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Dialogue interpreter training has traditionally focused on the way in which the interpreter manages, and maintains, verbal interaction between the primary participants while it seems to overlook the importance of specific non-verbal aspects that are inherent in mediated interaction. This article presents an alternative method for the training of medical interpreters by drawing on research on non-verbal communication in interpreter-mediated consultations with a view to drawing attention to the interpreter's impact on the patient's inclusion in a patient-centred framework during mediated consultations. More specifically, it provides evidence of non-verbal interaction that might open up new trajectories in the interpreters' training by foregrounding the impact of the interpreter's and others' direction of gaze and body orientation on the accomplishment and maintenance - or lack thereof - of a patient-centred framework of communication. The present article reports on findings that emerged from the analysis of selected excerpts of authentic interpreter-mediated consultations within the framework of a training experiment. Coded instances of interaction are analysed by relying on Goffman's 'ratification process', Goodwin's 'participation and engagement frameworks' and Norris' 'modal density foreground-background continuum'. Hospital ethical approval and participants' written informed consent were obtained prior to the collection of data.

Laying hens prefer roosting on high compared to low perches during night time. According to the antipredator hypothesis, hens on high perches can afford to be less vigilant while roosting at night. A total of 120 LSL hens in groups of five were presented a single perch, which was varied in height throughout two subsequent experiments each. In experiment 1, an acoustic noise was played back in the middle of the night. Hens’ latencies until reaction and their roosting behaviours shown before disturbance were analysed depending on perch height (30, 90, or 150 cm). In addition, roosting behaviours were recorded throughout the entire experimental nights and differences were analysed in relation to perch height. Experiment 2 focussed on night-time use of single perches offered at ten different heights ranging from 20 cm to 180 cm. In experiment 1, perch height and hens’ body orientation towards the source of acoustic noise did not influence reaction latencies (P > 0.05). Surprisingly, hens resting with their head forward immediately before playbacks showed a slower reaction (LS-means = 1.27 s) to the acoustic noise than hens resting with their head under the wing (LS-means = 0.71 s, P = 0.004). In contrast, the percentage of hens perching with their head forward during the entire night was higher on low (LS-means = 55.48%) compared to high perches (LS-means = 33.44%, P = 0.001) in experiment 1. In both experiments, perch use increased with rising height up to 90 cm. In experiment 2, hens did not show a preference for roosting on the perch compared to resting on the floor at a perch height of 80 cm or lower. Although hens showed a clear preference to roost on perches higher than 90 cm, their reactions to an acoustic disturbance during night time did not clearly support the antipredator hypothesis. Possibly, perch height may be a crucial factor when hens are searching for an appropriate roosting place before the dark period but may have limited influence on roosting behaviour during the night.

The ability to maintain the body relative to the external environment is important for adaptation to altered gravity. However, the physiological limits for adaptation or the disruption of body orientation are not known. In this study, we analyzed postural changes in mice upon exposure to various low gravities. Male C57BL6/J mice (n = 6) were exposed to various gravity-deceleration conditions by customized parabolic flight-maneuvers targeting the partial-gravity levels of 0.60, 0.30, 0.15 and μ g (

Individuals with a positive body image appreciate their bodies, hold an internal perspective of their bodies, and are satisfied with the functionality of their bodies. Research shows that positive body image is more complex than the absence of body dissatisfaction. Although exercise reduces women's body dissatisfaction, very little research has explored how, or even whether, exercise is associated with positive body image. Therefore, we examined whether exercise frequency was positively related to three aspects of positive body image (body appreciation, internal body orientation, and functional body satisfaction) among 321 college women. Appearance-based exercise motivation (the extent exercise is pursued to influence weight or shape) was hypothesized to moderate these associations. Hierarchical moderated regression analyses showed that exercise frequency was related to higher positive body image, but high levels of appearance-based exercise motivation weakened these relationships. Thus, messages promoting exercise need to de-emphasize weight loss and appearance for positive body image.

