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Agglomeration economies are manifested in geographical concentration of firms, as stated by Agglomeration Theory. The objective of this paper was to examine the proximity and concentration of firms in continuous space and in specific directions for the mapping of potential industrial clusters, through an unprecedented approach. The methods used were the indicator semivariogram, anisotropy modeling and kriging interpolation. The geostatistical approach was initially applied in a simulated data with patterns known a priori: random and clusters. Then it was validated with real data of roasted coffee industry in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Each dataset was tested in isotropic and anisotropic scenarios. Geostatistics was sufficient to detect patterns of randomness and spatial dependence, measure the extent of proximity between firms, identify regions with a high level of industrial concentration on the map and estimate an index of concentration at the firm level. The results also advanced the specialized literature by indicating that the anisotropic scenarios, which adjusts the directional bias, better described the reality of the phenomena compared to the isotropic ones. Error measures in anisotropic scenarios were between 7 and 30% more accurate. It was concluded that the direction can be a determinant of the theory of agglomerations and that geostatistics can be useful for mapping potential industry clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relational boredom is an important cognitive-emotional experience that is understudied in the relationship maintenance literature. In three dyadic studies, we investigated accuracy and bias in partners' perceptions of each other's relational boredom, and how accurate and biased boredom perceptions were associated with relationship quality. Results revealed that, overall, partners tended to overestimate—but accurately track—each other's relational boredom across the features that comprise relational boredom and across time. Additionally, when people accurately perceived their partner experiencing high levels of boredom, they reported lower relationship quality; in all other cases, one's own relationship quality was preserved. Furthermore, when people accurately perceived their partner experiencing high levels of boredom, their partner also reported lower relationship quality, while the partner's relationship quality was consistently preserved when the perceiver was accurate at low levels of boredom or overestimated. These findings have important implications for how couples navigate boredom and maintain long-term relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Becoming literate has been argued to have a range of social, economic and psychological effects. Less examined is the extent to which repercussions of becoming literate may vary as a function of writing system variation. A salient way in which writing systems differ is in their directionality. Recent studies have claimed that directional biases in a variety of spatial domains are attributable to reading and writing direction. This claim is the focus of the present paper, which considers the scope and possible mechanisms underlying script directionality effects in spatial cognition, with particular attention to domains with real-world relevance. Three questions are addressed: (1) What are possible mediating and moderator variables relevant to script directionality effects in spatial cognition? (2) Does script directionality exert a fixed or a malleable effect? and (3) How can script directionality effects be appropriately tested? After discussing these questions in the context of specific studies, we highlight general methodological issues in this literature and provide recommendations for the design of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aimed to answer the question "why do people run the track counterclockwise (CCW)?" by investigating the neurophysiological differences in clockwise (CW) versus CCW direction using motor imagery. Three experiments were conducted with healthy adults. Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to examine hemispheric asymmetries in the prefrontal, frontal, and central regions during CW and CCW running imagery (n = 40). We also evaluated event-related potential (ERP) N200 and P300 amplitudes and latencies (n = 66) and conducted another experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (n = 30). EEG data indicated greater left frontal cortical activation during CCW imagery, whereas right frontal activation was more dominant during CW imagery. The prefrontal and central asymmetries demonstrated greater left prefrontal activation during both CW and CCW imagery, with CCW rotation exhibiting higher, though statistically insignificant, asymmetry scores than CW rotation. As a result of the fMRI experiment, greater activation was found during CW than during CCW running imagery in the brain regions of the left insula, Brodmann area 18, right caudate nucleus, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left superior parietal cortex, and supplementary motor area. In the ERP experiment, no significant differences were found depending on direction. These findings suggest that CCW rotation might be associated with the motivational approach system, behavioral activation, or positive affect. However, CW rotation reflects withdrawal motivation, behavioral inhibition, or negative affect. Furthermore, CW rotation is understood to be