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Reorientation enables navigators to regain their bearings after becoming lost. Disoriented individuals primarily reorient themselves using the geometry of a layout, even when other informative cues, such as landmarks, are present. Yet the specific strategies that animals use to determine geometry are unclear. Moreover, because vision allows subjects to rapidly form precise representations of objects and background, it is unknown whether it has a deterministic role in the use of geometry. In this study, we tested sighted and congenitally blind mice ( N s = 8-11) in various settings in which global shape parameters were manipulated. Results indicated that the navigational affordances of the context-the traversable space-promote sampling of boundaries, which determines the effective use of geometric strategies in both sighted and blind mice. However, blind animals can also effectively reorient themselves using 3D edges by extensively patrolling the borders, even when the traversable space is not limited by these boundaries.

Background and Objectives: The evolution of healthcare from 18th-century reductionism to 21st-century postgenomic holism has been described in terms of systems medicine, and the impact of the built environment on human health is the focus of investigation and development, leading to the new specialty of evidence-based, therapeutic architecture. The traditional system of Vāstu architecture-a design paradigm for buildings which is proposed to promote mental and physical health-has been applied and studied in the West in the last 20 years, and features elements absent from other approaches. This review critically evaluates the theory and research of a well-developed, standardized form of Vāstu-Maharishi Vastu® architecture (MVA). MVA's principles include development of the architect's consciousness, universal recommendations for building orientation, siting, and dimensions; placement of key functions; and occupants' head direction when sleeping or performing tasks. The effects of isolated Vāstu elements included in MVA are presented. However, the full value of MVA, documented as a systematic, globally applicable practice, is in the effect of its complete package, and thus this review of MVA includes evaluating the experience of living and working in MVA buildings., Methods: The published medical and health-related literature was systematically surveyed for research on factors related to isolated principles applied in MVA as well as on the complete system., Results: Published research suggests that incorporating MVA principles into buildings correlates with significant improvements in occupants' physical and mental health and quality of life: better sleep, greater happiness of children, and the experience of heightened sense of security and reduced stress. The frequency of burglaries, a social determinant of health, also correlates. Potential neurophysiological mechanisms are described., Conclusions: Findings suggest that MVA offers an actionable approach for managing a key social determinant of health by using architectural design as preventive medicine and in public health., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interest: Fergusson, Bonshek, and Schneider declare no conflicts of interest. Lipman is the owner of an architecture and planning firm that promotes and designs structures incorporating Maharishi Vastu architecture (MVA). The firm itself is compensated for MVA consulting but Lipman receives none of the remuneration for MVA consulting work., (© The Author(s) 2022.)

Background: Cognitive orientation to daily occupational performance (CO-OP) is a client-centered treatment approach that was developed in the 1990s by occupational therapists. Purpose: Exploring current evidence about the effectiveness of CO-OP on children with cerebral palsy (CP). Method: Major electronic databases were searched. A narrative synthesis of current literature and meta-analyses on randomized control trials (RCTs) were conducted on changes in occupational performance. Findings: Seven studies with 103 participants were included. Four studies were RCTs with moderate levels of evidence, and three studies had single-subject designs. Although beneficial effects of CO-OP on goal achievement and transferring learned skills were reported, meta-analyses showed that CO-OP had no significant effect on the performance (WMD = 1.52, 95% CI = -1.58 to 4.63, P  = .33) and satisfaction domains (WMD = 1.71, 95% CI = -1.14 to 4.57, P  = .24) of Canadian Occupational Performance Measure scores compared to alternative interventions. Implications: CO-OP improves occupational performance but not more than alternative interventions. Results are inconclusive due to small sample sizes and heterogeneity of alternative interventions and participants. Therefore, research with a larger number of participants with sound RCT methods is needed.

Background.: In the cognitive orientation to daily occupational performance (CO-OP) approach, parent involvement is critical for transferring skills from therapeutic settings to everyday contexts., Purpose.: This study aimed to gain insight into the experience of parents whose children with developmental coordination disorder participated in CO-OP intervention., Method.: This consolidation of three small qualitative studies investigating parents' experience involved an inductive qualitative content analysis of 10 parent interviews and 1 parent focus group., Findings.: Four overarching themes emerged as depicting parents' experience. Although parents recognized the improvements their children made with the intervention, they also expressed several challenges, such as incorporating CO-OP tasks into daily routines, shifting of parent-child relationship and feeling self-efficacious with the approach., Implications.: This study highlights that parent observation of intervention sessions is not enough to support parents applying CO-OP at home. Research is needed to understand how to best engage parents in the CO-OP approach.

