In this dissertation, I investigate American specular narrative which displays a significant level of visual empiricism and examine the implications of the eyewitness perspective such narrative assumes. Based on the epistemological assumption that "to see is to know," specular narrative imagines an empirical access (via visual processes of the gaze) to a knowable reality, and uses the figure of the eyewitness (by way of narration, focalization, and narrative technique) to render a supposedly transparent relation between narrative and reality. This study draws upon theories of narrative, realism, subjectivity, and the gaze to explore this narrative eyewitness, tracking how the impulse to construct an authentic American identity, which materializes during American colonization, influences early American discourse and recurs as a specular realism in later American narrative. I examine how the illusion of the eyewitness sustains Realist ideology in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narrative (William Dean Howells' A Hazard of New Fortunes, Henry James' The Spoils ofPoynton, and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth); how new spatial and temporal paradigms created by automotive technology affect the eyewitness (and a particular vision of America) in the American road book, specifically Theodore Dreiser's A Hoosier Holiday, and how the specular fetishism of the nonfiction novel, particularly Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, problematizes narrative objectivity and sutures the reader into the narrative as eyewitness / Department of English

When vestibular sense organs suffer damage functional problems arise such as imbalance and falls as well as difficulty with gaze control, resulting in blurred vision, dizziness and feelings of disorientation. A novel computer-based rehabilitation program has been developed. Using the Gyration TM motion-sense mouse, attached to a headband, to control computer applications and games, the participants were able to interact with targets in computer games through head motion, allowing different gaze exercises to be carried out. Balance exercises can be incorporated simultaneously and progressively into the rehabilitation program. The main findings of this study revealed that using head rotation to interact with computer games coupled with demanding balance conditions resulted in substantial improvements in gaze control, standing balance and walking performance. These observations provide support that a low-cost home computer-gaming rehabilitation program is well suited to train gaze control through active and passive head motion and to concomitantly train standing balance.

Research on the psychology of women, and women's negative embodied experiences, frequently implicates societal practices of objectification as catalysts for the internalization of objectification in women, or self-objectification. While extant models and theories provide excellent frameworks for identifying the causes, consequences and development of self-objectification in women, much detail is required before these formulations achieve their full clinical application. Information on women's immediate emotional, cognitive, and behavioural responses to objectifying social experiences would assist clinicians and clients to identify common concomitants of objectification and self-objectification, particularly those that aggregate over time into long-term negative psychological outcomes. / In the present study, hypotheses regarding women's social experiences of objectification and self-objectification were tested on 228 college-age women who completed the Objectification Response Questionnaire (ORQ; Robinson, 2001), and measures assessing Objectified Body Consciousness (OBC; McKinley & Hyde, 1996) and Self-Objectification (SOQ; Noll & Fredrickson, 1997). On the ORQ, participants report on emotional and cognitive responses, as well as behavioural responses in the form of social looking, to hypothetical scenarios depicting social experiences of objectifying gazing by a stranger. ORQ responses were unrelated to SOQ scores, but were related to OBC Self-Surveillance and Control Beliefs subscales. Interactions of OBC scores and observer characteristics of gender and attractiveness were also significantly related to ORQ scores. Results are discussed in the context of augmenting prevailing theories and models in the area of women and self-objectification, specifically in the form of clinical applications to disrupt certain social experiences of objectification and self-objectification, and facilitate behaviours, thoughts and attitudes associated with resilience, competence and subjectification.

