One of the main diagnostic criteria for Asperger Syndrome is a severe social impairment (American Psychiatric Association [DSM-IV-TR] 2000), something that has often been connected to a more specific impairment in facial recognition. However, the main diagnostic tool (the DSM-IV-TR) has received much criticism during later years and is soon to be revised (Woodbury-Smith & Volkmar 2009). Among other things, many researchers claim that the diagnosis should be complemented with a sliding scale of severity (Ring, Woodbury-Smith, Watson, Wheelright & Baron-Cohen 2008). The use of facial information is central in the social interaction of humans, evident in the special patterns of visual scanning that people employ for facial stimuli (Yarbus 1967). Because of that, this symptom of Asperger Syndrome has become a high research priority. The impairment in facial recognition has been connected to a bias towards detail based processing (McPartland, Webb, Keehn & Dawson 2010). A recent study also connects this to an unusually high visual acuity, which could result in a disposition to focus on small facial features. In the present study. facial stimuli were prepared to provoke memory conjunction errors. This type of memory error means that a person erroneously claims to recognize a face assembled by pieces of previously shown stimuli. If a person is more prone to do so, that would imply that he or she is more focused on details than on configural information (Danielsson 2006). Two groups were tested, one consisting of non-diagnosed adults and one of adults diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. A test for visual acuity was administered, which was followed by a series of facial recognition tasks. Responses in the latter part were given with a computer mouse, and eye fixations were recorded using a head mounted eye-tracking device. Three hypotheses were formulated. First, persons with AS were expected to perform more poorly in all facial recognition tasks. Second, persons with AS were expected to make more conjunction errors than test group subjects. Finally, persons with AS were expected to display a mean visual acuity significantly higher than that of the test group. However, no significant differences emerged between the groups in relation to either of the hypotheses, and results could not be referred to flaws in the experimental setup. Therefore, these results are taken to display the heterogeneity of the Asperger Syndrome population, and possibly the importance of early training measures to compensate for social impairments.

<p>Joint attention is critical for social learning activities such as parent-child shared book reading. However, there is a potential disassociation of attention when the adult reads texts while the child looks at pictures. I hypothesize that the lack of joint attention limits children's opportunity to learn print-related skills. The current study tests the hypothesis with interventions that enhance real-time joint attention. Eye movements of parents and children were simultaneously tracked when they read books together on computer screens. I also provided real-time feedback to the parent regarding where the child was looking, and vice versa. Changes of dyads' reading behaviors before and after the joint attention intervention were measured from both eye movements and video records. Baseline data showed little joint attention in parent-child shared book reading. The real-time attention feedback significantly increased the joint attention and children's print-related learning. These findings supported my hypothesis that engaging in effective joint attention is critical for children to acquire knowledge and skills during shared reading and other collaborative learning activities.</p> / Dissertation

Based on the Prospect Theory by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and the Impression Formation Theory by Fiske and Neuberg (1990), this research examines decision makers¡¦ information attention for subjects who are required to judge under framing. The eye-tracking technology is applied to evaluate decision makers¡¦ information attention. The results indicate that, as predicted by the Prospect Theory, the effect of framing is observed in both positive and negative framed conditions. Overall, the study finds that subjects in negative frames exert more effort in information attention than those in positive frames. Concerning the effect of the need for cognition (NC) trait in negative framing conditions, the finding shows that subjects who have a higher level of NC exert more effort in information attention than the low NC subjects. In addition, subjects with high a higher level of math ability focus exert more attentional effort on possible outcomes and probabilities in positive framing but not in negative framing. Finally, the result shows that there is no relationship between information attention and the framing effect, indicating that the framing effect is resilient to the influence of information attention effort induced by both the personality traits like NC and the mechanism like deep thought. Collectively, these results pave the way for future research to study cognitive processes under framing so that we can understand how different information representations may increase or lessen the effect of framing.

