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Amid the current global trend toward urbanization, there is a growing need for an improved quality of life. While rural public spaces are essential components of community life, their design and planning have traditionally focused on material aspects, neglecting the spiritual well-being of rural residents. This study uses the public spaces of Huixingtou Village in Handan City, Hebei Province, China, as an example to investigate the impact of five key elements within rural public spaces (architecture, streets, greenery, nodes, and landmarks) on individual emotions and perceptions, exploring how these elements contribute to the satisfaction of individuals' spiritual lives. Initially, we compared the disparities among these elements concerning perceptual dimensions (functionality, technology, and aesthetics) and emotional dimensions (sense of achievement, safety, and well-being). This analysis revealed significant variations in emotional and perceptual dimensions influenced by different rural public space elements. Subsequently, we examined the associations between these elements and objective physiological response data from participants, using eye-tracking technology to delve into the interplay between emotions and perceptions. The results indicate that distinct rural public space elements elicit specific emotional responses, with visual elements and features exerting a pronounced influence on emotional reactions. This in-depth analysis provides comprehensive recommendations for emotional design strategies. Ultimately, this study furnishes emotionally driven design strategies for rural public spaces based on objective data, offering practical guidance for sustainable development and the enhancement of rural public space quality. These findings have significant implications for creating more attractive, inclusive, and sustainable rural spatial environments, addressing the needs of individuals seeking a high and enhanced quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Although research has shown that the replay of encoding-specific gaze patterns during retrieval, known as gaze reinstatement, facilitates memory retrieval, little is known about whether it differentially associates with the negativity preference in memory (defined as enhanced memory for negative stimuli relative to neutral stimuli in this study) among younger and older adults. The present study aims to address this research gap. Methods A total of 33 older adults (16 women; aged 58–69 years, M  = 63.48, SD  = 2.98) and 36 younger adults (10 women; aged 18–26 years, M  = 20.39, SD  = 1.57) completed a remember/know recognition memory task involving negative and neutral pictures. Their eye movements were tracked during both the memory encoding and retrieval phases. Results Younger and older adults had better memory for negative than neutral pictures. Older adults exhibited significantly stronger gaze reinstatement for negative than neutral stimuli, while this difference was nonsignificant in younger adults. Moreover, gaze reinstatement is positively linked to memory performance in both age groups. Discussion The results suggest that gaze reinstatement may play age-differential roles in the negativity preference of memory. Negative valence may enhance gaze reinstatement, which improves subsequent recognition memory, particularly among older adults. The finding contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the negative preference for memory in different age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher scaffolding is crucial to promote students' cooperative learning processes, but little is known about the cognitive attention underlying teachers' scaffolding behavior. This study aims to investigate the scaffolding behavior teachers exhibit while intervening in students' cooperative learning and to explore the relation between teachers' scaffolding behavior and visual perception when applying supportive strategies. Four secondary teachers in China were studied during mathematics lessons using eye-tracking glasses complemented by an additional classroom camera with interviews. The results show that the teachers applied scaffolding strategies very often, followed by the usage of diagnostic strategies. Furthermore, they were more concerned about the cognitive aspects of students' learning processes than the social aspects. The applied strategies were significantly related to fixation patterns during scaffolding. Detailed analysis suggests that (1) the teachers diagnosed students' understanding mainly by observing the material with an attention or scan pattern; (2) during scaffolding processes, when applying a cognitive performance strategy, teachers paid attention to both the students and their material; (3) while regulating cognitive processes, most teachers scanned students' material quickly; and (4) teachers generally focused more on materials to provide interaction-related help than on students' facial expressions. Additionally, the study points out that teachers' perception skills and behaviors during class activities may be influenced by the task being performed, teachers' teaching experience, and their beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to explore how specific cues with new manifestations (i.e. herding message and price discount information) and customer cognitive style influence attention allocation and purchase intention. Design/methodology/approach: To empirically validate the research hypotheses, an eye-tracking experiment with a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed design was conducted on a sample of 44 participants recruited from a university in China. Repeated measures analysis of variance was employed for data analysis. Findings: The results show that herding message and price discount information play different roles in viewers' attention and have an interactive effect on attention. Moreover, individual cognitive styles moderate the impact of