Value-based adoption of augmented reality: A study on the influence on online purchase intention in retail

The increasing use of digital technology-based retail services provides new opportunities for digital marketing. In this paper, we investigate how augmented reality (AR) technology can be leveraged as part of the firm's strategy. We explore the online purchase intention through AR smart glasses (ARSG), considering consumers' value assessment through a cost–benefit analysis and the influence of technical, experiential and social AR value drivers. We develop an augmented value-based adoption model addressing four main objectives: (1) Evaluate the effect of the perceived value of ARSG, (2) Evaluate the effect of immersion (experiential dimension), (3) Evaluate the effect of AR devices and technical complexity (technical dimension) and (4) Evaluate the importance of subjective norms (social dimension) on the online purchase intention through AR technology. Based on an ESIC Tech Lab experiment with two types of ARSG from market leaders and AR retail apps, the study uses survey data from 253 participants. The results suggest that the technical dimension has an ambiguous effect, with tech-complexity enhancing directly the perceived value of ARSG for online purchase while reducing the net value of consumers' economic cost–benefit analysis. We find strong evidence that the experiential and social AR dimensions (in the form of immersion and subjective norm) have a significant positive influence on consumers' purchase intention online, which are better predictors than the pure economic cost–benefit assessment (through usefulness and difficulty). Furthermore, the technical innovativeness of consumers is found to increase directly the online purchase intention through ARSG.     

Digital daydreaming: Introducing the spontaneous smartphone checking scale

Smartphones are a ubiquitous part of many people's lives, but little is known about their impact on everyday thought processes. Here we introduce the spontaneous smartphone checking scale (SSCS)—which measures the tendency to direct attention toward one's smartphone, unpreceded by external prompts (e.g., notifications, or alerts) and with no specific conscious goal in mind, as a parallel to mind-wandering directed toward internal thoughts. The SSCS showed good psychometric properties and construct validity. It separated from measures of daydreaming and mind-wandering by not loading on dimensions related to self-consciousness, reflection, and rumination, but instead loading highly on a factor associated with other aspects of digital communication and concerns about public appearance on social media. This suggests that spontaneous smartphone checking serves different mental and social functions than internally generated spontaneous thought processes. We discuss possible long-term effects of spontaneous smartphone checking taking up time for internally generated spontaneous thoughts.     

Stroke damages attentional maintenance in working memory

Stroke is the main cause of acquired disability in adults, and specific deficits in working memory (WM) are among the most common cognitive consequences. In neuropsychological routine, WM is most of the time investigated in the framework of the multicomponent model (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, The psychology of learning and motivation, 47). Using a more recent theoretical WM model, the time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model (Barrouillet et al., 2011, Psychol. Rev., 118, 175), the aim of the present study was to investigate in young post-stroke patients to which extent attentional maintenance is impaired in WM. To address this question, we discarded other factors known to directly influence WM performance, that is processing speed and short-term memory span. We proposed to 53 post-stroke patients and to 63 healthy controls a complex span paradigm in which participants were asked to alternate between the memorization of a series of images and a concurrent parity judgement task of a series of digits. To investigate the attentional maintenance processes, we manipulated the cognitive load (CL) of the concurrent task. CL effect is typically interpreted as the involvement of attentional maintenance processes. The task was adapted to each participant according to their processing speed and memory span. As expected, the results showed higher recall performance in healthy controls compared with post-stroke patients. Consistent with the literature, we also observed higher performance when the CL was low compared with high. However, the improvement in recall at low CL was smaller for post-stroke patients compared with controls, suggesting that post-stroke WM deficit could be in part due to a deficit of the attentional maintenance processes.     

INTERMITTENT REGRESSIONS IN A SERIAL AFTERIMAGE EXPERIMENT AS SIGNS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

S mith G. J. W., R uuth E., F ranzén G. & S jöholm L. Intermittent regressions in a serial afterimage experiment as signs of schizophrenia. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1972 , 13 , 27 33.—A group of 35 young patients suspected of schizophrenia were tested in a serial afterimage (AI) experiment and were also rated on the Rockland-Pollin scale. Subjects with high psychotic scores showed one or more regressions to immature (size-constant, positive, physiognomic) images in their Al serials, images typical of children who cannot clearly distinguish their Ails as subjective phenomena distinct from the outside world. The Al test thus indicates schizophrenics to be characterized by intermittent withdrawal into a world of experiencing the self and non-self as not clearly distinguished. Regressions were rare in two control groups.     

