Urban Informatics and Public Transport

The holistic urban experience we perceive when immersed in an urban context is at the heart of urban informatics. This experience encompasses all urban elements such as architecture, people, and culture. Urban informatics explores the possibilities and opportunities created by new technologies and information for enhancing the urban experience. Public transport is an essential urban experience. Everyday, urban dwellers takes public transport to commute and move between different parts of the city. Public transport serves people from all over the city and moves them through different places in the city, using different means of transportation. The nature of public transport—involving people, places, and technologies, makes it a fitting context for urban informatics interventions. There are three main aspects of the public transport experience that can readily benefit from urban informatics interventions the: pragmatic aspect, hedonistic aspect, and social aspect. From the pragmatic perspective, these interventions can help people to be more efficient and effective in taking public transport. Hedonistic-related interventions aim to bring enjoyment and fun to our mundane commute. Finally, urban informatics can strengthen the sense of community in a socially-passive context like public transport environments through adopting socially focused interventions.

Feeling a little Blue? : Boofheads, bodies, and beaches

Pat Grant’s graphic novel Blue (2012) tells two stories about the impact of a newly migrant group on a small coastal Australian town. The wider story explores the wholesale effects of a previously unknown population joining an existing, culturally homogenous community. These broad social images are used to contextualise the more immediate story of three youths who are disenfranchised within the pre-existing community, but who can claim social enfranchisement by alienating the new members of the community. That the migrant population is depicted literally as aliens emphasises Blue’s participation in a wider conversation about citizenship and empathy. However, Blue does not necessarily seek to provoke a particular emotional response in its readers. Rather, in following three characters who lack what Nussbaum calls “narrative imagination” in their pursuit of good surfing or visceral entertainment—of beaches or bodies—Blue explores the means and consequences of refusing intersubjective affect. This is most powerfully rendered by the main characters’ ultimate avoidance of, and fictions about, a dead body they have wagged school to see. At the very moment of a person becoming a true object—a corpse—the meaning of objectifying people is revealed; the young protagonists seem to recognise this fact, and thus retreat from the affective scene which nonetheless informs Blue as a whole.

Emotional climate and high quality learning experiences in science teacher education

The role of emotion during learning encounters in science teacher education is under-researched and under-theorized. In this case study we explore the emotional climates, that is, the collective states of emotional arousal, of a preservice secondary science education class to illuminate practice for producing and reproducing high quality learning experiences for preservice science teachers. Theories related to the sociology of emotions informed our analyses from data sources such as preservice teachers’ perceptions of the emotional climate of their class, emotional facial expressions, classroom conversations, and cogenerative dialogue. The major outcome from our analyses was that even though preservice teachers reported high positive emotional climate during the professor’s science demonstrations, they also valued the professor’s in the moment reflections on her teaching that were associated with low emotional climate ratings. We co-relate emotional climate data and preservice teachers’ comments during cogenerative dialogue to expand our understanding of high quality experiences and emotional climate in science teacher education. Our study also contributes refinements to research perspectives on emotional climate.

NESSTI : norms for environmental sound stimuli

In this paper we provide normative data along multiple cognitive and affective variable dimensions for a set of 110 sounds, including living and manmade stimuli. Environmental sounds are being increasingly utilized as stimuli in the cognitive, neuropsychological and neuroimaging fields, yet there is no comprehensive set of normative information for these type of stimuli available for use across these experimental domains. Experiment 1 collected data from 162 participants in an on-line questionnaire, which included measures of identification and categorization as well as cognitive and affective variables. A subsequent experiment collected response times to these sounds. Sounds were normalized to the same length (1 second) in order to maximize usage across multiple paradigms and experimental fields. These sounds can be freely downloaded for use, and all response data have also been made available in order that researchers can choose one or many of the cognitive and affective dimensions along which they would like to control their stimuli. Our hope is that the availability of such information will assist researchers in the fields of cognitive and clinical psychology and the neuroimaging community in choosing well-controlled environmental sound stimuli, and allow comparison across multiple studies.

