Combining social cues in attention: Looking at gaze, head, and pointing cues.

Social cues bias covert spatial attention. In most previous work the impact of different social cues, such as the gaze, head, and pointing cue, has been investigated using separated cues or making one cue explicitly task relevant in response-interference tasks. In the present study we created a novel cartoon figure in which unpredictive gaze and head and pointing cues could be combined to study their impact on spatial attention. In Experiment 1, gaze and pointing cues were either presented alone or together. When both cues were present, they were always directed to the same location. In Experiment 2, gaze and pointing cues were either directed to the same location (aligned) or directed to different locations (conflicted). Experiment 3 was like Experiment 2, except that the pointing cue was tested alongside a head-direction cue. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the effect of the gaze cue was reliably smaller than the pointing cue, and an aligned gaze cue did not have an additive benefit for performance. In Experiments 2 and 3, performance was determined by the pointing cue, regardless of where they eyes were looking, or the head was directed. The present results demonstrated a strong dominance of the pointing cue over the other cues. The child-friendly stimuli present a versatile way to study the impact of the combination of social cues, which may further benefit developmental research in social attention, and research in populations whose members might have atypical social attention.

Long-distance migration law of radon in overburden of abandoned goaf during coal spontaneous combustion.

The surface isotope radon measurement method (SIRMM) is widely used in fire source detection in abandoned mines. However, studies on the long-distance migration of radon during coal spontaneous combustion are lacking, which hinders the further popularization of this technology in coal fire prevention and control. For this reason, the migration law of radon in overlying strata in fire areas was studied through experiments and numerical simulation. The radon exhalation concentration of coal was found to increase at first and then decrease in the range of 30-350 °C through experiments. The radon concentration reaches the maximum value (557.1 Bq/m3) at 150 °C, which is 6.3 times higher than that at 30 °C. Based on the radon source term obtained by fitting the experimental data, the radon migration model of coal spontaneous combustion in abandoned goaf was constructed, and the dynamic distribution characteristics of the airflow, temperature, and radon concentration fields in the overlying strata area were analyzed. The internal relationship between surface radon and underground fire source was discussed. The simulation results revealed the sharp change in the porosity of the overlying rock causes radon concentration at the interface between the caving and fissure zones to increase continually with the process of spontaneous combustion, providing material and energy support for the long-distance radon migration. When the maximum temperature of the coal pile reaches 70 °C, the concentration of radon released from the coal pile increases rapidly to 13696 Bq/m3, and the radon from the underground space appears on the surface at this temperature. In the range of 70-150 °C, with rapid increase in radon released from coal piles, the surface concentration of radon also increased rapidly to 225 Bq/m3. At the high-temperature stage exceeding 150 °C, the concentration of radon released from coal piles exhibited a downward trend, resulting in a decrease in the rate of increase of radon concentration on the surface. A close relationship between the surface radon concentration and underground fire source temperature in the process of coal spontaneous combustion was observed. In the spatial position, the peak position of radon on the surface was highly consistent with that of the fire source longitudinally, which ensures the accuracy of the SIRMM to determine the location of the hidden fire source. This suggests that the SIRMM can accurately evaluate the fire source's temperature and fire area's development trend.