In this study the mechanisms that control attention in natural scenes was examined. It was explored whether familiarity with the environment makes participants more sensitive to changes or novel events in the scene. Previous investigation of this issue has been based on viewing 2D pictures/images of simple objects or of natural scenes, a situation which does not accurately reflect the challenges of natural vision. In order to examine this issue, as well as the differences between 2D and 3D environments, two experiments were designed in which the general task demands could be manipulated. The results revealed that familiarity with the environment significantly increased the time spent fixating regions in the scene where a change had occurred. The results support the hypothesis that we learn the structure of natural scenes over time, and that attention is attracted by deviations from the stored scene representation. Such a mechanism would allow attention to objects or events that were not explicitly on the current cognitive agenda.

In this study, Concept map (CM) development processes of the experts and novices were explored. This studyaimed to investigate the similarities and differences among novices and experts&rsquo / CM development process regarding their cognitive processes. Two experiments were designed / eye-tracking, written and verbal data were collected from 29 pre-service teachers and 6 subject matter experts.Data were analyzed by using qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods. The results indicated that eventhough some of the strategies were similar, there were different patterns followed by the experts and novices during the CM development process. Both experts and novices embraced &lsquo / deductive reasoning&rsquo / , and preferred &lsquo / hierarchical&rsquo / type of CMs. The other patterns recognized during the process were&lsquo / filling information in an order&rsquo / , &lsquo / branch construction pattern&rsquo / ,&lsquo / content richness&rsquo / and &lsquo / progress pattern&rsquo / . Novices and experts were distinguished in their content richness measures which used to determine the quality of the maps. Regarding the progress pattern, novices and experts differed in terms of the frequency and duration for specific acts invarious phases of their progress in CM development process. Furthermore, expert participants differed from novices in their fixation count numbers, fixation durations, visit duration periods for specific actions. Fixation count numbers of the novices were higher than the experts during the entire process and in specific dimensions of the CM development process. As a conclusion, these pattern differences affect the CM development process directly and the instructors need to give emphasis to these critical points while using CM during the instruction, and with the help of these pattern differences, instructors could guide the learner effectively and acquire content rich CMs.

¡@¡@It has been for a long time to develop systems of eye control, which are related to a variety of techniques, such as signal/image processing, characteristics of face identifying/tracking, action-mappings, etc. In terms of implementations, the acquisition of data can be done by either special instruments or by general devices. Such systems can be applied to many fields, for instance, military, medicine, entertainments, and other tasks that are fitted. And for the similar system, the performance differs due to the disparity of distinct situations and the way to use it. ¡@¡@In this thesis, we present a system that takes a sequence of images of a user as inputs, and then integrates methods of elliptical model of head, dual states of eyes, deformable templates, and the most yield filter to track the user¡¦s eyes. A coarse-to-fine strategy is used to rapidly locate the region of eyes and to get the information of eyes in order to translate into corresponding operations on machines. The experiment shows that our system is quite robust and fast so that it can help people who are unable to use physical body well.

Overweight and obesity are influenced by many factors, however, food and beverage advertising and its influence on the dietary preferences and choices of youth is important. Models providing explanations for the association between advertising and youth outcomes have been proposed, yet few have been tested. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how objective measures of attention to food and beverage advertising were associated with the (1) unhealthy food and beverage preferences (2) unhealthy food and beverage choices and (3) overweight/obesity status of youth, and how susceptibility to food and beverage advertising moderated these associations. Participants included 102 youth (m age = 11.6; 56.4% Caucasian; 43.1% female) who viewed 40 food and beverage advertisements on a computer and had their eye movements recorded. Attention measures included total time, total unhealthy time, fixation length (animated characters/branded logos, unhealthy food and beverage items), and fixation count (animated characters/branded logos, unhealthy food and beverage items). Participants self-reported susceptibility to food and beverage advertising, unhealthy food and beverage preferences, unhealthy food and beverage choices, and overweight/obesity. Regression models, controlling for gender, and moderation analyses were conducted. Fixation length and count for unhealthy food and beverage items were each positively and significantly associated with unhealthy food and beverage preferences. Fixation count for unhealthy food and beverage items was positively and marginally associated with unhealthy food and beverage choices. Findings indicate that individuals who look longer and more frequently at unhealthy food and beverage items appear to prefer them, and may also choose them. Susceptibility to food and beverage advertising moderated the association between fixation count for animated characters/branded logos and BMI z-score, suggesting that under conditions of high susceptibility to food and beverage advertising, those with a higher fixation count for animated characters/branded logos had a lower BMI z-score. Future research should include longitudinal studies, as well as work which examines the role of other potential moderating variables. Findings may have important implications for use in intervention programs, in the development of advertising messages for healthy food and beverage items, and/or policy initiatives aimed at changing the landscape of food and beverage advertising. / text

