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BACKGROUND: The change in the efficacy of antimicrobial agents due to their misuse is implicated in extensive health and mortality related concerns. The Antibiotics Use Questionnaire (AUQ) is a theory driven measure based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TpB) factors that is designed to investigate drivers of antibiotic use behaviour. The objective of this study is to replicate the factor structure from the pilot study within a similar Australian confirmation cohort, and to extend this through investigating if the factor structure holds in a Chinese-identifying cohort. METHODS: The AUQ was disseminated to two cohorts: a confirmation cohort similar to the original study, and a Chinese identifying cohort. Data analysis was completed on the two data sets independently, and on a combined data set. An orthogonal principal components analysis with varimax rotation was used to assess the factor structure, followed by general linear models to determine the influence of the TpB factors on reported antibiotic use. RESULTS: 370 participant responses from the confirmation cohort, and 384 responses from the Chinese-identifying cohort were retained for analysis following review of the data. Results showed modest but acceptable levels of internal reliability across both cohorts. Social norms, and the interaction between attitudes and beliefs and knowledge were significant predictors of self-reported antibiotic use in both cohorts. In the confirmation cohort healthcare training was a significant predictor, and in the Chinese-identifying cohort education was a significant predictor. All other predictors tested produced a nonsignificant relationship with the outcome variable of self-reported antibiotic use. CONCLUSIONS: This study successfully replicated the factor structure of the AUQ in a confirmation cohort, as well as a cohort that identified as culturally or legally Chinese, determining that the factor structure is retained when investigated across cultures. The research additionally highlights the need for a measure such as the AUQ, which can identify how differing social, cultural, and community factors can influence what predicts indiscriminate antibiotic use. Future research will be required to determine the full extent to which this tool can be used to guide bespoke community level interventions to assist in the management of antimicrobial resistance.
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Antibacterianos , Humanos , Antibacterianos/uso terapêutico , Inquéritos e Questionários , Feminino , Masculino , Adulto , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Austrália , Conhecimentos, Atitudes e Prática em Saúde , Estudos de Coortes , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Adulto Jovem , Projetos Piloto , Idoso , ChinaRESUMO
Perceptual processes underlying individual differences in face-recognition ability remain poorly understood. We compared visual sampling of 37 adult super-recognizers-individuals with superior face-recognition ability-with that of 68 typical adult viewers by measuring gaze position as they learned and recognized unfamiliar faces. In both phases, participants viewed faces through "spotlight" apertures that varied in size, with face information restricted in real time around their point of fixation. We found higher accuracy in super-recognizers at all aperture sizes-showing that their superiority does not rely on global sampling of face information but is also evident when they are forced to adopt piecemeal sampling. Additionally, super-recognizers made more fixations, focused less on eye region, and distributed their gaze more than typical viewers. These differences were most apparent when learning faces and were consistent with trends we observed across the broader ability spectrum, suggesting that they are reflective of factors that vary dimensionally in the broader population.
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Reconhecimento Facial , Adulto , Humanos , IndividualidadeRESUMO
Typically aged adults show reduced ability to learn a route compared to younger adults. In this experiment, we investigate the role of visual attention through eye-tracking and engagement of attentional resources in age-related route learning deficits. Participants were shown a route through a realistic virtual environment before being tested on their route knowledge. Younger and older adults were compared on their gaze behaviour during route learning and on their reaction time to a secondary probe task as a measure of attentional engagement. Behavioural results show a performance deficit in route knowledge for older adults compared to younger adults, which is consistent with previous research. We replicated previous findings showing that reaction times to the secondary probe task were longer at decision points than non-decision points, indicating stronger attentional engagement at navigationally relevant locations. However, we found no differences in attentional engagement and no differences for a range of gaze measures between age groups. We conclude that age-related changes in route learning ability are not reflected in changes in control of visual attention or regulation of attentional engagement.
