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Introduction: Data from several areas of public health (e.g., harmful alcohol and tobacco) are consistent with the assertion that children’s exposure to advertising strategies increases intention to consume such products. Most studies have measured self-rated impact of gambling advertising using questionnaires. Given that gambling advertisements come in different forms such as print media/television advertising and contain variable content, it is difficult to understand using subjective measures which aspects of the gambling advertisements increase craving and desire to trigger a gambling session. In the present study, we applied a novel data-driven methodology that directly tracks eye movements to reveal attentional biases towards gambling adverts and promotions by examining differences in young people’s eye gaze behaviour when watching gambling and non-gambling (control) moving adverts. Method: A total of 98 (16–18 years old) children who self-identify as having a low or high craving to gambling watched gambling and non-gambling (control) television adverts, while their eye movements were recorded. Results: The results show that the data-driven method can isolate video clips that best distinguish people on the low-high craving spectrum, reveal the type of each video clip with the largest group differences, and accurately predict young people’s gambling craving on the basis of eye movement patterns. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that young people’s craving for gambling can be predicted based on their eye movements to video clips of gambling advertisements and that certain features of gambling advertisements may be more appealing to some group of viewers, particularly those with high craving for gambling.

It is of great significance for safe driving to study drivers' eye movement and driving operation behavior when they encounter other road users violating traffic rules. The underlying reason is that most drivers are unable to process the unexpected visual stimulation, which is more likely to lead to driving accidents, especially in a hybrid situation. In this study, a driving simulator is used to design driving scenarios and study the driving performance of drivers with different driving experiences when other road users violate traffic rules. The experimental results show that some novice drivers ignore the position of their own vehicle when they encounter traffic violations which will lead to the collision with other road users. Moreover, some novice drivers can only perform one of the operations between steering and braking to avoid collision in these emergent situations. They cannot reasonably combine braking and steering to complete emergency driving operations like experienced drivers. Finally, when the driving difficulty increases, experienced drivers spend less time looking and more time scanning their surroundings to ensure that they can cope with the more complex driving environment while novice drivers do the opposite. This study reveals the difference between novices and experienced drivers, which paves a useful reference for the future advanced driving assistance system.

The judgment of female body appearance has been reported to be affected by a range of internal (e.g., viewers’ sexual cognition) and external factors (e.g., viewed clothing type and colour). This eye-tracking study aimed to complement previous research by examining the effect of facial expression on female body perception and associated body-viewing gaze behaviour. We presented female body images of Caucasian avatars in a continuum of common dress sizes posing seven basic facial expressions (neutral, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust), and asked both male and female participants to rate the perceived body attractiveness and body size. The analysis revealed an evident modulatory role of avatar facial expressions on body attractiveness and body size ratings, but not on the amount of viewing time directed at individual body features. Specifically, happy and angry avatars attracted the highest and lowest body attractiveness ratings, respectively, and fearful and surprised avatars tended to be rated slimmer. Interestingly, the impact of facial expression on female body assessment was not further influenced by viewers’ gender, suggesting a ‘universal’ role of common facial expressions in modifying the perception of female body appearance.

IntroductionTo determine men's body ideals and the factors that influence these choices, this study used a matrix of computer generated (CG) male bodies (based on an analysis of 3D scanned real bodies) which independently varied in fat and muscle content.MethodsTwo hundred and fifty-eight male participants completed a range of psychometric measures to index body concerns and body ideal internalization and then chose the CG body that best reflected their own current body, as well as the body that reflected their personal ideal. A subset of participants was then retested to check that these judgements were stable over time.ResultsWhile judgements of the ideal body seem to be influenced by a shared appearance ideal, the degree to which this ideal was internalized showed significant variability between participants. The effect of this internalization was reflected in the difference between the estimated current body and the ideal.DiscussionHigher internalization led to a preference for higher muscle and lower fat content. This preference was most marked for fat content, although reducing adiposity also made the underlying musculature more salient. Additionally, the ideal body composition was modulated by the composition the participant believed his current body had (i.e., it seemed that a participant's ideal body was anchored by what they believed to be their current body and what change was possible from this starting point).

Kruger and Dunning (1999) described a metacognitive bias in which insight into performance is linked to competence: poorer performers are less aware of their mistakes than better performers. Competence-based insight has been argued to apply generally across task domains, including a recent report investigating social cognition using a variety of face-matching tasks. Problematically, serious statistical and methodological criticisms have been directed against the traditional method of analysis used by researchers in this field. Here, we further illustrate these issues and investigate new sources of insight within unfamiliar face matching. Over two experiments (total N = 1077), where Experiment 2 was a preregistered replication of the key findings from Experiment 1, we found that insight into performance was multi-faceted. Participants demonstrated insight which was not based on competence, in the form of accurate updating of estimated performance. We also found evidence of insight which was based on competence: the difference in confidence on correct versus incorrect trials increased with competence. By providing ways that we can move beyond problematic, traditional approaches, we have begun to reveal a more realistic story regarding the nature of insight into face perception.

Face mask is now a common feature in our social environment. Although face covering reduces our ability to recognize other's face identity and facial expressions, little is known about its impact on the formation of first impressions from faces. In two online experiments, we presented unfamiliar faces displaying neutral expressions with and without face masks, and participants rated the perceived approachableness, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and dominance from each face on a 9-point scale. Their anxiety levels were measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Social Interaction Anxiety Scale. In comparison with mask-off condition, wearing face masks (mask-on) significantly increased the perceived approachableness and trustworthiness ratings, but showed little impact on increasing attractiveness or decreasing dominance ratings. Furthermore, both trait and state anxiety scores were negatively correlated with approachableness and trustworthiness ratings in both mask-off and mask-on conditions. Social anxiety scores, on the other hand, were negatively correlated with approachableness but not with trustworthiness ratings. It seems that the presence of a face mask can alter our first impressions of strangers. Although the ratings for approachableness, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and dominance were positively correlated, they appeared to be distinct constructs that were differentially influenced by face coverings and participants’ anxiety types and levels.

