Examination of Cybersickness in Virtual Reality: The Role of Individual Differences, Effects on Cognitive Functions & Motor Skills, and Intensity Differences During and After Immersion

Background: Given that VR is applied in multiple domains, understanding the effects of cyber-sickness on human cognition and motor skills and the factors contributing to cybersickness gains urgency. This study aimed to explore the predictors of cybersickness and its interplay with cognitive and motor skills. Methods: 30 participants, 20-45 years old, completed the MSSQ and the CSQ-VR, and were immersed in VR. During immersion, they were exposed to a roller coaster ride. Before and after the ride, participants responded to CSQ-VR and performed VR-based cognitive and psychomotor tasks. Post-VR session, participants completed the CSQ-VR again. Results: Motion sickness susceptibility, during adulthood, was the most prominent predictor of cybersickness. Pupil dilation emerged as a significant predictor of cybersickness. Experience in videogaming was a significant predictor of both cybersickness and cognitive/motor functions. Cybersickness negatively affected visuospatial working memory and psychomotor skills. Overall cybersickness', nausea and vestibular symptoms' intensities significantly decreased after removing the VR headset. Conclusions: In order of importance, motion sickness susceptibility and gaming experience are significant predictors of cybersickness. Pupil dilation appears as a cybersickness' biomarker. Cybersickness negatively affects visuospatial working memory and psychomotor skills. Cybersickness and its effects on performance should be examined during and not after immersion.Comment: 32 Pages, 4 figures, 14 Tables. The article has been submitted to Virtual Worlds Journa

Teacher Training in Technology Based on their Psychological Characteristics: Methods of Group Formation and Assessment

AbstractTeachers, despite adequate training in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), appear to be reluctant to incorporate ICT into their teaching practices. This is an issue of major importance, not only for educational but also for career development reasons, since the acquisition of new skills broadens a professional's career identity and enriches his/her career opportunities. Research so far has tried to explore the factors related to teacher's reluctance and personality seems to be one of them. The paper presents the first stage of an extended research study on the specific field and discusses the research methodology used to explore personality traits, as well as other psychological characteristics, such as self-efficacy related to ICT use, and anxiety and attitudes towards ICT use. The sample consisted of trainee teachers who were divided into groups, according to their personality characteristics, based on the five-factor personality model of Costa and McCrae (1992). The instruments that were constructed for the present study and were used for the assessment of in-group cooperation and teacher's intention for ICT adoption in teaching are presented and discussed

Trainee Teachers’ Intention to Incorporating ICT Use into Teaching Practice in Relation to their Psychological Characteristics: The Case of Group-based Intervention

AbstractPersonality traits and other psychological variables have been found to influence the use of technology as well as group functioning and effectiveness. In this study it is hypothesized that the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality traits and psychological variables are related to teachers’ willingness to incorporate ICT into their teaching practices, as well as to within group interactions and outcome. The study employs a pre- and post- intervention research design, consisted of a training program in ICT in Education offered to a sample of 109 undergraduate trainee teachers which was divided into experimental (homogenous & heterogeneous) and control groups based on their personality traits and psychological characteristics, in order to examine the significance of these traits’ configuration in work groups, their intention to incorporate ICT into their future teaching practice and the quality of within group cooperation. Preliminary results revealed individual differences concerning gender and anxiety as well as group differences in favour of heterogeneous groups

Detecting strengths and weaknesses in learning mathematics through a model classifying mathematical skills

Through a review of the literature on mathematical learning disabilities (MLD) and low achievement in mathematics (LA) we have proposed a model classifying mathematical skills involved in learning mathematics into four domains (Core number, Memory, Reasoning, and Visual-spatial). In this paper we present a new experimental computer-based battery of mathematical tasks designed to elicit abilities from each domain, that was administered to a sample of 165 typical population 5th and 6th grade students (MLD=9 and LA=17). Explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted on the data obtained, together with K-means cluster analysis. Results indicated strong evidence for supporting the solidity of the model, and clustered the population into six distinguishable performance groups with the MLD and LA students distributed within five of the clusters. These findings support the hypothesis that difficulties in learning mathematics can have multiple origins and provide a means for sketching students’ mathematical learning profiles