Objective: This study evaluates the effect of transverse and longitudinal ultrasound transducer orientation on saphenous vein cannulation during endovenous ablation., Methods: A single-blinded, multicentre, randomised controlled trial was performed in patients undergoing ultrasound-guided venous cannulation for saphenous ablation. The primary outcomes were overall cannulation success and time to successful cannulation., Results: In total, 100 patients were assigned to parallel longitudinal orientation and transverse orientation groups. Cannulation success was 100%. There was no significant variation in time to cannulation detected between the transverse orientation and longitudinal orientation (85 s vs. 71 s, p  = 0.314). Longitudinal orientation was associated with significantly fewer needle passes [median 3 (interquartile range 1-5) vs. 2 (interquartile range 1-3), p  = 0.026] and less pain (median visual analogue scale score 1 vs. 2.5, p  = 0.039) than those in the transverse orientation group., Conclusion: This trial has shown that while longitudinal orientation is associated with less procedural pain it has no significant effect on time to target vein cannulation during endovenous ablation.

Introduction.: Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts motor coordination and interferes with participation in everyday activities. Cognitive Orientation to Occupational Performance (CO-OP) is a client-centered treatment approach that focuses on skill acquisition through cognitive strategy use., Objectives.: To determine which types of goals a sample of children with DCD choose most frequently and which domain-specific strategies were most commonly used to address these goals., Methods.: Retrospective chart review of 50 children (8-12 years) with DCD who completed CO-OP intervention was conducted to identify goal types and strategy use., Results.: Leisure was the most common goal type. Supplementing task knowledge, body position, and task modification were the most frequently used strategies., Conclusions.: Results confirm the types of goals that are commonly selected by children with DCD and highlight commonly used strategies used to meet these goals. Findings will help guide occupational therapists in selecting appropriate strategies to meet children's goals.

Background.: Evidence-based approaches to improve function in individuals with cerebral palsy are needed., Purpose.: To investigate the effectiveness of the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance approach™ (CO-OP) to improve performance on self-chosen, functional goals as compared to traditional occupational therapy for cerebral palsy., Method.: Crossover design with 12 participants, aged 6-15 years, randomly assigned to CO-OP and traditional intervention groups, followed by crossover and a 3-month follow-up. The participants identified three occupation-based goals for CO-OP and each group received ten 45-minutes intervention twice weekly in clinical context. Occupational performance, manual dexterity and Gross Motor Function Measures were analysed using generalized estimating equations., Findings.: There were clinical and statistically significant improvements in functional goals following CO-OP and not traditional therapy. There were gains in dexterity but not in gross motor skills., Implications.: CO-OP was effective to improve functional performance in young people with cerebral palsy and should be more utilized.

An object appears smaller in the periphery than in the center of the visual field. In two experiments ( N = 24), we demonstrated that visuospatial attention contributes substantially to this perceptual distortion. Participants judged the size of central and peripheral target objects after a transient, exogenous cue directed their attention to either the central or the peripheral location. Peripheral target objects were judged to be smaller following a central cue, whereas this effect disappeared completely when the peripheral target was cued. This outcome suggests that objects appear smaller in the visual periphery not only because of the structural properties of the visual system but also because of a lack of spatial attention.

This study aims to determine whether a functional literacy program using principles from the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance approach and Occupational Adaptation theory, and embedded in community-based daily activities, could enhance occupational participation in a sample of sheltered homeless adults. This study used a two-group, controlled design with pre- and post-intervention measures. Intervention was carried out in a group setting in 1.5 hr, twice-weekly sessions over 8 weeks. Intervention addressed literacy skills needed to complete participant identified, desired daily activities. Statistically significant differences were found between intervention and control groups' perceived functional literacy skills with regard to occupational performance ( Z = -4.075, p < .0001, d = 1.02) and satisfaction ( Z = -4.113, p < .0001, d = 1.40); reading frequency ( Z = -3.594, p < .0001, d = 0.48), reading effectiveness ( Z = -10.673, p < .0001, d = 0.68), level of support ( Z = -10.410, p < .0001, d = 1.81), and reading efficiency ( Z = -10.297, p < .0001, d = 1.83). The intervention enhanced perceived reading and occupational participation in the study's sample. Further research is needed to replicate and translate results in daily practice.

Perception and action interact in nearly every moment of daily life. Previous studies have demonstrated not only that perceptual input shapes action but also that various factors associated with action-including individual abilities and biomechanical costs-influence perceptual decisions. However, it is unknown how action fluency affects the sensitivity of early-stage visual perception, such as orientation. To address this question, we used a dual-task paradigm: Participants prepared an action (e.g., grasping), while concurrently performing an orientation-change-detection task. We demonstrated that as actions became more fluent (e.g., as grasping errors decreased), perceptual-discrimination performance also improved. Importantly, we found that grasping training prior to discrimination enhanced subsequent perceptual sensitivity, supporting the notion of a reciprocal relation between perception and action.

