Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka möjliga prediktorer för utfallet i KBT-behandling vid depression, face-to-face samt i kombination med stöd av en smartphoneapplikation. 88 deltagare randomiserades till smartphone- (n = 45) eller face-to-face-betingelsen (n = 43). Utfallsmåttet var förändring i Beck Depression Inventory-II mellan förocheftermätning, främst beräknat med residual gain scores. Samband mellan prediktorer och utfall undersöktes medkorrelationsanalyser. Regressionsanalyser med interaktionen mellan prediktor och behandlingsbetingelse genomfördes för att undersöka skillnader mellan betingelserna. Resultatet visade att högre initial depressionsnivå predicerade större förbättring för alla deltagare sammantaget samt för båda behandlingsbetingelserna. Att ha sysselsättning predicerade mindre förbättring för face-to-face-betingelsen. Vissa frågor gällande smartphoneanvändning visade sig betydelsefulla. Exempelvis var upplevelsen av att ha stor användning av sin smartphone relaterat till större förbättring för smartphonebetingelsen. Gällande allians var högre skattningar på Working Alliance Inventory-Short under behandlingsvecka tre relaterat till större förbättring för alla deltagaresammantaget samt för smartphonebetingelsen. Detta samband gällde även vid kontroll för skattning av förväntad allians. Kön, ålder, civilstånd, utbildningsnivå, stad, initial ångestnivå, samtidig ångestdiagnos, tidigare depressionsdiagnos, förväntad allians samt flera smartphonefrågor predicerade inte utfallet. Att många faktorer inte korrelerade med utfallet skulle kunna tyda på att detta behandlingsformat kan komma att passa en bred patientgrupp, men att det kan vara viktigt att ta hänsyn till betydelsen av allians samt individers smartphonevanor.

This essay deals with the subject of communication through Facebook. In this survey we studied 100 youths from Karlstad and their communication habits and behavior patterns on Facebook. The social network site Facebook has since its start in 2004 made a mark in modern communication. Today in 2010 the site has more than 500 million users. This paper wants to study what happens to other types of communication. Has the increased use of computer-mediated communication led us away from face to face or has it encouraged us to use face- to face communication more often? Our target group for this study is people attending their final year in high school. In this study we have been using both qualitative- and quantitative methods to collect our data. The result of the study suggests that a big part in our target group is happy to use Facebook or other computer-mediated sites as ways of their communication. Partly because they think it is a convenient way to communicate but also because they find it easier to get in touch with people, both close friends and people they have never met, by using computer-mediated communication instead of face-to-face communication. Virtually all in our target group suggests that Facebook has helped them in their communication and that they are more social now than before. This paper also has sought to illuminate if shy people can be helped to establish social ties through computer-mediated communication.Keywords: Facebook, communication, face-to-face, computer-mediated communication and shyness

This thesis presents a robust face recognition method and a combination of methods for gender identification and age group classification for semantic annotation of videos. Local binary pattern histogram which has 256 bins and pixel intensity differences are used as extracted facial features for gender classification. DCT Mod2 features and edge detection results around facial landmarks are used as extracted facial features for age group classification. In gender classification module, a Random Trees classifier is trained with LBP features and an adaboost classifier is trained with pixel intensity differences. DCT Mod2 features are used for training of a Random Trees classifier and LBP features around facial landmark points are used for training another Random Trees classifier in age group classification module. DCT Mod2 features of the detected faces morped by two dimensional face morphing method based on Active Appearance Model and Barycentric Coordinates are used as the inputs of the nearest neighbor classifier with weights obtained from the trained Random Forest classifier in face identification module. Different feature extraction methods are tried and compared and the best achievements in the face recognition module to be used in the method chosen. We compared our classification results with some successful earlier works results in our experiments performed with same datasets and got satisfactory results.

The design of a face recognition system ( FRS ) can been separated into two major modules ¡V face detection and face recognition. In the face detection part, we combine image pre-processing techniques with maximum-likelihood estimation to detect the nearest frontal face in a single image. Under limited restrictions, our detection method overcomes some of the challenging tasks, such as variability in scale, location, orientation, facial expression, occlusion ( glasses ), and lighting change. In the face recognition part, we use both Karhunen-Loeve transform and linear discrimant analysis ( LDA ) to perform feature extraction. In this feature extraction process, the features are calculated from the inner products of the original samples and the selected eigenvectors. In general, as the size of the face database is increased, the recognition time will be proportionally increased. To solve this problem, hard-limited Karhunen-Loeve transform ( HLKLT ) is applied to reduce the computation time in our FRS.