Anterior temporal cortex and semantic memory : reconciling findings from neuropsychology and functional imaging

Studies of semantic impairment arising from brain disease suggest that the anterior temporal lobes are critical for semantic abilities in humans; yet activation of these regions is rarely reported in functional imaging studies of healthy controls performing semantic tasks. Here, we combined neuropsychological and PET functional imaging data to show that when healthy subjects identify concepts at a specific level, the regions activated correspond to the site of maximal atrophy in patients with relatively pure semantic impairment. The stimuli were color photographs of common animals or vehicles, and the task was category verification at specific (e.g., robin), intermediate (e.g., bird), or general (e.g., animal) levels. Specific, relative to general, categorization activated the antero-lateral temporal cortices bilaterally, despite matching of these experimental conditions for difficulty. Critically, in patients with atrophy in precisely these areas, the most pronounced deficit was in the retrieval of specific semantic information.

The effects of sleep restriction on executive inhibitory control and affect in young adults

Purpose: Young adults regularly experience restricted sleep due to a range of social, educational and vocational commitments. Evidence suggests that extended periods of sleep deprivation negatively impact affective and inhibitory control mechanisms leading to behavioural consequences such as increased emotional reactivity and impulsive behaviour. It is less clear whether acute periods of restricted sleep produce the same behavioural consequences. Methods: Nineteen young adults (m = 8, f = 12) with habitual late bed-time (after 22:30 h) and wake-time (after 06:30 h) completed a range of objective and subjective measures assessing sleepiness (Psychomotor Vigilance Task, Karolinska Sleepiness Scale), inhibitory control (Emotional Go/No-go Task and a Balloon Analog Risk Task) and affect (Positive and Negative Affective Schedule). Testing was counterbalanced across participants, and occurred on two occasions once following restricted sleep and once following habitual sleep one week apart. Results: Compared to habitual sleep, sleep restriction produced significantly slower performance on the Psychomotor Vigilance Task, and higher subjective ratings of sleepiness on the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale. Sleep restriction also caused a significant decrease in positive affect, but no change in negative affect on the Affective Schedule. Inhibitory control efficiency was significantly differentiated, with participants showing an increase in risk taking on the Balloon Analog Risk Task, but there was no evidence of increased reactivity to negative stimuli on the Emotional Go/No-go task. Conclusions: Results suggest that even acute periods of sleep loss may cause deficits in affective experiences and increase impulsive and potentially high risk behaviour in young adults.

Potentiation of the early visual response to learned danger signals in adults and adolescents

The reinforcing effects of aversive outcomes on avoidance behaviour are well established. However, their influence on perceptual processes is less well explored, especially during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Using electroencephalography, we examined whether learning to actively or passively avoid harm can modulate early visual responses in adolescents and adults. The task included two avoidance conditions, active and passive, where two different warning stimuli predicted the imminent, but avoidable, presentation of an aversive tone. To avoid the aversive outcome, participants had to learn to emit an action (active avoidance) for one of the warning stimuli and omit an action for the other (passive avoidance). Both adults and adolescents performed the task with a high degree of accuracy. For both adolescents and adults, increased N170 event-related potential amplitudes were found for both the active and the passive warning stimuli compared with control conditions. Moreover, the potentiation of the N170 to the warning stimuli was stable and long lasting. Developmental differences were also observed; adolescents showed greater potentiation of the N170 component to danger signals. These findings demonstrate, for the first time, that learned danger signals in an instrumental avoidance task can influence early visual sensory processes in both adults and adolescents.

Electrophysiological responses to violations of expectation from eye gaze and arrow cues

Isolating processes within the brain that are specific to human behavior is a key goal for social neuroscience. The current research was an attempt to test whether recent findings of enhanced negative ERPs in response to unexpected human gaze are unique to eye gaze stimuli by comparing the effects of gaze cues with the effects of an arrow cue. ERPs were recorded while participants (N¼30) observed a virtual actor or an arrow that gazed (or pointed) either toward (object congruent) or away from (object incongruent) a flashing checkerboard. An enhanced negative ERP (N300) in response to object incongruent compared to object congruent trials was recorded for both eye gaze and arrow stimuli. The findings are interpreted as reflecting a domain general mechanism for detecting unexpected events.

