Extending Fitts' law to a three-dimensional pointing task

An attempt was made to extend Fitts' law to a three-dimensional movement (pointing) task to enhance its predictive performance in this domain. An experiment was conducted in which 10 subjects performed three-dimensional pointing movements under the manipulation of target size, distance to target and direction to target. As expected, the duration of these three-dimensional movements was rather variable and affected markedly by direction to target. As a result, the variance in the movement times produced was not satisfactorily explained by the conventional Fitts' model. The conventional model was extended by incorporating a directional parameter into the model. The extended model was shown to better fit the data than the conventional Fitts' model, both in terms of r(2) and the standard error of the residual between the measured movement time and the value predicted by model fit.     

Bodily movement of approach is detected faster than that of receding

The human visual system is efficient at detecting an approaching object. In detecting approaching human beings, bodily movement serves as a cue for the visual system to compute moving direction. On the basis of this knowledge, we hypothesized that bodily movement implying approach is detected faster than receding bodily movement even when only bodily movement is available as a clue to discerning motion direction. To examine this hypothesis, we conducted a visual search experiment in which participants searched for a point-light figure with approaching or receding walking movement. Results showed that an approaching point-light figure was detected faster than a receding one. This search asymmetry was eliminated when the figures were presented upside-down. These findings indicate the potency of bodily movement that implies approach in effectively capturing visuospatial attention.     

Immediate use of prosody and context in predicting a syntactic structure

Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on parsing but whether prosody can impact even the initial parsing decision is still not evident. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing temporarily ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese. Our results showed that listeners used the prosodic cue to make a structural prediction before hearing disambiguating information. Importantly, the effect was limited to cases where the visual scene provided an appropriate context for the prosodic cue, thus eliminating the explanation that listeners have simply associated marked prosodic information with a less frequent structure. Furthermore, the influence of the prosodic information was also evident following disambiguating information, in a way that reflected the initial analysis. The current study demonstrates that prosody, when provided with an appropriate context, influences the initial syntactic analysis and also the subsequent cost at disambiguating information. The results also provide first evidence for pre-head structural prediction driven by prosodic and contextual information with a head-final construction.     

Texture and grain boundary character distribution (GBCD) in rapidly solidified and annealed Fe–6·5 mass% Si ribbons

Abstract

The type and frequency of grain boundaries, the so-called grain boundary character distribution (GBCD), has been determined in rapidly solidified and subsequently annealed Fe-6·5 mass% Si alloy ribbon by the scanning electron microscopy-electron channelling pattern (SEM-ECP) technique. High frequencies of low-angle boundaries and coincidence boundaries with Σ3, Σ9, Σ11, Σ17 and Σ19 were observed in a fully annealed ribbon with well defined {110} texture. The total frequency of low-angle boundaries and coincidence boundaries is almost one-half of all grain boundaries. The coincidence boundaries which occurred more frequently are exactly those predicted theoretically from the coincidence orientations for 〈110〉 rotation in cubic crystals, similar to those observed previously in {100} textured ribbons of the same alloy produced by the same processing method. The presence of a close relationship between the type of texture and GBCD has been confirmed by experiment on differently textured ribbons of the same material.     

On the dislocation mechanism of amorphization of Si by indentation

The formation of an amorphous phase underneath a Vickers indentation produced on a Si(001) surface at room temperature has been observed by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. Two types of location are observed for the amorphous phase. One is formed just underneath the image of the indentation and the other is parallel to the slip planes of Si. It is concluded that the latter type, at least, is formed as a result of activation of dislocations which is induced by an external shear stress combined with a hydrostatic pressure.     

Atomic arrangement at the 3C-SiC/Si(001) interface revealed utilising aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope

The atomistic structure of the 3C-SiC/Si(001) interface has been investigated using a combination of aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy and a newly developed image processing method for eliminating artificial contrast. The structures having periods four times longer than those of the silicon lattice have been observed distinctly in images taken along both Si[110] and Si[100] directions. Contrary to theoretical models proposed previously, the interface of the three-dimensional structural model that we constructed on the basis of our experiments has a silicon-rich configuration. We have clarified that the strain field induced by the two-dimensional misfit between Si(001)-(4?×?4) and SiC(001)-(5?×?5) is relaxed by the two-dimensional network of misfit dislocations; simple edge dislocations with [100] and [010] directions and Lomer dislocations with [110] and [110] directions. The atomistic structures of the Lomer dislocations have been also clarified.     

The effects of antipoverty programs on children's cumulative level of poverty-related risk

The authors examined the effects of antipoverty programs on children's cumulative poverty-related risk and the relationship between cumulative poverty-related risk and child outcomes among low-income families. Samples included 419 children ages 3-10 years in the New Hope program and 759 children ages 2-9 years in the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), which tested 2 program approaches. Nine poverty-related risks made up the measure of cumulative risk. Both MFIP program approaches reduced cumulative poverty-related risk. New Hope reduced cumulative poverty-related risk among long-term welfare recipients. In both New Hope and MFIP, significant linear relationships between cumulative poverty-related risk and parent-reported behavior problems and school achievement were found. Cumulative poverty-related risk partially mediated the impacts of the MFIP programs on children's behavior problems. Among long-term welfare recipients, cumulative poverty-related risk partially mediated New Hope's impact on parent-reported school achievement.