Balance control can be interpreted as a combination of state feedback control with optimal state estimation. In this framework, state estimation uses an internal model of body and sensor dynamics to process sensory information and determine body orientation. The aim of this study was to assess the ability of the brain to create accurate state estimation when the congruence between sensory information was altered. Participants stood upright on a force platform with a monitor directly in front of them at eye level displaying their center of pressure (CP) position in real-time. When a target appeared on the monitor, participants had to move their CP as fast and as accurately as possible within the target. Voluntary balance pointing movements were made with the head either straight or rotated about the trunk, and mapping directions of the CP were changed on the basis of experimental conditions. Manipulating the sensory information congruency caused less accurate state estimation of the body motion leading to larger signed and absolute angular errors and a greater area of the final CP position were measured. These results suggest that performing head-centered to trunk-centered sensorimotor transformation reduces the accuracy in the state estimation of body motion during a balance pointing task.

Scaphopods comprise about 900 described species of elongate infaunal molluscs, separated into two orders. The phylogenetic position of this class is contentious, having been proposed as a sister-group to bivalves or alternatively cephalopods, all groups that notably represent dramatic modifications of the molluscan body plan and historical confusion over the fundamental body axes. The digging scaphopod foot was previously considered to be anterior. Here we use a three-dimensional tomographic reconstruction of digestive anatomy and partial dorso-ventral musculature, to test the hypothesis that the scaphopod foot is ventral. Similar to cephalopods, the body orientation is confounded by ano-pedal flexion, but rationalising scaphopods is perhaps further undermined by their infaunal lifestyle, which confounds comparison of ecological life position. Some scaphopods are locally abundant, providing good quality material for anatomical study. In our focal species, Rhabdus rectius (Carpenter, 1864), sexes can reliably be differentiated in vivo by differential colour of the gonad (yellow in females; white in males). The gut is composed of three complete loops. Based on the orientation of the digestive tract and the dorso-ventral muscles, we find further evidence to support the interpretation that the concave side of the scaphopod shell is anterior (the site of the mouth) and the foot is ventral.

On land, the spatial magnitude of postural sway (i.e., the amount of sway) tends to be greater when participants look at the horizon than when they look at nearby targets. By contrast, on ships at sea, the spatial magnitude of postural sway in young adults has been greater when looking at nearby targets and less when looking at the horizon. Healthy aging is associated with changes in the movement patterns of the standing body sway, and these changes typically are interpreted in terms of age-related declines in the ability to control posture. To further elucidate the mechanisms associated with these changes we investigated control of posture in a setting that poses substantial postural challenges; standing on a ship at sea. In particular, we explored postural sway on a ship at sea when older adults looked at the horizon or at nearby targets. We evaluated the kinematics of the center of pressure in terms of spatial magnitude (i.e., the amount of sway) and multifractality (a measure of temporal dynamics). We found that looking at the horizon significantly affected the multifractality of standing body, but did not systematically influence the spatial magnitude of sway. We discuss the results in terms of age-related changes in the perception and control of dynamic body orientation.

Accelerometers can be used to monitor animal behavior remotely, but validation is required for each species. Previously, we showed that accelerometer data in collars could be used to identify specific behaviors in African elephants Loxodonta africana, using complex analytical methods. Here, we show that simple methods can also be used to identify elephant activity levels and body orientation. Subjects were 6 African elephants: 3 at Disney’s Animal Kingdom®, Florida, USA, and 3 in Samburu-Laikipia, Kenya. Each elephant wore a collar containing a tri-axial accelerometer positioned on top of the neck. Simultaneous video recordings allowed validation of accelerometer data against observed behavior. The standard deviation of the total acceleration was shown to be a valid measure of dynamic acceleration, differentiating activity levels associated with resting, feeding, bathing, walking, and rapid walking. The mean of the total acceleration was shown to be a valid measure of static acceleration, and indicated upright and recumbent orientations. Simulations showed how accuracy was affected by sample rate, number of axes examined, and analysis window lengths. Based on 34 continuous 24 h acceleration streams, the 6 elephants exhibited an average of 2.5 h of overnight recumbence associated with minimal movement, indicating sleep. Daily activity budgets exhibited periods of minimal activity (e.g. resting, 17%), low activity (e.g. feeding, 68%), medium activity (e.g. walking, 13%), and high activity (e.g. rapid walking, 2%). Kenyan elephants were slightly more active and exhibited less restful recumbence compared to zoo elephants. Accelerometers in elephant collars can detect activity levels that are associated with specific behaviors, and can detect body orientation as a proxy for sleep.