<p>Chatroom conversations often elicit an initial impression of chaos. This is probably chiefly due to disrupted adjacency sequences, but also a result of the language being rich in non-standard linguistic forms and grammar. This study explores chatroom conversations with reference to Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle and the maxims that accompany it, and compares them to real life conversations. The aim is to see whether they differ from real life conversations to the extent expected, and whether these differences give rise to any compensational strategies to ensure successful communication. The results reveal a slightly higher amount of maxim undermining in the chat room than in the real life conversations, but not as high as expected. Accordingly, few compensational strategies need be adopted. It is suggested that the main explanation for these findings is that chatroom users have adapted their conversation patterns to the medium.</p>

Previous research has shown that male pigeons (Columba livia) respond with courtship displays to video playbacks of a female pigeon indicating that they 'recognize' the female as a potential mate. Courtship displays significantly decline when the head region of the female is occluded (Shimizu, 1998) suggesting that features located within the head are important for species recognition and mate selection. However, little is known about the exact visual features necessary to elicit displays. The current study examined the preference behavior of male pigeons when given a choice between photographic images of normal looking or altered female pigeon faces. The altered-face categories included: 1) enlarged or removed facial features such as the eyes or beak; 2) the eyes and beak reconfigured within the head; and 3) removed contour (outline). The results showed that subjects responded preferentially toward females with enlarged features (eyes or beak). However, subjects responded preferentially toward normal females when the alternative stimuli were faces that were missing the eyes and/or beak. Preference for normal females was also observed when females with "incorrect" configuration were shown. Finally, subjects responded significantly less to females lacking contour, even when the eyes and beak were visible. The overall findings suggest local facial components are important, although this effect diminishes if the contour of the female is not visible. These findings also suggest that pigeons attend to both local components and global configuration when they detect conspecifics and identify potential mates.

Background Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have been reported to show socio-communicative impairments which are associated with impaired face perception and atypical gaze behaviour. Attending to faces and interpreting the important socio-communicative cues presented allows us to understand other’s cognitive states, emotions, wants and desires. This information enables successful social encounters and interactions to take place. Children with ASD not attending to these important social cues on the face may cause some of the socio-communicative impairments observed within this population. Examining how children with ASD attend to faces will enhance our understanding of their communicative impairments. Aim The present thesis therefore aimed to use eye-tracking methodology to examine attention allocation to faces for communicative cues in children with ASD. Method The first line of enquiry examined how children with ASD (n = 21; age = 13y7m) attended to faces presented within their picture communication systems compared to typically developing children matched on chronological age, verbal ability age and visuo-spatial ability age. The next investigation was conducted on the same group of children and examined how children with ASD attended to faces of different familiarity including, familiar, unfamiliar and the child’s own face. These faces were also presented with direct gaze or averted gaze to investigate how this would impact on the children’s allocation of attention. The final exploration highlighted how children with ASD (n = 20; age = 12y3m) attended to socially salient information (faces) and non-socially salient information (objects) presented within social scenes of varying complexity, compared to typically developing controls. Again groups were matched based on chronological age, verbal ability age, and visuo-spatial ability age. Results Children with ASD were shown to allocate attention to faces presented within their picture communication symbols similarly compared to their typically developing counterparts. All children were shown to fixate significantly longer on the face images compared to the object images. The children with ASD fixated for similar amounts of time to the eye and mouth regions regardless of familiarity and gaze direction compared to their controlled matches. All groups looked significantly longer at the eye areas compared to the mouth areas of the faces across all familiarity types. The children also fixated longer on the eye and mouth regions of direct gazing faces compared to the regions presented on the averted gazing faces. The children with ASD fixated on the faces and objects presented within social scenes similar to their typically developing counterparts across all complexity conditions. The children were shown to fixate significantly longer on the objects compared to the faces. Conclusions Children with ASD showed typical allocation of attention to faces. This suggests that faces are not aversive to them and they are able to attend to the relevant areas such as eye and mouth regions. This may have been influenced by the inclusion of high functioning children with ASD. However these results may also suggest that attention allocation and gaze behaviour are not the only factors which contribute to the socio-communicative impairments observed in ASD.

