Journal articles on the topic 'Perceptual Ques'

This study investigates the possibility of a relationship between manufacturing strategy and organizational culture within manufacturing plants. Survey data were collected from 138 respondents in 16 plants. These plants included random samples of textile, beauty and pharmaceutical industries, which located in Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang, and Bekasi areas. Al necessary data for this study were obtained from a questionnaire through a mail survey. The questionnaires were designed so that multiple respondents answered all perceptual ques- tions. The definition of manufacturing strategy in this study is primarily process-based, it does notinclude such content dimensions. Manufacturing strategy and organizational culture were found to exhibit a statistically significantrelationship within the plant. The analysis indicates that awell implementedmanufacturing strategy, which includes formal planning processes, com- munication of strategy, contribution to competitive position, and a long range orientation. It coexists with a dan oriented organizational cufture characterized by the use of groups and teams, low emphasis on hierarchy, and high level of loyalty and share plant-wide philosophy. This analysis suggests several implications regarding the manufacturing strategy process. First, itmay be necessary to involve mutiple decision makers at different organizational levels in the implementation of manufacturing strategy in order to help them to come up with the right decisions. Second, it may be useful to view culture as a mechanism, which controls the behavior of individuals by defining it certainly.

Background and Objectives: A cording to the importance of the effect of maternal health on pregnancy on the parts of the child’s mood, The purpose of this research was to determine and compare the perceptual sensitivity of infants of mothers with gestational diabetes and healthy mothers. Methods: This descriptive and causal-comparative research consisted of 88 mothers with infants aged 3-12 months who referred to the vaccination wards of Qom community health centers. The mothers were divided into two groups with and without a history of gestational diabetes. The research instruments were the IBQ-R infant mood assessment questionnaire and the individual information questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney, Chi-square and SPSS software. Results: There is difference between the average perceptual sensitivity of infants of mothers with gestational diabetes and healthy mothers (P<0.05). the level of perceptual sensitivity in infants in mothers with a history of gestational diabetes is significantly higher than in infants of healthy mothers (P=0.034). Conclusion: Maternal diabetes during pregnancy is correlated to the perceptual sensitivity of infants. Maternal anxiety about the infant’s health can be reduced by justifying the infant’s behaviors by informing mothers with gestational diabetes in the postpartum period.

SIG 3 spearheaded the development of a standard method for perceptual evaluation of voice quality—and is on the way to developing clinical protocols for the instruments commonly used in voice assessment.

What factors predict the originality of domain-specific idea generation? Replicating and extending an earlier study using a Design Product Ideation task in an introductory university design course, the present research, grounded in the componential theory of creativity, assessed the relative contributions to originality of design ideation from five factors: divergent thinking, personality traits, general cognitive ability, prior creative experience, and task-specific challenge/interest. The Design Product Ideation task asked participants, at two different timepoints, to propose ideas for products to improve either the experience of urban gardening or of outdoor picnics. Four divergent thinking tasks were used, including the predominantly conceptually-based Alternative Uses Task, a newly developed perceptually-based Figural Interpretation Quest, and two modified verbal tasks from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance Suppose and Torrance Product). Regression analyses revealed that, at both timepoints, originality on the Design Product Ideation tasks was predicted by multiple divergent thinking, personality, and task-based factors. Originality of responses to the Figural Interpretation Quest was a significant predictor at both timepoints, and continued to add incremental value after controlling for the other divergent thinking measures. Collectively, these findings indicate that the four divergent thinking tasks, though related, do not measure identical constructs, and that many individual difference components, both trait-based (e.g., openness to experience) and more specifically task-based (e.g., perceived challenge of the task), shape creative performance. Methodologically, and from a practical standpoint, these findings underscore the value of incorporating both conceptual and perceptual measures of divergent thinking as contributors to originality in domain-specific idea generation.

