Suzumushi : the silent swarm

This silent swarm of stylized crickets is downloading data from Internet and catalogue searches being undertaken by the public at the State Library Queensland. These searches are being displayed on the screen on their backs. Each cricket downloads the searches and communicates this information with other crickets. Commonly found searches spread like a meme through the swarm. In this work memes replace the crickets’ song, washing like a wave through the swarm and changing on the whim of Internet users. When one cricket begins calling others, the swarm may respond to produce emergent patterns of text. When traffic is slow or of now interest to the crickets, they display onomatopoeia. The work is inspired by R. Murray Schafer’s research into acoustic ecologies. In the 1960’s Schafer proposed that many species develop calls that fit niches within their acoustic environment. An increasing background of white noise dominates the acoustic environment of urban human habitats, leaving few acoustic niches for other species to communicate. The popularity of headphones and portable music may be seen as an evolution of our acoustic ecology driven by our desire to hear expressive, meaningful sound, above the din of our cities. Similarly, the crickets in this work are hypothetical creatures that have evolved to survive in a noisy human environment. This speculative species replaces auditory calls with onomatopoeia and information memes, communicating with the swarm via radio frequency chirps instead of sound. Whilst these crickets cannot make sound, each individual has been programmed respond to sound generated by the audience, by making onomatopoeia calls in text. Try talking to a cricket, blowing on its tail, or making other sounds to trigger a call.

Visuospatial tasks suppress craving for cigarettes

The Elaborated Intrusion (EI) theory of desire posits that visual imagery plays a key role in craving. We report a series of experiments testing this hypothesis in a drug addiction context. Experiment 1 showed that a mental visual imagery task with neutral content reduced cigarette craving in abstaining smokers, but that an equivalent auditory task did not. The effect of visual imagery was replicated in Experiment 2, which also showed comparable effects of non-imagery visual working memory interference. Experiment 3 showed that the benefit of visual over auditory interference was not dependent upon imagery being used to induce craving. Experiment 4 compared a visuomotor task, making shapes from modeling clay, with a verbal task (counting back from 100), and again showed a benefit of the visual over the non-visual task. We conclude that visual imagery supports craving for cigarettes. Competing imagery or visual working memory tasks may help tackle craving in smokers trying to quit.

Real-time evaluation of driver’s alertness on highways

Suburbanisation has been internationally a major phenomenon in the last decades. Suburb-to-suburb routes are nowadays the most widespread road journeys; and this resulted in an increment of distances travelled, particularly on faster suburban highways. The design of highways tends to over-simplify the driving task and this can result in decreased alertness. Driving behaviour is consequently impaired and drivers are then more likely to be involved in road crashes. This is particularly dangerous on highways where the speed limit is high. While effective countermeasures to this decrement in alertness do not currently exist, the development of in-vehicle sensors opens avenues for monitoring driving behaviour in real-time. The aim of this study is to evaluate in real-time the level of alertness of the driver through surrogate measures that can be collected from in-vehicle sensors. Slow EEG activity is used as a reference to evaluate driver's alertness. Data are collected in a driving simulator instrumented with an eye tracking system, a heart rate monitor and an electrodermal activity device (N=25 participants). Four different types of highways (driving scenario of 40 minutes each) are implemented through the variation of the road design (amount of curves and hills) and the roadside environment (amount of buildings and traffic). We show with Neural Networks that reduced alertness can be detected in real-time with an accuracy of 92% using lane positioning, steering wheel movement, head rotation, blink frequency, heart rate variability and skin conductance level. Such results show that it is possible to assess driver's alertness with surrogate measures. Such methodology could be used to warn drivers of their alertness level through the development of an in-vehicle device monitoring in real-time drivers' behaviour on highways, and therefore it could result in improved road safety.