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Envelhecimento/fisiologia , Atenção/fisiologia , Aprendizagem/fisiologia , Navegação Espacial/fisiologia , Percepção Visual/fisiologia , Idoso , Movimentos Oculares/fisiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Tempo de Reação/fisiologia , Realidade Virtual , Adulto JovemRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance is a global public health concern, with extensive associated health and economic implications. Actions to slow and contain the development of resistance are imperative. Despite the fact that overuse and misuse of antibiotics are highlighted as major contributing factors to this resistance, no sufficiently validated measures aiming to investigate the drivers behind consumer behaviour amongst the general population are available. The objective of this study was to develop and investigate the psychometric properties of an original, novel and multiple-item questionnaire, informed by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, to measure factors contributing to self-reported antibiotic use within the community. METHOD: A three-phase process was employed, including literature review and item generation; expert panel review; and pre-test. Investigation of the questionnaire was subsequently conducted through a cross-sectional, anonymous survey. Orthogonal principal analysis with varimax rotation, cronbach alpha and linear mixed-effects modelling analyses were conducted. A 60 item questionnaire was produced encompassing demographics, social desirability, three constructs of the Theory of Planned Behaviour including: attitudes and beliefs; subjective norm; perceived behavioural control; behaviour; and a covariate - knowledge. RESULTS: Three hundred seventy-three participants completed the survey. Eighty participants (21%) were excluded due to social desirability concerns, with data from the remaining 293 participants analysed. Results showed modest but acceptable levels of internal reliability, with high inter-item correlations within each construct. All four variables and the outcome variable of antibiotic use behaviour comprised four items with the exception of social norms, for which there were two items, producing a final 18 item questionnaire. Perceived behavioural control, social norms, the interaction between attitudes and beliefs and knowledge, and the presence of a healthcare worker in the family were all significant predictors of antibiotic use behaviour. All other predictors tested produced a nonsignificant relationship with the outcome variable of self-reported antibiotic use. CONCLUSION: This study successfully developed and validated a novel tool which assesses factors influencing community antibiotic use and misuse. The questionnaire can be used to guide appropriate intervention strategies to reduce antibiotic misuse in the general population. Future research is required to assess the extent to which this tool can guide community-based intervention strategies.
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Antibacterianos , Uso Indevido de Medicamentos , Comportamentos Relacionados com a Saúde , Conhecimentos, Atitudes e Prática em Saúde , Inquéritos e Questionários , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Antibacterianos/uso terapêutico , Estudos Transversais , Farmacorresistência Bacteriana , Família , Feminino , Pessoal de Saúde , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Psicometria , Saúde Pública , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Normas Sociais , Adulto JovemRESUMO
In reading, the perceptual span is a well-established concept that refers to the amount of information that can be read in a single fixation. Surprisingly, despite extensive empirical interest in determining the perceptual strategies deployed to process faces and an ongoing debate regarding the factors or mechanism(s) underlying efficient face processing, the perceptual span for faces-the Facespan-remains undetermined. To address this issue, we applied the gaze-contingent Spotlight technique implemented in an old-new face recognition paradigm. This procedure allowed us to parametrically vary the amount of facial information available at a fixated location in order to determine the minimal aperture size at which face recognition performance plateaus. As expected, accuracy increased nonlinearly with spotlight size apertures. Analyses of Structural Similarity comparing the available information during spotlight and natural viewing conditions indicate that the Facespan-the minimum spatial extent of preserved facial information leading to comparable performance as in natural viewing-encompasses 7° of visual angle in our viewing conditions (size of the face stimulus: 15.6°; viewing distance: 70 cm), which represents 45% of the face. The present findings provide a benchmark for future investigations that will address if and how the Facespan is modulated by factors such as cultural, developmental, idiosyncratic, or task-related differences.
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Face/fisiologia , Reconhecimento Facial/fisiologia , Fixação Ocular/fisiologia , Percepção Visual/fisiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Desempenho Psicomotor/fisiologia , Tempo de Reação , Movimentos Sacádicos/fisiologia , Adulto JovemRESUMO
A major challenge in modern eye movement research is to statistically map where observers are looking, by isolating the significant differences between groups and conditions. As compared to the signals from contemporary neuroscience measures, such as magneto/electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye movement data are sparser, with much larger variations in space across trials and participants. As a result, the implementation of a conventional linear modeling approach on two-dimensional fixation distributions often returns unstable estimations and underpowered results, leaving this statistical problem unresolved (Liversedge, Gilchrist, & Everling, 2011). Here, we present a new version of the iMap toolbox (Caldara & Miellet, 2011) that tackles this issue by implementing a statistical framework comparable to those developed in state-of-the-art neuroimaging data-processing toolboxes. iMap4 uses univariate, pixel-wise linear mixed models on smoothed fixation data, with the flexibility of coding for multiple between- and within-subjects comparisons and performing all possible linear contrasts for the fixed effects (main effects, interactions, etc.). Importantly, we also introduced novel nonparametric tests based on resampling, to assess statistical significance. Finally, we validated this approach by using both experimental and Monte Carlo simulation data. iMap4 is a freely available MATLAB open source toolbox for the statistical fixation mapping of eye movement data, with a user-friendly interface providing straightforward, easy-to-interpret statistical graphical outputs. iMap4 matches the standards of robust statistical neuroimaging methods and represents an important step in the data-driven processing of eye movement fixation data, an important field of vision sciences.