Mimicry has been an important topic for biology since the rise of the Darwinian theory of evolution. However. by its very narure mimicry is a sign process and the quest for understanding mimicry in biology has intrinsically always been a semiotic quest. In this paper various theories since Henry W. Bates will be examined to show how the concept of mimicry has been shifted from perceptual resemblance to a particular communicative structure. A concept of mimicry will then be formulated which emphasizes its dynamic properties, and finally, mimicry will be considered in the framework of ecosemiotics.

In the first section of this article, an operationalized notion of preternatural experience is described which includes two general classes of experience: religio-mystical (Ontic) and paranormal (Perceptual). The exploratory study which follows uses the personality measures of the complete Tellegen Differential Personality Questionnaire taken from 120 subjects who reported having had spontaneous religio-mystical and/or paranormal experiences at some time in the past. The scores on all eleven primary dimensions, three higher order affect factors, and two validity scales were used individually, in univariate ANOVAs, and together, in a Direct Discriminant Function Analysis, to successfully separate two classes of preternatural experients from non-experients and from each other.

In their quest for creating magical experiences, magicians rely on a host of psychological factors. Here, we compare tricks based on attentional misdirection with tricks based on amodal completion. Based on the notion that amodal completion is a cognitively impenetrable perceptual phenomenon, we predicted that the tricks based on this perceptual effect should—to a much larger extent than tricks based on attentional misdirection—retain their deceptive power when the tricks are repeated. The results of an experiment with four magic tricks involving attentional misdirection and four magic tricks based on amodal completion lend strong support to this prediction. Asking subjects to try to figure out the secret behind these tricks after one, two, or three presentations of each trick, we found that the observed solution rates for tricks based on attentional misdirection increased much more with repeated viewing than those for tricks based on amodal completion, which remained very low throughout. Thus, the results lend further support to the idea that amodal completion is based on cognitively impenetrable perceptual mechanisms.

Speech coding is the art of creating a minimally redundant representation of the speech signal that can be efficiently transmitted or stored in digital media and decoding the signal with the best possible perceptual Quality. The speech transmission in wireless networks is associated with the reduction of extra information present in signal in such a way to preserve the quality and intelligibility of speech. It is known that the lower the bit rate the lesser the quality of the reconstructed speech however there is a constant quest to achieve a better speech quality at lower bit-rates.This paper presents performance analysis for the quality of advanced hybrid speech coding techniques in Time domain, Spectral domain and perceptual domain. These analyses are implemented on three different algorithms of advanced hybrid speech coding techniques such as CELP, G729 Annex A, G723.1 to assess the quality performance for English female speaker, English male speaker and Arabic female speaker by using Mat lab simulation program. Our evaluation criterion implemented includes the following tests: Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Segmental Signal to Noise Ratio (SNRseg), The Log-Likelihood Ratio (LLR), The Weighted Spectral Slope (WSS), Absolute Error,Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ),NONE">Rating of speechdistortion, rating of background noise and the predicted rating of overall quality.

Classical constructivists such as Rock and Hoffman contend that the processes of perception are intelligent and construct perceptual experience by going beyond the stimulus information or by creating a percept that deviates from the physical properties of the object. On these terms, Gibson’s theory of perception is anti-constructivist. After reviewing classical constructivism, this article maintains, first, that the phenomenology of visual space shows a deviation from physical spatial properties, by being contracted in depth, even under fullcue conditions, a fact that makes trouble for Gibson’s version of direct realism. Second, independently of the first argument, it contends that perception is pervasively constructed in the sense that stimulus information must be transformed to yield perception. Accordingly, perception is radically constructed in its very bones.