We used attractiveness judgements as a proxy to visualize the ideal female and male body for male and female participants and investigated how individual differences in the internalization of cultural ideals influence these representations. In the first of two studies, male and female participants judged the attractiveness of 242 male and female computer-generated bodies which varied independently in muscle and adipose. This allowed us to map changes in attractiveness across the complete body composition space, revealing single peaks for the attractiveness of both men and women. In the second study, we asked our participants to choose the most attractive male and female bodies in a method of adjustment task in which they could independently vary muscle and adipose to create the most attractive body. We asked whether individual differences in internalization of cultural ideals, drive for muscularity, eating disorder symptomatology and depressive symptoms could systematically shift the location of peak attractiveness in body composition space. We found a clear preference by both genders for a male body with high muscle and low adipose, and a toned, low adipose female body. The degree of internalization of cultural ideals predicted large individual differences in the composition of the most attractive bodies.

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) hold a unique position in human society, particularly in their role as social companions; as such, it is important to understand their emotional lives. There has been growing interest in studying behavioural biases in dogs as indirect markers (reflecting lateralized brain activity) of their emotional states. In this paper, we not only review the previous literature on emotion-related behavioural lateralization in dogs, but also propose and apply the concept of evidential weight to previous research. This allows us to examine different hypotheses about emotion-related brain asymmetries (i.e., Right-Hemisphere-, Valence-, Approach-Withdrawal-Hypothesis) on the basis of a “likelihood-ist” concept of evidence. We argue that previous studies have not been able to discriminate well between competing hypotheses and tended to focus on confirmation bias than critically assess different hypotheses; as such there is a strong case for more systematic investigation to pull these theories apart. We present the areas for future research and explain their importance for understanding the emotional lives of dogs.

Face images depicting the same individual can differ substantially from one another. Ecological variation in pose, expression, lighting, and other sources of appearance variability complicates the recognition and matching of unfamiliar faces, but acquired familiarity leads to the ability to cope with these challenges. Among the many ways that face of the same individual can vary, some images are judged to be better likenesses of familiar individuals than others. Simply put, these images look more like the individual under consideration than others. But what does it mean for an image to be a better likeness than another? Does likeness entail typicality, or is it something distinct from this? We examined the relationship between the likeness of face images and the similarity of those images to average images of target individuals using a set of famous faces selected for reciprocal familiarity/unfamiliarity across US and UK participants. We found that though likeness judgments are correlated with similarity-to-prototype judgments made by both familiar and unfamiliar participants, this correlation was smaller than the correlation between similarity judgments made by different participant groups. This implies that while familiarity weakens the relationship between likeness and similarity-to-prototype judgments, it does not change similarity-to-prototype judgments to the same degree.

A wealth of studies have shown that humans are remarkably poor at determining whether two face images show the same person or not (face matching). Given the prevalence of photo-ID, and the fact that people employed to check photo-ID are typically unfamiliar with the person pictured, there is a need to improve unfamiliar face matching accuracy. One method of improvement is to have participants complete the task in a pair, which results in subsequent improvements in the low performer (“the pairs training effect”). Here, we sought to replicate the original finding, to test the longevity of the pairs training effect, and to shed light on the potential underlying mechanisms. In two experiments, we replicated the pairs training effect and showed it is maintained after a delay (Experiment 1). We found no differences between high and low performers in confidence (Experiment 1) or response times (Experiment 2), and the content of the pairs’ discussions (Experiment 2) did not explain the results. The pairs training effect in unfamiliar face matching is robust, but the mechanisms underlying the effects remain as yet unexplained.

Virtual Reality (VR) experienced through head-mounted displays often leads to vection, discomfort and sway in the user. This study investigated the effect of motion direction and eccentricity on these three phenomena using optic flow patterns displayed using the Valve Index. Visual motion stimuli were presented in the centre, periphery or far periphery and moved either in depth (back and forth) or laterally (left and right). Overall vection was stronger for motion in depth compared to lateral motion. Additionally, eccentricity primarily affected stimuli moving in depth with stronger vection for more peripherally presented motion patterns compared to more central ones. Motion direction affected the various aspects of VR sickness differently and modulated the effect of eccentricity on VR sickness. For stimuli moving in depth far peripheral presentation caused more discomfort, whereas for lateral motion the central stimuli caused more discomfort. Stimuli moving in depth led to more head movements in the anterior–posterior direction when the entire visual field was stimulated. Observers demonstrated more head movements in the anterior–posterior direction compared to the medio-lateral direction throughout the entire experiment independent of motion direction or eccentricity of the presented moving stimulus. Head movements were elicited on the same plane as the moving stimulus only for stimuli moving in depth covering the entire visual field. A correlation showed a positive relationship between dizziness and vection duration and between general discomfort and sway. Identifying where in the visual field motion presented to an individual causes the least amount of VR sickness without losing vection and presence can guide development for Virtual Reality games, training and treatment programmes.

The correct interpretation of an animal’s emotional state is crucial for successful human–animal interaction. When studying dog and cat emotional expressions, a key source of information is the pet owner, given the extensive interactions they have had with their pets. In this online survey we asked 438 owners whether their dogs and/or cats could express 22 different primary and secondary emotions, and to indicate the behavioral cues they relied upon to identify those expressed emotions. Overall, more emotions were reported in dogs compared to cats, both from owners that owned just one species and those that owned both. Although owners reported a comparable set of sources of behavioral cues (e.g., body posture, facial expression, and head posture) for dogs and cats in expressing the same emotion, distinct combinations tended to be associated with specific emotions in both cats and dogs. Furthermore, the number of emotions reported by dog owners was positively correlated with their personal experience with dogs but negatively correlated with their professional experience. The number of emotions reported in cats was higher in cat-only households compared to those that also owned dogs. These results provide a fertile ground for further empirical investigation of the emotional expressions of dogs and cats, aimed at validating specific emotions in these species.