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Biometria/métodos , Movimentos Oculares/fisiologia , Modelos Lineares , Software , Humanos , Método de Monte Carlo , Estatísticas não Paramétricas , Interface Usuário-ComputadorRESUMO
Cognitive abilities decline with healthy ageing which can have a critical impact on day-to-day activities. One example is road crossing where older adults (OAs) disproportionally fall victim to pedestrian accidents. The current research examined two virtual reality experiments that investigated how the complexity of the road crossing situation impacts OAs (N = 19, ages 65-85) and younger adults (YAs, N = 34, ages 18-24) with a range of executive functioning abilities (EFs). Overall, we found that OAs were able to make safe crossing decisions, and were more cautious than YAs. This continued to be the case in high cognitive load situations. In these situations, safe decisions were associated with an increase in head movements for participants with poorer attention switching than participants with better attention switching suggesting these groups developed compensation strategies to continue to make safe decisions. In situations where participants had less time to make a crossing decision all participants had difficulties making safe crossing decisions which was amplified for OAs and participants with poorer EFs. Our findings suggest more effort should be taken to ensure that road crossing points are clear of visual obstructions and more speed limits should be placed around retirement or care homes, neither of which are legislated for in the UK and Australia.
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Acidentes de Trânsito , Realidade Virtual , Humanos , Idoso , Acidentes de Trânsito/psicologia , Cognição , Atenção , Função Executiva , Caminhada/psicologiaRESUMO
As we age, many physical, perceptual and cognitive abilities decline, which can critically impact our day-to-day lives. However, the decline of many abilities is concurrent; thus, it is challenging to disentangle the relative contributions of different abilities in the performance deterioration in realistic tasks, such as road crossing, with age. Research into road crossing has shown that aging and a decline in executive functioning (EFs) is associated with altered information sampling and less safe crossing decisions compared to younger adults. However, in these studies declines in age and EFs were confounded. Therefore, it is impossible to disentangle whether age-related declines in EFs impact on visual sampling and road-crossing performance, or whether visual exploration, and road-crossing performance, are impacted by aging independently of a decline in EFs. In this study, we recruited older adults with maintained EFs to isolate the impacts of aging independently of a decline EFs on road crossing abilities. We recorded eye movements of younger adults and older adults while they watched videos of road traffic and were asked to decide when they could cross the road. Overall, our results show that older adults with maintained EFs sample visual information and make similar road crossing decisions to younger adults. Our findings also reveal that both environmental constraints and EF abilities interact with aging to influence how the road-crossing task is performed. Our findings suggest that older pedestrians' safety, and independence in day-to-day life, can be improved through a limitation of scene complexity and a preservation of EF abilities.
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The main concern in face-processing research is to understand the processes underlying the identification of faces. In the study reported here, we addressed this issue by examining whether local or global information supports face identification. We developed a new methodology called "iHybrid." This technique combines two famous identities in a gaze-contingent paradigm, which simultaneously provides local, foveated information from one face and global, complementary information from a second face. Behavioral face-identification performance and eye-tracking data showed that the visual system identified faces on the basis of either local or global information depending on the location of the observer's first fixation. In some cases, a given observer even identified the same face using local information on one trial and global information on another trial. A validation in natural viewing conditions confirmed our findings. These results clearly demonstrate that face identification is not rooted in a single, or even preferred, information-gathering strategy.
