Investigating local and global effects of surface colours and contours in amodal completion

ABSTRACT

We studied interpretations of partly occluded shapes. Models that account for amodal completion mostly deal with local and global contour characteristics. In the current study, we were interested in the effects of colour on local and global contour completions. In our stimuli, local contour completions comprised simple linear extensions of the partly occluded contours, whereas global contour completions accounted for global shape regularities. Our stimuli were designed such that the visible surface colour could also be completed in a local or global fashion, being consistent or inconsistent with contour completions. We tested the preferred interpretations of the partly occluded shapes by using a sequential matching task. Participants had to judge whether a test shape could be a previously shown partly occluded shape. We found that interpretations of partly occluded shapes depend on both colour and contour characteristics. Additional time bin analyses revealed that for fast responses colour and contour completions already depend on the visible context of the partly occluded shapes, while for slow responses the congruency between colour and contour completions play a role as well.     

Reflections on relational readings of organizational learning

In this concluding article we further reflect on relational readings of organizational learning and how they can contribute to organization studies and organizing practices. As has been seen, the root metaphor of “organizational learning” takes a variety of forms. These include “product-oriented” pictures such as learning curves, strategy, and business processes, and the generative metaphor of organizational learning as conversations-for-new-possibilities. This special issue highlights the contribution of learning-as-conversations, especially in those organizational instances where the organizing is “in-the-making” and where the creation of a transitional space can be a new meeting ground for participants. In an increasingly globalized world we are more and more in need of the ability to construct such transitional and possibility-enabling practices. It can be a task of work and organizational psychology to contribute ideas and practices for this endeavour.     

Metabolic Syndrome and Cognitive Function in Healthy Middle-Aged and Older Adults without Diabetes

ABSTRACT

Objective: Few studies have addressed whether the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its individual components are associated with cognitive function in middle-aged and older populations, as well as whether specific areas of cognition are more affected than others. We examined the cross-sectional association between MetS and six areas of cognitive function in healthy cognitively intact adults without diabetes (n?=?853, mean age 61 years) randomized in two intervention trials. Methods: The National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) criteria were used to identify subjects with MetS. Cognitive function was assessed with a neuropsychological battery. A principal components analysis was used to extract five uncorrelated factors interpreted to represent five areas of cognition, and a measure of global cognition was calculated. Results: MetS was weakly but non-significantly associated with lower verbal learning (β?=??.14 [SE(β)?=?0.09], p?=?.15). As the number of MetS criteria increased, scores on global cognition (p trend?=?.01), verbal learning (p trend?=?.06) and semantic memory (p trend?=?.04) decreased. Hypertension was the only MetS risk factor that was independently correlated with lower verbal learning (β?=??.17 [SE(β) =?0.08], p?=?.04), semantic memory (β?=??.26 [SE(β)?=?0.08], p?=?.001) and global cognition (β?=??.15 [SE(β)?=?0.07], p?=?.04). Conclusion: This study adds to the evidence of an association between MetS and lower cognitive function among healthy middle-aged and older adults without CVD and diabetes, as well as confirms the correlation between hypertension and lower cognition.     

广告语言与产品卷入度对广告卷入度的影响研究

从产品角度对地方语广告进行研究。本研究将语言熟练度和地域文化认同这两个因素作为控制变量,选取产品卷入度作为调节变量,分别在语音和文本广告两种不同的广告媒介中,研究广告语言（普通话VS粤语）对广告卷入度（认知卷入度VS情感卷入度）的影响机制。结果表明：对于高卷入度产品广告,普通话比粤语产生的广告认知卷入度和情感卷入度都更高;对于低卷入度产品广告,无论广告使用普通话抑或粤语,消费者对广告的认知卷入度都没有显著差异,但粤语比普通话能带来更高的广告情感卷入度。     

Preattentive Perception of Multiple Illusory Line-Motion: A Formal Model of Parallel Independent-Detection in Visual Search

The phenomenon referred to as illusory line-motion (ILM; O. Hikosaka, S. Miyauchi, & S. Shimojo, 1993a) has been described as a measure of the local facilitation of attention gradient. However, J. Kawahara, K. Yokosawa, S. Nishida, and T. Sato (1996) have demonstrated a spatially parallel search for an “odd man out” in the ILM direction. Apart from showing preattentive ILM perception in terms of an analogy between line-motion and apparent motion, the authors examined whether ILM perception is possible without attention from another point of view. Four experiments revealed that the ILM target can be detected in parallel without invoking attentional facilitation and invalidated the possible contribution of attentional set in parallel ILM search. Participants were able to correctly detect the ILM target among multiple nontargets, even when the line orientation was changed from trial to trial. The authors' independent-detection model predicted ILM search performance well on several occasions. These findings strongly support a preattentive and stimulus-driven explanation of ILM perception.     