Retomando hipótese apresentada em Soares (1992) e explorada em Soares (1999), o presente artigo verifica o grau de participação da informação morfológica na construção do ritmo em Tikuna, língua tonal usada por um grande número de falantes distribuídos por uma área extensa da Amazônia, na América do Sul. Particularmente, verifica-se a existência ou não de um ritmo morfológico na língua e o lugar que nele ocupariam as raízes - entendidas como elementos indecomponíveis e, portanto, diferentes dos radicais (concebidos como resultados de raízes já categorizadas, seja por um morfema fonologicamente nulo, seja por um afixo aberto). Entre as conclusões mais importantes está a de se ter a possibilidade de dispensar a referência à margem direita da palavra como fator prosódico primeiro para o desencadeamento da constituição de pés métricos binários em Tikuna. Tal dispensa é possível quer em casos de sufixação, quer em casos de composição. Na sufixação, tem-se como possível o aparecimento do acento rítmico alimentado por uma espécie de colaboração, do ponto de vista perceptual, entre duração e altura da voz – colaboração essa que depende de uma camada tonal completamente especificada e que abre campo para operações rítmicas de nível mais baixo. Na composição, inexiste interação perceptual da altura da voz com a estrutura métrica, havendo indicações de que as operações rítmicas são aí diferentes daquelas de nível mais baixo. No que diz respeito à relação entre constituição morfológica e construção da grade métrica, observou-se, durante a sufixação, que a própria subdivisão do espaço rítmico duracional é coincidente com a de um pé métrico no plano acentual, tendo-se constatado que tal subdivisão acompanha de perto a estruturação morfológica interna à palavra, sendo que o mesmo se dá em casos de composição.

In this study, some human-oriented problems and solution proposals that insect taxonomists encounter in field studies are explained. The problems today’s modern entomologists encounter in the collection, classification, and all other field studies of insects are human-based. Moreover, these human-induced problems fall into two groups: physical and behavioral. In other words, it is necessary not to see the human footprint only as a biological and ecological diversity. In addition, the human factor also complicates the work of entomologists in terms of sensory, perceptual, and behavioral aspects.

The term magic has long been associated with both technology and art. Whether an illusion performed on stage or the search for the supernatural, magic is concerned with changing either reality itself or our perception of it. Each new technology takes on a magical role by increasing humans' power to manipulate the world around them. Similarly, magical practices are often labeled arts, and the manipulation of our perceptions by artists often creates quasi-magical experiences. Four approaches to magic in relation to digital art practice—illusionist, alchemist, necromancer and sorcerer—offer a mode of understanding the manipulation of perceptual reality by artists using digital technologies. The framework will then be applied to five such practitioners—Pascal Dombis, Anne-Sarah Le Meur, Antoine Schmitt, Dmitry Morozov and Zaven Paré—who demonstrate the quest for the unknown and the manipulation of knowledge to create a new reality.

AbstractDe-anthropocentrism is the leitmotif of philosophy in the twenty-first century, encouraging diverse and competing thoughts as to how this goal may be achieved. This article argues that the method by which we may achieve de-anthropocentrism is ethical rather than metaphysical – it must involve a creation of the self, rather than an interpretation of the given human conditions. Through engagements with the thought of Nietzsche, Levinas, and Foucault, and a close reading of Baudelaire’s poem “La Beauté,” I will illustrate three ethical commitments essential to de-anthropocentrism: to abandon the claim to knowledge associated with human reason, to remain in perpetual quest of an object, and to transgress the given perceptual structure through aesthetic experience. In contrast to Kantian philosophy built upon universal human reason, art is the ethical arena where each artist creates their own way to relate to the object, while de-anthropocentrism occurs – this article argues – when the artist includes the self as the field of creation. Object-Oriented Ontology in my assessment is the only branch of philosophy that truly achieves de-anthropocentrism.

