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The purpose of this research was to study children's ability to recognize partially occluded images. Tasks were constructed which consisted of occluded images from video games, trademarks, and household objects. The tasks were administered to third and sixth grade students at two elementary schools in Arlington, Texas. The researcher discovered no significant differences between the scores of males and females except for the males' higher score on the video game task .

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of visual stimuli on music listening skills in pre-service elementary teachers. Visual Stimuli in this study refers to the presentation of arts elements in selected visually projected images of paintings. Music listening skills are defined as those skills needed to identify and interpret musical excerpts. A Pretest-Posttest Control-group Design was used in this study. Subjects were pre-service elementary general educators enrolled in a large southern university (N=93). Students from intact classes were randomly placed into either the experimental group or the control group. The treatment consisted of six music listening lessons over a two-week period with each group receiving the identical teaching protocol with the exception of the use of paintings with the experimental group. Listening instruction emphasized the identification of melodic contour, instrumentation, texture, rhythm and expressive elements of the compositions. The Teacher Music Listening Skills Test (TMLST) was constructed by the investigator and administered before and after the treatment. The TMLST was designed to assess music listening skills in adult non-musicians. Results indicate that the group receiving visual stimuli in the form of paintings scored significantly higher on listening skills (pandlt;.01) than the control group which received no visual stimuli in the form of visually projected images of paintings. There was an instruction effect on both preference and familiarity of the musical pieces for both the control group and the experimental group.

The present thesis set out to investigate how sensory modality and spatial presentation influence visual and auditory duration judgments in the millisecond range. The effects of modality and spatial location were explored by considering right and left side presentations of mixed or blocked visual and auditory stimuli. Several studies have shown that perceived duration of a stimulus can be affected by various extra-temporal factors such as modality and spatial position. Auditory stimuli lead to more precise duration judgments than visual stimuli and often last subjectively longer than visual stimuli of equal duration. The circumstances under which these modality differences occur are not clear yet. Recent studies indicated an interaction between temporal and spatial processing. Overestimation of durations was associated with right side presentation of visual stimuli, underestimation with left side presentation. However, the effect of spatial presentation has not been explored in the auditory temporal judgments. Furthermore, there is a debate concerning the mechanisms underlying processing of visual and auditory intervals with some researchers supporting the view that there is a central, amodal temporal mechanism and others arguing in favour of distinct, modality specific temporal mechanisms. The above issues were examined in a series of experiments using the duration discrimination paradigm. Processing demands where varied between experiments by varying the number of stimuli positions and the way that different modality trials were presented (mixed or blocked). Across all experiments we found no effect of location either in visual or auditory domain. However, in experiments in which different modality trials were intermixed, participants in the visual versions of the task tended to overestimate durations of comparison stimuli that were presented at different locations to the standard stimuli. In such conditions, visual stimuli were also judged to be longer than the auditory. However, when the location of the comparison stimulus was at the same side as the standard a reverse effect was observed. These findings call into question an influence of the position per se on temporal judgments as the visual duration judgments were affected rather by the change of the location. Auditory judgments were not affected by location manipulations, suggesting that different mechanisms might underlie visual and auditory temporal processing. Based on these results, we propose the existence of an error-correction mechanism, according to which a specific duration is added in order to compensate for the loss of time caused by spatial attention shifts. This mechanism is revealed under some circumstances (such as mixed modality) where it is over-activated, resulting into a systematic bias. This work has important implications for the contemporary research in time perception as it is shedding new light on the possible ways that a unified experience of timing arises from modally and spatially specific temporal mechanisms.

The purpose of this study was to explore the response v of coyotes (Canis latrans) to certain olfactory and visual stimuli. It was assumed that the findings would be of value in refining techniques used in sampling and controlling coyotes. The specific objectives were to determine (1) if coyotes were more likely to approach and remain in the vicinity of a familiar than unfamiliar scent, (2) if the response to olfactory and visual stimuli differed, (3) if positively reinforcing an approach to the stimuli differentially altered the response to visual and olfactory stimuli, and (4) if the response differed with sex and social rank. The results failed to reject each of the null hypotheses implicit in the four objectives. Two factors that may have contributed to these findings were that subjects were too accustomed to "novelty" and there was a lack of behavioral control during the tests. On the basis of the results of this study, it is suggested that coyotes are so sensitive to their surroundings and so accommodating in their behavior that behavioral test results may simply reflect their responses to specific captive and test conditions.

<p>People  have  different  strategies  to  regulate  and  control  their  own emotions.  For  short-term  emotion  regulation  of  visual  stimuli, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment are of relevance. The present  study  used  self-ratings  and  eye-tracking  data  to  replicate previous  findings  that  eye  movements  are  effective  in  emotion regulation.  25  participants  (6  males)  watched  positive  and  negative pictures in an attend condition and a decrease emotion condition. They rated  their  emotional  experience  and  their  eye  movements  were followed  with  an  eye-tracker.  Ratings  showed  that  they  perceived pictures as less emotional in the decrease condition as compared to the attend condition both for positive and negative pictures. This decrease in  ratings  of  emotional  response  was  larger  for  positive  than  for negative  pictures.  Eye-tracking  data  showed  no  significant  effect  of emotion  regulation condition. Further  research  is proposed  to  include self-ratings  in  studies  of  physiological  changes  due  to  emotion regulation,  to  differentiate  between  strategies  of  emotion  regulation potentially used by participants.</p>