Driving performance impairments due to hypovigilance on monotonous roads

Drivers' ability to react to unpredictable events deteriorates when exposed to highly predictable and uneventful driving tasks. Highway design reduces the driving task mainly to a lane-keeping manoeuvre. Such a task is monotonous, providing little stimulation and this contributes to crashes due to inattention. Research has shown that driver's hypovigilance can be assessed with EEG measurements and that driving performance is impaired during prolonged monotonous driving tasks. This paper aims to show that two dimensions of monotony - namely road design and road side variability - decrease vigilance and impair driving performance. This is the first study correlating hypovigilance and driver performance in varied monotonous conditions, particularly on a short time scale (a few seconds). We induced vigilance decrement as assessed with an EEG during a monotonous driving simulator experiment. Road monotony was varied through both road design and road side variability. The driver's decrease in vigilance occurred due to both road design and road scenery monotony and almost independently of the driver's sensation seeking level. Such impairment was also correlated to observable measurements from the driver, the car and the environment. During periods of hypovigilance, the driving performance impairment affected lane positioning, time to lane crossing, blink frequency, heart rate variability and non-specific electrodermal response rates. This work lays the foundation for the development of an in-vehicle device preventing hypovigilance crashes on monotonous roads.

Order of instruction effects - do they make a difference when teaching senior chemistry with computer based visualizations?

This study investigated whether conceptual development is greater if students learning senior chemistry hear teacher explanations and other traditional teaching approaches first then see computer based visualizations or vice versa. Five Canadian chemistry classes, taught by three different teachers, studied the topics of Le Chatelier’s Principle and dynamic chemical equilibria using scientific visualizations with the explanation and visualizations in different orders. Conceptual development was measured using a 12 item test based on the Chemistry Concepts Inventory. Data was obtained about the students’ abilities, learning styles (auditory, visual or kinesthetic) and sex, and the relationships between these factors and conceptual development due to the teaching sequences were investigated. It was found that teaching sequence is not important in terms of students’ conceptual learning gains, across the whole cohort or for any of the three subgroups.

Improved sensorimotor adaptation after exhaustive exercise is accompanied by altered brain activity

Acute exercise has been shown to exhibit different effects on human sensorimotor behavior; however, the causes and mechanisms of the responses are often not clear. The primary aim of the present study was to determine the effects of incremental running until exhaustion on sensorimotor performance and adaptation in a tracking task. Subjects were randomly assigned to a running group (RG), a tracking group (TG), or a running followed by tracking group (RTG), with 10 subjects assigned to each group. Treadmill running velocity was initially set at 2.0 m s− 1, increasing by 0.5 m s− 1 every 5 min until exhaustion. Tracking consisted of 35 episodes (each 40 s) where the subjects' task was to track a visual target on a computer screen while the visual feedback was veridical (performance) or left-right reversed (adaptation). Resting electroencephalographic (EEG) activity was recorded before and after each experimental condition (running, tracking, rest). Tracking performance and the final amount of adaptation did not differ between groups. However, task adaptation was significantly faster in RTG compared to TG. In addition, increased alpha and beta power were observed following tracking in TG but not RTG although exhaustive running failed to induce significant changes in these frequency bands. Our results suggest that exhaustive running can facilitate adaptation processes in a manual tracking task. Attenuated cortical activation following tracking in the exercise condition was interpreted to indicate cortical efficiency and exercise-induced facilitation of selective central processes during actual task demands.

Lingodroids : studies in spatial cognition and language

The Lingodroids are a pair of mobile robots that evolve a language for places and relationships between places (based on distance and direction). Each robot in these studies has its own understanding of the layout of the world, based on its unique experiences and exploration of the environment. Despite having different internal representations of the world, the robots are able to develop a common lexicon for places, and then use simple sentences to explain and understand relationships between places even places that they could not physically experience, such as areas behind closed doors. By learning the language, the robots are able to develop representations for places that are inaccessible to them, and later, when the doors are opened, use those representations to perform goal-directed behavior.