This thesis describes a research study in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), specifically usability evaluation. The research investigated ways to optimise the usability of Web sites. It specifically compared Flash and HTML versions of several different types of Web sites. The study commenced with a literature review regarding the process of usability evaluation of Web sites. Various usability evaluation methods and techniques were explored, and two emerging techniques were chosen for further investigation: (1) a contingent heuristic approach; and (2) eye gaze tracking. In order to confirm that these two techniques can be used effectively for Web site usability evaluations, two experiments were conducted to evaluate the usability of Web sites. The first experiment utilised an online questionnaire derived from the Website Usability Contingent Evaluation Tool (WUCET), which was based on the contingent heuristic approach. The second experiment involved eye gaze tracking with the faceLAB system, while participants interacted with Web sites of different types. Both experiments utilised Flash and HTML versions of the same set of Web sites. By analysing data collected from the experiments, comparisons between the usability of Flash and HTML versions were made. The results from quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey responses suggested that Flash version of Web sites, in general, provided higher usability than HTML version of Web sites, but eye gaze tracking data analyses showed no significant difference between the two versions. However, analyses of the eye tracking data were useful for improving understanding of the ways in which users interact with different versions of the Web sites. In addition, other influential factors that could affect the perceived usability of the Web sites, such as user’s gender and previous experience with computers and the Web, were also considered. The results of the experiments showed that in regard to Flash and HTML implementations of Web sites, there was a difference in Web site usability perception patterns between male and female users, and also between users with long-term computer/Web experience and users with short-term experience. In addition, a range of different types (purposes) of Web sites were utilised. In this study, selected Web sites fall into three broad categories according to their main purpose: (1) information; (2) entertainment; and (3) e-commerce. It was discovered that the type of Web sites also influenced the usability of Flash and HTML versions of Web sites, as perceived by users.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Theatre, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-67).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The primary aim of this study was to determine the visual gaze behaviour of sub-elite cricket batsmen when facing fast in-swing and out-swing bowling. To achieve the aim of this study, two main objectives were set: (1) to describe and compare the visual gaze behaviour of sub-elite cricket batsmen for both successful and unsuccessful trials irrespective of the ball faced; and (2) to describe and compare the visual gaze behaviour of sub-elite cricket batsmen for both in-swing and out-swing bowling trials irrespective of the outcome. The gaze behaviour characteristics were described and compared in terms areas of interest (AOI), number of fixations, duration of each fixation, starting and last fixation, and order of fixations. The study was pre-experimental in nature and utilised a quantitative approach. A One group post-test only design was followed in this study. A total of 13 batsmen were tested that met the inclusion criteria and were included in the study by means of purposive sampling. Four different variables were assessed: eye dominance, visual gaze behaviour, the speed of delivery and ambient light. No significant differences were found for the mean number and duration of fixations irrespective of the stroke outcome and the ball type faced. However, significant differences were obtained when specifically looking at the stroke outcome and the ball type faced. Results suggest that the AOI, upper body, arm/ ball release and pitch are considered as task relevant cues. Information appears to be acquired from the aforementioned AOI in a sequential manner to contribute to successful batting performance. In addition, batsmen should attempt to diminish the number of blinks at the end of trials to contribute towards more successful batting performance.