We used eye-tracking technique to examine gaze shifts of 9-, 16-, and 24-month-old infants who were presented with still images of a conversation between two individuals facing each other or turning away from each other. The results showed that body orientation, as measured by the face-to-face effect, is sufficient to provide infants with crucial information about others' social engagement.

The vestibular system constitutes an inertial sensor, which detects linear (otoliths) and angular (semicircular canals) accelerations of the head in the three dimensions. The otoliths are specialized in the detection of linear accelerations and can be used by the brain as a "plumb line" coding earth gravity acceleration (direction). This property of otolithic system suggested that the sense of verticality is supported by the vestibular system. The preeminence of vestibular involvement in the sense of verticality stated in the 1900s was progressively supplanted by the notion of internal models of verticality. The internal models of verticality involve rules and properties of integration of vestibular graviception, somaesthesic graviception, and vision. The construction of a mental representation of verticality was mainly modeled as a bottom-up organization integrating visual, somatosensory and vestibular information without any cognitive modulations. Recent studies reported that the construction of internal models of verticality is not an automatic multi-sensory integration process but corresponds to more complex mechanisms including top-down influences such as awareness of body orientation or spatial representations.

Undergraduate women ( N = 143) completed self-reports on exercise behavior, body orientation, body appreciation, and body-related talk. Results showed that conversations about weight loss/dieting and conversations about exercise differentially predicted body appreciation. Importantly, multiple regression analyses showed that the relationship between talk type and body appreciation was explained by the object–process dichotomy: Conversations about exercise oriented women to consider what their bodies can do which, in turn, predicted appreciation of one’s body. In contrast, the relationship between conversations about weight loss/dieting and body appreciation was mediated by negative attitudes about one’s body but not by an object orientation.

SUMMARYMany wasps and bees learn the position of their nest relative to nearby visual features during elaborate ‘learning’ flights that they perform on leaving the nest. Return flights to the nest are thought to be patterned so that insects can reach their nest by matching their current view to views of their surroundings stored during learning flights. To understand how ground-nesting bumblebees might implement such a matching process, we have video-recorded the bees' learning and return flights and analysed the similarities and differences between the principal motifs of their flights. Loops that take bees away from and bring them back towards the nest are common during learning flights and less so in return flights. Zigzags are more prominent on return flights. Both motifs tend to be nest based. Bees often both fly towards and face the nest in the middle of loops and at the turns of zigzags. Before and after flight direction and body orientation are aligned, the two diverge from each other so that the nest is held within the bees' fronto-lateral visual field while flight direction relative to the nest can fluctuate more widely. These and other parallels between loops and zigzags suggest that they are stable variations of an underlying pattern, which enable bees to store and reacquire similar nest-focused views during learning and return flights.

The ability to appreciate the attentional states of others is an important element used in discerning the presence of Theory of Mind in an individual. Whether primates are able to recognize attention, and further, use such information to predict behavior, remains contentious. In this study, six western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) were tested under different conditions that aimed to investigate not only their understanding of what a human experimenter sees, but also what information they use to make these judgments. In all experiments the gorillas selected between two human experimenters, one who could see them and one who could not. In Experiment 1 the gorillas’ performance was significantly above chance in conditions where they judged body orientation, head orientation, and eyes. Experiment 2 showed that the gorillas’ initial judgments of attention may be based on body orientation rather than facial cues. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the gorillas were better able to utilize facial cues in some conditions, when these cues were paired with a more neutral body orientation. These findings suggest that the gorillas are using a hierarchical approach to determining visual attention, by making an immediate decision based on the most salient cue— body orientation. However, when body orientation is more ambiguous their ability to judge the less prominent cues of the face and eyes does improve.