AbstractThe extent to which visual processing can proceed in the visual hierarchy without awareness determines the magnitude of perceptual delay. Increasing data demonstrate that primary visual cortex (V1) is involved in consciousness, constraining the magnitude of visual delay. This makes it possible that visual delay is actually within the optimal lengths to allow sufficient computation; thus it might be unnecessary to compensate for visual delay.The time delay problem – that perception lives slightly in the past as a result of neural conduction – has recently attracted a considerate amount of attention in the context of the flash-lag effect. The effect refers to a visual illusion wherein a brief flash of light and a continuously moving object that physically align in space and time are perceived to be displaced from one another – the flashed stimulus appears to lag behind the moving object (Krekelberg & Lappe 2001). In the target article, Nijhawan compellingly argues that delay compensation could be undertaken by a predictive process in the feedforward pathways in the vision system. Before jumping into the quest for the mechanism of delay compensation, however, I would like to argue that the magnitude of delay has been overestimated, and that it might even be unnecessary to compensate for such a delay.

Abstract Background The predictive coding framework of perception postulates that we automatically infer what is around us by combining our sensory input with our prior beliefs. Mathematical models based in Bayesian statistics can describe this process, elucidating both typical as well as atypical brain processes, such as emergence of hallucinations. A previous study using a Pavlovian conditioning task showed that hallucinations are a result of over-weighting of prior beliefs over incoming sensory evidence. Participants with Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVH) were more susceptible to auditory conditioned hallucinations (ACH) than individuals without AVH, regardless of a diagnosis of psychosis. This suggests a common underlying mechanism for the emergence of hallucinations irrespective of functional status. To further investigate these mechanisms, we developed a visual conditioned hallucinations (VCH) task, modeled after the original ACH task. Together, these tasks can elucidate the specificity of conditioned hallucinations with regards to sensory modality. In addition to the deployment of the VCH, we also tested the feasibility of the first known online deployment of QUEST, an adaptive psychometric thresholding method, in a targeted population. Methods Task Methodology. Individual trials of the task consist of simultaneous presentation of a faintly-presented (low-contrast) visual stimulus (Gaussian stripes embedded in visual white noise) and a salient auditory stimulus (loud tone). An association between visual and auditory stimuli is established, followed by testing of the strength of this association by presenting the auditory stimulus alone. Trials where the visual stimulus is not presented, but nevertheless reported to be perceived are considered as CH trials. Data Collection and Analysis. Subjects were recruited on two platforms, the Amazon-powered Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and the COPE Project an initiative targeted at individuals with unusual experiences. Analyses were conducted by pooling across the four groups and grouping based on presence of visual or auditory hallucinations, creating four groups: AH+/VH+, AH+/VH-, AH-/VH+, AH-/VH-. Between-group differences were analyzed using two-sample t-tests. Results The responses of participants across the board, both in the control sample and in those with perceptual experiences, validates the efficacy of using the QUEST thresholding paradigm to predict response to threshold levels. Participants who were assigned VH+ groups showed a significantly higher rate of reporting CHs, compared to the control group with no hallucinatory experiences (p &lt; 0.01). Similarly, participants assigned to AH+ groups also showed a significantly higher rate of reporting CHs (p &lt; 0.01). Differential parameter values for a computational model assessing perceptual inference were computational signatures of CH were also examined between groups, as were neural signatures encoding visual versus auditory-mediated conditioned hallucinations. Discussion In this study, we show the feasibility of psychometric experiments in a targeted online sample of individuals with unusual experiences. We also demonstrate that the differential parameter values of the computational modeling of visually conditioned hallucinations differentiate between individuals with and without hallucinations, leading to better understanding of the neural signatures of hallucinations and potential therapeutic targets in clinical populations.

Since its inception, metal music has been on a quest for greater heaviness. However, despite its fundamental relevance to the genre, what actually makes metal music perceptually ‘heavy’ is still poorly understood. This article examines the musical, performative and production features that contribute to the heaviness of Lorna Shore’s ‘To the Hellfire’, Loudwire magazine’s metal song of the year 2021. The musicological analysis is supported by rich data from the provider Nail the Mix (NTM): the song’s original multi-track recordings; a Q&A and live mix session with the EP’s producer, Josh Schroeder, and community discussion in NTM’s Facebook group. The findings suggest that the song’s heaviness is mainly provided as a result of sonic weight, harmonic distortion, hyperreal performances, disruption and unpredictability, contrast and dynamic development towards a climax. Musically, blending metal subgenres to increase heaviness is deemed beneficial, and concerning production, automated and dynamic processing responsive to musical structures and performances is highlighted.