associated with neural inefficiency, increased task difficulty, or unfamiliarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animals frequently encounter situations in which they can choose to move either left or right. Consistent preferences to move a specific direction may be associated with lateralization, or the asymmetric structure and function of the brain and nervous system. Other lateralized behaviors commonly occur across taxa, possibly reflecting a selective advantage of cerebral specialization. Yet, lateralization and possible directional biases are rarely tested within an ecologically relevant context, such as movement, or while animals are making decisions on a larger scale. Here, we quantify to what extent wild food-caching mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli) in their natural environment demonstrate consistent directional biases in movement when learning a spatial task. Directional bias was estimated from the direction (left or right) that birds moved around a square experimental apparatus while searching for a food reward at the beginning of the tasks, at which point birds had not yet fully learned the location of the food reward. Chickadees did not show a directional bias in movement at a population level. Individual variation in directional bias was significantly repeatable across years but did not significantly vary between two elevations and was not significantly associated with performance on either a spatial learning and memory task or a single spatial reversal learning task. Overall, our results show that chickadees did not show directional bias when deciding what direction to move during spatial cognitive tasks, suggesting that no consistent preference in movement direction may be advantageous when searching for food on a larger scale. Significance statement: Many animals across a wide range of taxa will consistently prefer to use either their left or right side to complete certain types of tasks. Such asymmetric behaviors may be associated with asymmetries in brain structure and are well documented in birds. Yet, mountain chickadees did not show similar directional biases in their movement-based decision-making. Furthermore, biases in their movement were not associated with overall cognitive performance. These null results suggest that while strong left or right preferences may be beneficial in certain contexts, such biases might not be advantageous while foraging for food on a larger scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current and recent relationship evaluations offer important information about the strength and stability of relationships. The diagnostic value of relationship evaluations should motivate people to accurately recall recent changes in relationship quality (tracking accuracy) but may also increase sensitivity to times of low relationship quality (directional bias). Such a vigilant pattern of tracking accuracy and negatively biased memories of relationship quality should be amplified for those high in attachment anxiety. The current study used repeated assessments to compare memories of relationship quality across several weeks with actual evaluations of relationship quality gathered in prior weeks (787 weekly reports, N = 113, 94% women). People high in attachment anxiety more accurately tracked the ups and downs of past relationship quality, but also remembered times of low relationship quality to be lower than actually reported. People high in attachment anxiety also experienced greater depressed moods across weeks when they remembered their relationship quality more negatively. These results have important implications for understanding inconsistencies in prior research and the links between attachment anxiety and depressed mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aimed to answer the question “why do people run the track counterclockwise (CCW)?” by investigating the neurophysiological differences in clockwise (CW) versus CCW direction using motor imagery. Three experiments were conducted with healthy adults. Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to examine hemispheric asymmetries in the prefrontal, frontal, and central regions during CW and CCW running imagery (n = 40). We also evaluated event-related potential (ERP) N200 and P300 amplitudes and latencies (n = 66) and conducted another experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (n = 30). EEG data indicated greater left frontal cortical activation during CCW imagery, whereas right frontal activation was more dominant during CW imagery. The prefrontal and central asymmetries demonstrated greater left prefrontal activation during both CW and CCW imagery, with CCW rotation exhibiting higher, though statistically insignificant, asymmetry scores than CW rotation. As a result of the fMRI experiment, greater activation was found during CW than during CCW running imagery in the brain regions of the left insula, Brodmann area 18, right caudate nucleus, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left superior parietal cortex, and supplementary motor area. In the ERP experiment, no significant differences were found depending on direction. These findings suggest that CCW rotation might be associated with the motivational approach system, behavioral activation, or positive affect. However, CW rotation reflects withdrawal motivation, behavioral inhibition, or negative affect. Furthermore, CW rotation is understood to be associated with neural inefficiency, increased task difficulty, or unfamiliarity.