People  have  different  strategies  to  regulate  and  control  their  own emotions.  For  short-term  emotion  regulation  of  visual  stimuli, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment are of relevance. The present  study  used  self-ratings  and  eye-tracking  data  to  replicate previous  findings  that  eye  movements  are  effective  in  emotion regulation.  25  participants  (6  males)  watched  positive  and  negative pictures in an attend condition and a decrease emotion condition. They rated  their  emotional  experience  and  their  eye  movements  were followed  with  an  eye-tracker.  Ratings  showed  that  they  perceived pictures as less emotional in the decrease condition as compared to the attend condition both for positive and negative pictures. This decrease in  ratings  of  emotional  response  was  larger  for  positive  than  for negative  pictures.  Eye-tracking  data  showed  no  significant  effect  of emotion  regulation condition. Further  research  is proposed  to  include self-ratings  in  studies  of  physiological  changes  due  to  emotion regulation,  to  differentiate  between  strategies  of  emotion  regulation potentially used by participants.

yes / The findings of a wildness study are presented where audio–visual stimuli (video footage), were assessed by experimental subjects under controlled conditions, in order to obtain reliable estimates of perceived tranquillity together with a number of other rated qualities including calmness and pleasantness. A wide range of mainly natural scenes totalling 46 were presented including footage from the Scottish Highlands and Dartmoor National Park. The findings clearly demonstrate that rated tranquillity relates closely to rated calmness and pleasantness and this agrees with earlier studies of soundscape categorisation. The effect of adding man-made sounds to the soundscape was shown to seriously degrade perceived tranquillity though ratings of wildness were not nearly as affected. Attempts to improve the level of tranquillity further by adding natural sounds were largely unsuccessful. It was considered important to determine if the previously employed Tranquillity Rating Prediction Tool (TRAPT) successfully validated for mainly urban open spaces could usefully predict tranquility in remote wildland areas. In fact results demonstrated the relatively close relationship between predicted and actually rated tranquillity in these remote areas which further extended the range of validity of the prediction tool. The findings of this study will challenge the notion that characterization of landscapes is purely a visual exercise and that soundscape quality needs to be considered as an integral part of this assessment process. For this reason the findings will be of interest to those responsible for managing and marketing protected areas such as National Parks, practitioners involved in carrying out landscape character assessments, cartographers and landscape architects involved in designing tranquil spaces across a range of scales. / Full text was made available 1st March 2016 at the end of the publisher's embargo.

在臺灣國中英語課程的寫作部份，一向只有片段的填空、改寫句子或翻譯等，加強文法及句型結構的練習，而忽略能讓學生自我表達的創意寫作。對英語能力相當有限的國中生而言，若能提供有效、有趣的寫作指導，他們也能應用語言能力並發揮創意，寫出有趣的文章。 本研究在探討由看圖說故事進而寫故事，對國中生寫作能力的影響。本研究以台北市某國中兩班三年級，六十位學生為研究對象，先施以一次先前研究，作為主要研究的設計及實施之參考，再以三個故事為主題進行六篇記敘文的寫作。其中三篇只給作文題目及引導句，稱為題目引導式寫作；另三篇則提供題目加圖片，稱為圖片引導式寫作。整個研究內容另包括三次問卷及一系列的訪談。問卷一及問卷三在了解受測學生在研究前、研究後的寫作態度及動機的轉變；問卷二及訪談旨在了解學生對於圖片做為輔助教材的觀感。 本研究的主要發現如下：（1）圖片有助於學生寫故事的組織及架構，（2）圖片提供語料及文意，有助於學生發展故事內容及長度，（3）圖片刺激學生想像力，增加學生故事的創意，（4）學生在經過圖片式的寫作引導之後，對英文作文表現出比較積極的學習態度及動機。 / For junior high students in Taiwan, writing activities have been restricted to grammar-oriented exercises. Creative writing that engages students in using the target language communicatively has been neglected. Students at this level of proficiency, if provided with effective and stimulating writing instruction, are also able to compose fascinating stories. The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of pictures on junior high students’ narrative writing. Subjects in this study are sixty ninth-graders from two classes in a junior high school in Taipei city. Instruments consist of a pilot study, three student surveys, six narrative writing assignments and a series of one-to-one interviews. Findings are summarized as follows: First, picture aids facilitate students’ organizational skills for story writing. Second, pictorial presentation provides students with linguistic resources that help to enrich their story content. Third, pictorial images stimulate students’ imagination and add creativity to their stories. Furthermore, writing improvements through pictorial instruction also lead to the students’ positive attitude toward writing and stronger motivation as well.

Previous research shows that integration of the senses is interchangeably dependent by  temporal neural mechanisms. One unsolved problem is how sensory timing differences in the brain is processed. In this systematic review (K = 18), audio-visual behavioral task paradigms are investigated with a focus on temporal binding window estimates. The results showed among other things that temporal integration is an adaptive neural process and that temporal acuity increases with age. Measurements between studies were sometimes incompatible which limited conclusions. Future studies should focus on standardizing operational parameters and compare within and between group designs.