The knower and the known

This paper is a presentation and discussion of Spinoza's view on the knower, or the mind, as an agent. The knower is on his view to be regarded as an active or generative complex cognitive experience. Imagination, reason and intuition are the cognitive principles. On account of their intrinsic relation to “the first law of nature”, that of selfpreservation, together with the thesis of the mind as constituted by ideas or knowledge, these principles function at the same time as moral principles. Consequently, it makes sense to speak of an individual's moral attitude toward everything be knows. A discussion of imagination, reason and intuition mainly as cognitive principles is followed by some concluding remarks on the cognitive and moral relation between human beings: To know another human being is to know his knowledge. The moral attitude of individuals to each other is a function of their mutual knowledge of knowledge.     

MEASUREMENT OF 'POLITICAL.' PREFERENCES: A further study of direct and indirect scaling methods

The direct methods of ratio estimation and magnitude estimation and the indirect method of pair comparison were used to construct scales of liberalism and conservatism. It was found ( a ) that the scales of conservatism are linearly related to each other and ( b ) those of liberalism are also linearly related to each other but with a discontinuity in the middle of the range; one linear function for the conservative statements and another for the liberal statements, with the discontinuity occurring in the middle of the subjective scale. Liberalism vs. conservatism was found to be reverse. The linear function between all kinds of scales as well as the reverse relation between liberalism vs. conservatism suggest that the continuum of political preferences is metathetic.     

Changes in information as a function of a culturally appropriate smoking cessation community intervention for Hispanics

Tested a 7-month, media-based, community intervention among Hispanics in San Francisco designed to change levels of information on the damaging effects of cigarette smoking and on the availability of culturally appropriate cessation services. Three community-wide surveys of Hispanics were conducted with independent random samples, two as baselines (n = 1,660 and 2,053) and one postintervention (n = 1,965). Results showed that changes in the level of awareness of cessation services had taken place after implementation of the intervention. Furthermore, those changes took place primarily among the less acculturated Spanish-speaking Hispanics who were the target of the intervention. The changes in information reported here demonstrate that a culturally appropriate information dissemination campaign that utilizes multiple channels can produce changes in a community's level of information even when the campaign is implemented for a relatively short period.     

Attention and personality in augmenting/reducing of visual evoked potentials

Earlier research has shown that extraverts tend to increase their visual evoked potential amplitudes with increasing light intensity (augmenting), while introverts reach their maximum amplitude at lower intensities (reducing). The evoked response has normally been measured from association areas of the brain (at the vertex). The present study measured VEP amplitudes over visual cortex and at the vertex, using four light intensities in two conditions, where attention was either directed towards the light stimuli, or away from them by a concurrent auditory task. Forty subjects were classified as extraverts or introverts based on the Eysenck Personality Inventory. The results show that attention interacted significantly with extraversion. Introverts exhibited a narrower focus of attention, while higher amplitudes and amplitude-intensity functions when attending to the light flashes and lower when distracted. Extraverts showed smaller differences between conditions, indicating a more evenly distributed attention. Higher arousal in introverts is the probable cause of their narrower focus of attention. There were marked differences in the distribution of activity between vertex and occipital cortex. Introverts showed relatively stronger occipital responses and extraverts stronger vertex responses across all intensities and in both conditions. The predisposition for mainly perceptual responses to aversive stimuli in introverts, and for general alerting and motor preparatory responses in extraverts, are interpreted as supportive of Brebner and Cooper's hypothesis that introverts are ‘geared to inspect’ and extraverts are ‘geared to respond’.     

Therapeutic Interaction and Dropout: Measuring Relational Communication in Solution-focused Therapy

The relational communication of sixteen dropout versus sixteen continuation sessions of solution-focused therapy was studied using two different coding schemes. On the Topic Initiation/Topic Following coding scheme (Tracey, 1986) no differences were found between dropout and continuation sessions, whereas the Family-Relational Communication Control Coding Scheme (Heatherington and Friedlander, 1987) yielded a number of significant findings. Both in 'successful' and in 'unsuccessful' dropout sessions, therapeutic interaction was found to be more conflictive than in continuation cases, with clients showing more domineering behaviour in dropout than in continuation sessions. Markovian and lag sequential analysis are used to clarify some of these findings, and their implications are discussed.