herding message on attention allocation. Still, two cues positively affect customer purchase intention. Originality/value: This study guides future research by applying cue utilization theory to investigate the effects of two cues in live streaming. Findings offer practical implications for how live streaming cues affect viewers' attention allocation and purchase intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Icon cognitive impairment is one of the main difficulties for older users to use smart products. This study explores the impact of icon style, icon concreteness and both together on understanding icons by comparing the cognitive differences between two groups of users, young and old. The performance of different types of icons on cognitive performance was analyzed specifically through a comprehensive cognitive load assessment method of behavioral, physiological and subjective data. The results showed that the cognitive performance of skeuomorphism concrete icons was higher and the cognitive load was lower when the user group was novice or older users with less experience in interacting with the GUI; the cognitive performance of flat concrete icons was higher and the cognitive load was lower when the user group was familiar or young users with more experience in interacting with the GUI. From the perspective of cognitive differences between young and old, the results of this study provide a reference for future icon design of interactive interfaces for older people smart terminals to help designers and developers achieve a better user experience for the aging group, which has practical significance for the age-friendly design of graphical interfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a contrastive context facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used inappropriately in a noncontrastive context misleads listeners to predict an incorrect referent, hindering the identification process (Ito et al., 2012, 2014). In Mandarin Chinese, the mapping between prosodic form and contrastive focus is less transparent, potentially delaying the acquisition of contrastive focus. This study assessed the online processing of contrastive focus by 196 Mandarin-speaking 4–10-year-olds and 34 adults in China, using the visual world paradigm. Stimuli contained a target NP in a mini discourse, with focus being used in contrastive (Experiment 1) versus Noncontrastive contexts (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed that the appropriate use of prosodic form for contrastive focus facilitated the identification of a target referent for 7–10-year-olds and adults, though not younger children. Experiment 2 showed that the inappropriate use of prosodic form for contrastive focus slowed the identification process only for 10-year-olds and adults. Thus, whereas 7–10-year-olds are sensitive to prosodic form for contrastive focus, only 10-year-olds use it as a primary cue to predict an upcoming referent like adults. The acquisition of contrastive focus in Mandarin is therefore a gradual process, with children showing sensitivity to contrastive focus during the early school years, and developing adult-like form–function mapping between prosody and focus until the end of primary school. Public Significance Statement: This study reveals a three-stage developmental trajectory of children learning Mandarin Chinese in acquiring adult-like abilities to use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension. It suggests that the acquisition of contrastive focus in Mandarin Chinese might be a protracted process, probably due to the less transparent form–function mappings between prosody and focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the effects of sentence context and tonal information on spoken word recognition processes in Cantonese Chinese. We recruited 60 native Cantonese listeners to participate in the eye-tracking experiment. The target words (phonologically similar words) were manipulated to either (1) a congruent context or (2) an incongruent context in the experiment. The resulting eye-movement patterns in the incongruent context condition clearly revealed that (1) sentence context produced a garden-path effect in the initial stage of the spoken word recognition processes and then (2) the lexical tone of the word (bottom-up information) overrode the contextual effects to help listeners to discriminate between different similar-sounding words during lexical access. In conclusion, the patterns of eye-tracking data show the interactive processes between the lexical tone (an acoustic cue within a Cantonese word) and sentence context played in different phases to the spoken word recognition of Cantonese Chinese., (© 2023. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

It has been well documented that formulaic language (such as collocations; e.g., provide information) enjoys a processing advantage over novel language (e.g., compare information). In natural language use, however, many formulaic sequences are often inserted with words intervening in between the individual constituents (e.g., provided information → provide some of the information). Whether or not the processing advantage persists in nonadjacent forms remains largely unknown. The present study thus sought to address this gap by recording the eye movements of Chinese native speakers when they were reading sentences embedded with formulaic sequences (high frequency collocations) versus novel phrases (low frequency controls), in their adjacent (e.g., 'resolve difficulties' vs. 'experience difficulties'), short-insertion (e.g., 'resolve these difficulties' vs. 'experience these difficulties'), and long-insertion forms (e.g., 'resolved so many difficulties' vs. 'experienced so many difficulties'). Results suggested that the processing advantage for formulaic language over novel language existed not only in their adjacent form, but also in their short-insertion form, albeit the magnitude of the processing advantage diminished with the increase of insertion length. The persistence of FL processing advantage is in line with usage-based approach to language learning, processing, and use., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