Ironic enjoyment occurs when people enjoy music despite or because of it being evaluated as bad. Although initial qualitative results suggest that this phenomenon fulfills a variety of self-regulatory functions that are also found in enjoyed music, to date no research has experimentally tested how important these functions are in ironically enjoyed music, in comparison to naturally enjoyed music. In two between-subjects experiments, participants ( N = 216 and N = 143) were instructed to think back to a recent occasion in which they listened to a piece of music which they either enjoyed ironically or enjoyed naturally. They then answered questions on the effects this had on them (Studies 1 and 2) and on the subjective qualities of the music (Study 2). The results suggested that ironically enjoyed music had less effect on personal identification and on managing positive or negative moods and was also appreciated less and judged as less novel than naturally enjoyed music. Differences in mood-management functions were associated with lower levels of subjective qualities of ironically enjoyed music, especially appreciation. Novelty was especially related to positive mood enhancement for ironically enjoyed music. Participants mentioned humor as an additional function of ironically enjoyed music listening.

Deciding whether two different face photographs or voice samples are from the same person represent fundamental challenges within applied settings. To date, most research has focussed on average performance in these tests, failing to consider individual differences and within‐person consistency in responses. Here, participants completed the same face (Experiment 1) or voice matching test (Experiment 2) on two separate occasions, allowing comparison of overall accuracy across the two timepoints as well as consistency in trial‐level responses. In both experiments, participants were highly consistent in their performances. In addition, we demonstrated a large association between consistency and accuracy, with the most accurate participants also tending to be the most consistent. This is an important result for applied settings in which organisational groups of super‐matchers are deployed in real‐world contexts. Being able to reliably identify these high performers based upon only a single test informs regarding recruitment for law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Approximately half the population have experienced a lucid dream. Yet, it is not well understood how an individual realises they are dreaming (i.e. lucid insight). A few studies suggest it can be triggered by a nightmare, or by the identification of inconsistencies/dream-like qualities/peculiarities. The present study aimed to produce a detailed typology of lucidity triggers to inform consideration of the nature of associated thought processes. 91 lucid dreamers were identified in an undergraduate sample of 148. Lucid dreamers were asked to describe what it was, if anything, that had made them realise they were dreaming. Thematic analysis of responses extracted evidence of four overarching triggers consistent with previous research: identification of an abnormality, identification of a dream-like quality, an emotionally-arousing dream event, and miscellaneous. It was uniquely identified that ‘abnormalities’ within the dream were those inconsistent with waking knowledge rather than with the accompanying dream content. Novel triggers were identified that were classifiable as subthemes under the previously-identified triggers, and triggers co-occurred in a third of cases. Novel triggers included ‘deja reve’, the feeling that one has dreamt the experience before, as well as ‘self-comfort/denial’ involving an emotionally-driven denial of the reality of a distressing dream. Nightmare-induced lucidity appeared to arise via qualitatively diverse paths: via self-comfort/denial and/or via the identification of abnormalities/dream-like qualities. The nature of the triggers indicates that higher-order cognition can precede, and promote, lucid insight. This sheds light on a key theoretical issue of whether lucid insight is a pre-requisite for the re-emergence of higher-order cognition. Keywords: lucid dreaming, lucidity, nightmares, higher-order cognition, phenomenology.

The current “deep learning + large-scale data + strong supervised labeling” technology framework of collision avoidance for ground robots and aerial drones is becoming saturated. Its development gradually faces challenges from real open-scene applications, including small data, weak annotation, and cross-scene. Inspired by the neural structure and processes underlying human cognition (e.g., human visual, auditory, and tactile systems) and the knowledge learned from daily driving tasks, such as, a high-level cognitive system is developed for integrating collision sensing and collision avoidance. This bio-inspired cognitive approach takes the advantages of good robustness, high self-adaptability, and low computation consumption in practical driving scenes.

Investigations of face identification have typically focussed on matching faces to photographic IDs. Few researchers have considered the task of searching for a face in a crowd. In Experiment 1, we created the Chokepoint Search Test to simulate real‐time search for a target. Performance on this test was poor (39% accuracy) and showed moderate associations with tests of face matching and memory. In addition, trial‐level confidence predicted accuracy, and for those participants who were previously familiar with one or more targets, higher familiarity was associated with increased accuracy. In Experiment 2, we found improvements in performance on the test when three recent images of the target, but not three social media images, were displayed during searches. Taken together, our results highlight the difficulties inherent in real‐time searching for faces, with important implications for those security personnel who carry out this task on a daily basis.

Objective Tests of theories of mate choice often rely on data gathered in White, industrialised samples and this is especially the case for studies of facial attraction. Our understanding of preferences for sexual dimorphism is currently in flux and a number of hypotheses require testing in more diverse participant samples. The current study uses opportunistically gathered facial dimorphism preference data from 271 participants in rural Nicaragua, and 40 from the national capital Managua. We assess pre-registered hypotheses drawn from sexual selection theory, and from more recent approaches which consider the impacts of economic development and cultural ‘modernisation’ on mate preferences. Methods Participants verbally reported demographic data, and indicated preferences for five male and five female pairs of faces manipulated to differ in sexually dimorphic facial structure based on a sample of Salvadoran individuals. Results While urban participants showed a preference for more feminine female faces, this preference was not evident in the rural participants. Neither urban nor rural participants showed any directional preference for masculinised/feminised male faces. Furthermore, there was no support for any other pre-registered hypothesis. Conclusions Our results are consistent with previous studies showing no interest in facial dimorphism in less globally-acculturated, or market integrated, populations. Together, this suggests that while facial dimorphism may be subject to systematically varying preferences amongst some low-fertility, industrialised populations, it is not a feature which is likely to have been important in ancestral populations. We call for further work attempting to replicate well known mate choice phenomena in more diverse samples.