Electro-cortical implicit race bias does not vary with participants' race or sex

Earlier research found evidence for electro-cortical race bias towards black target faces in white American participants irrespective of the task relevance of race. The present study investigated whether an implicit race bias generalizes across cultural contexts and racial in- and out-groups. An Australian sample of 56 Chinese and Caucasian males and females completed four oddball tasks that required sex judgements for pictures of male and female Chinese and Caucasian posers. The nature of the background (across task) and of the deviant stimuli (within task) was fully counterbalanced. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to deviant stimuli recorded from three midline sites were quantified in terms of mean amplitude for four components: N1, P2, N2 and a late positive complex (LPC; 350–700 ms). Deviants that differed from the backgrounds in sex or race elicited enhanced LPC activity. These differences were not modulated by participant race or sex. The current results replicate earlier reports of effects of poser race relative to background race on the LPC component of the ERP waveform. In addition, they indicate that an implicit race bias occurs regardless of participant's or poser's race and is not confined to a particular cultural context.

The relationship between self-reported animal fear and ERP modulation : Evidence for enhanced processing and fear of harmless invertebrates in snake- and spider-fearful individuals

The present study used ERPs to compare processing of fear-relevant (FR) animals (snakes and spiders) and non-fear-relevant (NFR) animals similar in appearance (worms and beetles). EEG was recorded from 18 undergraduate participants (10 females) as they completed two animal-viewing tasks that required simple categorization decisions. Participants were divided on a post hoc basis into low snake/spider fear and high snake/spider fear groups. Overall, FR animals were rated higher on fear and elicited a larger LPC. However, individual differences qualified these effects. Participants in the low fear group showed clear differentiation between FR and NFR animals on subjective ratings of fear and LPC modulation. In contrast, participants in the high fear group did not show such differentiation between FR and NFR animals. These findings suggest that the salience of feared-FR animals may generalize on both a behavioural and electro-cortical level to other animals of similar appearance but of a non-harmful nature.

Overlapping medical alarms are almost indiscriminable

Objective: We explore how accurately and quickly nurses can identify melodic medical equipment alarms when no mnemonics are used, when alarms may overlap, and when concurrent tasks are performed. Background: The international standard IEC 60601-1-8 (International Electrotechnical Commission, 2005) has proposed simple melodies to distinguish seven alarm sources. Previous studies with nonmedical participants reveal poor learning of melodic alarms and persistent confusions between some of them. The effects of domain expertise, concurrent tasks, and alarm overlaps are unknown. Method: Fourteen intensive care and general medical unit nurses learned the melodic alarms without mnemonics in two sessions on separate days. In the second half of Day 2 the nurses identified single alarms or pairs of alarms played in sequential, partially overlapping, or nearly completely overlapping configurations. For half the experimental blocks nurses performed a concurrent mental arithmetic task. Results: Nurses' learning was poor and was no better than the learning of nonnurses in a previous study. Nurses showed the previously noted confusions between alarms. Overlapping alarms were exceptionally difficult to identify. The concurrent task affected response time but not accuracy. Conclusion: Because of a failure of auditory stream segregation, the melodic alarms cannot be discriminated when they overlap. Directives to sequence the sounding of alarms in medical electrical equipment must be strictly adhered to, or the alarms must redesigned to support better auditory streaming. Application: Actual or potential uses of this research include the implementation of IEC 60601-1-8 alarms in medical electrical equipment.