Craniofacial shape in patients with beta thalassemia: A morphometric analysis

Σκοπός: H αξιολόγηση με μορφομετρική προσέγγιση του σχήματος του κρανιοπροσωπικού συμπλέγματος σε ασθενείς με β-θαλασσαιμία και η σύγκριση τους με αντίστοιχους ασθενείς ελέγχου.Υλικό και μεθοδολογία: Η ομάδα των ασθενών με β-θαλασσαιμία είχε 40 ασθενείς (24 άνδρες, 16 γυναίκες). Σε κάθε ασθενή με β-θαλασσαιμία έγινε αντιστοίχιση 2 ασθενών ελέγχου με κριτήριο το φύλο και την ηλικία (συνολικά 80 άτομα ελέγχου). Για κάθε ασθενή έγινε λήψη πλάγιας κεφαλομετρικής ακτινογραφίας (συνολικά 120 ακτινογραφίες). Σε κάθε ακτινογραφία πραγματοποιήθηκε ιχνογράφηση 15 καμπύλων και 127 ημισημείων. Στα παραπάνω έγινε αλληλεπίθεση Προκρούστη και Ανάλυση Κύριων Παραγόντων προκειμένου να περιγραφεί η ποικιλομορφία του σχήματος της βάσης του κρανίου, του μέσου τριτημορίου του προσώπου, της κάτω γνάθου και του κρανιοπροσωπικού συμπλέγματος για κάθε φύλο ξεχωριστά. Υπολογισμός σφάλματος έγινε με επανάληψη της ψηφιοποίησης και των μετρήσεων σε 20 ακτινογραφίες από δύο ερευνητές.Αποτελέσματα: Η ομάδα της β-θαλασσαιμίας είχε διαφορά στο σχήμα του κρανιοπροσωπικού συμπλέγματος και για τα δύο φύλα (P<0,001). Οι υπό εξέταση ομάδες διαχωρίζονταν μεταξύ τους στο σχηματοχώρο. Οι κυριότερες διαφορές των ασθενών με β-θαλασσαιμία περιλάμβαναν μικρότερο σώμα της κάτω γνάθου, προβολή του μέσου τριτημορίου του προσώπου και μειωμένο οπίσθιο κάτω ύψος προσώπου. Τα παραπάνω ευρήματα συμφωνούν με τις ήδη υπάρχουσες παρατηρήσεις που βρίσκονται στη βιβλιογραφία.Συμπεράσματα: Η β-θαλασσαιμία προκαλεί σημαντικές μεταβολές στο κρανιοπροσωπικό σύμπλεγμα. Το σχήμα του προσώπου των ασθενών αυτών έχει την τάση να εμφανίζεται περισσότερο κυρτό και με πιο αποκλίνοντα σκελετικά επίπεδα σε σχέση με αυτό του φυσιολογικού πληθυσμού.AIM: To morphometrically evaluate the shape of the craniofacial complex of patients with betathalassemia and compare it with matched controls.MATERIALS AND METHOD: Beta thalassemia group consisted of 40 patients (16 females, 24 males). Each patient was matched on age and gender to two controls (n=80 controls). A total of 120 lateral cephalometric radiographs were collected, one from each patient, digitized and traced with 15 curves and 127 semi-landmarks. These landmarks were subjected to Procrustes superimposition and principal component analysis in order to describe shape variability of the cranial base, maxilla and mandible, as well as of the entire craniofacial complex for each sex. Error of the method was evaluated using both an intra-and inter observer approach.RESULTS: The beta thalassemia group was significantly different in shape to the control group for both sexes (P<0.001). The groups were clearly separated in shape space. The main differences were related to smaller mandibular body for the thalassemia group, midface protrusion and decrease in posterior face height. These shape differences are in accordance with the well known clinical and radiological characteristics of this disease