A literatura brasileira contemporânea, em seus diversos gêneros, opera o deslocamento de termos, lugares e teorias com as quais estamos familiarizados, mobilizando, inclusive, outras formas de comunicação com o público leitor. Não obstante, certas tensões continuam latentes, a despeito, por exemplo, de questionamentos entre o lugar do autor e o do narrador; entre verdades biográficas e verdades imaginativas; entre a ficcionalização da verdade e a desrealização da vida real, em que margens tênues parecem cobrar olhos atentos e dilatação conceitual. Neste contexto, a poesia, ao passo que se comunica com seu tempo, dele se distancia, voltando-se contra a tendência às experiências superficiais, das quais a leitura apressada realizada por indivíduos imersos na tônica da contemporaneidade que, ainda assim, são seus potenciais interlocutores. Em Inenigmática (2014), Dilson Solidade Lima, por meio da constituição dos sujeitos poéticos, acena para o lugar do leitor no jogo criativo da poesia, cercando o espaço extraliterário com um discurso poético que provoca o campo perceptual de quem se propõe a trilhar o caminho das palavras. A proposta deste estudo é investigar a potência comunicativa da obra, no sentido do que requer na composição de sutis jogos de leitura, de forma a forçar o deslocamento do leitor, retirando-o de seu suposto lugar de passividade contemplativa e, concomitantemente, propor o debate sobre os campos teóricos tradicionais acerca dos lugares consagrados a cada um.

Does perceived distance depend on gravity? The moon illusion, in which the moon looks smaller when viewed overhead, suggests that it might, although so many factors are involved in this complex illusion. Prior research assessing perceived distance had blindfolded observers walk to a remembered location. However, this precludes altering an observer’s orientation relative to gravity. Here, a crossmodal comparison of a visual line and a standard-length tactile rod provided a novel means for assessing the perception of distance by exploiting size constancy — a shorter perceptual visual length (measured in rod lengths) corresponds to a shorter perceived distance from the observer. Experiments were conducted in a fully decorated room that was oriented at 90° with respect to gravity (the York University tumbled room) and in an identical normally oriented control room. Observers maintained an upright orientation with respect to the rooms. Observers judged the length of a variable visual line, projected with a laser and a pair of galvanometers, and varied by a QUEST procedure, relative to a fixed length tactile rod. The length of the visual line matched to the reference length was significantly longer — compatible with being perceived as further away — in the tumbled room than in the control room. A separate experiment failed to replicate this change in distance perception when the observer’s orientation relative to gravity was changed outside the tumbled room, suggesting that the effect is due to a conflict between visually- and gravitationally-defined reference frames.

In the quest to solve human communication problems, the need to learn a foreign language arises, and this usually occurs in a multilingual setting. In the process of this learning, some challenges occur, especially the phonological phenomenon of interference. Given this challenge, the paper contributes to scholarly works on language learning by exploring the articulation of English fricatives by selected [ethnic] students of the Federal University Lokoja (FUL), Lokoja, Nigeria. The researchers carefully selected some participants from the Ebira, Igala and Okun-Yoruba ethnic groups, which form the majority of ethnicities in the university community. A total of 60 students were selected for this study; 20 each from the 3 major ethnic groups in FUL. The major instrument used for this research is the Read Aloud Method, containing nine carefully structured sentences each containing a target English fricative sound. The selected test items were read aloud by the participants and subjected to both perceptual and acoustic analyses. The acoustic analysis was done using the speech analyzer PRAAT. Audio-Articulation Model developed by Mehmet Demirezen was used as the framework for this study. The study reveals that there is a dominant influence from the mother tongue of the participants as they were unable to properly articulate some fricatives in some cases. Also, the study found that there is an overlapping peculiar to the different speakers representing each ethnic group. It can be concluded that since ethnic groups have their distinct languages, it is a factor in the inability of speakers to properly produce fricative sounds. This absence of the fricatives in the L1 shows up in the production of the L2.