Background and Objectives Self - report data is known to be unrel iable and susceptible to factors such as social desirability bias. Methods used for collecting self - report data has thus far been unsuccessful in ameliorating known obstacles to honest self - disclosure. Considering the current HIV/AIDS pandemic and relate d health crises, it is imperative that self - report data is an accurate depiction of reality, since it informs research requirements and designs as well as intervention designs and the evaluation of the efficacy of the interventions. Aim To evaluate and co mpare the efficacy of the Informal Confidential Voting Interview (ICVI) to the FTFI (Face - to - Face Interview) and the SAQ (Self - Administered Questionnaire) in enhancing self - disclosure and minimizing social desirability bias on sensitive topics of sexual ex perience and sexual activity. Study Design A sample of 110 undergraduate and post - graduate students at various tertiary education institutions in Pietermaritzburg were randomly allocated to the ICVI, the SAQ or the FTFI. The ICVI combined a face - to - face interview with a voting box method devised to enhance response anonymity. The FTFI and the SAQ were administered according to a standardized procedure to maximize confidentiality and self - disclosure. Results The self - disclosure scores were significant ly higher for the ICVI in comparison to the FTFI and the SAQ, with a p = 0.005. Post - hoc tests revealed that the ICVI performed significantly better in self - disclosure scores than the FTFI with p = 0.022 and the SAQ with p = 0.015. There was no significa nt difference in self - disclosure scores between the SAQ and the FTFI. Using the Marlowe - Crowne scale of social desirability bias, a significant difference in social desirability bias scores were achieved with p = 0.043. However, the post - hoc analysis ind icated no affirmative significant mean difference in social desirability score among any of the methods. Males displayed greater self - disclosure than females with p = 0.013, but for both sexes the ICVI group achieved the highest mean self - disclosure score s than the FTFI - and the SAQ group. Conclusion The results of this study concluded that the employment of ICVI fundamentally resulted in better quality data than the SAQ and the FTFI on topics of sensitivity and controversial behaviours. The findings ar e suggestive of the successful implementation of the ICVI method across potentially diverse research contexts that rely on self - report data, as the method is adaptable to the target population and its characteristics. Further research is warranted to buil d on its current design and facilitate the implementation of the ICVI across the wide disciplines of self - report data. / Thesis (M.Sc.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, [2009]

Face detection and recognition has been very popular topics. Recently, its applications for mobile devices have gained tremendous attention due to the rapid expansion of the market. Although numerous techniques exist for face detection and recognition, only a few solve realistic challenges under the mobile device application environment. In this thesis, we propose an automatic face authentication system including both face detection and recognition components for mobile device applications by using spatially enhanced Local Binary Patterns (LBP) feature extraction. The first contribution is to propose a fast and accurate face detector by using LBP features and its spatially enhanced variant. The simplicity of LBP ensures low computational complexity and spatially enhanced LBP achieves high accuracy. The second contribution is to propose color based spatially enhanced LBP features for face recognition. The proposed features achieve high accuracy by extracting complementary information from color channels and spatial correlations between LBP features.

When viewing ambiguous figures, individuals can exert selective attentional control over their perceptual reversibility behaviour (e.g., Strüber & Stadler, 1999). In the current study, we replicated this finding but we also found that ambiguous figures containing faces are processed quite differently from those containing objects. Furthermore, inverting an ambiguous figure containing faces (i.e., Rubin’s vase-face) resulted in an “inversion effect”. These findings highlight the importance of considering how we attend to faces in addition to how we perceive and process faces. Describing the perceptual reversal patterns of individuals in the general population allowed us to draw comparisons to behaviours exhibited by individuals with Asperger Syndrome (AS). The group data suggested that these individuals were less affected by figure type or stimulus inversion. Examination of individual scores, moreover, revealed that the majority of participants with AS showed an atypical reversal pattern, particularly with ambiguous figures containing faces, and an atypical inversion effect. Together, our results show that ambiguous figures can be a very valuable tool for examining face processing mechanisms in the general population and other distinct groups of individuals, particularly those diagnosed with AS.