the diner's/consumer's experience in both everyday eating and drinking, as well as in the context of experiential dining, is also gaining ever more attention from professionals in a variety of disciplines. In this review, we highlight the importance that everything that we perceive via the sense of touch, from the weight of the menu to the feel of the tablecloth, tableware, cutlery, and even the food itself, has on our eating experience and food and beverage-related behaviors. Everything we feel, be it the weight, the temperature, or the texture of whatever we happen to come across while eating appears to matter. In addition, we also highlight the relevance of oral-somatosensory cues to our sensory and hedonic perception of foods. A number of examples are given to demonstrate some of the many ways in which chefs, designers, and artists are now exploiting these findings in order to change and, hopefully, to enhance the diner's eating experience in innovative ways

An educational experience in ancient Rome to evaluate the impact of virtual reality on human learning processes

Immersive Virtual Reality technology has recently gained significant attention and is expanding its applications to various fields. It also has many advantages in education, as it allows to both simplify the explanation of complex topics through their visualization, and explore lost or unreachable environments. To evaluate the impact of immersive experiences on learning outcomes we developed an educational experience that lets users visit an ancient Roman Domus and provides information about daily life in Roman times. We designed a between-subjects data collection to investigate learning ratio, user experience, and cybersickness of participants through anonymous questionnaires. We collected 76 responses of participants (18–35 y.o.) divided into three conditions: a Immersive Virtual Reality experience, a slide-based lecture and a 2D desktop-based experience. Our results show that the virtual reality experience is considered more engaging and as effective as more traditional 2D and slide-based experiences in terms of learning

Can People with Chronic Neck Pain Recognize Their Own Digital Pain Drawing?

Background: Although the reliability of pain drawings (PDs) has been confirmed in people with chronic pain, there is a lack of evidence about the validity of the PD, that is, does the PD accurately represent the pain experience of the patient? Objectives: We investigate whether people with chronic neck pain (CNP) can recognize their own PD to support the validity of the PD in reporting the experience of pain. Moreover, we examined the association between their ability to recognize their own PD with their levels of pain intensity and disability and extent of psychosocial and somatic features. Study Design: Experimental. Setting: University Laboratory. Methods: Individuals with CNP completed their PD on a digital body chart, which was then automatically modified with specific dimensions using a novel software, providing an objective range of distortion and eliminating errors, which could potentially occur in manually controlled visual-subjective based methods. Following a 10-minute break listening to music, a series of 20 PDs were presented to each patient in a random order, with only 2 being their original PD. For each PD, the patients rated its likeliness to their own original PD on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 representing “this is my pain.” Results: Overall, the patients rated their original PD with a median score of 92% similarity, followed by 91.8% and 89.5% similarity when presented with a PD scaled down to 75% and scaled up by 150% of the original size, respectively; these scores were not significantly different to the ratings given for their original PD. The PD with horizontal translation by 40 pixels (8%) and vertical translation by 70 pixels (12.8%) were rated as the most dissimilar to their original PD; these scores were significantly different to their original PD scores. The Spearman correlation coefficient revealed a significant negative association between their ability to recognize their original PD and their Modified Somatic Perceptions Questionnaire scores. Limitations: The patients in the study presented with relatively mild CNP, and the results may not be generalized to those with more severe symptoms. Conclusions: People with CNP are generally able to identify their own PD but that their ability to recognize their original PD is negatively correlated with the extent of somatic awareness

Influencia del manejo sobre la actividad biológica y proporción de agregados en molisoles y entisoles de la región semiárida pampeana

El uso de rotaciones con diversos cultivos causa cambios en el tamaño, en la distribución y en la estabilidad de los agregados y son causales de la relación entre materia orgánica, actividad microbiológica y estabilidad de los agregados lo cual han sido evidenciado en numerosos estudios. Es por ello que se realizó este trabajo, con el objetivo de evaluar el grado de influencia que la composición granulométrica y el manejo poseen sobre la distribución de agregados, el contenido de carbono y de nitrógeno, y la producción de CO2 de las distintas fracciones de agregados, de un suelo Ustipsament típico y un suelo Haplustol éntico con dos manejos contrastantes: cultivos anuales continuos y pastura perenne. Se determinó la distribución de agregados y en cada fracción se midió respiración microbiana, contenido de carbono y nitrógeno. Se encontró que el suelo U posee mayor proporción de agregados ≤ 1mm para ambos manejos. En el suelo H, los agregados de menor diámetro se encontraron en mayor porcentaje en el manejo C, mientras que para el manejo con P los más abundantes fueron la fracción de mayor tamaño. En el suelo U, la mayor actividad respiratoria, se encontró en los agregados de 1-4 mm, mientras que en el suelo H, fue similar para los 3 tamaños de agregados. No se encontraron diferencias significativas en la producción de CO2 entre manejos en los dos suelos. El manejo con C en ambos suelos perdió CO en los tres tamaños de agregados con respecto al manejo con P. Se podría interpretar que el efecto del manejo con C con respecto al P, ha sido más perjudicial en el suelo H que en el suelo U, y que los agregados intermedios se mantienen más estables que los más grandes; además podría decirse que el suelo H resultaría ser un sistema más conservacionista debido a que a pesar de tener mayor contenido de CO y N la respiración del mismo fue menor, lo que evidencia menores pérdidas de CO por parte de la biomasa microbiana