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. Emotions play an important role in overeating, yet there is little research looking at practical strategies to reduce overeating in response to a negative mood. In three different experimental studies, we tested if exposure to music can reduce food consumption in a negative mood. Female undergraduates (N = 120-121 in each study) completed a measure of emotional eating and reported baseline hunger. Mood ratings were taken at baseline, post-mood induction and post-eating. All participants were given a mood induction (sadness for study 1, stress for studies 2 and 3) and allocated to one of three music conditions (self-chosen in study 3) or a silent (control) condition. Music was selected from three pieces reported by each participant as being listened to regularly when experiencing the negative mood being examined (sadness or stress) in order to provide solace (comforting music), diversion (distracting positive music), or discharge (angry and/or sad music). Participants were provided with several snack foods to consume whilst completing a mock taste test and intake (in grams) was compared between conditions. In study 1 participants in the music for discharge condition consumed less than those in the control condition. Moreover, participants with high levels of self-reported EE ate more crisps in the control than in the distraction condition. In study 2 participants in the solace condition consumed less than those in the control and discharge conditions. In study 3 most participants chose music for diversion; this did not, however, lead to lower consumption, despite a reduction in reported stress. Overall, the results of these studies indicate that listening to certain types of music might reduce emotion-related eating after controlling for hunger using a standardized pre-session snack.

We investigated the effect of wearing glasses and sunglasses on the perception of social traits from faces and on face matching. Participants rated images of people wearing no glasses, glasses and sunglasses on three social traits (trustworthiness, competence and attractiveness). Wearing sunglasses reduced ratings of trustworthiness. Participants also performed a matching task (telling whether two images show the same person or not) with pairs of images both wearing no glasses, glasses or sunglasses, and all combinations of eyewear. Incongruent eyewear conditions (e.g., one image wearing glasses and the other wearing sunglasses, etc.) reduced performance. Further analysis comparing performance on congruent and incongruent eyewear trials showed that our effects were driven by match trial performance, where differences in eyewear decreased accuracy. For same-eyewear-condition pairs, performance was poorer for pairs of images both wearing sunglasses than no glasses. Our results extend and update previous research on the effect of eyewear on face perception.

Emotional memory may be modulated by BDNF Val66Met and 5-HTTLPR polymorphisms. However, the influence of these genetic variants on the overnight retention of emotional memories has not been investigated in humans. Thirty-six healthy female students were selected to participate in this study based on 5-HTTLPR genotype status (L’/L’, L’/S’, S’/S’). Participants were also genotyped for BDNF Val66Met (Val/Val, Met carriers). We measured recognition performance for positive, neutral and negative images before and after overnight sleep. We found a significant interaction between BDNF Val66Met genotype group and image valence on post-sleep recognition performance. This interaction was driven by greater memory for negative and positive images, relative to neutral images, in Met carriers. We also found that longer Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep duration predicted greater post-sleep recognition performance for negative images in Met carriers, but not in Val homozygotes. We observed no influence of 5-HTTLPR polymorphisms on post- sleep recognition performance for positive, neutral or negative images. Our findings support a modulatory role for BDNF Val66Met in overnight emotional memory retention in females. We discuss the implications of this finding for understanding the influence of BDNF Val66Met on depression vulnerability.

Face familiarity produces advantages for both memory and matching. By developing an internal representation through repeated experience, viewers extract identity-specific information that aids subsequent recognition. However, researchers have recently argued that this process may also result in a familiarity disadvantage, whereby specific instances of the face are more difficult to remember, perhaps due to this process of prioritising identity- over image-specific information. Although previous experiments found no evidence of this disadvantage in working memory, initial research has demonstrated an effect in longer term storage. Here, we attempted to replicate this finding by focussing on the ability to learn images of a single (un)familiar identity. Our results failed to demonstrate a familiarity disadvantage while replicating the finding that familiarity influences response bias. As researchers continue to investigate how familiarity alters both internal representations and associated processes, it is important to establish which processes may or may not be affected.

Research has indicated that female body perception and associated body-viewing gaze behaviour in women viewers can be influenced by a variety of internal and external factors (e.g., own body satisfaction, clothing style, and viewing angle). Although the clothing colour affects women's visual and aesthetic appearance rated by men or women wearer themselves, its impact on women judging other women's body attractiveness and body size is largely unclear. In this eye-tracking study we presented female body images of Caucasian and African avatars in a continuum of common dress sizes wearing different colours (black, grey, white, red, green and blue), and asked 31 young Caucasian women to rate the perceived body attractiveness and body size. Our analysis revealed that clothing colour black and red attracted the highest body attractiveness and slimmer body size ratings, whereas green and grey induced the lowest body attractiveness and overestimated body size judgements. Such colour-induced modulatory effect on body perception was further influenced by the avatar race (or skin tone; e.g., higher attractiveness ratings for colours white, blue and green in African than in Caucasian avatars), and was associated with the changes of body-viewing gaze allocation at the upper body and waist-hip regions (i.e. colour black and white attracting more viewing at the upper body and waist-hip regions, respectively). Taken together, it seems that the clothing colour and its contrast with skin tone play valuable roles in mediating women's body perception of other women.

Emotion perception research has largely been dominated by work on facial expressions, but emotion is also strongly conveyed from the body. Research exploring emotion recognition from the body tends to refer to “the body” as a whole entity. However, the body is made up of different components (hands, arms, trunk, etc.), all of which could be differentially contributing to emotion recognition. We know that the hands can help to convey actions and, in particular, are important for social communication through gestures, but we currently do not know to what extent the hands influence emotion recognition from the body. Here, 93 adults viewed static emotional body stimuli with either the hands, arms, or both components removed and completed a forced-choice emotion recognition task. Removing the hands significantly reduced recognition accuracy for fear and anger but made no significant difference to the recognition of happiness and sadness. Removing the arms had no effect on emotion recognition accuracy compared with the full-body stimuli. These results suggest the hands may play a key role in the recognition of emotions from the body.