We used the truth and bias model to examine changes in tracking accuracy and under/overestimation (directional bias) on therapists' judgments about clients' satisfaction. We examined 3 factors of clinical experience that could moderate accuracy: (a) overall level of acquaintanceship with a client, operationalized as treatment length (i.e., less or more time seeing a client), (b) time point in therapy with a specific client, operationalized as session number (i.e., earlier or later in treatment with a client), and (c) order (1st client seen, 2nd client seen . . . last client seen across two years of training in a psychology clinic) in which clients were seen. We conducted a three-level hierarchical linear modeling using data on 6054 sessions, nested in 284 adult clients, nested in 41 doctoral student therapists providing open-ended psychodynamic individual psychotherapy. We found that therapists were able to accurately track client-rated session evaluations with less underestimation (i.e., lower tendency to estimate that clients were less satisfied than they actually were) as they gained experience (both treatment length and client order). Furthermore, therapists exhibited greater tracking accuracy gains over the span of shorter treatments and when working with clients earlier in their clinical training. In longer treatments and with clients seen later in training, tracking accuracy was stable and consistent. Implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have examined the stability of the representation of the position of sound sources in spatial working memory. The goal of this study was to verify whether the memory of sound position declines as maintenance time increases. In two experiments, we tested the influence of the delay between stimulus and response in a sound localization task. In Experiment 1, blindfolded participants listened to bursts of white noise originating from 16 loudspeakers equally spaced in a 360-degree circular space around the listener in such a way that the nose was aligned to the zero-degree coordinate. Their task was to indicate sounds' position using a digital pointer when prompted at varying delays: 0, 3, and 6 s after stimulus offset. In Experiment 2, the task was analogous to Exp. 1 with stimulus–response delays of 0 or 10 s. Results of the two experiments show that increasing stimulus–response delays up to 10 s do not impair sound localization. Participants systematically overestimated the eccentricity of the auditory stimulus by shifting their responses either toward the 90-degree coordinate, in alignment with the right ear, or toward the 270-degree coordinate, in alignment with the left ear. Such bias was analogous in the front and in the rear azimuthal space and was only marginally influenced by the delay conditions. We conclude that the representation of auditory space in working memory is stable, but directionally biased with systematic overestimation of eccentricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An oblique view of three-dimensional objects is preferred over a frontal or lateral view, partly because it is more familiar and easily recognizable. However, which side of a symmetric object looks better remains unsolved. Reading direction, handedness, and the functionality of objects have been suggested as the potential sources of directional bias. In this study, participants of three online surveys (total N = 1082) were asked to choose one item that looked better or was more aesthetically pleasing; the test was performed between 100 pairs of left- and right-facing mirror-images. The results showed that Japanese participants (both vertical and left-to-right readers) and Israeli participants (right-to-left readers) preferred left-facing images over right-facing images, whereas American participants (left-to-right readers) preferred right-facing images over left-facing images. Weak effects of handedness and object functionality were also found: Left-handers tended to choose right-facing images more than right-handers, and the view of objects with a handle that is graspable by the dominant hand was more likely to be chosen over the opposite side view, regardless of culture. Although previous studies have emphasized the role of reading direction, a close look at the results suggests that it cannot fully account for the preferred facing direction of oblique objects.

Electrofishing techniques are widely used for the estimation of the size of stream-dwelling fish populations for both fishery management and scientific study. In contrast to multiple pass, population depletion methods, single-pass catch-per-unit-effort ( CPUE) methods are less time-consuming and labour-intensive. A possible issue with the commonly used fixed total time CPUE protocol is that it does not differentiate between the time spent actively fishing and the time incurred while not actively fishing (e.g. removing fish from nets and navigating the site). This issue is likely related to fish density. This study compared two methods of CPUE electrofishing and tested the hypothesis that time spent handling fish and navigating a site can be a source of error in the commonly used fixed total time electrofishing method. Seventy-one sites were sampled across three subcatchments in the Foyle catchment in Northern Ireland. We found a difference in the catch per unit time between the two methods and that this difference increased with fish density. The fixed-time CPUE method also failed to detect a species presence in low-density sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a new methodology for estimating and testing the form of anisotropy of homogeneous spatial processes. We derive a generalised version of the isotropy test proposed by Arbia et al. (2013) and analyse its properties in various settings. Expanding on this, we propose a new testing procedure in the frequency domain that allows one to estimate and test under mild conditions any form of anisotropy in homogeneous spatial processes. The power of the test is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations performed both on regularly and irregularly spaced data. Finally, the method is used to analyse the soybean yields in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental problem in ecology is to link spatial arrangements of key biota and the scale at which organisms interact with each other to structure communities and influence ecosystem functioning. Limpets are widely acknowledged to play an important role in the ecology of intertidal rocky shores and exert the strongest grazing effect of any marine grazer. As a consequence, to understand rocky shore dynamics it is necessary to understand the processes that control spatial and temporal patterns of limpet foraging. Much is known about how limpets behave and their distribution during low tide while at rest, and where and when limpets forage. However, it is less well understood how the behaviour and