Ce n'est que parce que nous existons corporellement que la connaissance est possible. Cependant, dans l'expérience éducative, la puissance épistémique du corps est négligée, ce qui tend à l'appauvrissement des registres de l'intelligible. Cette thèse propose alors de se pencher sur ce problème en diagonal : à partir d'une Philosophie du Corps et de l'Image qui, dans la modernité - comprise non pas en tant que périodisation, mais comme une qualification de nos négociations entre le réel et l'intelligible -, a dévoilé d'autres façons de faire et d'effectuer ces registres. Ces moyens sont explorés à travers l'ouverture apportée par les travaux de Merleau-Ponty et Foucault, illustratifs de ce nouveau commerce du réel. Pour aborder le problème, la visibilité et le mouvement du corps dans le cinéma ont été pris comme objet d'analyse. Ce dernier est analysé à travers un corpus de films dont les intrigues se concentrent sur l'éducation formelle et, plus ou moins intensément, demandent l'engagement des personnages et des spectateurs dans une performance visuelle. Pour s'approcher de cet objet, les questions suivantes ont été posées : comment le phénomène de l'éducation est montré par le cinéma ? Quel corps y est montré ? Comment les spectateurs peuvent-ils le voir ? À partir de l'examen du corpus filmique et de l'articulation théorique entre les philosophies de Merleau-Ponty et de Foucault, il est ainsi devenu possible d'affirmer la thèse du cinéma en tant qu'éducation du regard. L'objectif général de cette thèse est de dévoiler le potentiel éducatif de l'expérience filmique, qui fournit un autre régime d'intelligibilité pour l'éducation. Dans ce régime, le corps en tant qu'opérateur visuel élargit la capacité de compréhension du réel. Pour atteindre cet objectif, le travail s'est composé en trois chapitres. Dans le premier, nous abordons l'approche méthodologique : tout d'abord, la pertinence de l'articulation théorique entre les deux philosophes a été définie ; puis, l'utilisation des images comme langage indirect qui participe à la description de la réalité a été expliquée ; une présentation du corpus filmique a suivi cette étape ; finalement, les critères du choix des films ont été décrits et ont donné lieu à une explicitation de l'instrument adopté pour l'analyse de l'objet. Le deuxième chapitre débat, au préalable, de l'incapacité de l'Occident à formuler discursivement le réel. Ensuite, en même temps que la visualisation des scènes de films, nous explorons la contribution de Merleau-Ponty et Foucault sur la performance visuelle, déclenchée par les images. Dans le troisième, les implications de l'éducation du regard faculté favorisées par l'expérience filmique sont développées, en particulier, en ce qui concerne la nouvelle place accordée à la visibilité dans la formulation du réel. Ces développements permettent, de ce fait, la construction d'un script favorisant la visibilité de l'éducation. C'est ainsi qu'en prenant le regard en tant qu'expérience de la connaissance, ce script se propose de montrer d'autres façons d'être, de voir, de penser et de sentir le monde, en reconfigurant, par conséquent, des protocoles épistémiques et de subjectivation présents dans le contexte éducatif. / The knowledge is only possible due to we exist bodily. However, during the educational experience, the epistemic potency of the body is neglected, declining the registers of the intelligibility. The current thesis approaches that problem obliquely: from a body and image philosophy which has revealed other ways of doing those registers in the modernity – understood not as period itself, but as a qualification for the negotiations between the real and the intelligible. The referred ways are explored through Merleau-Ponty's and Michel Foucault's works, which offer a spectrum about that new negotiation of the real. In order to approach the studied problem, the visibility and the human body motricity in the cinema are taken as analysis object. The mentioned objects have been analyzed through a corpus of movies of which plots are centered at the formal education and they require from the characters and the spectators engagement into a visual performance. Aiming to approach the object, it is questioned how the Education phenomenon is represented by the cinema; how the body is exposed and how spectators can see it. Analyzing the corpus and articulating Merleau-Ponty's and Michel Foucault's theories, it has been possible to state the following thesis: the cinema as an education of the gaze. The general objective of this study is to reveal the educational potency of the filmic experience, which provides a new path of intelligibility for Education. In that sense, the body as a visual operator widens the capacity of understanding the real. The current work is divided in three chapters. The first one brings the methodological approach: it is pointed how the theoretical articulation is properly arranged; it explains the method of using the images as indirect language as part of the reality description; the filmic corpus is presented, as well the criteria for the films choices and for the construction of instrument adopted during the object analysis are described. In the second chapter, it is problematized the incapacity of the western society of formulating the real discursively by debating Merleau-Ponty's and Foucault's theoretical contributions about the visual performance displayed on the images while the films are watched and analyzed. In the third chapter, the implications of the education of the gaze provided by the cinema are developed, mainly concerning about the place attributed to the visibility during the formulation of the real. Finally, paths are designed for the construction of another approach for the visibility in Education. Assuming the gaze as an experience of knowledge, this study aims to present other ways of being, seeing, thinking and feeling the world. Therefore, it is a proposal to reset the epistemic and subjectification patterns at the educational context.