This review describes the primary strategies used to express changes in conceptual viewpoint (Parrill, 2012) in co-speech gesture and sign language. We describe the use of the face, eye gaze, body orientation and hands to represent these differences in viewpoint, focusing particularly on McNeill’s (1992) division of iconic gestures into observer versus character viewpoint gestures, and on the situations in which they occur. We also draw a parallel between the strategies used in co-speech gesture and those used in different signed languages (see Cormier, Quinto-Pozos, Sevcikova, & Schembri, 2012), and suggest possibilities for further research in this area.

In this chapter we examine the ways in which children in two primary school classes respond to teacher informing turns, and the evidence this provides for engagement with learning. Teachers’ informings can be factually telling the students some curriculum content directly, or they can be procedural informings telling the students how to practically accomplish some task. Informing turns, particularly factual informings, appear to be much less frequent in classrooms that have been studied than question turns, notably in Initiation-Response-Follow-up/Evaluation (IRF/E) sequences. One feature of informing turns is that they are less likely to elicit verbal responses than questions, therefore making it more of a challenge to track learners’ displays of understanding and orientation to learning. In this study we investigate children’s embodied responses to the teachers’ informing turns, in particular gaze and body orientation, and ask how this might predict their successful uptake of curriculum learning. By examining the ways in which knowledge is displayed (or not) over the course of a lesson we are able to track the epistemic trajectories of children providing insights into how they engage with what the teacher says.

Objective: Through an experimental study, the present work aims at testing the effectiveness of diet and mental imagery on the success of free throw in Congolese beginners Basketball Players. Method: 45 players participated in this experimental study in Brazzaville (Congo) .These subjects were divided into 3 groups. Group I (n=15), made up of beginner Basketball players subjected to a balanced diet to the mental training and to the practice of throwing on the ground. Group II (n=15), made up of beginner basketball players from a local team subjected to mental training of the throw and food monitoring; Group III (n=15), beginner Basketball Players participating in the district competitions. The variables studied were: flexion of the legs (FL), body orientation (BO), the extension of the arms (EA), and the success of shots (SS). Results: The results indicate that the best progress was made by the players in Group I: + 67.7% for the squat, + 38% for the orientation of the body, + 45.7% for the extension of arm, and 83.7% for successful shots. Conclusion: In summary, mental rehearsal combined with a balanced diet facilitates the practice of physical and sporting activity and significantly improves learning and performance of athletes.

INTRODUCTION: To flip a switch "down," our motor system can normally rely on concordant visual, gravitational, and egocentric cues about the vertical. However, divers must sometimes perform this task while visual cues are limited and gravitational cues are misaligned with egocentric cues. Astronauts must also flip switches "down" in absence of gravitational cues. Our study evaluates this ability using a laboratory simulation. METHODS: The subjects were 24 healthy volunteers who were blindfolded, tilted into different angles of roll, and asked to silence an alarm by flipping a switch "down." The switch was constructed such that it could be flipped in any direction in the subjects' frontal plane. RESULTS: Two subjects deflected the switch in accordance with the direction of gravity, irrespective of their body orientation. Twenty subjects deflected it in accordance with their body orientation, irrespective of the direction of gravity. The remaining two persons could not be classified unequivocally. Notably, some egocentric responders deflected the rod consistently toward their feet, but others deflected it consistently toward other parts of their body. DISCUSSION: Since our findings disagree with perceptual studies where gravitational rather than egocentric cues predominated in the absence of vision, we posit that perception and action may access distinct internal representations of the vertical. On the practical side, our findings indicate that designers of spaceflight and underwater equipment should not rely on divers' intuitive knowledge on how to flip a switch "down." Bock O, Bury N. Flipping a switch "down" when not aligned with the gravitational vertical. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2016; 87(10):838-843. Language: en