Humans often fail to identify a target because of nearby flankers. The nature and stages at which this crowding occurs are unclear, and whether crowding operates via a common mechanism across visual dimensions is unknown. Using a dual-estimation report ( N = 42), we quantitatively assessed the processing of features alone and in conjunction with another feature both within and between dimensions. Under crowding, observers misreported colors and orientations (i.e., reported a flanker value instead of the target's value) but averaged the target's and flankers' spatial frequencies (SFs). Interestingly, whereas orientation and color errors were independent, orientation and SF errors were interdependent. These qualitative differences of errors across dimensions revealed a tight link between crowding and feature binding, which is contingent on the type of feature dimension. These results and a computational model suggest that crowding and misbinding are due to pooling across a joint coding of orientations and SFs but not of colors.

Sum frequency generation (SFG) * Equal contributors. spectroscopy was used to deduce the orientation of the terminal methyl (CH 3 ) group of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) at the air-solid and air-liquid interfaces at surface concentrations as low as 1% protonated molecules in the presence of 99% deuterated molecules. The SFG spectra of octadecanethiol (ODT) and deuterated octadecanethiol (d 37 ODT) SAMs on gold were used for analysis at the air-solid interface. However, the eicosanoic acid (EA) and deuterated EA (d 39 EA) SAMs on the water were analyzed at the air-liquid interface. The tilt angle of the terminal CH 3 group was estimated to be ∼39 ° for a SAM of 1% ODT : 99% d 37 ODT, whereas the tilt angle of the terminal CH 3 group of the 1% EA : 99% d 39 EA monolayer was estimated to be ∼32 °. The reliability of the orientational analysis at low concentrations was validated by testing the sensitivity of the SFG spectroscopy. A signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio of ∼60 and ∼45 was obtained for the CH 3 symmetric stretch (SS) of 1% ODT : 99% d 37 ODT and 1% EA : 99% d 39 EA, respectively. The estimated increase in S/N ratio values, as a measure of the sensitivity of the SFG spectroscopy, verified the capacity to acquire the SFG spectra at low concentrations of interfacial molecules under ambient conditions. Overall, the orientational analysis of CH 3 SS vibrational mode was feasible at low concentrations of protonated molecules due to increased S/N ratio. In support, the improved S/N ratio on varying incident power density of the visible beam was also experimentally demonstrated.

Recent experiences influence the processing of new information even when those experiences are irrelevant to the current task. Does this reflect the indirect effects of a passively maintained representation of the previous experience, or is this representation reactivated when a new event occurs? To answer this question, we attempted to decode the orientation of the stimulus on the previous trial from the electroencephalogram on the current trial in a working memory task. Behavioral data confirmed that the previous-trial stimulus orientation influenced the reported orientation on the current trial, even though the previous-trial orientation was now task irrelevant. In two independent experiments, we found that the previous-trial orientation could be decoded from the current-trial electroencephalogram, indicating that the current-trial stimulus reactivated or boosted the representation of the previous-trial orientation. These results suggest that the effects of recent experiences on behavior are driven, in part, by a reactivation of those experiences and not solely by the indirect effects of passive memory traces.

Visual object perception requires integration of multiple features; spatial attention is thought to be critical to this binding. But attention is rarely static-how does dynamic attention impact object integrity? Here, we manipulated covert spatial attention and had participants (total N = 48) reproduce multiple properties (color, orientation, location) of a target item. Object-feature binding was assessed by applying probabilistic models to the joint distribution of feature errors: Feature reports for the same object could be correlated (and thus bound together) or independent. We found that splitting attention across multiple locations degrades object integrity, whereas rapid shifts of spatial attention maintain bound objects. Moreover, we document a novel attentional phenomenon, wherein participants exhibit unintentional fluctuations- lapses of spatial attention-yet nevertheless preserve object integrity at the wrong location. These findings emphasize the importance of a single focus of spatial attention for object-feature binding, even when that focus is dynamically moving across the visual field.

Due to memory loss, people with dementia are increasingly disorientated in space, time, and identity, which causes profound experiences of insecurity, anxiety, and homesickness. In the case study presented in this article, we explored how architecture can support people in coping with this challenge. We took a novel approach to offer architects insights into experiences of living with dementia. Starting from a critical realist and constructionist approach, we combined ethnographic techniques with an architectural analysis. This case study offers insights into the experiences and activities of a woman living with dementia within the architectural context of her home. We describe how the physical and social environment provided her guidance through sequences of day-to-day activities. This study highlights how architecture can support people with dementia in orientating by accommodating places for (1) everyday activities and (2) privacy and togetherness.