As tourism’s intangibility leads tourism marketers to rely heavily on visuals such as photographic images, the selection of visual stimuli that attract the target audience’s attention is critical. This study used a triangulated approach that included both self-reports and observational eye-tracking data. Australian and Chinese participants were recruited to view a series of photographic tourism images that depicted either high or low arousal activities and natural or built environments. Australian participants fixated more frequently, and for longer durations, than Chinese. Fixation also varied with the image conditions, with the Chinese group having particularly low fixation durations and counts for the low arousal or natural condition. This study fills the void in visual attention research in tourism and presents a novel approach to understanding the appeal of tourism images to potential tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though previous research has examined how implicit meter can facilitate the processing of stress-timed languages, syllable-timed languages, such as Chinese, remain under studied. Past research has shown that among verb-noun combinations in Chinese, the processing of [2 + 2] (two disyllabic words) combination rhythmic pattern is easier than that of [2 + 1] (a disyllabic word and a monosyllabic word) pattern, though it is unclear whether this effect is modulated by the sentential position of the verb-noun combination. The present study uses eye-tracking to examine the influence of position on rhythmic pattern during silent reading. In Experiment 1, participants read sentences with [2 + 1] versus [2 + 2] VN phrases embedded in different sentential positions. Results show that the fixation duration of [2 + 1] VN phrases is significantly longer than that of [2 + 2] and that the fixation duration of VN phrases is shorter at the sentence-middle position than it is at the sentence-final position, suggesting that the rhythmic pattern effect at the sentence-middle position exhibits a reduced magnitude compared to the sentence-final position. In Experiment 2, participants read sentences with either mono- or disyllabic words after the VN phrases to further explore whether the reduction of the rhythmic pattern effect is related to the number of succeeding syllables. Results show that while the fixation duration of the [2 + 1] VN pattern is significantly longer than that of the [2 + 2] pattern, there is no significant difference between the monosyllabic versus the disyllabic conditions, nor is there a significant interaction between rhythmic pattern and syllable length post VN phrases, thus ruling out the rhythmic effect from succeeding context. Together, these patterns suggest that the reduction of the rhythmic pattern effect is caused by position rather than number of syllables after phrases., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We test the comprehension of transitive sentences in very young learners of Mandarin Chinese using a combination of the weird word order paradigm with the use of pseudo-verbs and the preferential looking paradigm, replicating the experiment of Franck et al. (2013) on French. Seventeen typically-developing Mandarin infants (mean age: 17.4 months) participated and the same experiment was conducted with eighteen adults. The results show that hearing well-formed NP-V-NP sentences triggered infants to fixate more on a transitive scene than on a reflexive scene. In contrast, when they heard deviant NP-NP-V sequences, no such preference pattern was found, a performance pattern that is adult-like. This is at variance with some of the results from Candan et al. (2012), who only found evidence for canonical word order comprehension at almost age 3 when considering fixation time. Furthermore, within the age range tested, performance showed no effect of age or vocabulary size.

[Display omitted] • Plant architecture and design have a significant effect on how people perceive them. • Ornamental bamboo features were assessed by eye-tracking and questionnaire survey. • Fixation count reveal the participant's preference to stem color and leaf and stem stripes. • People prefer natural traits due to latent conscious belief and social adaptation. • Abnormal traits draw people's visual focus by increasing dwell time percentage. Plant structure and architecture have a significant influence on how people interpret them. Bamboo plants have highly ornamental attributes, but the traits that attract people the most are still unknown. Therefore, to assess the people's preference for ornamental features of bamboo plants, eye-tracking measures (fixation count, percent of dwell time, pupil size, and saccade amplitude) and a questionnaire survey about subjective preference were conducted by ninety college students as the participants. The result showed that subjective ratings of stem color, leaf stripes, and stem stripes showed a significant positive correlation with the fixation count. The pupil size and saccade amplitude of different ornamental features were not correlated with the subjective ratings. According to random forest model, fixation count was the most influential aspect affecting subjective ratings. Based on integrated eye-tracking measures and subjective ratings, we conclude that people prefer the ornamental features like green stem, green stem with irregular yellow stripes or yellow stem with narrow green stripes, leaves with less number of stripes, normal stem, and tree. In addition, people prefer natural traits, for instance, green stem, normal stem, and tree, related to latent conscious belief and evolutionary adaptation. Abnormal traits, such as leaf stripes and stem stripes attract people's visual attention and interests, making the fixation count and increasing the