Missing Links, Cultural Modernity and the Dead: Anatomically Modern Humans in the Great Cave of Niah (Sarawak, Borneo)

The Great Cave of Niah in Sarawak (northern Borneo) came into the gaze of Western Science through the work of Alfred Russell Wallace, who came to Sarawak in the 1850s to search for ‘missing links’ in his pioneering studies of evolution and the natural history of Island Southeast Asia and Australasia. The work of Tom and Barbara Harrisson in the 1950s and 1960s placed the Great Cave, and particularly their key find, the ‘Deep Skull’, at the nexus of the evolving archaeological framework for the region: for decades the skull, dated in 1958 by adjacent charcoal to c.40,000 BP, was the oldest fossil of an anatomically modern human anywhere in the world and thus critical to ideas about human evolution and dispersal. Although several authorities later questioned the provenance and antiquity of the Deep Skull, renewed investigations of the Harrisson excavations since 2000 have shown that it can be attributed securely to a specific location in the Pleistocene stratigraphy, with direct U-series dating on a piece of the skull indicating an age for it of c.37,500 BP and the first evidence for associated human activity at the site going back to c.50,000 BP. The new work also indicates that the skull is part of a cultural deposit, perhaps a precursor to the long tradition in Borneo of processing of the dead and secondary burial. These indicators of cultural complexity chime with the complexity of the subsistence behaviour of the early users of the caves discussed by Philip Piper and Ryan Rabett in chapter ten of this volume.

Eye-movements aid the control of locomotion

Eye-movements have long been considered a problem when trying to understand the visual control of locomotion. They transform the retinal image from a simple expanding pattern of moving texture elements (pure optic flow), into a complex combination of translation and rotation components (retinal flow). In this article we investigate whether there are measurable advantages to having an active free gaze, over a static gaze or tracking gaze, when steering along a winding path. We also examine patterns of free gaze behavior to determine preferred gaze strategies during active locomotion. Participants were asked to steer along a computer-simulated textured roadway with free gaze, fixed gaze, or gaze tracking the center of the roadway. Deviation of position from the center of the road was recorded along with their point of gaze. It was found that visually tracking the middle of the road produced smaller steering errors than for fixed gaze. Participants performed best at the steering task when allowed to sample naturally from the road ahead with free gaze. There was some variation in the gaze strategies used, but sampling was predominantly of areas proximal to the center of the road. These results diverge from traditional models of flow analysis.

The art of conversation is coordination: common ground and the coupling of eye movements during dialogue

When two people discuss something they can see in front of them, what is the relationship between their eye movements? We recorded the gaze of pairs of subjects engaged in live, spontaneous dialogue. Cross-recurrence analysis revealed a coupling between the eye movements of the two conversants. In the first study, we found their eye movements were coupled across several seconds. In the second, we found that this coupling increased if they both heard the same background information prior to their conversation. These results provide a direct quantification of joint attention during unscripted conversation and show that it is influenced by knowledge in the common ground.

Eye-tracking for avatar eye-gaze and interactional analysis in immersive collaborative virtual environments

Participants' eye-gaze is generally not captured or represented in immersive collaborative virtual environment (ICVE) systems. We present EyeCVE. which uses mobile eye-trackers to drive the gaze of each participant's virtual avatar, thus supporting remote mutual eye-contact and awareness of others' gaze in a perceptually unfragmented shared virtual workspace. We detail trials in which participants took part in three-way conferences between remote CAVE (TM) systems linked via EyeCVE. Eye-tracking data was recorded and used to evaluate interaction, confirming; the system's support for the use of gaze as a communicational and management resource in multiparty conversational scenarios. We point toward subsequent investigation of eye-tracking in ICVEs for enhanced remote social-interaction and analysis.

Exploring combinations of different color and facial expression stimuli for gaze-independent BCIs

Background: Some studies have proven that a conventional visual brain computer interface (BCI) based on overt attention cannot be used effectively when eye movement control is not possible. To solve this problem, a novel visual-based BCI system based on covert attention and feature attention has been proposed and was called the gaze-independent BCI. Color and shape difference between stimuli and backgrounds have generally been used in examples of gaze-independent BCIs. Recently, a new paradigm based on facial expression changes has been presented, and obtained high performance. However, some facial expressions were so similar that users couldn't tell them apart, especially when they were presented at the same position in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. Consequently, the performance of the BCI is reduced. New Method: In this paper, we combined facial expressions and colors to optimize the stimuli presentation in the gaze-independent BCI. This optimized paradigm was called the colored dummy face pattern. It is suggested that different colors and facial expressions could help users to locate the target and evoke larger event-related potentials (ERPs). In order to evaluate the performance of this new paradigm, two other paradigms were presented, called the gray dummy face pattern and the colored ball pattern. Comparison with Existing Method(s): The key point that determined the value of the colored dummy faces stimuli in BCI systems was whether the dummy face stimuli could obtain higher performance than gray faces or colored balls stimuli. Ten healthy participants (seven male, aged 21–26 years, mean 24.5 ± 1.25) participated in our experiment. Online and offline results of four different paradigms were obtained and comparatively analyzed. Results: The results showed that the colored dummy face pattern could evoke higher P300 and N400 ERP amplitudes, compared with the gray dummy face pattern and the colored ball pattern. Online results showed that the colored dummy face pattern had a significant advantage in terms of classification accuracy (p < 0.05) and information transfer rate (p < 0.05) compared to the other two patterns. Conclusions: The stimuli used in the colored dummy face paradigm combined color and facial expressions. This had a significant advantage in terms of the evoked P300 and N400 amplitudes and resulted in high classification accuracies and information transfer rates. It was compared with colored ball and gray dummy face stimuli.