Our first impressions of others, whether accurate or unfounded, have real-world consequences in terms of how we judge and treat those people. Previous research has suggested that criminal sentencing is influenced by the perceived facial trustworthiness of defendants in murder trials. In real cases, those who appeared less trustworthy were more likely to receive death rather than life sentences. Here, we carried out several attempts to replicate this finding, utilizing the original set of stimuli (Study 1), multiple images of each identity (Study 2), and a larger sample of identities (Study 3). In all cases, we found little support for the association between facial trustworthiness and sentencing. Furthermore, there was clear evidence that the specific image chosen to depict each identity had a significant influence on subsequent judgments. Taken together, our findings suggest that perceptions of facial trustworthiness have no real-world influence on sentencing outcomes in serious criminal cases.

Although online dating allows us to access a wider pool of romantic partners, choice could induce an ‘assessment mindset’, orienting us toward ‘optimal’ or alternative partners and undermining our willingness to commit or remain committed to someone. Contextual changes in judgements of facial attractiveness can shed light on this issue. We directly test this proposal by activating a context where participants imagine choosing between items in picture slideshows (dates or equally attractive desserts), observing its effects on attraction to i) faces on second viewing and ii) novel versus familiar identities. Single women, relative to single men, were less attracted to the same face on second viewing (Experiments 2 and 4), with this sex difference only observed after imagining not ‘matching’ with any romantic dates in our slideshow (i.e., low choice, Experiment 4). No equivalent sex differences were observed in the absence of experimental choice slideshows (Experiment 3), and these effects (Experiment 2) were not moderated by slideshow content (romantic dates or desserts) or choice set size (five versus fifteen items). Following slideshows, novel faces were more attractive than familiar faces (Experiment 1), with this effect stronger in men than in women (Experiment 2), and stronger across both sexes after imagining ‘matching’ with desired romantic dates (i.e., high choice, Experiment 4). Our findings suggest that familiarity does not necessarily ‘breed liking’ when we have the autonomy to choose, revealing lower-order socio-cognitive mechanisms that could underpin online interactions, such as when browsing profiles and deciding how to allocate effort to different users.

When interacting with other humans, facial expressions provide valuable information for approach or avoid decisions. Here, we consider facial attractiveness as another important dimension upon which approach-avoidance behaviours may be based. In Experiments 1–3, we measured participants' responses to attractive and unattractive women's faces in an approach-avoidance paradigm in which there was no explicit instruction to evaluate facial attractiveness or any other stimulus attribute. Attractive faces were selected more often, a bias that may be sensitive to response outcomes and was reduced when the faces were inverted. Experiment 4 explored an entirely implicit measure of approach, with participants passively viewing single faces while standing on a force platform. We found greater lean towards attractive faces, with this pattern being most obvious in male participants. Taken together, these results demonstrate that attractiveness activates approach-avoidance tendencies, even in the absence of any task demand.

Background In recent years, fraudsters have begun to use readily accessible digital manipulation techniques in order to carry out face morphing attacks. By submitting a morph image (a 50/50 average of two people’s faces) for inclusion in an official document such as a passport, it might be possible that both people sufficiently resemble the morph that they are each able to use the resulting genuine ID document. Limited research with low-quality morphs has shown that human detection rates were poor but that training methods can improve performance. Here, we investigate human and computer performance with high-quality morphs, comparable with those expected to be used by criminals. Results Over four experiments, we found that people were highly error-prone when detecting morphs and that training did not produce improvements. In a live matching task, morphs were accepted at levels suggesting they represent a significant concern for security agencies and detection was again error-prone. Finally, we found that a simple computer model outperformed our human participants. Conclusions Taken together, these results reinforce the idea that advanced computational techniques could prove more reliable than training people when fighting these types of morphing attacks. Our findings have important implications for security authorities worldwide. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-019-0181-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

To create neural representations of external stimuli, the brain performs a number of processing steps that transform its inputs. For fundamental attributes, such as stimulus contrast, this involves one or more nonlinearities that are believed to optimise the neural code to represent features of the natural environment. Here we ask if the same is also true of more complex stimulus dimensions, such as emotional facial expression. We report the results of three experiments combining morphed facial stimuli with electrophysiological and psychophysical methods to measure the function mapping emotional expression intensity to internal response. The results converge on a nonlinearity that accelerates over weak expressions, and then becomes compressive for stronger expressions, similar to the situation for lower level stimulus properties. We further demonstrate that the nonlinearity is not attributable to the morphing procedure used in stimulus generation.

Models of social evaluation aim to capture the information people use to form first impressions of unfamiliar others. However, little is currently known about the relationship between perceived traits across gender. In Study 1, we asked viewers to provide ratings of key social dimensions (dominance, trustworthiness, etc.) for multiple images of 40 unfamiliar identities. We observed clear sex differences in the perception of dominance—with negative evaluations of high dominance in unfamiliar females but not males. In Study 2, we used the social evaluation context to investigate the key predictions about the importance of pictorial information in familiar and unfamiliar face processing. We compared the consistency of ratings attributed to different images of the same identities and demonstrated that ratings of images depicting the same familiar identity are more tightly clustered than those of unfamiliar identities. Such results imply a shift from image rating to person rating with increased familiarity, a finding which generalises results previously observed in studies of identification.