This paper aims to understand the kind of activities that industrial actors develop in order to protect their enterprises during industrial crisis conditions. A series of political unrest, insurgency, economic turmoil, deadly earthquakes, and economic embargo at the Indo- Nepal boarder escalated the industrial crisis in Nepal. The quest for sustainability of enterprises during the enduring nature of the crisis stimulated for a more detail conversation and survey. A perceptual survey of industrial actors accompanying conversation therein indicates that trade union and association leaders develop positive attitude and advance specific activities for protecting their enterprises during industrial crisis conditions. The study finds that an empathic nature helps to develop a positive attitude among the industrial actors, which seems contributory for enterprises to survive during crisis conditions. The actors tend to positively perceive significance of specific activities under the conditions of difficulties and hardships and enhance immunity to the industrial crisis. This paper argues that the empathic nature of the industrial actors becomes more effective to safeguard the pluralistic interests of the stakeholders of the enterprise than the self- centric nature of the actors. The actors are not only engaged in safeguarding their claims on the industry but are also contributing—beyond their routine work—positively to strengthen the enterprise immunity during difficulties. This paper concludes with an insight of shifting managerial attention from the generic concepts like cost minimisation and product differentiation to the concepts of regularity in supply of goods and services in the business network by expanding the scope of industrial relations vertically and horizontally. The empathic nature of industrial actors enhances the effectiveness of the general system theory and social network theory by developing understanding of the role of industrial actors’ relations in sustaining and operationalizing a business network under organizational crisis conditions.

Battery life is an increasingly urgent challenge for today's untethered VR and AR devices. However, the power efficiency of head-mounted displays is naturally at odds with growing computational requirements driven by better resolution, refresh rate, and dynamic ranges, all of which reduce the sustained usage time of untethered AR/VR devices. For instance, the Oculus Quest 2, under a fully-charged battery, can sustain only 2 to 3 hours of operation time. Prior display power reduction techniques mostly target smartphone displays. Directly applying smartphone display power reduction techniques, however, degrades the visual perception in AR/VR with noticeable artifacts. For instance, the "power-saving mode" on smartphones uniformly lowers the pixel luminance across the display and, as a result, presents an overall darkened visual perception to users if directly applied to VR content. Our key insight is that VR display power reduction must be cognizant of the gaze-contingent nature of high field-of-view VR displays. To that end, we present a gaze-contingent system that, without degrading luminance, minimizes the display power consumption while preserving high visual fidelity when users actively view immersive video sequences. This is enabled by constructing 1) a gaze-contingent color discrimination model through psychophysical studies, and 2) a display power model (with respect to pixel color) through real-device measurements. Critically, due to the careful design decisions made in constructing the two models, our algorithm is cast as a constrained optimization problem with a closed-form solution, which can be implemented as a real-time, image-space shader. We evaluate our system using a series of psychophysical studies and large-scale analyses on natural images. Experiment results show that our system reduces the display power by as much as 24% (14% on average) with little to no perceptual fidelity degradation.

