No description available.

No description available.

The introduction of input devices with natural user interfaces in gaming hardware has changed the way we interact with games. Hardware with motion-sensing and gesture recognizing capabilities remove the constraint of interacting with games through typical traditional devices like mouse-keyboard and gamepads. This changes the way we approach games and how the game communicates back to us as the player opening new levels of interactivity. This thesis covers how eye tracker technology can be used to affect rendering effects in games.

Gaze direction and head rotation are powerful cues that inform humans about another person's attention, intentions and even emotion. Previous research has focused on understanding how people make judgements about individual faces in direct view. However in everyday life, people are often presented with groups of faces and need to judge where the attention of that group is directed, such as in group conversations or when giving presentations. This thesis presents research whose aim is to better understand how gaze direction and head rotation are perceived in the visual periphery and in groups. First, observers' perception of gaze deviation in the visual periphery was tested, using psychophysical methods and modelling. The results showed that observers' ability to judge gaze perception is severely limited, and that observers' judgements are severely biased by head rotation in the visual periphery. Second, observers' ability to perceive the average gaze or head direction of a group of spatially distributed faces was investigated. This was done using equivalent noise analysis, a technique which gives estimates for observers' internal noise (how certain they are in their judgements of any individual face) and their effective sample size (how many faces they are able to combine into their average). The findings revealed that head rotation was averaged with less uncertainty and greater effective sample size than gaze deviation, suggesting that observers can more precisely and efficiently pool information about head rotation than gaze. Finally, averaging of heads and gaze stimuli presented in temporal sequences was analysed using the same equivalent noise technique and compared to spatial averaging. In sequences, the differences in processing between head and gaze direction disappear, suggesting that poor peripheral perception of gaze is the limit on our averaging of gaze cues.

This thesis considers women’s representation in television commercials in Australia and Bangladesh. It is an empirical study. A total of 780 advertisements were recorded from various television channels of Australia and Bangladesh. Among them 280 and 500 advertisements were taken from Bangladeshi and Australian television channels respectively. This thesis is about women’s representation in television commercials in Australia and Bangladesh. Bringing an interdisciplinary but empirical approach to a broad range of recently screened advertisements, the thesis examines how femininities are stereotypically represented in these two countries’ television commercials. The study suggests that women are produced and reproduced as sexual objects and/or objects to be looked at, and that representations of women’s bodies circulate around the binary of purity and pollution in heavily gendered and racialised ways. The interesting finding of this study is the extension of the ‘male-gaze’ concept where women come under the gaze from (hetero) sexual perspectives. The study suggests that images of femininity and racialisation are produced and reproduced. This constructs women’s secondary position and creates racial instability in societies.

An objective methodology to assess visual acuity (VA) in infants was developed. The methodology is based on the analysis of visual scanning parameters when visual stimuli consisting of homogeneous targets and a target with gratings (TG) are presented. The percentage of time on the TG best predicted the ability of the subject to discriminate between the targets. Using this parameter, the likelihood ratio test was used to test the hypothesis that the TG was discriminated. VA is estimated as the highest spatial frequency for which the probability of false positive is lower than the probability of false negative for stimuli with lower spatial frequencies. VA estimates of 9 adults had an average error of 0.06 logMAR with a testing time of 3.5 minutes. These results suggest that if the attention of infants can be consistently maintained the new methodology will enable more accurate assessment of VA in infants.

An objective methodology to assess visual acuity (VA) in infants was developed. The methodology is based on the analysis of visual scanning parameters when visual stimuli consisting of homogeneous targets and a target with gratings (TG) are presented. The percentage of time on the TG best predicted the ability of the subject to discriminate between the targets. Using this parameter, the likelihood ratio test was used to test the hypothesis that the TG was discriminated. VA is estimated as the highest spatial frequency for which the probability of false positive is lower than the probability of false negative for stimuli with lower spatial frequencies. VA estimates of 9 adults had an average error of 0.06 logMAR with a testing time of 3.5 minutes. These results suggest that if the attention of infants can be consistently maintained the new methodology will enable more accurate assessment of VA in infants.