In the chapters of the first two parts of this book, we focus on specific issues that historically have been topics of educational psychology. We begin this third part of the book with a summary of the position on the thinking body that has emerged throughout those chapters. This summary is in the form of a holistic study of learning that accounts for the thinking body as a whole. Using exemplifying fragments from a tenth-grade physics course, we articulate a monist, one-substance approach. The analyses exhibit how the monist approach advanced throughout the book solves three perennial problems that plague present-day research: (a) the separation of body and mind that is accompanied by the reduction of affective and bodily practical dimensions of life to the intellectual (mentalism); (b) the conflation of thinking and speaking; and (c) the separation of individual and collective subjectivity

Flying birds rely on visual cues for retinal image stabilization by negating rotation-induced optic flow, the motion of the visual panorama across the retina, through corrective eye and head movements. In combination with vestibular and proprioceptive feedback, birds may also use visual cues to stabilize their body during flight. Here, we test whether artificially induced wide-field motion generated through projected visual patterns elicits maneuvers in body orientation and flight position, in addition to stabilizing vision. To test this hypothesis, we present hummingbirds flying freely within a 1.2 m cylindrical visual arena with a virtual surround rotated at different speeds about its vertical axis. The birds responded robustly to these visual perturbations by rotating their heads and bodies with the moving visual surround, and by adjusting their flight trajectories; following the surround. Thus, similar to insects, hummingbirds appear to use optic flow cues to control flight maneuvers in addition to stabilize their visual inputs.

The impairment of the horizontal is caused by elevation of the heel of the foot from the ground. Receptors in the soles of the feet provide a mapping of body orientation to the upright, and is identical to Mittelstaedt's idiotropic tendency. Initiation of gait wearing flat shoes without elevation of the heel is sufficient to change to a truthful horizontal. Using flat shoes increases neurogenesis and leads to a decreased frequency of diseases of the nervous system.

The ability to localize moving joints of a person in action is crucial for interacting with other people in the environment. However, it remains unclear how the visual system encodes the position of joints in a moving body. We used a paradigm based on a well-known phenomenon, the flash-lag effect, to investigate the mechanisms underlying joint localization in bodily movements. We first found that observers perceived a strong flash-lag effect in biological motion: when a briefly-flashed dot was presented physically in perfect alignment with a continuously moving limb, the flash dot was perceived to lag behind the position of the moving joint. Importantly, our study revealed that for familiar forward walking actions, the strength of the flash-lag effect for a joint depends on body orientation. Specifically, observing a walker with a natural body orientation (i.e., upright) yielded a significantly stronger flash-lag effect for the critical foot joint than did viewing an inverted walker. In contrast, the hand joint showed a weaker flash-lag effect in the upright walker than the inverted walker. These findings suggest that the impact of body orientation on encoding joint locations depended on body part. Furthermore, we found that action familiarity modulates the impact of body orientation on the flash-lag effect. Body orientation impacted location encoding in familiar forward walking actions, but not in unfamiliar actions (e.g., backward walking, jumping-jack). Simulation results showed that generic motion mechanisms, such as the temporal averaging model, cannot fully account for these empirical findings regarding the flash-lag effect in biological motion. The present study provides compelling evidence that action processing interacts with position processing to localize the moving joints in whole-body actions, and that this influence depends on body orientation and familiarity of actions.

The DIORAMA GPS satellite platform orientation model is described. Satellites need to keep sensors pointed towards the earth and solar panels oriented to face the sun (when not in the earth’s shadow) while they orbit the earth.