This dissertation investigates two facts about language processing. The Good Enough Approach claims that language users do not form a fully detailed representation of the input unless the task at hand requires it. On the other hand it has been shown that language users display internal preferences when they are faced with ambiguous input, as to what direction disambiguation should take. It has been proposed that these preferences are based on previous experience with similar inputs. This thesis investigates these two issues using tools from the fields of decision making and reinforcement learning. Specifically feedback and payoffs associated with sentence interpretations are manipulated to explore reading behavior, understood as a process of information seeking, and disambiguation choices. In four eye-tracking-reading experiments, the experimental stimuli are sentences containing a relative clause attachment ambiguity. Experiment 1 investigates whether the combination of the degree of ambiguity of a sentence and the possible payoffs, affect people’s reading times for the potentially ambiguous parts of a sentence, as well as their disambiguation choices. Experiment 2 investigates the role of feedback in such processes, a combination related to expected utility maximization. Experiment 3 studies how participants learn from feedback under risky or non-risky conditions. The last experiment investigates whether participants adjust their responses to evidence provided by feedback even overriding their internal initial bias towards a default response. / text

Prescriptions for effective display of quantitative information involving more than two variables are not available. To explore the effectiveness of retinal variables in facilitating the interpretation of information and decision making when used in conjunction, a study with 135 participants was conducted. The study involved the use of color shape, color value, and value shape as retinal variables in interactive displays that required participants to answer nine questions in three levels of complexity (identification of data points, analyses of local comparisons and global trends). Time-on-task scores and performance scores were measured. In addition, a View Clamp eye tracker system was used and 12 out of the 135 participants completed the task of answering questions while their eye movements were recorded. Repeated measures analysis followed by multiple comparisons of means showed that participants in the color and shape group performed significantly better and faster than color/value and shape/value groups only for questions that involved studying global trends and decision making (level 3). The shape and value group was significantly faster than color and shape group in answering level 1. Color and value as retinal variables produced results that indicated that the two variables when used in conjunction could be suitable for display of data that involved comparison. This needs to be explored further. Eye movements provided further evidence to the feature integration theory (Treisman, 1982) and showed feature search occurred right away as participants entered the display. 78% of those who reported mental strategies indicated that they identified the features used in the display first.

This dissertation examines the processing of sentences involving long-distance linguistic dependencies, or sentences containing elements that must be linked across intervening words and phrases. Specifically, both behavioral (self-paced reading and eye tracking) and neurophysiological (electroencephalography) methods were used (a) to evaluate the relative importance of backward- and forward-looking dependency satisfaction processes in the comprehension of sentences involving wh-dependencies and (b) to determine the extent to which common neurocognitive mechanisms are involved the processing of wh- and anaphoric dependencies. With respect to the first issue, both behavioral andneurophysiological results indicated a core role for forward-looking, expectancy-based processes in the comprehension of wh-dependency sentences. Regarding the latter issue, despite considerable overlap in the reading patterns associated with wh-dependencies and (at least some types of) anaphora, the neurophysiological responses related to these dependency types indicated that their processing draws on distinct neurocognitive mechanisms.