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Movimentos Oculares , Face , Reconhecimento Visual de Modelos/fisiologia , Reconhecimento Psicológico/fisiologia , Feminino , Fixação Ocular , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Perception and eye movements are affected by culture. Adults from Eastern societies (e.g. China) display a disposition to process information holistically, whereas individuals from Western societies (e.g. Britain) process information analytically. Recently, this pattern of cultural differences has been extended to face processing. Adults from Eastern cultures fixate centrally towards the nose when learning and recognizing faces, whereas adults from Western societies spread fixations across the eye and mouth regions. Although light has been shed on how adults can fixate different areas yet achieve comparable recognition accuracy, the reason why such divergent strategies exist is less certain. Although some argue that culture shapes strategies across development, little direct evidence exists to support this claim. Additionally, it has long been claimed that face recognition in early childhood is largely reliant upon external rather than internal face features, yet recent studies have challenged this theory. To address these issues, we tested children aged 7-12 years of age from the UK and China with an old/new face recognition paradigm while simultaneously recording their eye movements. Both populations displayed patterns of fixations that were consistent with adults from their respective cultural groups, which 'strengthened' across development as qualified by a pattern classifier analysis. Altogether, these observations suggest that cultural forces may indeed be responsible for shaping eye movements from early childhood. Furthermore, fixations made by both cultural groups almost exclusively landed on internal face regions, suggesting that these features, and not external features, are universally used to achieve face recognition in childhood.
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Cultura , Movimentos Oculares , Fixação Ocular , Reconhecimento Visual de Modelos , Reconhecimento Psicológico , Criança , China , Face , Expressão Facial , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Escócia , Percepção VisualRESUMO
Eye movement data analyses are commonly based on the probability of occurrence of saccades and fixations (and their characteristics) in given regions of interest (ROIs). In this article, we introduce an alternative method for computing statistical fixation maps of eye movements--iMap--based on an approach inspired by methods used in functional magnetic resonance imaging. Importantly, iMap does not require the a priori segmentation of the experimental images into ROIs. With iMap, fixation data are first smoothed by convolving Gaussian kernels to generate three-dimensional fixation maps. This procedure embodies eyetracker accuracy, but the Gaussian kernel can also be flexibly set to represent acuity or attentional constraints. In addition, the smoothed fixation data generated by iMap conform to the assumptions of the robust statistical random field theory (RFT) approach, which is applied thereafter to assess significant fixation spots and differences across the three-dimensional fixation maps. The RFT corrects for the multiple statistical comparisons generated by the numerous pixels constituting the digital images. To illustrate the processing steps of iMap, we provide sample analyses of real eye movement data from face, visual scene, and memory processing. The iMap MATLAB toolbox is editable and freely available for download online (www.unifr.ch/psycho/ibmlab/).
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Biometria/métodos , Interpretação Estatística de Dados , Medições dos Movimentos Oculares/estatística & dados numéricos , Software , Algoritmos , Movimentos Oculares , HumanosRESUMO
Aging is accompanied by changes in general cognitive functioning which may impact the learning rate of older adults; however, this is often not controlled for in cognitive aging studies. We investigated the contribution of differences in learning rates to age-related differences in landmark knowledge acquired from route learning. In Experiment 1 we used a standard learning procedure in which participants received a fixed amount of exposure to a route. Consistent with previous research, we found age-related deficits in associative cue and landmark sequence knowledge. Experiment 2 controlled for differences in learning rates by using a flexible exposure learning procedure. Specifically, participants were trained to a performance criterion during route learning before being tested on the content of their route knowledge. While older adults took longer to learn the route than younger adults, the age-related differences in associative cue knowledge were abolished. The deficit in landmark sequence knowledge, however, remained. Experiment 3 replicated these results and introduced a test situation in which a deficit in landmark sequence knowledge yielded an increased likelihood of disorientation in older adults. The findings of this study suggest that age-related deficits in landmark associative cue knowledge are attenuated by controlling for learning rates. In contrast, landmark sequence knowledge deficits persist and are best explained by changes in the learning strategy of older adults to acquire task essential associative cue knowledge at the expense of supplementary sequence knowledge.
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Envelhecimento Cognitivo , Idoso , Envelhecimento , Cognição , Humanos , Conhecimento , AprendizagemRESUMO
Culture shapes how people gather information from the visual world. We recently showed that Western observers focus on the eyes region during face recognition, whereas Eastern observers fixate predominantly the center of faces, suggesting a more effective use of extrafoveal information for Easterners compared to Westerners. However, the cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception is a highly debated topic. Additionally, the extent to which those perceptual differences across observers from different cultures rely on modulations of extrafoveal information use remains to be clarified. We used a gaze-contingent technique designed to dynamically mask central vision, the Blindspot, during a visual search task of animals in natural scenes. We parametrically controlled the Blindspots and target animal sizes (0°, 2°, 5°, or 8°). We processed eye-tracking data using an unbiased data-driven approach based on fixation maps and we introduced novel spatiotemporal analyses in order to finely characterize the dynamics of scene exploration. Both groups of observers, Eastern and Western, showed comparable animal identification performance, which decreased as a function of the Blindspot sizes. Importantly, dynamic analysis of the exploration pathways revealed identical oculomotor strategies for both groups of observers during animal search in scenes. Culture does not impact extrafoveal information use during the ecologically valid visual search of animals in natural scenes.