Background.: Route navigation is a high-level skill and requires intact executive functioning to successfully find one's way while driving in unfamiliar environments., Purpose.: Driving performances were compared while navigating using electronic devices and printed directions on unfamiliar driving routes as well as in an interactive driving simulator., Method.: Twenty-four participants drove two on-road routes using GPS and printed directions, and navigated using printed directions in the simulator, using a point system to evaluate performance. The two unfamiliar routes, order of simulator and on-road driving, and use of GPS and printed directions were counterbalanced. Paired t test were used to compare both GPS versus printed directions and performance between on-road driving and the simulator., Findings.: Participants' performance using GPS on the road was significantly better than with printed directions. There was no significant difference between performance in the simulator and on the road., Implications.: Using GPS may be an effective strategy for improving safety. Using a driving simulator may be an efficient means of evaluating the strategic level of driving, executive function, and readiness to drive.

Transferring learning from therapy to everyday life skills is a necessary step for successful therapy outcomes, yet rarely addressed and achieved. However, a cognitive approach to skill acquisition, and the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP), explicitly identifies transfer as an objective and incorporates elements into the intervention to support transfer. A scoping review was undertaken to explore the nature and extent of the research regarding CO-OP and transfer. An online search of 10 databases was conducted to identify and examine research studies reporting on CO-OP and transfer. The search yielded 25 documents that addressed CO-OP and transfer. The studies used a variety of approaches to evaluate transfer; all reported transfer on at least one and, in many cases, multiple transfer outcome variables. The CO-OP literature addresses transfer across a variety of populations and settings using a variety of approaches. Further work is required to establish a common approach to examining transfer in the CO-OP literature and the literature in general.

Despite decades of research, the conditions under which shifts of attention to prior target locations are facilitated or inhibited remain unknown. This ambiguity is a product of the popular feature discrimination task, in which attentional bias is commonly inferred from the efficiency by which a stimulus feature is discriminated after its location has been repeated or changed. Problematically, these tasks lead to integration effects; effects of target-location repetition appear to depend entirely on whether the target feature or response also repeats, allowing for several possible inferences about orienting bias. To parcel out integration effects and orienting biases, we designed the present experiments to require localized eye movements and manual discrimination responses to serially presented targets with randomly repeating locations. Eye movements revealed consistent biases away from prior target locations. Manual discrimination responses revealed integration effects. These data collectively revealed inhibited reorienting and integration effects, which resolve the ambiguity and reconcile episodic integration and attentional orienting accounts.

The present study examined the influence of attentional focus on performance during a long-distance throwing task. Twelve participants executed three maximum-effort, long-distance baseball throwing attempts in three focus conditions: internal focus on wrist flexion (wrist internal focus), internal focus on the separation between pelvis and upper torso orientations (torso internal focus), and external focus on the ball path (external focus). Compared with the external focus and torso internal focus conditions, performance was poorer in the wrist internal focus condition. Performances were not different in the torso internal and external focus conditions. In addition, attentional focus affected the release angle of the ball but not its initial velocity. Our results reveal that the body part targeted for internal focus of attention and the forcefulness of the motor activity can be as important to motor performance as whether the attention is internal or external.

Vision in the fovea, the center of the visual field, is much more accurate and detailed than vision in the periphery. This is not in line with the rich phenomenology of peripheral vision. Here, we investigated a visual illusion that shows that detailed peripheral visual experience is partially based on a reconstruction of reality. Participants fixated on the center of a visual display in which central stimuli differed from peripheral stimuli. Over time, participants perceived that the peripheral stimuli changed to match the central stimuli, so that the display seemed uniform. We showed that a wide range of visual features, including shape, orientation, motion, luminance, pattern, and identity, are susceptible to this uniformity illusion. We argue that the uniformity illusion is the result of a reconstruction of sparse visual information (from the periphery) based on more readily available detailed visual information (from the fovea), which gives rise to a rich, but illusory, experience of peripheral vision.

Objectives: Wayfinding in hospitals is a complex problem since patients, who are likely to be under stress, may have to navigate their way to multiple locations in the course of a single visit. While good wayfinding design can reduce stress, poor wayfinding can not only increase individuals' anxiety but also generate additional costs for the hospital due to: lost time among staff members who need to direct patients rather than concentrate on their designated task; missed appointments or delayed meetings; and additional security staff to ensure that patients do not enter restricted areas. We investigated to what extent a questionnaire, developed by collecting data about the subjective experiences of wayfinders with diverse needs and abilities, could uncover wayfinding problems in hospitals., Methods: The methodology we developed involved four steps: creating an initial questionnaire based on the literature; customizing the questionnaire to a hospital environment; validating and verifying the questionnaire; and evaluating the questionnaire's added value at nine other hospitals., Results: The questionnaire's generality and added value were demonstrated since many types of wayfinding problems were uncovered at the nine hospitals that other methods had overlooked or regarded as relatively unimportant. The research emphasizes the centrality and uniqueness of the wayfinder rather than that of the institute in determining what people need., Conclusion: Our findings can contribute to understanding wayfinding issues in hospitals and to sensitize designers to the needs and knowledge levels of wayfinders when designing hospitals., (© The Author(s) 2016.)