A/Effective connections : mobility, technology and well-being

This article investigates the significance of internet communication technologies for mediating affect in ways that help promote feelings of well-being among recently arrived migrants from culturally and linguistically diverse communities (CALD) in Australia. It is based on a qualitative study that focuses on the internet's communicative capabilities for maintaining kinship ties in homeland countries, and for forging new connections in the host city of Brisbane during the early re-settlement period. Through the experience of ‘presence’ and affective communities, it emphasizes the ways in which visually mediated interaction helps to combat feelings of social isolation and loneliness. The study finds that internet use is creating new forms of sociality among migrants and plays a key role in the re-settlement period. It highlights the importance of publicly available computers and training for migrants.

Writing embodied practice from the inside : outside the exegesis

The textual turn is a good friend of expert spectating, where it assumes the role of writing-productive apparatus, but no friend at all of expert practices or practitioners (Melrose, 2003). Introduction The challenge of time-based embodied performance when the artefact is unstable As a former full-time professional practitioner with an embodied dance practice as performer, choreographer and artistic director for three decades, I somewhat unexpectedly entered the world of academia in 2000 after completing a practice-based PhD, which was described by its examiners as ‘pioneering’. Like many artists my intention was to deepen and extend my practice through formal research into my work and its context (which was intercultural) and to privilege the artist’s voice in a research world where it was too often silent. Practice as research, practice-based research, and practice-led research were not yet fully named. It was in its infancy and my biggest challenge was to find a serviceable methodology which did not betray my intentions to keep practice at the centre of the research. Over the last 15 years, practice led doctoral research, where examinable creative work is placed alongside an accompanying (exegetical) written component, has come a long way. It has been extensively debated with a range of theories and models proposed (Barrett & Bolt, 2007, Pakes, 2003 & 2004, Piccini, 2005, Philips, Stock & Vincs 2009, Stock, 2009 & 2010, Riley & Hunter 2009, Haseman, 2006, Hecq, 2012). Much of this writing is based around epistemological concerns where the research methodologies proposed normally incorporate a contextualisation of the creative work in its field of practice, and more importantly validation and interrogation of the processes of the practice as the central ‘data gathering’ method. It is now widely accepted, at least in the Australian creative arts context, that knowledge claims in creative practice research arise from the material activities of the practice itself (Carter, 2004). The creative work explicated as the tangible outcome of that practice is sometimes referred to as the ‘artefact’. Although the making of the artefact, according to Colbert (2009, p. 7) is influenced by “personal, experiential and iterative processes”, mapping them through a research pathway is “difficult to predict [for] “the adjustments made to the artefact in the light of emerging knowledge and insights cannot be foreshadowed”. Linking the process and the practice outcome most often occurs through the textual intervention of an exegesis which builds, and/or builds on, theoretical concerns arising in and from the work. This linking produces what Barrett (2007) refers to as “situated knowledge… that operates in relation to established knowledge” (p. 145). But what if those material forms or ‘artefacts’ are not objects or code or digitised forms, but live within the bodies of artist/researchers where the nature of the practice itself is live, ephemeral and constantly transforming, as in dance and physical performance? Even more unsettling is when the ‘artefact’ is literally embedded and embodied in the work and in the maker/researcher; when subject and object are merged. To complicate matters, the performing arts are necessarily collaborative, relying not only on technical mastery and creative/interpretive processes, but on social and artistic relationships which collectively make up the ‘artefact’. This chapter explores issues surrounding live dance and physical performance when placed in a research setting, specifically the complexities of being required to translate embodied dance findings into textual form. Exploring how embodied knowledge can be shared in a research context for those with no experiential knowledge of communicating through and in dance, I draw on theories of “dance enaction” (Warburton, 2011) together with notions of “affective intensities” and “performance mastery” (Melrose, 2003), “intentional activity” (Pakes, 2004) and the place of memory. In seeking ways to capture in another form the knowledge residing in live dance practice, thus making implicit knowledge explicit, I further propose there is a process of triple translation as the performance (the living ‘artefact’) is documented in multi-facetted ways to produce something durable which can be re-visited. This translation becomes more complex if the embodied knowledge resides in culturally specific practices, formed by world views and processes quite different from accepted norms and conventions (even radical ones) of international doctoral research inquiry. But whatever the combination of cultural, virtual and genre-related dance practices being researched, embodiment is central to the process, outcome and findings, and the question remains of how we will use text and what forms that text might take.