Disturbance in how one’s body shape and size is experienced, usually including over-estimation of one’s own body size, is a core feature of the diagnostic criteria of anorexia nervosa (AN). Is this over-estimation specific to women with AN’s judgments of their own body? Or is it just a general feature of their judgments about all bodies? If the latter, it would be consistent with a general error in the perception of body size potentially linked to the use of a different set of visual cues for judging body size. If the former, then this suggests that the over-estimation of own body size has a strong attitudinal component and may be part of the psycho-pathology of their condition. To test this hypothesis, 20 women with AN and 80 control observers estimated the body size of 46 women. The results show a strong effect of perceptual factors in estimating body size for both controls and women with AN. This result is consistent with size over-estimation of own body in AN having a strong attitudinal basis and being a core feature of the psycho-pathology of the condition.

It has recently been demonstrated how perceptual learning, that is an improvement in a sensory/perceptual task upon practice, can be boosted by concurrent high-frequency transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS). It has also been shown that perceptual learning can generalize and produce an improvement of visual functions in participants with mild refractive defects. By using three different groups of participants (single-blind study), we tested the efficacy of a short training (8 sessions) using a single Gabor contrast-detection task with concurrent hf-tRNS in comparison with the same training with sham stimulation or hf-tRNS with no concurrent training, in improving visual acuity (VA) and contrast sensitivity (CS) of individuals with uncorrected mild myopia. A short training with a contrast detection task is able to improve VA and CS only if coupled with hf-tRNS, whereas no effect on VA and marginal effects on CS are seen with the sole administration of hf-tRNS. Our results support the idea that, by boosting the rate of perceptual learning via the modulation of neuronal plasticity, hf-tRNS can be successfully used to reduce the duration of the perceptual training and/or to increase its efficacy in producing perceptual learning and generalization to improved VA and CS in individuals with uncorrected mild myopia.

Objectives The present study was into whether or not mindfulness training, based on the mindfulness-acceptance-commitment approach (MAC), can improve beginners’ skill acquisition of dart throwing. Design Randomised controlled trial. Methods A total of 43 first-year college students who had not played darts professionally prior to the study were randomly assigned to either an attention control group (n = 21) or a mindfulness training group (n = 22) during an eight-week dart training program. Dart throwing and psychological variables were assessed at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and two-week follow-up. Results Two-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the mindfulness group, but not the attention control group had significant improvements in mindfulness, experiential acceptance, and flow at post-intervention and follow-up. Although both groups improved dart throwing performance after the intervention, the improvement of the mindfulness group was statistically higher in comparison to that of the attention control group. Conclusions It was concluded that the MAC approach could improve the performance and adaptive sport experience of beginners in dart throwing.

Locomotion speed provides important social information about an individual’s fitness, mood and intent. Visual estimation of locomotion speed is a complex task for the visual system because viewing distance must be taken into account, and the estimate has to be calibrated by recent experience of typical speeds. Little is known about how locomotion speed judgements are made. Previous research indicates that the human visual system possesses neurons that respond specifically to moving human forms. This research used point-light walker (PLW) displays that are known to activate these cells, in order to investigate the process mediating locomotion speed judgements. The results of three adaptation experiments show that these judgements involve both a low-level sensory component and a high-level decision component. A simple theoretical scheme is proposed, in which neurons sensitive to image flicker rate (temporal frequency) provide a sensory speed code, and a benchmark ‘norm’ value of the speed code, based on prevailing locomotion speeds, is used to make decisions about objective speed. The output of a simple computational model of the scheme successfully captured variations in locomotion speed in the stimuli used in the experiments. The theory offers a biologically-motivated account of how locomotion speed can be visually estimated.

We know from previous research that unfamiliar face matching (determining whether two simultaneously presented images show the same person or not) is very error-prone. A small number of studies in laboratory settings have shown that the use of multiple images or a face average, rather than a single image, can improve face matching performance. Here, we tested 1,999 participants using four-image arrays and face averages in two separate live matching tasks. Matching a single image to a live person resulted in numerous errors (79.9% accuracy across both experiments), and neither multiple images (82.4% accuracy) nor face averages (76.9% accuracy) improved performance. These results are important when considering possible alterations which could be made to photo-ID. Although multiple images and face averages have produced measurable improvements in performance in recent laboratory studies, they do not produce benefits in a real-world live face matching context.

Stair walking is a hazardous activity and a common cause of fatal and non-fatal falls. Previous studies have assessed the role of eye movements in stair walking by asking people to repeatedly go up and down stairs in quiet and controlled conditions, while the role of peripheral vision was examined by giving participants specific fixation instructions or working memory tasks. We here extend this research to stair walking in a natural environment with other people present on the stairs and a now common secondary task: Using one's mobile phone. Results show that using the mobile phone strongly draws one's attention away from the stairs, but that the distribution of gaze locations away from the phone is little influenced by using one's phone. Phone use also increased the time needed to walk the stairs, but handrail use remained low. These results indicate that limited foveal vision suffices for adequate stair walking in normal environments, but that mobile phone use has a strong influence on attention, which may pose problems when unexpected obstacles are encountered.

BACKGROUND: High frequency transcranial random noise stimulation (hf-tRNS) facilitates performance in several perceptual and cognitive tasks, however, little is known about the underlying modulatory mechanisms. OBJECTIVE: In this study we compared the effects of hf-tRNS to those of anodal and cathodal tDCS in a global motion direction discrimination task. An equivalent noise (EN) paradigm was used to assess how hf-tRNS modulates the mechanisms underlying local and global motion processing. METHOD: Motion coherence threshold and slope of the psychometric function were estimated using an 8AFC task in which observers had to discriminate the motion direction of a random dot kinematogram presented either in the left or right visual hemi-field. During the task hf-tRNS, anodal and cathodal tDCS were delivered over the left hMT+. In a subsequent experiment we implemented an EN paradigm in order to investigate the effects of hf-tRNS on the mechanisms involved in visual motion integration (i.e., internal noise and sampling). RESULTS: hf-tRNS reduced the motion coherence threshold but did not affect the slope of the psychometric function, suggesting no modulation of stimulus discriminability. Anodal and cathodal tDCS did not produce any modulatory effects. EN analysis in the last experiment found that hf-tRNS modulates sampling but not internal noise, suggesting that hf-tRNS modulates the integration of local motion cues. CONCLUSION: hf-tRNS interacts with the output neurons tuned to directions near to the directional signal, incrementing the signal-to-noise ratio and the pooling of local motion cues and thus increasing the sensitivity for global moving stimuli.