An investigation of the infrared (IR) spectra of polyoxymethylene (POM) mold plates was undertaken to determine the sub-micron-scale morphology and molecular orientation. The nest-structured cells concerned with the orientation were observed from scanning electron microscope (SEM) measurements with the aid of Raman spectroscopy. The intensity of the anomalous IR reflectance peak of the C-O stretching A2 mode depends on the widths of the POM layers in the SEM image along the orientation direction. The results suggest that the spectral features originate from the Berreman effect of the bulk polaritons and the radiative surface polaritons. Moreover, the IR spectra of certain treated samples suggest that enhancement of the electromagnetic fields from the gap modes and transition dipole-dipole coupling influence the spectral shapes., (© The Author(s) 2016.)

This study investigated the superimposition of the projected markings on the road with head-up display, as well as their effects on the driver's speed. Two experiments were conducted. In Exp. 1, driving operations were simulated with a desktop computer to assess 18 deceleration markings (from the factors position, shape, and color) and determined the factors and levels influencing driving speeds. Based on the results of Exp. 1, six deceleration markings (from the factors shape and color) were selected in the driving simulator for conducting Exp. 2. The results of Exp. 1 showed that markings at the sides were better than the markings in the center. In Exp. 2, there was no significant difference between the effects of the arrangement of markings and the change of shape and color on driving stability. Yellow and white colors had no significant effect on speed; however, bar markings were better than zigzag markings. The results indicated that the projection of markings on a head-up display was helpful for indicating necessary deceleration.

This research assessed whether public space users will adopt a least-effort approach and choose a less suitable seat nearby or seek the most suitable seat, even if it is farther away from them when the decision is made. How distance assessment affects seat choice was investigated through an observational survey, which allowed the identification of behavioral patterns. Those behavioral patterns were then tested in a paired comparison experiment with 40 participants. The results showed that the effect of distance on seat choice is related to the difference in distance between the options and that a sufficient difference can cause trade-offs between distance and seat properties. The necessary difference in distance is conditioned by the activity and the seat properties.

The purpose of this theoretical analysis and synthesis is to indicate how left-eye sighting dominance may lead to reading failure through dysfunctional right hemisphere letter encoding. Differing compensatory strategies are postulated to lead to outcomes that include the development of the phonologically impaired and phonologically proficient subtypes of dyslexia as well as specific spelling disability. Evidence is presented indicating that these disorders might be prevented by delaying the introduction of letter writing until the age of 8 years. Early childhood speech categorization in children genetically at-risk of developing dyslexia is also considered from this perspective. Convergent support for this premature writing hypothesis is provided by a comparison with the development of the left-hand inverted writing posture.

The perceptual process of obtaining and using visual information plays a critical role in determining the quality of interception performance. Eye-movement characteristics and their association with interception accuracy where the constraints imposed on the task influence the eye-movement control are not well understood. The effects of spatial and temporal constraints were examined and associated with target motion on interception accuracy and gaze control strategy. Twenty-four (M = 28 yr., SD = 10; 10 women) inexperienced dart throwers volunteered for the study. Eye movements were measured while the participants attempted to intercept a horizontally moving target with a thrown dart. A mixed design experiment was employed with a between- (specification of interception point) and a within- (target speed) subjects factor. As target speed increased, spatial errors about the moving target increased but temporal errors decreased. Specifying a fixed location for target interception resulted in greater errors about the moving target. The point of gaze tended to center on the interception point, and this became more evident with increased target speed and the specification of a fixed interception point. The experimental findings provide support for a visual search strategy that exhibits compliance with the constraints of the task.

Although mental rotation is a core component of scientific reasoning, little is known about its underlying mechanisms. For instance, how much visual information can someone rotate at once? We asked participants to rotate a simple multipart shape, requiring them to maintain attachments between features and moving parts. The capacity of this aspect of mental rotation was strikingly low: Only one feature could remain attached to one part. Behavioral and eye-tracking data showed that this single feature remained "glued" via a singular focus of attention, typically on the object's top. We argue that the architecture of the human visual system is not suited for keeping multiple features attached to multiple parts during mental rotation. Such measurement of capacity limits may prove to be a critical step in dissecting the suite of visuospatial tools involved in mental rotation, leading to insights for improvement of pedagogy in science-education contexts., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

How do people combine their sense of direction with their use of visual landmarks during navigation? Cue-integration theory predicts that such cues will be optimally integrated to reduce variability, whereas cue-competition theory predicts that one cue will dominate the response direction. We tested these theories by measuring both accuracy and variability in a homing task while manipulating information about path integration and visual landmarks. We found that the two cues were near-optimally integrated to reduce variability, even when landmarks were shifted up to 90°. Yet the homing direction was dominated by a single cue, which switched from landmarks to path integration when landmark shifts were greater than 90°. These findings suggest that cue integration and cue competition govern different aspects of the homing response: Cues are integrated to reduce response variability but compete to determine the response direction. The results are remarkably similar to data on animal navigation, which implies that visual landmarks reset the orientation, but not the precision, of the path-integration system., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