Visual attention is an important characteristic in the human vision system, which is capable of allocating the cognitive resources to the selected information. Many researchers are attracted to the study of this mechanism in the human vision system and have achieved a wide range of successful applications. Generally, there are two tasks encountered in the visual attention research including visual saliency detection and gaze estimation. The former is normally described as distinctiveness or prominence as a result of a visual stimulus. Given images or videos as input, saliency detection methods try to simulate the mechanism of human vision system, predicting and locating the salient parts in them. While the later involves physical device to track the eye movement and estimate the gaze points. As for saliency detection, it is an effective technique for studying and mimicking the mechanism of the human vision system. Most of saliency models can predict the visual saliency with the boundary or the rough location of the true salient object, but miss the appearance or shape information. Besides, they pay little attention to the image quality problem such as low-resolution or noises. To handle these problems, in this thesis, we propose to model the visual saliency from local and global perspectives for better detection of the visual saliency. The combination of the local and global saliency scheme employing different visual cues can make fully use of their respective advantages to compute the saliency. Compared with existing models, the proposed method can provide better saliency with more appearance and shape information, and can work well even in the low-resolution or noisy images. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm. Next, video saliency detection is another issue for the visual saliency computation. Numerous works have been proposed to extract the video saliency for the tasks of object detection. However, one might not be able to obtain desirable saliency for inferring the region of foreground objects when the video presents low contrast or complicated background. Thus, this thesis develops a salient object detection approach with less demanding assumption, which gives higher detection performance. The method computes the visual saliency in each frame using a weighted multiple manifold ranking algorithm. It then computes motion cues to estimate the motion saliency and localization prior. By adopting a new energy function, the data term depends on the visual saliency and localization prior; and the smoothness term depends on the constraint in time and space. Compared to existing methods, our approach automatically segments the persistent foreground object while preserving the potential shape. We apply our method to challenging benchmark videos, and show competitive or better results than the existing counterparts. Additionally, to address the problem of gaze estimation, we present a low cost and efficient approach to obtain the gaze point. As opposed to eye gaze estimation techniques requiring specific hardware, e.g. infrared high-resolution camera and infrared light sources, as well as a cumbersome calibration process. We concentrate on visible-imaging and present an approach for gaze estimation using a web camera in a desktop environment. We combine intensity energy and edge strength to locate the iris center and utilize the piecewise eye corner detector to detect the eye corner. To compensate for head movement causing gaze error, we adopt a sinusoidal head model (SHM) to simulate the 3D head shape, and propose an adaptive weighted facial features embedded in the pose from the orthography and scaling with iterations algorithm (AWPOSIT), whereby the head pose can be estimated. Consequently, the gaze estimation is obtained by the integration of the eye vector and head movement information. The proposed method is not sensitive to the light conditions, and the experimental results show the efficacy of the proposed approach

The eyes are one of the most expressive non-verbal tools a person has and they are able to communicate a great deal to the outside world about the intentions of that person. Being able to decipher these communications through robust and non-intrusive gaze tracking techniques is increasingly important as we look toward improving Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Traditionally, devices which are able to determine a user's gaze are large, expensive and often restrictive. This work investigates the prospect of using common mobile devices such as tablets and phones as an alternative means for obtaining a user's gaze. Mobile devices now often contain high resolution cameras, and their ever increasing computational power allows increasingly complex algorithms to be performed in real time. A mobile solution allows us to turn that device into a dedicated portable gaze-tracking device for use in a wide variety of situations. This work specifically looks at where the challenges lie in transitioning current state-of-the-art gaze methodologies to mobile devices and suggests novel solutions to counteract the specific challenges of the medium. In particular, when the mobile device is held in the hands fast changes in position and orientation of the user can occur. In addition, since these devices lack the technologies typically ubiquitous to gaze estimation such as infra-red lighting, novel alternatives are required that work under common everyday conditions. A person's gaze can be determined through both their head pose as well as the orientation of the eye relative to the head. To meet the challenges outlined a geometric approach is taken where a new model for each is introduced that by design are completely synchronised through a common origin. First, a novel 3D head-pose estimation model called the 2.5D Constrained Local Model (2.5D CLM) is introduced that directly and reliably obtains the head-pose from a monocular camera. Then, a new model for gaze-estimation is introduced -- the Constrained Geometric Binocular Model (CGBM), where the visual ray representing the gaze from each eye is jointly optimised to intersect a known monitor plane in 3D space. The potential for both is that the burden of calibration is placed on the camera and monitor setup, which on mobile devices are fixed and can be determined during factory construction. In turn, the user requires either no calibration or optionally a one-time estimation of the visual offset angle. This work details the new models and specifically investigates their applicability and suitability in terms of their potential to be used on mobile platforms.