The N170 observed ‘in the wild’: robust event-related potentials to faces in cluttered dynamic visual scenes

As a social species in a constantly changing environment, humans rely heavily on the informational richness and communicative capacity of the face. Thus, understanding how the brain processes information about faces in real-time is of paramount importance. The N170 is a high temporal resolution electrophysiological index of the brain's early response to visual stimuli that is reliably elicited in carefully controlled laboratory-based studies. Although the N170 has often been reported to be of greatest amplitude to faces, there has been debate regarding whether this effect might be an artifact of certain aspects of the controlled experimental stimulation schedules and materials. To investigate whether the N170 can be identified in more realistic conditions with highly variable and cluttered visual images and accompanying auditory stimuli we recorded EEG 'in the wild', while participants watched pop videos. Scene-cuts to faces generated a clear N170 response, and this was larger than the N170 to transitions where the videos cut to non-face stimuli. Within participants, wild-type face N170 amplitudes were moderately correlated to those observed in a typical laboratory experiment. Thus, we demonstrate that the face N170 is a robust and ecologically valid phenomenon and not an artifact arising as an unintended consequence of some property of the more typical laboratory paradigm.

Regulatory focus moderates the relationship between task control and physiological and psychological markers of stress : a work simulation study

This experiment examined whether trait regulatory focus moderates the effects of task control on stress reactions during a demanding work simulation. Regulatory focus describes two ways in which individuals self-regulate toward desired goals: promotion and prevention. As highly promotion-focused individuals are oriented toward growth and challenge, it was expected that they would show better adaptation to demanding work under high task control. In contrast, as highly prevention-focused individuals are oriented toward safety and responsibility they were expected to show better adaptation under low task control. Participants (N = 110) completed a measure of trait regulatory focus and then three trials of a demanding inbox activity under either low, neutral, or high task control. Heart rate variability (HRV), affective reactions (anxiety & task dissatisfaction), and task performance were measured at each trial. As predicted, highly promotion-focused individuals found high (compared to neutral) task control stress-buffering for performance. Moreover, highly prevention-focused individuals found high (compared to low) task control stress-exacerbating for dissatisfaction. In addition, highly prevention-focused individuals found low task control stress-buffering for dissatisfaction, performance, and HRV. However, these effects of low task control for highly prevention-focused individuals depended on their promotion focus.

“This is not a burning issue for me”: How citizens justify their use of wood heaters in a city with a severe air pollution problem

Although wood smoke pollution has been linked to health problems, wood burning remains a popular form of domestic heating in many countries across the world. In this paper, we describe the rhetoric of resistance to wood heater regulation amongst citizens in the regional Australian town of Armidale, where wood smoke levels regularly exceed national health advisory limits. We discuss how this is related to particular sources of resistance, such as affective attachment to wood heating and socio-cultural norms. The research draws on six focus groups with participants from households with and without wood heating. With reference to practice theory, we argue that citizen discourses favouring wood burning draw upon a rich suite of justifications and present this activity as a natural and traditional activity promoting comfort and cohesion. Such discourses also emphasise the identity of the town as a rural community and the supposed gemeinschaft qualities of such places. We show that, in this domain of energy policy, it is not enough to present ‘facts’ which have little emotional association or meaning for the populace. Rather, we need understand how social scripts, often localised, inform identity and practice.

The affect heuristic and public support for three types of wood smoke mitigation policies

This study applied the affect heuristic model to investigate key psychological factors (affective associations, perceived benefits, and costs of wood heating) contributing to public support for three distinct types of wood smoke mitigation policies: education, incentives, and regulation. The sample comprised 265 residents of Armidale, an Australian regional community adversely affected by winter wood smoke pollution. Our results indicate that residents with stronger positive affective associations with wood heating expressed less support for wood smoke mitigation policies involving regulation. This relationship was fully mediated by expected benefits and costs associated with wood heating. Affective associations were unrelated to public support for policies involving education and incentives, which were broadly endorsed by all segments of the community, and were more strongly associated with rational considerations. Latent profile analysis revealed no evidence to support the proposition that some community members experience internal “heart versus head” conflicts in which their positive affective associations with wood heating would be at odds with their risk judgments about the dangers of wood smoke pollution. Affective associations and cost/benefit judgments were very consistent with each other.