Purpose Early detection of abnormal visual acuity (VA) is crucial in the identification and management of ocular and visual abnormalities in infants. Currently, the Teller Acuity Cards (TACs) are considered the gold standard for clinical testing and are effective in obtaining a quick estimate of an infant’s VA, but they have certain drawbacks. They rely on a subjective assessment of the baby’s looking behavior. Despite this, TACs have been found to have good validity and repeatability. The current study investigates a new method to objectively assess visual acuity in infants, which is uses a video gaze tracker (GT) and computer-generated stimuli, developed in the lab of M. Eizenman at the University of Toronto. The purpose was to validate this method in adults and infants against current clinical VA tests. Visual scanning patterns were measured by the GT system that requires minimal subject cooperation in adult and infant populations. The targets were judged as seen when the relative fixation time on the grating exceeded a pre-determined threshold, as compared to the fixation time on the luminance-matched background. Methods Experiment 1: In 15 uncorrected myopic adults, binocular grating VA was measured. The targets were square-wave gratings of spatial frequency ranging from 2.3 to 37 cpd presented randomly in one of four positions on the screen. There were 6 objective protocols (in which VA was judged by fixations). The subjects were naïve, as the only instruction given to the participants was to look towards the screen. The experimenter, who presented the gratings also acted as an observer by making judgments of seen/not seen responses using the objective information provided by the software. Objective GT VA was compared with VA measured with subjective responses using the same stimuli and with Teller Acuity Cards (TACs). Experiment 2: Binocular grating VA for horizontal gratings was measured in 20 typically-developing infants aged 3 to 12 months. Spatial frequency ranged from 0.32 to 42 cpd and VA was measured on two visits with both the GT and TACs. A staircase protocol was used to obtain the VA threshold in the GT. The experimenter controlled the staircase method and an observer used the objective information of visual fixations using the software to judge if the grating was seen or not. Video cartoons were shown between stimulus presentations to keep the infant’s attention towards the screen. VA was also measured with the TACs held in the vertical orientation, so that the gratings were horizontal, similar to the GT method. A TAC stage was specially designed with a vertical slot in which the cards could be presented. The observer was masked regarding the participant’s age and the starting spatial frequency. The study co-ordinator determined the choice of the start card which was randomized between participants so as to give an equal number of participants with each start card. The same start card was used for the second session of each infant. The threshold was defined as the highest spatial frequency for which the infant gave a clear, correct look and an unclear/inconsistent look for the next higher level. The observer, who was masked regarding the absolute spatial frequency, increased or decreased the spatial frequency until this threshold was determined. Results Experiment 1: The mean age of participants in the adult study was 28.47±7.93 yrs and their mean uncorrected logMAR acuity was 0.9±0.2. There was no obvious difference among the mean acuities obtained by 6 objective GT protocols, the subjective GT protocol and the TACs. The GT showed agreement of 93% and 100 % within half an octave compared with the subjective protocol and TACs (horizontal gratings) respectively. There was 100% agreement within 1 octave of the objective GT with both the subjective protocol and the TACs (horizontal gratings). The objective gaze tracker VA showed significant correlation with uncorrected refractive error (r =0.87, p < 0.001). Experiment 2: The mean age of participants was 7.9±2.5 months. In both visits, the testability of the TACs was 100% across all infants. GT had 100% testability on the first visit and 95% testability on the second visit. The mean TAC acuity over two visits for all the infants was 0.7±0.23 log cycles per degree, while the mean log GT acuity over two visits was 0.86±0.30. Infant GT VA acuity estimates were within 1 octave of the TACs 90% and 79% of the time for the first and second visit respectively, while GT VA estimates were within half octave of the TACs 63.2% and 47% of the time for the first and second visit respectively. Eighty-seven percent of the GT VAs and 72.5% of TACs were within one octave of the mean age norms, although on average the GT gave better acuities than the TACs. There was an increase in GT VA with increasing age (r=0.80, p<0.005 for the first visit and r=0.77, p<0.005 for the second visit). Both the TACs and the GT had repeatability of 89.5% within 1 octave between visits and 84.2% and 79% within half octave between visits respectively. Conclusions In adults, the gaze tracker gave VA thresholds which were equivalent to the TACs and were not significantly different from subjectively determined grating VA. The agreement of the GT with TACs in infants and with norms in the infant literature established good validity for the GT. Finally, the significant correlation with age confirmed the validity of the measurements of the gaze tracker. The repeatability of the gaze tracker was similar to that of the TACs, demonstrating the quality usefulness of the test. These results demonstrate the potential for an automated test of infant visual acuity, which could be a powerful and useful tool for visual acuity assessment in infants and other population groups who cannot respond verbally. The staircase protocol established in the study could be fully automated in an objective version of the test. The raw data of eye movements obtained in this study such as the pattern of first fixations, time taken for first fixations, time spent fixing the stimulus, typical stimulus duration and time between presentations could be used to develop algorithms for fully automated testing of VA in infants.

Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides tells the story of adolescent boys gazing at the five Lisbon sisters, who captivate the entire neighborhood with their blond hair and youthful beauty. The young women are positioned as objects, merely to be gazed upon by the male narrators, who by watching them seek to gain knowledge of life and death. Therefore, the novel risks adhering to a traditional, patriarchal theme, where men are the active subjects and women are the passive objects. By reading against the grain and focusing on the sisters' stories told in glimpses through the narrators' voices, however, it emerges that The Virgin Suicides carries a feminist message that runs counter to the objectification and silencing of the young women.

The present study used eye-tracking to investigate whether a model’s gaze direction influences the way observers look at the entire body of the model and how this interacts with the observer and the model’s gender. Participants viewed individual male and female computer agents during both a free-viewing task and a rating task to evaluate the attractiveness of each character. The results indicated that both male and female participants primarily gazed at the models’ faces. Participants also spent more time scanning the face when rating the attractiveness of each model. Observers tended to scan faces with a direct gaze longer than faces with an averted gaze for both the free-viewing and attractiveness rating tasks. Lastly, participants evaluated models with a direct gaze as more attractive than models with an averted gaze. As these results occurred for pictures of computer agents, and not actual people, this suggests that direct gaze, and faces in general, are powerful for engaging attention. In summary, both task requirements and gaze direction modified face viewing preference.