The quest to democratize the use of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) has given High-Level Synthesis (HLS) the final push to be widely accepted with FPGA vendors strongly supporting this VLSI design methodology to expand the FPGA user base. HLS takes as input an untimed behavioral description and generates efficient RTL (Verilog or VHDL). One major advantage of HLS is that it allows us to generate a variety of different micro-architectures from the same behavioral description by simply specifying different combination of synthesis options. In particular, commercial HLS tools make extensive use of synthesize directives in the form pragmas. This strength is also a weakness as it forces HLS users to fully understand how these synthesis options work and how they interact to efficiently set them to get a hardware implementation with the desired characteristics. Luckily, this process can be automated. Unfortunately, the search space grows supra-linearly with the number of synthesis options. To address this, this work proposes an automatic synthesis option tuner dedicated for FPGAs. We have explored a larger number of behavioral descriptions targeting ASICs and FPGAs and found out that due to the internal structure of the FPGA a large number of synthesis options combinations never lead to a Pareto-optimal design and, hence, the search space can be drastically reduced. Moreover, we make use of large database of DSE results that we have generated since we started working in this field to further accelerate the exploration process. For this, we use a technique based on perceptual hashing that allows our proposed explorer to recognize similar program structures in the new description to be explored and match them with structures in our database. This allows us to directly retrieve the pragma settings that lead to Pareto-optimal configurations. Experimental results show that the search space can be accelerated substantially while leading to finding most of the Pareto-optimal designs.

In the contemporary world, the swift advancement of urbanization, the pressing need for environmental conservation, and humanity’s unyielding quest for a better quality of life have jointly underscored the escalating importance of research on landscape aesthetics and perceptual experiences. Researchers have often evaluated the overall scene’s beauty based on photos taken from a single viewpoint. However, it has been observed that different viewpoints of the same scene can lead to varying degrees of beauty perception. Some positive viewpoints highlight landscape features that contribute to beauty preferences, while negative viewpoints emphasize aspects that may evoke discomfort and decrease perceived beauty. Therefore, a crucial question arises: which viewpoint, positive or negative, holds more influence over the overall beauty of the scene? This paper aimed to address this question by utilizing panoramic map technology to establish a landscape perception evaluation model. The model was based on empirical evidence from various spatial scenes along the Yaozijian Ancient Road in Anhua County, encompassing towns and villages. The study analyzed the functional relationship between landscape factors, positive and negative viewpoints, and the degree of scenic beauty. It was found that (1) it is difficult to reflect the overall scenic beauty of a scene (OSBS) of a single viewpoint photo, and both positive and negative viewpoints of scenic beauty have significant effects on the OSBS. In the empirical case study, it was found that the overall effect of a positive viewpoint of scenic beauty (PVSB) on OSBS was greater; (2) PVSB had a major effect on OSBS with a high visual hierarchy and cloud ratio and a low type of vegetation and proportion of man-made objects; (3) a negative viewpoint of scenic beauty (NVSB) had a major effect on OSBS with a low visual hierarchy of the landscape. The results of the study reveal the relationship between landscape factors of different viewpoints and the OSBS, which can be applied to landscape beauty evaluation and landscape planning and design processes.