Predictive Pointing Movements and Saccades Toward a Moving Target

The authors investigated whether and, if so, how velocity information is used to control predictive manual pointing movements and saccades. Participants (N = 6) intercepted an occluded moving target as if it were still visible. They kept their eyes fixated while the target moved. The target traveled over a fixed distance and changed its velocity on the way. The presentation time of the final velocity was varied. Both the eye and the hand overshot the slow target and undershot the fast target, particularly when the duration of the final velocity was short. Thus, responses were biased in the direction of the target's initial velocity. The error seemed to arise because participants did not take their latency into account when aiming at the target. Instead, they strategically aimed farther ahead when the target was fast. Amplitude was also more related to the position of velocity change than to final velocity duration. Both findings suggest that target velocity is not extrapolated but that individuals add an increment to the position of velocity change.     

Dialogue in Our Cosmic Aloneness

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is briefly summarized to serve as a background for making the case that, due to the highly exceptional characteristics of the earth's position and motion in the solar system as well as the precarious history of human evolution, we may be alone in the universe. With the conviction that this cosmic isolation enhances our need for dialogue with God, I discuss the nature of authentic dialogue as exhaustively explored by Martin Buber. I conclude with remarks dealing with the importance of understanding and using Buber's insights on dialogue as a way of satisfying our primal need to communicate with a cosmic “other,” in particular, God. Thus, in contrast to the numerous articles that have discussed the theological implications of SETI being successful, I treat here what it might mean if we are alone.     

What makes a saint? A Lincoln case study in the communion of the local and the universal Church

Within the curtilage of Lincoln Cathedral lie buried the remains of three very different people to whom sainthood has been attributed: Saint Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln (d.1200); 'Little Saint Hugh' (d.1255), a child maliciously alleged to have been murdered by the local Jewish community; and Edward King (d.1910), Anglican Bishop of Lincoln. Hugh is a saint of the Catholic Church, commemorated by Catholics and Anglicans; 'Little Saint Hugh' was for a short while acclaimed by local people as a saint but never officially recognised as one; Edward King is commemorated by Anglicans but not formally recognised as a saint. The marked difference of approach to the attribution of sainthood between local Christians and Catholic Church authorities, as well as between Catholics and Anglicans, is illustrated by this case study, which raises important ecumenical questions: 'What makes a saint?’, ‘How are non-Catholics to regard the Roman Catholic procedure for beatification and canonisation?’, ‘To what extent can there be fully ecumenical calendars of local saints?’, ‘Does beatification offer a way forward by which Catholics may recognise the holiness of non-Catholic Christians?’     

Exploring the Non-objectified Character of Dao in the Laozi: A Modem Articulation

This article focuses on the interpretation of heng dao 恆 道 (sometimes translated as "the constant dao") and its fundamental character in the Laozi.It argues against the prevailing interpretation of dao as an unchanging metaphysical substance or reality,and maintains that the fundamental feature of heng dao is both dynamic and eternal.Heng dao is beyond language because of its dynamic character,but the Laozi nevertheless strives to express it in three aspects:1) its flexibility and adaptability as represented in the metaphor of water;2) its movement of reversal and return;3) and in its existential significance as a guide for life.Heng dao can be called the non-objectified dao,which produces law,principle,rule,method,and so on.Looked at in this way,the dynamic character of heng dao can be called non-objective.     

Learning to feel global: Exploring the emotional geographies of worldschooling

Worldschooling is a small but growing alternative education and lifestyle practice adopted by families who take their children out of conventional school settings and educate them while traveling the world. Many worldschooling families document their journeys on blogs and in social media forums, where they explicitly embrace the educational potential of travel and claim the world as their classroom. Drawing on a mobile virtual ethnography of worldschooling, including analysis of online materials along with interviews and field notes from seven months of fieldwork as a worldschooling parent, I explore the intersections of emotion, learning, mobility, and global citizenship in these accounts of worldschooling. While many parents design their mobile curricula around destination based content, they emphasize the repertoire of social and emotional skills their children learn while traveling around the world, often aligning these skills with aspirations of global citizenship. In this sense, global citizenship is about emotions as much as it is about exercising certain rights and responsibilities. In this article, I chart the overlapping emotional geographies that emerge around these performances of ‘feeling global,’ focusing especially on the tensions between individual emotions and broader affective climate of neoliberal globalization.