Gaze pursuit and arm control of adolescent males diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and normal controls: evidence of a dissociation in processing visual information of short and long duration

Three-dimensional kinematic analysis of line of gaze, arm and ball was used to describe the visual and motor behaviour of male adolescents diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The ADHD participants were tested when both on (ADHD-On) and off (ADHD-Off) their medication and compared to age-matched normal controls in a modified table tennis task that required tracking the ball and hitting to cued right and left targets. Long-duration information was provided by a pre-cue, in which the target was illuminated approximately 2 s before the serve, and short-duration information by an early-cue illuminated about 350 ms after the serve, leaving -500 ms to select the target and perform the action. The ADHD groups differed significantly from the control group in both the pre-cue and early-cue conditions in being less accurate, in having a later onset and duration of pursuit tracking, and a higher frequency of gaze on and off the ball. The use of medication significantly reduced the gaze frequency of the ADHD participants, but surprisingly this did not lead to an increase in pursuit tracking, suggesting a barrier was reached beyond which ball flight information could not be processed. The control and ADHD groups did not differ in arm movement onset, duration and velocity in the short-duration early-cue condition; in the long-duration pre-cue condition, however, the ADHD group's movement time onset and arm velocity differed significantly from controls. The results show that the ADHD groups were able to process short-duration information without experiencing adverse effects on their motor behaviour; however, long-duration information contributed to irregular movement control.

Cosmetic Orbital Inferomedial Decompression: Quantifying the Risk of Diplopia Associated With Extraocular Muscle Dimensions

Purpose: To quantify the risk of new diplopia in inferomedial orbital decompression performed for cosmetic reasons. Methods: Retrospective analysis of 114 patients with Graves orbitopathy who underwent an inferomedial orbital decompression. No patient had diplopia in any of the gaze positions or optic neuropathy. A single coronal slice 9 mm posterior to the lateral orbital rim was employed to quantify the muscular index of the extraocular recti and of the superior complex. A control group of 56 patients imaged for other reasons were also measured. After surgery the oculomotor status of all patients who complained of diplopia and of 51 patients free of diplopia was measured with the prism and cover test in the primary and secondary gaze positions. Results: The rate of new-onset diplopia was 14.0% (16 patients). Eye deviations were confirmed in 14 patients. Of these, 10 had significant strabismus that warranted surgical or prism treatment. Most patients had esotropia associated with small vertical deviations. The size of the medial and inferior recti was significantly associated with the development of diplopia. The estimated odds for the appearance of diplopia in patients with muscle enlargement was 12.76 (medial rectus) and 5.21 (inferior rectus). Small-angle deviations were also detected in 27.4% of patients who did not experience diplopia. Conclusions: Medial and inferior recti enlargement is a strong predictor of new-onset diplopia. A large number of patients who do not report diplopia also present with small-angle deviations. (Ophthal Plast Reconstr Surg 2012;28:204-207)

All the rest is merely exploitation and perseverance : the poster art of Frank Kozik

"The history of poster art tends to focus on the art of Henri Toulouse-Latrec, Jules Cheret, and Alfonse Mucha, while leaving out or barely mentioning the work of artists such as Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, and Alton Kelley. The aim of this thesis is to widen the gaze of poster art by centering on a contemporary rock poster artist: Frank Kozik. By focusing on formal and sociological analysis ofa number of Kozik's posters, I illustrate how he not only fits in with the arc of poster art development, but also influences it into the next century"

Modeling the role of fixational eye movements in real-world scenes

Our eyes never remain still. Even when we stare at a fixed point, small involuntary movements take place in our eyes in an imperceptible manner. Researchers agree on the presence of three main contributions to eye movements when we fix the gaze: microsaccades, drifts and tremor. These small movements carry the image across the retina stimulating the photoreceptors and thus avoiding fading. Nowadays it is commonly accepted that these movements can improve the discrimination performance of the retina. In this paper, several retina models with and without fixational eye movements were implemented by mean of RetinaStudio tool to test the feasibility of these models to be incorporated in future neuroprostheses. For this purpose each retina model has been stimulated with natural scene images in two experiments. Results are discussed from the point of view of a neuroprosthesis development.