We recently introduced a method based on quantification of orienting responses toward visual stimuli to assess the quality of visual information processing in children. In the present study, we examined the relationship between orienting responses and factors that are associated with visual processing impairments in current clinical practice. Response time and fixation quality to visual features such as form, contrast, motion, and color stimuli were assessed in 104 children from 1 to 12 years attending special education for the visually impaired. Using regression analysis, we investigated whether these parameters were affected by clinical characteristics of children. Response times significantly depended on stimulus type. Responses to high-contrast cartoons were significantly slower in children with a clinical diagnosis of cerebral visual impairment. Fixation quality was significantly affected by visual acuity and nystagmus. The results suggest that the quantitative measurement of orienting responses is strongly related to cerebral visual impairment in children., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Basic visual features (e.g., color, orientation) are assumed to be processed in the same general way across different visual tasks. Here, a significant deviation from this assumption was predicted on the basis of the analysis of stimulus spatial structure, as characterized by the Boolean-map notion. If a task requires memorizing the orientations of a set of bars, then the map consisting of those bars can be readily used to hold the overall structure in memory and will thus be especially useful. If the task requires visual search for a target, then the map, which contains only an overall structure, will be of little use. Supporting these predictions, the present study demonstrated that in comparison to stimulus colors, bar orientations were processed more efficiently in change-detection tasks but less efficiently in visual search tasks (Cohen's d = 4.24). In addition to offering support for the role of the Boolean map in conscious access, the present work also throws doubts on the generality of processing visual features., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Upright static faces are widely thought to recruit holistic representations, whereby individual features are integrated into nondecomposable wholes for recognition and interpretation. In contrast, little is known about the perceptual integration of dynamic features when viewing moving faces. People are frequently exposed to correlated eye and mouth movements, such as the characteristic changes that accompany facial emotion, yawning, sneezing, and laughter. However, it is unclear whether the visual system is sensitive to these dynamic regularities, encoding facial behavior relative to a set of dynamic global prototypes, or whether it simply forms piecemeal descriptions of feature states over time. To address this question, we sought evidence of perceptual interactions between dynamic facial features. Crucially, we found illusory slowing of feature motion in the presence of another moving feature, but it was limited to upright faces and particular relative-phase relationships. Perceptual interactions between dynamic features suggest that local changes are integrated into models of global facial change., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

The effects of mental practice in novices were investigated. University students (N = 60) performed a serial aiming task, distributed in 5 groups of 12: mental practice, physical practice, mental-physical practice (first mental then physical practice), physical-mental practice (first physical then mental practice), and a control group that only performed the tests. Participants transported three tennis balls among six containers in a pre-established sequence in a target time. In the acquisition phase and retention test (24 hr. later), the task was the same; in the transfer test, 5 min. after the acquisition phase, sequence and time changed. Six trials were performed in the acquisition phase, and each test consisted of 9 trials. The performance measures were absolute error, constant error, and variable error; a t test and a two-way ANOVA were used to compare the acquisition phase and tests, respectively. Physical practice and both groups of combined conditions presented better performance in tests than the mental practice and control groups. Mental practice without motor experience in the task did not improve motor learning. Prior physical performance is desirable before conducting mental practice.

Twenty-eight sex- and age-matched participants, half dextrals and half sinstrals, were instructed to move a pen-sized planometer three inches (7.6 cm) while blindfolded. Under separate trials, movements were made at four angles, towards and away from the body, and at two distances from the body (30 cm, 53 cm). Half were made with the right hand and half with the left hand. Line estimates increased in length across blocks of trials in a linear fashion and progressively overestimated the three-inch imagined criterion. Lines made moving towards the body were longer than those made moving away from the body, implying an egocentric frame of reference in making the estimates. Line estimates made at an oblique angle differed significantly from estimates made at other angles. No influences of sex, handedness, or the hand used in making the estimates were observed. The findings suggest that motoric estimates of line lengths made without visual cues-a unique measure of an implicit cognitive concept-are significantly altered by temporal and spatial factors, but not by sex or hemispheric laterality.

Ballroom dancing consists in the performance of rhythmic movements guided by music, which provide sensorimotor integration and stimulate feelings. The body schema is the unconscious sensorimotor representation that allows the individual to perceive his anatomical body in space. Comprising tactile, proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and environmental information, it is directly related to movement. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of non-competitive practice of ballroom dancing on body perception. The projection point test was applied to 30 volunteers before and after a period of 3 mo.; 15 controls attended lectures on body perception and 15 participants took dance lessons. It was observed that ballroom dancing brought perceptual benefits for those who practiced it.

