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La réglementation et les attentes sociétales incitent aujourd'hui les aménageurs du territoire à évaluer les impacts environnementaux de leurs projets de construction, mais également à prévoir des mesures et des actions pour créer ou restaurer la biodiversité des espaces modifiés. Cependant, l'évaluation ex-post des projets de restauration ou de création d'habitats pose de nombreuses questions méthodologiques. L'étude de cas du Mont-aux-Liens, un aménagement paysager contigu à l'autoroute A19, montre que la diversité spécifique végétale est une composante pertinente de la performance écologique d'un tel aménagement. Le bilan quantitatif (richesse spécifique) est meilleur que celui projeté par l'aménageur, mais l'approche qualitative montre un échec des semis et une colonisation exogène forte. Les caractéristiques écologiques et les stratégies adaptatives expliquent ces bilans. Elles fournissent des informations utiles pour la redéfinition d'objectifs adaptés à l'amélioration de la performance écologique de l'aménagement, du point de vue de la biodiversité végétale

Humans construct rich representations of other people's mental states. Here we investigated how intentionality in eye gaze affected perception and responses to gaze. Observers viewed videos of human gazers looking left or right. Unbeknownst to the observers, the gazers could either choose where to look (self-chosen gaze) or were explicitly instructed where to look (computer-instructed gaze). In Experiment 1, observers reported the direction of the gazer's upcoming look before the eye movement was initiated. Faster responses were found for self-chosen relative to computer-instructed gaze. In Experiments 2 and 3, observers responded by reporting the location of a peripheral target that appeared at the gazed-at or not gazed-at location. Faster responses were found for gazed-at relative to not gazed-at targets and at longer cue-target intervals for self-chosen relative to computer-instructed gaze. The examination of the eye movement kinematics indicated that self-chosen gaze shifts were marked by a larger magnitude of motion within the eye region prior to the eye movement occurring relative to computer-instructed ones. Thus, perceived intentionality in eye gaze facilitates responses in observers with the information about mental states communicated via subtle properties of eye motion., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Introduction: Although it is well established that humans spontaneously attend to where others are looking, it remains debated whether this gaze following behavior occurs because gaze communicates directional information (i.e., where an agent is looking) or because gaze communicates an agent's inferred mental content (i.e., what an agent perceives), both of which rely on the processes involved in the general Theory of Mind ability., Methods: To address this question, in two Experiments we used a novel task to measure how spatially dissociated and spatially combined effects of an agent's gaze direction and perceived mental content influence target performance. We also contrasted performance for social directional cues and nonsocial arrows., Results: Our data revealed that performance was compromised when cue direction and mental content dissociated relative to when they combined. Performance for dissociated components was especially prominent when a social avatar served as a cue relative to a comparison arrow., Discussion: Together, these data show that a typical gaze signal communicates information about both where an agent is attending and what they are attending to., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Mayrand, Capozzi and Ristic.)

The aging population in Canada has been increasing continuously throughout the past decades. Amongst this demographic, around 11% suffer from some form of cognitive decline. While diagnosis through traditional means (i.e., Magnetic Resonance Imagings (MRIs), positron emission tomography (PET) scans, cognitive assessments, etc.) has been successful at detecting this decline, there remains unexplored measures of cognitive health that could reduce stress and cost for the elderly population, including approaches for early detection and preventive methods. Such efforts could additionally contribute to reducing the pressure and stress on the Canadian healthcare system, as well as improve the quality of life of the elderly population. Previous evidence has demonstrated emotional facial expressions being altered in individuals with various cognitive conditions such as dementias, mild cognitive impairment, and geriatric depression. This review highlights the commonalities among these cognitive health conditions, and research behind the contactless assessment methods to monitor the health and cognitive well-being of the elderly population through emotion expression. The contactless detection approach covered by this review includes automated facial expression analysis (AFEA), electroencephalogram (EEG) technologies and heart rate variability (HRV). In conclusion, a discussion of the potentials of the existing technologies and future direction of a novel assessment design through fusion of AFEA, EEG and HRV measures to increase detection of cognitive decline in a contactless and remote manner will be presented., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© 2024 Jiang, Yan and Mayrand.)

Human eyes convey a wealth of social information, with mutual looks representing one of the hallmark gaze communication behaviors. However, it remains relatively unknown if such reciprocal communication requires eye-to-eye contact or if general face-to-face looking is sufficient. To address this question, while recording looking behavior in live interacting dyads using dual mobile eye trackers, we analyzed how often participants engaged in mutual looks as a function of looking towards the top (i.e., the Eye region) and bottom half of the face (i.e., the Mouth region). We further examined how these different types of mutual looks during an interaction connected with later gaze-following behavior elicited in an individual experimental task. The results indicated that dyads engaged in mutual looks in various looking combinations (Eye-to-eye, Eye-to-mouth, and Mouth-to-Mouth) but proportionately spent little time in direct eye-to-eye gaze contact. However, the time spent in eye-to-eye contact significantly predicted the magnitude of later gaze following response elicited by the partner's gaze direction. Thus, humans engage in looking patterns toward different face parts during interactions, with direct eye-to-eye looks occurring relatively infrequently; however, social messages relayed during eye-to-eye contact appear to carry key information that propagates to affect subsequent individual social behavior., (© 2023. The Author(s).)