International audience; In this paper we propose a novel human action recognition method, robust to viewpoint variation, which combines skeleton-and depth-based action recognition approaches. For this matter, we first build several base classifiers, to independently predict the action performed by a subject. Then, two efficient combination strategies , that take into account skeleton accuracy and human body orientation, are proposed. The first is based on fuzzy switcher where the second uses a combination between fuzzy switcher and aggregation. Moreover, we introduce a new algorithm for the estimation of human body orientation. To perform the test we have created a new Multiview 3D Action public dataset with three viewpoint angles (30°,0°,-30°). The experimental results show that an efficient combination strategy of base classifiers improves the accuracy and the computational efficiency for human action recognition.

International audience; Objective This paper aims to provide some practical recommendations to reduce eye lens dose for workers exposed to X-rays in interventional cardiology and radiology and also to propose an eye lens correction factor when lead glasses are used. Methods Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the variation of eye lens exposure with operator position, height and body orientation with respect to the patient and the X-ray tube. The paper also looks into the efficiency of wraparound lead glasses using simulations. Computation results are compared with experimental measurements performed in Spanish hospitals using eye lens dosemeters as well as with data from available literature. Results Simulations showed that left eye exposure is generally higher than the right eye, when the operator stands on the right side of the patient. Operator height can induce a strong dose decrease by up to a factor of 2 for the left eye for 10-cm-taller operators. Body rotation of the operator away from the tube by 45°–60° reduces eye exposure by a factor of 2. The calculation-based correction factor of 0.3 for wraparound type lead glasses was found to agree reasonably well with experimental data. Conclusions Simple precautions, such as the positioning of the image screen away from the X-ray source, lead to a significant reduction of the eye lens dose. Measurements and simulations performed in this work also show that a general eye lens correction factor of 0.5 can be used when lead glasses are worn regardless of operator position, height and body orientation. © 2016 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica

Background. Visual vertical (VV) measurement provides information about spatial cognition and is now part of postural disorders assessment. Guidelines for clinical VV measurement after stroke remain to be established, especially regarding the orientation settings for patients who do not sit upright. Objectives. We analyzed the need to control body orientation while patients estimate the VV. Methods. VV orientation and variability were assessed in 20 controls and 36 subacute patients undergoing rehabilitation after a first hemisphere stroke, in 3 settings: body not maintained (trunk and head free), partially maintained (trunk maintained, head free), or maintained (trunk and head). VV was analyzed as a function of trunk and head tilt, also quantified. Results. Trunk and head orientations were independent. The ability to sit independently was affected by a tilted trunk. The setting had a strong effect on VV orientation and variability in patients with contralesional trunk tilt (n = 11; trunk orientation −18.4 ± 11.7°). The contralesional VV bias was severe and consistent under partially maintained (−8.4 ± 5.2°) and maintained (−7.8 ± 3.5°) settings, whereas various individual behaviors reduced the mean bias under the nonmaintained setting (−3.6 ± 9.3°, P < .05). VV variability was lower under the maintained (1.5 ± 0.2°) than nonmaintained (3.7 ± 0.4°, P < .001) and partially maintained (3.6 ± 0.2°, P < .001) settings. In contrast, setting had no effect in patients with satisfactory postural control in sitting. Conclusion. Subject setting improves VV measurement in stroke patients with postural disorders. Maintaining the trunk upright enhances the validity of VV orientation, and maintaining the head upright enhances the validity of within-subject variability. Measuring VV without any body maintaining is valid in patients with satisfactory balance abilities.

Accelerometers are motion-detection devices that, when attached to animals, are capable of detecting body orientation, overall activity levels, and specific behavior patterns. We deployed accelerometers in order to study the hypothesis that accelerometer output would allow us to distinguish between 4 behavior patterns in 3 adult female African elephants Loxodonta africana at Disney's Animal Kingdom®, Florida, USA. Tri-axial accelerometer data loggers were attached to the tops of collars worn around the elephants' necks. Behavior was documented on video while the accelerometer output was stored on the data logger. Feeding, bathing, and walk- ing behaviors were recorded in all 3 subjects, while swaying behavior could be recorded in only 1 subject. Data in the 3 physical dimensions (sway, surge, and heave) were analyzed in terms of overall magnitude of movement (dynamic acceleration) and in terms of the periodicity of move- ment. When classifying accelerometer data of unlabeled origin to the correct behavioral state, overall success ranged from 70 to 91%. Bathing was sometimes confused with feeding and walk- ing, but feeding, walking, and swaying were easily distinguished from each other. These results show that data from accelerometers can distinguish an elephant's behavioral states, and thus may be used to monitor elephant behavior remotely. Such devices could be deployed for a variety of purposes, ranging from monitoring elephant activity in zoos to an early-warning system that could alert the authorities when wild elephants are being illegally hunted.