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Diversidade Cultural , Discriminação Psicológica/fisiologia , Movimentos Oculares/fisiologia , Reconhecimento Visual de Modelos/fisiologia , Adulto , Face , Feminino , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMO
Previous research has shown that visual attention does not always exactly follow gaze direction, leading to the concepts of overt and covert attention. However, it is not yet clear how such covert shifts of visual attention to peripheral regions impact the processing of the targets we directly foveate as they move in our visual field. The current study utilised the co-registration of eye-position and EEG recordings while participants tracked moving targets that were embedded with a 30 Hz frequency tag in a Steady State Visually Evoked Potentials (SSVEP) paradigm. When the task required attention to be divided between the moving target (overt attention) and a peripheral region where a second target might appear (covert attention), the SSVEPs elicited by the tracked target at the 30 Hz frequency band were significantly, but transiently, lower than when participants did not have to covertly monitor for a second target. Our findings suggest that neural responses of overt attention are only briefly reduced when attention is divided between covert and overt areas. This neural evidence is in line with theoretical accounts describing attention as a pool of finite resources, such as the perceptual load theory. Altogether, these results have practical implications for many real-world situations where covert shifts of attention may discretely reduce visual processing of objects even when they are directly being tracked with the eyes.
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Atenção , Potenciais Evocados Visuais , Movimentos Oculares , Percepção Visual , Adulto , Eletroencefalografia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Campos Visuais , Adulto JovemRESUMO
The ability to recognise places is known to deteriorate with advancing age. In this study, we investigated the contribution of age-related changes in spatial encoding strategies to declining place recognition ability. We recorded eye movements while younger and older adults completed a place recognition task first described by Muffato et al. (2019). Participants first learned places, which were defined by an array of four objects, and then decided whether the next place they were shown was the same or different to the one they learned. Places could be shown from the same spatial perspective as during learning or from a shifted perspective (30° or 60°). Places that were different to those during learning were changed either by substituting an object in the place with a novel object or by swapping the locations of two objects. We replicated the findings of Muffato et al. (2019) showing that sensitivity to detect changes in a place declined with advancing age and declined when the spatial perspective was shifted. Additionally, older adults were particularly impaired on trials in which object locations were swapped; however, they were not differentially affected by perspective changes compared to younger adults. During place encoding, older adults produced more fixations and saccades, shorter fixation durations, and spent less time looking at objects compared to younger adults. Further, we present an analysis of gaze chaining, designed to capture spatio-temporal aspects of gaze behaviour. The chaining measure was a significant predictor of place recognition performance. We found significant differences between age groups on the chaining measure and argue that these differences in gaze behaviour are indicative of differences in encoding strategy between age groups. In summary, we report a direct replication of Muffato et al. (2019) and provide evidence for age-related differences in spatial encoding strategies, which are related to place recognition performance.
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Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is associated with paradoxical trust cognitions and behaviours. While BPD is associated with difficulty forming trust and maintaining cooperation in trust-based exchanges, design and analytical methodology best suited to reveal the temporal ebb and flow of trust have been underutilized. We used an economic game to examine the trajectories of trust as it forms, dissolves, and restores in response to trust violation and repair, and to explain how these vary as a function of borderline pathology. Young adults (N = 234) played a 15-round trust game in which partner trustworthiness was varied to create three phases: trust formation, trust violation, and trust restoration. Discontinuous growth modelling was employed to capture the trends in trust over time and their relationship with BPD trait count. BPD trait count was associated with an incongruous pattern of trust behaviour in the form of declining trust when interacting with a new and cooperative partner, and paradoxically, increasing trust following multiple instances of trust violation by that partner. BPD trait count was also associated with trust restoring at a faster rate than it was originally formed. By adopting a methodology that recognizes the dynamic nature of trust, this study illustrated at a micro level how relational disturbances may be produced and maintained in those with a moderate to high BPD trait count. Further investigation of the factors and processes that underlie these incongruous trust dynamics is recommended.
