The digital age project: strategies that enable older social housing residents to use the internet

Provides insights into the factors affecting technology adoption for older and disadvantaged people, and provides training and interface guidelines and a potential model for other public housing communities to become more digitally aware. Research Aims The experience of social housing communities in countries like the United Kingdom suggests that while access to digital infrastructure and equipment is important, access alone does not equate to digital inclusion. The aim of this research was two-fold, namely to: Understand the impact of access to and use of the internet, within a community of potentially vulnerable consumers; and, Determine the strategies that may assist people living in public housing communities to become more digitally aware and enable them to take advantage of online services such as health, government, news, shopping and methods of online communication. The research also sought to determine what benefits may flow from information technology skills to perceptions of social connectedness, self-efficacy, resilience, health and well-being. Given that people with low levels of computer literacy typically face greater risk of cognitive overload in attempting to learn new technologies, the principles and guidelines from Cognitive Load Theory were applied to training materials and activities to minimise cognitive load and thereby facilitate learning. The research was designed with a view to providing important insights into the factors affecting technology adoption for older and disadvantaged people, as well as providing training and interface guidelines and a potential model for other public housing communities to become more digitally aware

Correlated changes in perceptions of the gender and orientation of ambiguous biological motion figures

SummaryThe sensitivity of the mammalian visual system to biological motion cues has been shown to be general and acute [1–3]. Human observers, in particular, can deduce higher-order information, such as the orientation of a figure (which way it is facing), its gender, emotional state, and even personality traits, on the basis only of sparse motion cues. Even when the stimulus information is confined to point lights attached to the major joints of an actor (so-called point-light figures), observers can use information about the way the actor is moving to tell what they are doing, whether they are a male or female, and how they are feeling [4–6]. Here we report the novel finding that stimulus manipulations that made such walkers appear more female also had the effect of making the walkers appear more often as if they were walking away from rather than towards observers. Using frontal-view (or rear-view) point-light displays of human walkers, we asked observers to judge whether they seemed to be walking towards or away from the viewing position. Independent of their own gender, observers reliably reported those figures they perceived to be male as looking like they were approaching (as reported in [7]), but those they perceived to be female as walking away. Furthermore, figures perceived to be gender-neutral also appeared more often, although not exclusively, to be walking towards observers

Current trends in technology and society

The effects of technologies on societies in which they are developed define cultures. With that point in mind this book incorporates essays on current issues in technology and society and especially at points of intersection between both

Current trends in experimental and applied psychology

Psychology is a discipline with a rich and proud history of research, both pure and applied. With that point in mind this book is the first in a series that incorporates essays focused on current issues in both the laboratory and in the workplace

Possible neural substrates for binocular rivalry

Binocular rivalry is the perceptual consequence of dichoptic input which is not congruent between both visual inputs. There is some evidence, both theoretical and empirical, that the perception of binocular rivalry is mediated by interactions between binocular neurones, rather than by interactions between monocular neurones. This evidence suggests also a model of perception which predicts binocular rivalry as a consequence of normal interactions between binocular neurones in a retinotopic array. This model accounts for rivalry without postulating any additional interconnections beyond those already thought to exist between binocular neurones simply assumes an orderly mapping of tuning characteristics across groups of cells, as is typically observed in visual cortex. On the basis of this model, and findings already reported, it was hypothesised that binocular rivalry reflects extrastriate rather than area V1 processing (no process so far attributed to area V1 has yet been reported to be affected by binocular rivalry). It was hypothesised also that area V2 was the most likely area in which such processing first arises. Area V2 has been associated with the perception of 'purely subjective contours'. It has been shown that some cells in area V2 are tuned for such contours, which are characterised by the absence of Fourier components at the orientation of the perceived contour, while no cells in area V1 have been found to be similarly sensitive (von der Heydt and Peterhans 1989). This characteristic of area V2 neurones enables purely subjective contours to be used to test the two hypotheses described above. Real contour tilt aftereffects, which are thought to arise in area V1, are not affected by rivalry during their induction. If purely subjective contour tilt aftereffects (Paradiso, Shimojo and Nakayama 1989) are subject to the same types of processing as their real contour counterparts, as suggested by the rationale and model of von der Heydt and Peterhans (1989), interactions between subjective contour tilt aftereffects and binocular rivalry should indicate the role, if any, of area V2 in rivalry. It was found that purely subjective contour tilt aftereffects (Experiment One) and tilt illusions (Experiment Four) exhibit angular functions like those observed for real contour tilt aftereffects and illusions. Just as for real contour effects, these functions can be described in terms of direct effects (Experiment Two) and indirect effects (Experiment Three), suggesting purely subjective contours are processed as if they were real contours. Unlike real contour direct effects, purely subjective contour direct and indirect effects are reduced in magnitude by periods of rivalry during their induction (Experiment Five). In keeping with their suggested extrastriate locus (eg. Wenderoth, van der Zwan and Williams 1993), the magnitude of a real contour indirect effect is also reduced by periods of rivalry occurring during its induction (Experiment Six). These results suggest that rivalry does arise first in area V2. If this is true then complete interocular transfer of the purely subjective aftereffect, induced with or without rivalry, should occur because area V2 is almost exclusively binocular. This proved not to be the case, however, suggesting the ocular dominance observed in most binocular cells has to be taken into account in any explanation of rivalry (Experiment Seven). This was tested using real contours and found to be the case. These last results suggested also that rivalrous interactions occur between groups of binocular neurones only in extrastriate cortex (Experiment Eight). This hypothesis was tested by examining the effect of binocular rivalry on the duration of the plaid motion aftereffect, which is thought to arise no earlier than area MT, a visual cortical area which is also thought to be almost exclusively binocular. It was found that rivalry did reduce the duration of plaid motion aftereffects but not linear motion aftereffects, and that the impact of rivalry might be linked to plaid sensitive cells in area MT, although this last conclusion is tenuous (Experiments Nine and Ten). Finally, it was shown also that the magnitude of the reduction in duration of the aftereffect was proportional to the predominance of the plaid stimulus during rivalry, a finding which supports the mechanism of rivalry suggested by the binocular model. The results together suggest that binocular rivalry does arise through binocular interactions, but that such interactions cannot be attributed to a single cortical area. All groups of binocular neurones may be subject to the processes that ultimately give rise to the perception of rivalry, a conclusion which does not invalidate the binocular model of rivalry. This has some consequences for binocular vision, particularly stereopsis, which might occur qualitatively during binocular rivalry

Local and global mechanisms of one and two dimensional orientation illusions

One-dimensional (1-D) orientation illusions induced on a test grating by a tilted and-surrounding 1-D inducing grating have a well-known angular function that exhibits both repulsion and attraction effects. Two-dimensional (2-D) orientation illusions are those induced on a test gratingby 2-D image modulation, such as a pair of superimposed inducing gratings at different orientations, usually orthogonal (a plaid). Given the known angular functions induced by the plaid component gratings, two hypotheses were developed that predicted different plaid-induced illusion functions. Hypothesis 1 states that the 1-D component-induced effects simply add linearly; Hypothesis 2 states that there is an additional mechanism that responds to the virtual axes of mirror symmetry of the plaid and adds to the effect. The data oftwo experiments were consistent with the predictions from the second hypothesis but not the first. Possible neural substrates of mechanisms that extract axes of symmetry are discussed; it is suggested that such global symmetry axes may underlie the perceived orientation of complex shape