Neural Sign Reenactor: Deep Photorealistic Sign Language Retargeting

In this paper, we introduce a neural rendering pipeline for transferring the facial expressions, head pose, and body movements of one person in a source video to another in a target video. We apply our method to the challenging case of Sign Language videos: given a source video of a sign language user, we can faithfully transfer the performed manual (e.g., handshape, palm orientation, movement, location) and non-manual (e.g., eye gaze, facial expressions, mouth patterns, head, and body movements) signs to a target video in a photo-realistic manner. Our method can be used for Sign Language Anonymization, Sign Language Production (synthesis module), as well as for reenacting other types of full body activities (dancing, acting performance, exercising, etc.). We conduct detailed qualitative and quantitative evaluations and comparisons, which demonstrate the particularly promising and realistic results that we obtain and the advantages of our method over existing approaches.Comment: Accepted at AI4CC Workshop at CVPR 202

Validation of the Gaming Skills Questionnaire: Gaming Skills Effects on Cognitive and Affective Functioning in Adolescence

Given the widespread popularity of videogames, research attempted to assess their effects on cognitive and affective abilities, especially in children and adolescents. Despite numerous correlational studies, robust evidence on the causal relationship between videogames and cognition remains scarce, hindered by the absence of a comprehensive assessment tool for gaming skills across various genres. In a sample of 347 adolescents, this study aimed to develop and validate the Gaming Skill Questionnaire (GSQ) and assess the impact of gaming skills in six different genres (sport, first-person shooters, role-playing games, action-adventure, strategy, and puzzle games) on cognitive and affective abilities of adolescents. The GSQ exhibited strong reliability and validity, highlighting its potential as a valuable tool. Gaming skills positively affected executive function, memory, overall cognition, cognitive flexibility, and emotion recognition, except for empathy. Various game genres had different effects on cognitive and affective abilities, with verbal fluency influenced mainly by sports, executive functions by action, strategy, and puzzle, and emotion recognition positively impacted by action and puzzle but negatively by sports and strategy games. Both age and gaming skills influenced cognitive flexibility, with gaming having a greater effect. These intriguing genre-specific effects on cognitive and affective functioning postulate further research with GSQ’s contribution

Visual Speech-Aware Perceptual 3D Facial Expression Reconstruction from Videos

The recent state of the art on monocular 3D face reconstruction from image data has made some impressive advancements, thanks to the advent of Deep Learning. However, it has mostly focused on input coming from a single RGB image, overlooking the following important factors: a) Nowadays, the vast majority of facial image data of interest do not originate from single images but rather from videos, which contain rich dynamic information. b) Furthermore, these videos typically capture individuals in some form of verbal communication (public talks, teleconferences, audiovisual human-computer interactions, interviews, monologues/dialogues in movies, etc). When existing 3D face reconstruction methods are applied in such videos, the artifacts in the reconstruction of the shape and motion of the mouth area are often severe, since they do not match well with the speech audio. To overcome the aforementioned limitations, we present the first method for visual speech-aware perceptual reconstruction of 3D mouth expressions. We do this by proposing a "lipread" loss, which guides the fitting process so that the elicited perception from the 3D reconstructed talking head resembles that of the original video footage. We demonstrate that, interestingly, the lipread loss is better suited for 3D reconstruction of mouth movements compared to traditional landmark losses, and even direct 3D supervision. Furthermore, the devised method does not rely on any text transcriptions or corresponding audio, rendering it ideal for training in unlabeled datasets. We verify the efficiency of our method through exhaustive objective evaluations on three large-scale datasets, as well as subjective evaluation with two web-based user studies

Inversion from Audiovisual Speech to Articulatory Information by Exploiting Multimodal Data

International audienceWe present an inversion framework to identify speech production properties from audiovisual information. Our system is built on a multimodal articulatory dataset comprising ultrasound, X-ray, magnetic resonance images as well as audio and stereovisual recordings of the speaker. Visual information is captured via stereovision while the vocal tract state is represented by a properly trained articulatory model. Inversion is based on an adaptive piecewise linear approximation of the audiovisualto- articulation mapping. The presented system can recover the hidden vocal tract shapes and may serve as a basis for a more widely applicable inversion setup