Eye Gaze Behavior at Turn Transition: How Aphasic Patients Process Speakers' Turns during Video Observation

The human turn-taking system regulates the smooth and precise exchange of speaking turns during face-to-face interaction. Recent studies investigated the processing of ongoing turns during conversation by measuring the eye movements of noninvolved observers. The findings suggest that humans shift their gaze in anticipation to the next speaker before the start of the next turn. Moreover, there is evidence that the ability to timely detect turn transitions mainly relies on the lexico-syntactic content provided by the conversation. Consequently, patients with aphasia, who often experience deficits in both semantic and syntactic processing, might encounter difficulties to detect and timely shift their gaze at turn transitions. To test this assumption, we presented video vignettes of natural conversations to aphasic patients and healthy controls, while their eye movements were measured. The frequency and latency of event-related gaze shifts, with respect to the end of the current turn in the videos, were compared between the two groups. Our results suggest that, compared with healthy controls, aphasic patients have a reduced probability to shift their gaze at turn transitions but do not show significantly increased gaze shift latencies. In healthy controls, but not in aphasic patients, the probability to shift the gaze at turn transition was increased when the video content of the current turn had a higher lexico-syntactic complexity. Furthermore, the results from voxel-based lesion symptom mapping indicate that the association between lexico-syntactic complexity and gaze shift latency in aphasic patients is predicted by brain lesions located in the posterior branch of the left arcuate fasciculus. Higher lexico-syntactic processing demands seem to lead to a reduced gaze shift probability in aphasic patients. This finding may represent missed opportunities for patients to place their contributions during everyday conversation.

La ballerine illettrée:transformations of the feminine in Mallarmé's sance writings

Stéphane Mallarmé's texts on dance criticism occupy a prominent place in dance literature. They have also been of major interest to the Mallarme specialists who have seen in them the key to a greater understanding of the whole of his work. In this article I determine how his dance writings can be interpreted in the context of the whole of the œuvre, including for example the women's magazine he wrote and produced, La Dernière Mode. I establish to what extent the female presence in Mallarmé's poetry tends towards metaphors, women's bodies absent or negated by the gaze of the poet. As the poet responds to the stimulus of the dance, he divests the female dancer of her womanly characteristics, recasting her in his own imagination both as feminine principle and incarnation of 'l'Idée', and also as mythical being, 'au-delà de toute vie possible', a composite of other female characters inhabiting his œuvre, constantly poised between presence and absence, stillness and movement, a locus for a precarious balance which is endlessly re-enacted in h.is own writing practice.

Orchids : intersex and identity in documentary

Orchids: Intersex and Identity in Documentary explores the creative practice challenges of working with bodies with intersex in the long-form auto/biographical documentary Orchids. Just as creative practice research challenges the dominant hegemony of quantitative and qualitative research, so does my creative work position itself as a nuanced piece, pushing the boundaries of traditional cultural studies theories, documentary film practice and creative practice method, through its distinctive distillation and celebration of a new form of discursive rupturing, the intersex voice.

Eigengaze : covert behavioral biometric exploiting visual attention characteristics

It is possible for the visual attention characteristics of a person to be exploited as a biometric for authentication or identification of individual viewers. The visual attention characteristics of a person can be easily monitored by tracking the gaze of a viewer during the presentation of a known or unknown visual scene. The positions and sequences of gaze locations during viewing may be determined by overt (conscious) or covert (sub-conscious) viewing behaviour. This paper presents a method to authenticate individuals using their covert viewing behaviour, thus yielding a unique behavioural biometric. A method to quantify the spatial and temporal patterns established by the viewer for their covert behaviour is proposed utilsing a principal component analysis technique called `eigenGaze'. Experimental results suggest that it is possible to capture the unique visual attention characteristics of a person to provide a simple behavioural biometric.

No Exit

Jean Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit comes alive in this new English adaptation by academics and theatre practitioners Caroline Heim and Christian Heim. It is the most complete articulation of the ideals of Sartre’s existentialism. No Exit is an absurdist play about three people who meet in hell. This new adaptation premiered at the World Psychotherapy Congress in Darling Harbour, Sydney in August 2011. The production integrated and extended Sartre's concepts of "The Gaze", "Love and Sadism" and "Nothingness." Post-performance discussions were held after the performances to explore the discourses of the play.

Making trouble: Ethnographic designs on ruling relations for students and teachers in non-academic pathways

Since 2009, all Australian states require young people to be ‘earning or learning’ until age 17. Secondary schools and vocational colleges now accommodate students for whom the conventional academic pathways of the past were not designed. The paper reflects on a project designed to explore the moral orders in these institutional settings for managing such students in extended compulsory schooling. Originally designed as classroom ethnographies, the project involved observations over three to four weeks and interviews with teachers and students in five sites in towns experiencing high youth unemployment. The project aimed to support teachers to work productively in such classrooms with such students, under the assumption that teachers orchestrate classroom interactions. However, it became clear events in these classrooms were being shaped by relations and parties above and beyond the classroom, as much as by those present. Teachers and students were observed to both comply with, and push against, the layers of policy and institutional processes regulating their behaviours. This paper re-thinks the original project through the gaze and resources of institutional ethnography, to better account for the layers of accountabilities and documentation practices that impacted on both teacher and student behaviours. By tracing the extended webs of ‘ruling relations’, it shows both how teachers and students could make trouble for the institutional moral order, and then be held accountable for this trouble.