Summary.-The manner in which Pressey's assimilation theory of geometric illusions (e.g., Pressey & Pressey, 1992 ) operates is illustrated by considering the basic question of why shrinkage and expansion forms of Müller-Lyer's illusions differ. The traditional answer is that the differences are due to the fact that the two forms generate "fundamentally different" kinds of illusions. Three experiments, each purporting to support this view, were simulated by the quantitative version of the theory. Because the theory correctly predicted complex means and variances, it was concluded that the traditional position was not valid.

Implant malalignment in hip arthroplasty increases the risk of revision surgery due to problems such as hip instability, wear, and impingement. Traditional instrumentation lacks accuracy and does not individualize the goal. Computer-assisted surgery (CAS) and patient-specific solutions improve accuracy but add considerably to the cost, amongst other drawbacks. We developed an adjustable mechanical device, called Optihip, which is set to a patient-specific goal preoperatively and is independent of pelvis position intraoperatively. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate Optihip's accuracy ex vivo. Acetabular components were implanted into six cadaveric specimens, 12 hips, by two surgeons, with the device individually adjusted according to preoperative templating on computed tomography (CT) images relative to defined acetabular rim landmarks; options also exist for templating on single or biplanar X-rays. Intraoperatively, the device was positioned on the corresponding anatomical landmarks allowing the insertion of a guide pin, which then defined the desired orientation of the acetabular cup during impaction. Mean absolute difference between the preoperatively planned cup alignment and final acetabular cup orientation, measured from postoperative CT images, was 2.5±1.2° for inclination and 2.5±2.2° for version with maximum values of 4.7° and 6.8°, respectively. Compared with previous in vivo reports, Optihip guided the acetabular cup orientation more accurately than conventional hip arthroplasty, and comparably to CAS or patient-specific systems, while fitting into the normal surgical workflow. Although clinical testing is required to confirm these experimental results, the positive ex vivo accuracy suggests good potential for improving revision rates and patient functional outcome., (© IMechE 2014.)

Objective: Building on previous work on the role of attention deficits associated with the regulation of executive control in psychiatric disorders, we examine whether these attention deficits are related to an interpersonal disturbance, the experience of divorce., Method: Attentional capacities of 95 randomly selected couples from the general population were measured with a well-established task, the Attentional Network Task, which assesses the efficiency of 3 attention networks (that is, alerting, orienting, and executive control). Among the 190 participants, 32 had experienced a divorce in the past. ANCOVAs were used to compare divorced people in marital or cohabiting unions with people in first unions in their performance on this purely cognitive task., Results: Our findings indicate that divorced people who are currently living in a cohabiting relationship show significantly lower executive control than other adults living as couples, after controlling for sex, age, income, and education. This subgroup of divorced people not only exhibit greater difficulty in responding to some stimuli while ignoring irrelevant ones but also manifest cognitive deficits in conflict resolution., Conclusions: This study highlights the links between attention and the long-term maintenance of intimate relationships. Our results may have important implications for the identification of people at risk for divorce.

Being objectively close to or far from a place changes how people perceive the location of that place in a subjective, psychological sense. In the six studies reported here, we investigated whether people's spatial orientation (defined as moving toward or away from a place) will produce similar effects-by specifically influencing psychological closeness in each of its forms (i.e., spatial, temporal, probabilistic, and social distance). Orientation influenced subjective spatial distance at various levels of objective distance (Study 1), regardless of the direction people were facing (Study 2). In addition, when spatially oriented toward, rather than away from, a particular place, participants felt that events there had occurred more recently (Studies 3a and 3b) and that events there would be more likely to occur (Study 4). Finally, participants felt more similarity to people who were spatially oriented toward them than to people who were spatially oriented away from them (Study 5). Our investigation broadens the study of psychological distance from static spatial locations to dynamically moving points in space., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Although numerous studies have examined the facilitative and deleterious effects of monetary rewards on human behavior, little research (if any) has examined the connection between monetary rewards and choice reaction time (CRT) under varying stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility conditions. Twenty self-declared right-handed, undergraduate students, with an equal number of males and females in each group (M age = 21.6 yr., SD = 2.13), were randomly assigned to one of two groups: monetary rewards or control. Participants in the monetary rewards group had a chance to draw for a cash prize of $30.00 if their CRT performances (both speed and accuracy) were at the 50th percentile or better. Participants completed 4 tests of 40 trials that had varying S-R compatibility. Two subscales of the modified Brunel Modified Scale (BRUMS) were administered prior to testing and immediately after a 40-trial test. Dependent variables included CRT, error scores, and BRUMS survey data. Mixed-design analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated that monetary rewards did not affect movement initiation, response accuracy, or tension and confusion levels. However, strong S-R effects were found, based on CRT, error scores, and BRUMS data. These results are discussed with respect to the mechanisms of monetary rewards and S-R effects.