percentage of dwell time. This study has significant implications for landscape experts in the design and maintenance of ornamental bamboo plantations in China as well as in other areas of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food choice is a multifaceted construct that is not solely guided by our internal incentives. In fact, sensory scientist, consumer psychologists, and marketers have demonstrated that external ambient cues, including background music, can influence myriads of subconscious consumer behaviors, effectively leading to increased sales of food and beverages. However, the vast majority of literature in on this topic has thus far been confined to monocultural field studies in which the underlying mechanisms of food choice are unexplored. We therefore studied the explicit and implicit effects of custom-composed soundtracks on food choices and eye-movements in consumers from both 'East' and 'West'. Firstly, based on the results from a pre-study (N = 396), we composed a 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' soundtrack. Subsequently, we recruited 215 participants from China (n = 114) and Denmark (n = 101) respectively for in an in-laboratory eye-tracking food choice paradigm. For each culture, half of the participants listened to the 'healthy' soundtrack and the other half to the 'unhealthy' soundtrack during the experiment. Chi-square tests of independence revealed that across cultures, the healthy (vs. unhealthy) soundtrack led to more healthy food choices. Similarly, the generalized linear mixed models showed that the healthy soundtrack induced more and longer fixations on healthy (vs. unhealthy) food. Finally, a multiple mediation analysis signified a partial mediation effect of sound on food choice through the mediators of fixation duration, fixation count, and revisit count. Our results indicate that, with strategically chosen soundscapes, it is possible to influence consumers' decision-making processes and guide their attention towards healthier foods, providing valuable knowledge for local as well as global food business., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In two eye-tracking studies, reading of two-character Chinese compound words was examined. First and second character frequency were orthogonally manipulated to examine the extent to which Chinese compound words are processed via the component characters. In Experiment 1, first and second character frequency were manipulated for frequent compound words, whereas in Experiment 2 it was done for infrequent compound words. Fixation time and skipping probability for the first and second character were affected by its frequency in neither experiment, nor in their pooled analysis. Yet, in Experiment 2 fixations on the second character were longer when a high-frequency character was presented as the first character compared with when a low-frequency character was presented as the first character. This reversed character frequency effect reflects a morphological family size effect and is explained by the constraint hypothesis, according to which fixation time on the second component of two-component compound words is shorter when its identity is constrained by the first component. It is concluded that frequent Chinese compound words are processed holistically, whereas with infrequent compound words there is some room for the characters to play a role in the identification process.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of contextual predictability on orthographic and phonological activation during Chinese sentence reading by Cantonese-speaking readers using the error disruption paradigm. Participants' eye fixations and pupil sizes were recorded while they silently read Chinese sentences containing homophonic, orthographic, and unrelated errors. Sentences had varying amounts of contextual information leading up to target words such that some targets were more predictable than others. Results of the fixation time analysis indicated that orthographic effects were significant in first fixation and gaze duration, while phonological effects emerged later in total reading time. However, interactions between predictability and the homophonic condition were found in gaze duration. These results suggest that, while Cantonese readers activate word meanings primarily through orthography in early processing, early phonological activation can occur when facilitated by semantics in high-constraint sentence contexts. Analysis of pupillary response measurements revealed that participants' pupil sizes became larger when they read words containing orthographic errors, suggesting that orthographic error recovery processes significantly increase cognitive load.

Threat appeals have been widely utilized in numerous types of public service announcements (PSAs), and previous research has focused on the impact of the inherent messages in these announcements. By examining the research on the effects of framing PSAs in terms of the threat of the message to oneself or others, we proposed a clear conceptualization of "threat-target framing." The first two studies addressed the direct effects of threat-target framing and found that other-oriented threat appeals can evoke more guilt than can self-oriented threat appeals. Moreover, self-oriented threat appeals can evoke more fear and immediately direct recipients' attention to the smoker than can other-oriented threat appeals. Study 3 reported that a contextual factor-relationship norms-was introduced as a potential moderating factor. Results showed that relationship norms had the potential to moderate the effect of threat-target framing on recipients' fear response, but not the effect on recipients' guilt and coping response. In sum, the results highlighted the importance of message framing of advertising copies and the placement context. Our findings may be useful in understanding the antecedents of the persuasiveness of PSAs., (© 2019 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)