Certain striped patterns can induce illusory motion, such as those used in op-art. The visual system and the vestibular system work together closely, and so it is possible that illusory motion from a visual stimulus can result in uncertainty in the vestibular system. This increased uncertainty may be measureable in terms of the magnitude of head movements. Head movements were measured using a head-mounted visual display. Results showed that stimuli associated with illusory motion also seem to induce greater head movements when compared to similar stimuli. Individuals with migraine are more susceptible to visual discomfort, and this includes illusory motion from striped stimuli. However, there was no evidence of increased effect of illusory motion on those with migraine compared to those without, suggesting that while motion illusions may affect discomfort judgements, this is not limited to only those with migraine.

Near-misses occur across many forms of gambling and are rated as unpleasant while simultaneously increasing the motivation to continue playing. On slot machines, the icon position relative to the payline moderates the effects of near-misses, with near-misses before the payline increasing motivation, and near-misses after the payline being rated as aversive. Near-misses are also known to increase physiological arousal compared to full-misses, but physiological measures to date have not been able to dissociate positive and negative emotional responses. The present study measured facial electromyography at the corrugator (brow) and zygomaticus (cheek) sites, as well as electrodermal activity (EDA), following gambling outcomes on a two-reel slot machine simulation in 77 novice gamblers. Behavioral data was collected using trial-by-trial ratings of motivation and valence. Wins were rated as more pleasant and increased motivation to continue playing, compared to non-win outcomes. Wins were also accompanied by increased EDA and zygomaticus activity. Near-misses after the payline were rated as more aversive than other non-wins, and this was accompanied by increased EDA and zygomaticus activity. Near-misses before the payline increased motivation to continue playing, and were accompanied by increased EDA. Thus, both subjective and physiological responses to near-misses differ for events falling either side of the payline. The 'near-miss effect' is not a unitary phenomenon. Facial EMG has differential sensitivity to positive and negative valence and may be a useful measure for future studies of gambling behavior.

Matching two different images of a face is a very easy task for familiar viewers, but much harder for unfamiliar viewers. Despite this, use of photo-ID is widespread, and people appear not to know how unreliable it is. We present a series of experiments investigating bias both when performing a matching task and when predicting other people’s performance. Participants saw pairs of faces and were asked to make a same/different judgement, after which they were asked to predict how well other people, unfamiliar with these faces, would perform. In four experiments we show different groups of participants familiar and unfamiliar faces, manipulating this in different ways: celebrities in experiments 1 to 3 and personally familiar faces in experiment 4. The results consistently show that people match images of familiar faces more accurately than unfamiliar faces. However, people also reliably predict that the faces they themselves know will be more accurately matched by different viewers. This bias is discussed in the context of current theoretical debates about face recognition, and we suggest that it may underlie the continued use of photo-ID, despite the availability of evidence about its unreliability.

Studies have shown that perceiving another person's gaze shift facilitates responses in the direction of the perceived gaze shift. While it is often assumed that participants in these experiments remain fixated on the cue in the cueing interval, eye gaze is not always recorded to confirm this. The data presented here suggest that the effect of gaze cues on responses to peripheral targets depends on whether participants make eye movements prior to the onset of the target. Participants who were required to fixate showed cueing effects at short cue-target intervals, but no cueing at later intervals. Participants who could look around, often chose to do so, and showed the same positive cueing effects at the shorter interval, but negative cueing effects (suggestive of inhibition of return) at the longer interval.

Individually, both near-misses and losses disguised as wins (LDWs) have been seen to exert pro-motivational effects on gambling. However, it is not clear whether both structural characteristics are effective within the same game. Participants (n = 40) played a slot machine simulation. The simulation delivered near-misses, wins and ‘full-misses’. Half the participants also received LDWs that occurred independently of the outcomes on the payline. Valence and motivation ratings were collected after each round. Results showed that the LDW group reported increased valence ratings compared to the no-LDW group. Within the LDW group, trials with LDWs also resulted in increased enjoyment compared to trials without LDWs. We distinguished near-misses falling either side of the payline. Near-misses before the payline (NMB) were rated as more motivational than near-misses after the payline (NMA), whereas NMAs were rated as more aversive than NMBs. These differences between the two near-miss types were exacerbated by LDWs. Results demonstrate LDWs increase the trial-by-trial enjoyment of non-win outcomes. The motivational and hedonic effects of near-misses differed for events either side of the payline, and these differences were exaggerated by the presence of LDWs. Thus, near-misses can retain their effectiveness in complex forms of gambling that also deliver LDWs.

Although it has been reported that depth of field influences depth perception in nonstereo photographs, it remains unclear how depth of field affects depth perception under stereo viewing conditions. We showed participants stereo photographs with different depths of field using a Wheatstone stereoscope and a commercially available 3D TV. The depicted scene contained a floor, a background, and a measuring probe at different locations. Participants drew a floor plan of the depicted scene to scale. We found that perceived depth decreased with decreasing depth of field for shallow depths of field in scenes containing a height-in-the-field cue. For larger depths of field, different effects were found depending on the display system and the viewing distance. There was no effect on perceived depth using the 3D TV, but perceived depth decreased with increasing depth of field using the Wheatstone stereoscope. However, in the 3D TV case, we found that the perceived depth decreased with increasing depth of field in scenes in which the height-in-the-field cue was removed. This indicates that the effect of depth of field on perceived depth may be influenced by other depth cues in the scene, such as height-in-the-field cues.