This study aimed to investigate the difference of the body orientation ability in sitting position to adapt to dynamically changing angle of the base of support in stroke patients and Healthy adults. The angle between vertical and head and trunk in 12 stroke patients (6 male and 6 female) and 12 healthy adults (6 male and 6 female) were measured by video motion analysis system. The head and trunk angle between stroke patients and healthy adults in sitting position were significantly different when increase the angle of dominant side(p .05), Stroke patients compared to healthy adults had more deficits in their body orientation ability in sitting position to adapt to dynamically changing angle of the base of support. This finding may help to understand postural control deficits more clearly in stroke patients in sitting position.

Equipment of mobile phones with various kinds of sensors is transforming these devices from mere capabilities of voice and internet access to devices capable of sensing a number of phenomena pertaining to their users. In this paper we make use of these capabilities of phones to detect social interactions between people and analyze social context by using embedded sensors found in typical smart phones. Work carried out in this area has typically used dedicated hardware to establish social interactions, and we contend on the suitability of mobile phone, since additional devices that user is not familiar with influence natural user behavior and thus their social interaction patterns. Our work shows that two parameters that can be detected through mobile phone sensing, namely interpersonal distance and relative body orientation, provide a solid basis for inferring social interactions. We describe how these factors are acquired using smart phones and describe our analysis. The experiments demonstrate that we can recognize not only whether a social interaction is taking place, but also the type of social interaction, distinguishing between formal and informal social settings.

Cryptic colour patterns in prey are classical examples of adaptations to avoid predation, but we still know little about behaviours that reinforce the match between animal body and the background. For example, moths avoid predators by matching their colour patterns with the background. Active choice of a species-specific body orientation has been suggested as an important function of body positioning behaviour performed by moths after landing on the bark. However, the contribution of this behaviour to moths’ crypticity has not been directly measured. From observations of geometrid moths, Hypomecis roboraria and Jankowskia fuscaria, we determined that the positioning behaviour, which consists of walking and turning the body while repeatedly lifting and lowering the wings, resulted in new resting spots and body orientations in J. fuscaria and in new resting spots in H. roboraria. The body positioning behaviour of the two species significantly decreased the probability of visual detection by humans, who viewed photographs of the moths taken before and after the positioning behaviour. This implies that body positioning significantly increases the camouflage effect provided by moth’s cryptic colour pattern regardless of whether the behaviour involves a new body orientation or not. Our study demonstrates that the evolution of morphological adaptations, such as colour pattern of moths, cannot be fully understood without taking into account a behavioural phenotype that coevolved with the morphology for increasing the adaptive value of the morphological trait.

After a period of stepping on a rotating platform, blindfolded subjects demonstrate a tendency to unconsciously turn when stepping in place, an after-effect known as podokinetic after-rotation (PKAR). Recent studies have also reported a change in postural orientation following the adaptive period and have suggested that this is causally related to PKAR. Here, we assess changes in trunk orientation following platform adaptation and determine their relationship to PKAR. Specifically, we determine whether a reorganized standing posture causes PKAR. Ten subjects stepped on a platform rotating at 60°/s for 10 min, with a cadence of 100 steps/min. Following adaptation, a significant PKAR response was seen, with a mean yaw rotation velocity of 6.0 ± 2.2°/s. In addition to this dynamic after-effect, there was a significant twist of the trunk with respect to the feet when standing still (6.9° ± 4.5°; mean ± SD), confirming the presence of a postural reorientation after-effect. However, the magnitudes of the two after-effects did not correlate (r = 0.06, p = 0.87). Furthermore, in a second experiment, a prolonged passive twist of the trunk was used to induce postural reorientation. However, in this case, PKAR was not induced. These results demonstrate that PKAR is not an automatic consequence of reorganized standing posture.