The study tested whether age, sex, or task complexity moderate the effect of attentional focus on motor learning. Children (24 boys, 24 girls) and adults (24 men, 24 women) were assigned to an internal or external attentional focus, and were timed while riding either a Double Pedalo with handles (simple task) or without handles (complex task) over a distance of 7 meters. A Double Pedalo is a four-wheeled device that involves standing on two connected platforms, and alternately pushing them forward to make it move. Participants completed 20 acquisition trials, followed by a 24-hour retention test. For the simpler task, no time differences due to attentional focus emerged. With the complex task, an external focus resulted in faster times in retention than an internal focus, but only for males. These findings suggest that attentional focus affects children and adults similarly, but task complexity and sex moderate these effects.

This paper describes a test of Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), which views motor control as part of a process of controlling perceptual inputs rather than motor outputs. Sixteen undergraduate students (M age = 19.9 yr.) were asked to control one of three different perceptual aspects of an animated display--a shape, a motion or a sequence--using the same motor output, a key press. Animation rate was varied while quality of control was measured in terms of the proportion of time that the perception was maintained in the goal state. The results showed that increased animation rate made it hardest to control the more complex perceptions (motion and sequence) even though the same output was used to control all perceptions. This result is consistent with PCT, which predicts that the temporal constraints on control are ultimately a function of the type of perception controlled rather than the type of output used to control it.

Success in rugby union competition is dependent partly on the defensive strategies of a team. Despite this, little empirical evidence exists about effective defensive strategies used during play. This study attempted to identify defensive characteristics associated with increased likelihood of a successful outcome in rugby union, while considering the game situation. Twenty-one matches of the 2010 Super 14 competition were analysed, amounting to 2,394 coded tackle contacts. The likelihood of the defending team winning the breakdown (the post-tackle contact situation where opposing teams compete for possession of the ball) increased as the match progressed. Defensive speed, measured as the speed of the defence in response to the attacking line, was a statistically significant predictor of breakdown wins and preventing the attacking team from advancing towards the gain line. Identifying the relative effectiveness of such strategies allows understanding of rugby match behaviour and may be applied to improve organisation, design, training, teaching and learning the game.

The present investigation studied the effect of focus of attention and type of practice on self-efficacy and learning during a demonstration of the dart-throwing skill. 48 university students (M = 22.5 yr., SD = 3.6) without any experience of dart throwing were divided into four groups according to the type of practice (physical and observational) and focus of attention (internal and external) and practiced a dart-throwing task. Self-efficacy in dart throwing was measured at the pre-test, acquisition, and transfer phases. The internal-focus group concentrated on their limb function, whereas the external-focus group concentrated on the darts and the target during the demonstration. Observational groups only watched during the acquisition phase, then performed the task in the retention and transfer phases. There was a main effect of focus of attention in the retention and transfer phases after controlling self-efficacy, with external focus groups showing higher performance than internal focus groups. External focus of attention could facilitate the acquisition of a motor skill during observation and may build and/or be supported by self-efficacy.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the occurrence of stride regulation at the approach phase of the long jump in athletes with normal vision and visually deprived Class F12 and F13 athletes. All the athletes exhibited the presence of a regulatory mechanism. In the normal vision group this occurred on the fifth-to-last stride. In Class F12 athletes regulation commenced on the fourth-to-last stride for males and third-to-last stride for females. Class F13 males commenced regulation, like the control group, on the fifth-to-last stride; but females commenced on the fourth-to-last stride. The study demonstrated that reduced vision does not prevent Class F12 and F13 athletes from applying a regulatory mechanism similar to that observed in sighted athletes. However, the control mechanism of regulation emerged earlier in non-visually deprived long jumpers and the least visually impaired Class F13 athletes, signifying the importance of visual function in the regulatory stimuli.

This study investigated the effects of light type (spot, directional, and point), forward-rotated stimulus angle (20 degrees, 45 degrees, and 70 degrees), and surface texture (wood, metal, transparent glass, dark brown leather, and translucent plastic) on errors in the estimated vertical diameter of a three-dimensional object. Twenty female and 12 male Taiwanese college students, ages 18-22 years, participated in the current study. Participants were asked to judge the vertical diameter of an elliptical hole within a square plate that was displayed on an LCD monitor. Analysis indicated that the errors in estimated vertical diameter for rotated angles of 20 degrees and 45 degrees were greater than were those for 70 degrees. Additionally, the error of estimated vertical diameter for a rotated angle of 45 degrees was less than was that for 20 degrees. The surface texture also affected errors in estimated vertical diameter: transparent glass was associated with more errors than were wood and metal textures. However, light type had no effect on errors in estimated vertical diameter. These results have implications for the graphics-based design of interfaces.