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Transtorno da Personalidade Borderline/psicologia , Modelos Biológicos , Confiança/psicologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Models of eye guidance in reading rely on the concept of the perceptual span-the amount of information perceived during a single eye fixation, which is considered to be a consequence of visual and attentional constraints. To directly investigate attentional mechanisms underlying the perceptual span, we implemented a new reading paradigm-parafoveal magnification (PM)-that compensates for how visual acuity drops off as a function of retinal eccentricity. On each fixation and in real time, parafoveal text is magnified to equalize its perceptual impact with that of concurrent foveal text. Experiment 1 demonstrated that PM does not increase the amount of text that is processed, supporting an attentional-based account of eye movements in reading. Experiment 2 explored a contentious issue that differentiates competing models of eye movement control and showed that, even when parafoveal information is enlarged, visual attention in reading is allocated in a serial fashion from word to word.
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Atenção/fisiologia , Fixação Ocular/fisiologia , Fóvea Central/fisiologia , Leitura , Percepção de Tamanho/fisiologia , Acuidade Visual/fisiologia , Campos Visuais/fisiologia , Percepção Visual/fisiologia , Adulto , Eletroculografia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Orientação/fisiologia , Movimentos Sacádicos/fisiologia , Processamento de Sinais Assistido por Computador , Disparidade Visual/fisiologia , Adulto JovemRESUMO
In the last 20 years, there has been increasing interest in studying visual attentional processes under more natural conditions. In the present study, we propose to determine the critical age at which children show similar to adult performance and attentional control in a visually guided task; in a naturalistic dynamic and socially relevant context: road crossing. We monitored visual exploration and crossing decisions in adults and children aged between 5 and 15 while they watched road traffic videos containing a range of traffic densities with or without pedestrians. 5-10 year old (y/o) children showed less systematic gaze patterns. More specifically, adults and 11-15 y/o children look mainly at the vehicles' appearing point, which is an optimal location to sample diagnostic information for the task. In contrast, 5-10 y/os look more at socially relevant stimuli and attend to moving vehicles further down the trajectory when the traffic density is high. Critically, 5-10 y/o children also make an increased number of crossing decisions compared to 11-15 y/os and adults. Our findings reveal a critical shift around 10 y/o in attentional control and crossing decisions in a road crossing task.
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Atenção/fisiologia , Pedestres , Adolescente , Adulto , Algoritmos , Criança , Pré-Escolar , Tomada de Decisões , Movimentos Oculares/fisiologia , Fixação Ocular/fisiologia , Humanos , Estimulação Luminosa , Adulto JovemRESUMO
French readers' eye movements were monitored as they read a passage of text. Initial global analyses of word frequency, accounting for the majority of fixations in the text, revealed a good fit between the observed data and the simulated data from the E-Z Reader 7 model of eye movement control. However, the model did not perform as well on simulations of contextual predictability effects. A subset of 20 controlled words from the passage were used to examine the combined effects of frequency and predictability. Results from the observed data showed main effects of frequency and predictability but no interaction. With certain modifications, the E-Z Reader 7 model was able to adequately simulate the pattern of data. Although the E-Z Reader model successfully accounted for the present data, we believe that further modifications will be necessary in order to better account for data in the literature.
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Idioma , Periodicidade , Leitura , Vocabulário , Adulto , Movimentos Oculares , Feminino , Fixação Ocular , França , Humanos , Masculino , Fatores de TempoRESUMO
Humans have a natural expertise in recognizing faces. However, the nature of the interaction between this critical visual biological skill and memory is yet unclear. Here, we had the unique opportunity to test two individuals who have had exceptional success in the World Memory Championships, including several world records in face-name association memory. We designed a range of face processing tasks to determine whether superior/expert face memory skills are associated with distinctive perceptual strategies for processing faces. Superior memorizers excelled at tasks involving associative face-name learning. Nevertheless, they were as impaired as controls in tasks probing the efficiency of the face system: face inversion and the other-race effect. Super memorizers did not show increased hippocampal volumes, and exhibited optimal generic eye movement strategies when they performed complex multi-item face-name associations. Our data show that the visual computations of the face system are not malleable and are robust to acquired expertise involving extensive training of associative memory.