Useful field of view predicts driving in the presence of distracters

Purpose. The Useful Field of View (UFOV(R)) test has been shown to be highly effective in predicting crash risk among older adults. An important question which we examined in this study is whether this association is due to the ability of the UFOV to predict difficulties in attention-demanding driving situations that involve either visual or auditory distracters. Methods. Participants included 92 community-living adults (mean age 73.6 +/- 5.4 years; range 65-88 years) who completed all three subtests of the UFOV involving assessment of visual processing speed (subtest 1), divided attention (subtest 2), and selective attention (subtest 3); driving safety risk was also classified using the UFOV scoring system. Driving performance was assessed separately on a closed-road circuit while driving under three conditions: no distracters, visual distracters, and auditory distracters. Driving outcome measures included road sign recognition, hazard detection, gap perception, time to complete the course, and performance on the distracter tasks. Results. Those rated as safe on the UFOV (safety rating categories 1 and 2), as well as those responding faster than the recommended cut-off on the selective attention subtest (350 msec), performed significantly better in terms of overall driving performance and also experienced less interference from distracters. Of the three UFOV subtests, the selective attention subtest best predicted overall driving performance in the presence of distracters. Conclusions. Older adults who were rated as higher risk on the UFOV, particularly on the selective attention subtest, demonstrated poorest driving performance in the presence of distracters. This finding suggests that the selective attention subtest of the UFOV may be differentially more effective in predicting driving difficulties in situations of divided attention which are commonly associated with crashes.

An audio wiki supporting mobile collaboration

Wikis have proved to be very effective collaboration and knowledge management tools in large variety of fields thanks to their simplicity and flexible nature. Another important development for the internet is the emergence of powerful mobile devices supported by fast and reliable wireless networks. The combination of these developments begs the question of how to extend wikis on mobile devices and how to leverage mobile devices' rich modalities to supplement current wikis. Realizing that composing and consuming through auditory channel is the most natural and efficient way for mobile device user, this paper explores the use of audio as the medium of wiki. Our work, as the first step towards this direction, creates a framework called Mobile Audio Wiki which facilitates asynchronous audio-mediated collaboration on the move. In this paper, we present the design of Mobile Audio Wiki. As a part of such design, we propose an innovative approach for a light-weight audio content annotation system for enabling group editing, versioning and cross-linking among audio clips. To elucidate the novel collaboration model introduced by Mobile Audio Wiki, its four usage modes are identified and presented in storyboard format. Finally, we describe the initial design for presentation and navigation of Mobile Audio Wiki.

Reading in the Australian curriculum English : describing the effects of structure and organisation on multimodal texts

The recently introduced Australian Curriculum: English Version 3.0 (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2012) requires students to ‘read’ multimodal text and describe the effects of structure and organisation. We begin this article by tracing the variable understandings of what reading multimodal text might entail through the Framing Paper (National Curriculum Board, 2008), the Framing Paper Consultation Report (National Curriculum Board, 2009a), the Shaping Paper (National Curriculum Board, 2009b) and Version 3.0 of the Australian Curriculum English (ACARA, 2012). Our findings show that the theoretical and descriptive framework for doing so is implicit. Drawing together multiple but internally coherent theories from the field of semiotics, we suggest one way to work towards three Year 5 learning outcomes from the reading/writing mode. The affordances of assembling a broad but explicit technical metalanguage for an informed reading of the integrated design elements of multimodal texts are noted.

Benign Epilepsy with Centro-temporal Spikes: Spike Triggered fMRI Shows Somato-sensory Cortex Activity

Summary:  Objective: We performed spike triggered functional MRI (fMRI) in a 12 year old girl with Benign Epilepsy with Centro-temporal Spikes (BECTS) and left-sided spikes. Our aim was to demonstrate the cerebral origin of her interictal spikes. Methods: EEG was recorded within the 3 Tesla MRI. Whole brain fMRI images were acquired, beginning 2–3 seconds after spikes. Baseline fMRI images were acquired when there were no spikes for 20 seconds. Image sets were compared with the Student's t-test. Results: Ten spike and 20 baseline brain volumes were analysed. Focal activiation was seen in the inferior left sensorimotor cortex near the face area. The anterior cingulate was more active during baseline than spikes. Conclusions: Left sided epileptiform activity in this patient with BECTS is associated with fMRI activation in the left face region of the somatosensory cortex, which would be consistent with the facial sensorimotor involvement in BECT seizures. The presence of BOLD signal change in other regions raises the possibility that the scalp recorded field of this patient with BECTs may reflect electrical change in more than one brain region.