distribution of the same individuals within these two phases of activity can interact. At the smallest spatial scale, several species of limpet exhibit population-level biases in orientation during low tide. If orientation influences where and when limpets forage, this bias may lead to a directional bias in foraging direction and location during high tide, and potentially to patchy grazing. On the other hand, foraging location may determine low tide orientation. We tested these ideas by comparing the low tide orientation of individual limpets ( Cellana tramoserica ) with foraging frequency, and the relative direction of travel while foraging. We found that though there was an overall bias in departure angle and foraging location, there was no relationship between low tide orientation of individuals and their departure angle. Instead, prior to departure limpets rotated on their resting site to face a new direction. There was also no link between the direction of travel of limpets returning from foraging and their final low tide orientation, as limpets actively rotated on arrival at their resting site. Our findings suggest that there is little or no direct link between the orientation of an individual and its subsequent foraging, nor the converse. Limpets instead actively select both their orientation and the direction they depart for foraging by rotation on their resting site. These results decouple the small scale tide-out resting distribution and orientation of grazers from their ecological functioning. Therefore noting the location of limpets at low tide has limited use for predicting ecological consequences of their grazing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During development and disease, cells migrate collectively in response to gradients in physical, chemical and electrical cues. Despite its physiological significance and potential therapeutic applications, electrotactic collective cell movement is relatively less well understood. Here, we analyze the combined effect of intercellular interactions and electric fields on the directional migration of non-transformed mammary epithelial cells, MCF-10A. Our data show that clustered cells exhibit greater sensitivity to applied electric fields but align more slowly than isolated cells. Clustered cells achieve half-maximal directedness with an electric field that is 50% weaker than that required by isolated cells; however, clustered cells take ~2-4 fold longer to align. This trade-off in greater sensitivity and slower dynamics correlates with the slower speed and intrinsic directedness of collective movement even in the absence of an electric field. Whereas isolated cells exhibit a persistent random walk, the trajectories of clustered cells are more ballistic as evidenced by the superlinear dependence of their mean square displacement on time. Thus, intrinsically-directed, slower clustered cells take longer to redirect and align with an electric field. These findings help to define the operating space and the engineering trade-offs for using electric fields to affect cell movement in biomedical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study of Quentin Blake’s wordless picture book,Clown, which won the International Bologna Ragazzi Award in 1996, I examine the ways that the layout, color, line, perspective, directional bias and point of view act as subtexts which can influence the ‘reading’ of the pictorial narrative. Besides brief outlines of other wordless picture books and their creators there are references to those literary theorists who have informed my own work. I conclude that the lack of words inClownis compensated for by the abundance of images, the clown’s expressive body language and the textual quality of the drawing style. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Five individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities participated in paired-stimulus preference assessments during repeated baseline probes. All subjects initially showed a pronounced bias by typically selecting the stimulus placed in either the left or right position. Biased responding for 3 subjects was eliminated when training trials were conducted in which a stimulus of known lesser quality was presented as one of the choices. Reinforcer-quality training was unsuccessfiil for 2 subjects, as was a condition in which reinforcer magnitude was modified to favor unbiased responding. These subjects' biased responding was eliminated only when a correction procedure (repetition of error trials) was implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional directional bias is unable to identify the interactions and relationships between emitted tourist flows and attracted tourist flows, while arguably contradicting the actual emitting/attracting functions for any region, especially in systematic analysis. A newly coined FTR (Functional Tourism Region) based on a regional perspective and a new directional bias derived from conceptual, geographical and technical contexts are proposed. This paper proposes that the new directional bias is defined in terms of two characteristics. The first is the pointing of tourist flow as well as its pointing types, and the second is the inertial state of pointing. Pointing types are classified into three basic types: city-pointing, seaside-pointing and sun-lust-pointing. A case study of Chinese rural residents' domestic overnight travel pattern demonstrates that the new definition of directional bias may yield useful qualitative and quantitative information. Results indicate that city-pointing and seaside-pointing constitute the main pattern, while sun-lust-pointing increasingly contributes to the evolution of the whole tourist flow system. Increasing regional disparity is also detected in that China's eastern economic belt continuously enjoys tourism profits. Finally, it is postulated that the new directional bias of tourist flow can also be applied to other non-work flows that also have origins and destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several areas of the macaque brain are known to be related to the reward during the performance of saccadic eye-movement tasks. Neurons in the supplementary eye field (SEF) have been reported to be involved in the prediction and detection of a reward. We describe a group of neurons in the SEF that became active during the period of reward delivery after saccades toward a specific direction, but showed weaker activity in other directions, although the same amount of reward was given in each direction. Moreover, this directional reward activity was modulated by the reward size. Our results demonstrate that the SEF cells may reflect both reward amount and target positions toward which a movement was rewarded, and suggest that they may play an important role in providing information about the value of each saccade according to the spatial target location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]