Tests of behavioral insights have become increasingly more common, and have been deployed by UK government and agencies. Typically, these field experiments aim to change individual‐level behaviors. The current article tests the potential of behavioral insights for changing group‐level behavior. This article reports the results of a field experiment carried out with the Department of Communities and Local Government. The field experiment tested whether a normative message (vs. a neutral or no message) could encourage parish councils to register an asset of community value (social action). There was no statistically significant effect from this intervention, but the process of designing and implementing this field experiment shows the potential for theories of behavior change to be used by government departments.

Photographs of people are commonly said to be ‘good likenesses’ or ‘poor likenesses’, and this is a concept that we readily understand. Despite this, there has been no systematic investigation of what makes an image a good likeness, or of which cognitive processes are involved in making such a judgement. In three experiments, we investigate likeness judgements for different types of images: natural images of film stars (Experiment 1), images of film stars from specific films (Experiment 2), and iconic images and face averages (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, participants rated images for likeness and completed speeded name verification tasks. We consistently show that participants are faster to identify images which they have previously rated as a good likeness compared to a poor likeness. We also consistently show that the more familiar we are with someone, the higher likeness rating we give to all images of them. A key finding is that our perception of likeness is idiosyncratic (Experiments 1 and 2), and can be tied to our specific experience of each individual (Experiment 2). We argue that likeness judgements require a comparison between the stimulus and our own representation of the person, and that this representation differs according to our prior experience with that individual. This has theoretical implications for our understanding of how we represent familiar people, and practical implications for how we go about selecting images for identity purposes such as photo-ID.

Recent work in adults has suggested that the strength of social and symbolic cues not presented at fixation (but allowing eye movements to the cue) may be determined less by their biological relevance and more by the distinctiveness of the shape of the cue. The present study examines whether these results extend to children, who may differ in their relative exposure to symbolic cues (arrows) compared to social cues. Children aged 3 to 11 were presented with congruent or incongruent pairs of cues (line drawings of gazing eyes, pointing hands, and arrows) and were asked to indicate the direction of the target cue (indicated at the start of the block) by moving the mouse towards the response box indicating its direction. Results show a similar advantage for arrows and pointing hands in young children as previously found in adults, suggesting that cue shape trumps biological relevance for cues away from fixation from an early age.

Item does not contain fulltext The organization of visual processing into a coarse-to-fine information processing based on the spatial frequency properties of the input forms an important facet of the object recognition process. During visual object categorization tasks, microsaccades occur frequently. One potential functional role of these eye movements is to resolve high spatial frequency information. To assess this hypothesis, we examined the rate, amplitude and speed of microsaccades in an object categorization task in which participants viewed object and non-object images and classified them as showing either natural objects, man-made objects or non-objects. Images were presented unfiltered (broadband; BB) or filtered to contain only low (LSF) or high spatial frequency (HSF) information. This allowed us to examine whether microsaccades were modulated independently by the presence of a high-level feature - the presence of an object - and by low-level stimulus characteristics - spatial frequency. We found a bimodal distribution of saccades based on their amplitude, with a split between smaller and larger microsaccades at 0.4° of visual angle. The rate of larger saccades (>=0.4°) was higher for objects than non-objects, and higher for objects with high spatial frequency content (HSF and BB objects) than for LSF objects. No effects were observed for smaller microsaccades (>0.4°). This is consistent with a role for larger microsaccades in resolving HSF information for object identification, and previous evidence that more microsaccades are directed towards informative image regions. 9 p.

Negative biases in the interpretation of social information are associated with anxious symptoms in adolescents. Previous studies have attempted to modify interpretive biases to alleviate anxious mood responses but the longevity of such training effects has not been established. A cognitive bias modification of interpretations (CBM-I) paradigm was administered to sixty-nine 15–17 year-olds. Participants were either trained to interpret ambiguous social situations positively, or received control training that contained no emotional content. Participants showed significantly weaker endorsement of negative interpretations of novel ambiguous information following positive training than following control. Positive CBM-I training effects on interpretation did not differ between a group tested immediately following training and one tested 24 h later. Results provided no evidence of differential changes in state anxiety as a direct result of CBM-I training. The persistence of training effects of suppressing negative biases for ambiguous social information is encouraging for future work that might use bias-training methods in adolescents as buffers against negative emotional responses.

Could signallers use size contrast illusions to dishonestly exaggerate their attractiveness to potential mates? Using composite photographs of women from three body mass index (BMI) categories designed to simulate small groups, we show that target women of medium size are judged as thinner when surrounded by larger women than when surrounded by thinner women. However, attractiveness judgements of the same target women were unaffected by this illusory change in BMI, despite small true differences in the BMIs of the target women themselves producing strong effects on attractiveness. Thus, in the context of mate choice decisions, the honesty of female body size as a signal of mate quality appears to have been maintained by the evolution of assessment strategies that are immune to size contrast illusions. Our results suggest that receiver psychology is more flexible than previously assumed, and that illusions are unlikely to drive the evolution of exploitative neighbour choice in human sexual displays. © 2014 The Authors.

Evidence for the importance of bodily cues for emotion recognition has grown over the last two decades. Despite this growing literature, it is underspecified how observers view whole bodies for body expression recognition. Here we investigate to which extent body-viewing is face- and context-specific when participants are categorizing whole body expressions in static (Experiment 1) and dynamic displays (Experiment 2). Eye-movement recordings showed that observers viewed the face exclusively when visible in dynamic displays, whereas viewing was distributed over head, torso and arms in static displays and in dynamic displays with faces not visible. The strong face bias in dynamic face-visible expressions suggests that viewing of the body responds flexibly to the informativeness of facial cues for emotion categorisation. However, when facial expressions are static or not visible, observers adopt a viewing strategy that includes all upper body regions. This viewing strategy is further influenced by subtle viewing biases directed towards emotion-specific body postures and movements to optimise recruitment of diagnostic information for emotion categorisation.