Pusher syndrome is classically described as disorder of body orientation in the coronal plane. It is characterized by a tilt towards the contralesional paretic side and a resistance to external attempts to rectify. It occurs mainly in stroke patients, however, non-stroke causes have been described too. In 2010 the concept of the posterior pusher syndrome had been proposed, defined as disturbance of body orientation in the sagittal plane with imbalance, posterior tilt and an active resistance to forward pulling or pushing. The author describes, on the basis of the literature and own research, symptoms and methods of the treatment of the little-known posterior pusher syndrome.

This study tested whether human body orientation can influence the behavior of bull sharks by examining sharks’ approach distances from a person positioned vertically or horizontally in the water. Results showed that bull sharks,Carcharhinus leucas, kept a significantly greater distance when the test subject was standing in chest-deep water with his head above water versus lying on the ocean floor. Furthermore, larger bull sharks in the immediate area withdrew when the subject entered the water.

The analysis of customer behavior from surveillance camera is one of the most important open topics for marketing. We develop a system to recognize different customer behaviors on the front of shelf: no interest, viewing, turning to shelf, touching, picking and returning to shelf and picking and putting into basket, which show customer's increasing interest to products. In the proposed system, head orientation, body orientation, and arm action, the multiple cues are integrated for the customer behavior recognition. The proposed system discretizes the head and body orientation of customer into 8 directions to estimate whether the customer is looking or turning to the merchandise shelf. Semi-Supervised Learning method is applied to optimize the training dataset and to generate an accurate classifier. As for the arm action recognition, a novel combined hand feature (CHF), which includes hand trajectory, tracking status and the relative position between hand and shopping basket, is proposed to describe different arm actions. The CHF is classified by Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) into different arm actions. A series of experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods and the performance to the developed system.

We present a novel approach for jointly estimating targets' head, body orientations and conversational groups called F-formations from a distant social scene (e.g., a cocktail party captured by surveillance cameras). Differing from related works that have (i) coupled head and body pose learning by exploiting the limited range of orientations that the two can jointly take, or (ii) determined F-formations based on the mutual head (but not body) orientations of interactors, we present a unified framework to jointly infer both (i) and (ii). Apart from exploiting spatial and orientation relationships, we also integrate cues pertaining to temporal consistency and occlusions, which are beneficial while handling low-resolution data under surveillance settings. Efficacy of the joint inference framework reflects via increased head, body pose and F-formation estimation accuracy over the state-of-the-art, as confirmed by extensive experiments on two social datasets.

The aim of this study was to determine the thresholds for perception of tilt and translation using 3 motion/tilt profile paradigms. Healthy subjects were submitted to the following: 1) unilateral and bilateral eccentric rotations (centrifugation), 2) whole body translatory decelerations opposite to the movement direction while seated on a linear sled, and 3) discrete slow velocity platform tilts. Subjects were instructed to verbally indicate the perceived direction of tilt or translation. Fifteen healthy subjects (12 male and 3 female subjects, 18-31 yr) without any history or evidence of any ophthalmologic or neuro-otologic disorder participated in this study. Our results from unilateral centrifugation indicate a threshold for body tilt perception of approximately 2 degrees with a substantial interindividual range (1.9-5.6 degrees, 52% interindividual and 34% intraindividual variability), which, to our interpretation, mainly depends on otolithic function. Tilt perception during whole body decelerations and discrete platform tilts mainly depends on somatosensory information, showing the dominant role of the somatosensory system for the perception of body orientation. Thus, tilt sensations during eccentric rotations seems to be a promising tool for the evaluation of utricular dysfunction.