Lúdico, advindo do latim “ludere”, que significa ilusão, é a capacidade diferente de delegar significados dados à imaginação durante o brincar. Em atividades lúdicas, o brincante dá sentido à brincadeira que está acontecendo, ou seja, brinca-se com um determinado sentido, mas somente quem brinca reconhece sua intencionalidade. Quando há o adoecimento ou a hospitalização da criança, a necessidade desta de brincar não deve ser eliminada. Assim, o brincar por ser o instrumento “de trabalho” da criança, deve ser fornecido no contexto hospitalar, pois através deste a criança expressa seus sentimentos, sensações, dores e frustrações, assim como expressa seus anseios, vivências e felicidades. Logo, o objetivo deste estudo é analisar a importância da inserção do Terapeuta Ocupacional (TO) no setor pediátrico do Hospital Municipal Santana de Carandaí – MG. A metodologia utilizada foi o relato de experiência, o qual se deu por meio da vivência do profissional na inserção de sua profissão no contexto analisado. Os resultados, após inserção do TO no hospital analisado, evidenciaram que o lúdico pode ser utilizado como um recurso humanizado, ajudando a criança a lidar com experiências estressantes, ampliando seu campo perceptual e permitindo-lhe exteriorizar sentimentos e conflitos existentes durante sua internação. Assim, analisando as características apresentadas pela hospitalização percebe-se que a atuação correta de uma equipe multidisciplinar pode propiciar uma assistência mais humanizada de qualidade à criança hospitalizada. Estudos comprovam que o brincar no âmbito hospitalar pode fazer com que as crianças expressem seus insucessos, sua dependência, suas experiências (dolorosas e satisfatórias), bem como suas possíveis superações. A representação efetivada através do brincar simbólico é verdadeiramente uma linguagem imprescindível para a criança hospitalizada. Portanto, quando a criança manipula brinquedos dentro do âmbito hospitalar, esta se beneficia efetivamente deste “complemento” de tratamento. Através do brincar terapêutico, a criança cria situações já vivenciadas, aliviando o sofrimento advindo da hospitalização. Dessa maneira, faz-se necessário enfatizar a importância do brincar da criança hospitalizada como instrumento de possível compreensão e aceitação da doença por parte desta, propiciando assim, aspectos que possam influenciar positivamente na evolução do tratamento da criança, permitindo que esta continue seu processo de desenvolvimento, apesar de se encontrar doente. O TO neste contexto deve contribuir para o desenvolvimento típico da criança, auxiliando, inclusive, na exposição de seus sentimentos no momento do brincar. Dessa maneira, o tratamento da mesma pode tornar-se mais diretivo, contribuindo para uma melhor aceitação e enfrentamento da criança no processo de hospitalização. Sendo assim, observa-se que, através do tratamento efetivado a partir da utilização de brinquedos, é possível propiciar a redução da agitação corporal das crianças no âmbito hospitalar. O brincar, ao ser utilizado como atividade lúdica na hospitalização infantil, pode auxiliar na melhora do estado emocional das crianças que padecem de hospitalização. Sendo assim, unindo-se saberes e mudanças estruturais no âmbito hospitalar, poderá ocorrer a reorganização do serviço de saúde no ambiente em questão, oferecendo à criança um local mais humanizado e agradável, de forma que tal processo auxiliará no melhor desenvolvimento da mesma, tratando-a e minimizando os efeitos negativos do processo de internação.

3D cinema has been defined by a quest for increased realism and immersion and the recreation of realistic depth perception. However, instead of merely seeing stereo vision as a visual enhancement of 2D cinema, some contemporary moving image artists explore unique types of perceptual illusions and ambiguous perceptions in their stereoscopic films. Through the experimental stereoscopic films of Blake Williams and Kazuhiro Goshima, and interviews with the artists, this paper focuses on the artists’ motivations behind their works and their intended impacts on audiences. Drawing mainly on aesthetic, perceptual and technical perspectives, the paper examines how artists use experimental approaches to stereoscopic imaging and theorises the resulting aesthetics and perceptual forms for S3D films.

The quest for improved fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness is transforming automotive vehicle design. In addition to new energy sources and management, new powertrain technologies offer increased flexibility in the spatial arrangement (packaging) and exterior shape (styling) of a vehicle. Design choices in packaging and styling are closely linked to consumer preferences, particularly those that influence consumers’ decisions about the objective qualities of a product (i.e., perceptual attributes). The ability to include perceptual attributes into a design optimization study is a valuable extension of the more traditional engineering approach that looks at only functional attributes. Previous work has studied the quantification of perceived environmental friendliness (PEF) in vehicle silhouette design. In this paper, empirically validated PEF silhouette attributes are included as constraints in a vehicle optimization model that maximizes fuel economy. Results indicate that there is a tradeoff between PEF preferences and the attainable fuel economy for a given vehicle, where increasing vehicle length leads to increasing PEF and decreasing fuel economy.

Since the release of the Oculus Rift CV1 in 2016, millions of VR headsets have made their way into consumers’ homes. Since then, users have created large quantities of data about their experiences in VR through posts made to online discussion forums. We examine this data to gain insights on what sorts of “lingering effects” users report having experienced after VR, and on the progression of these effects over time. We found three major categories of lingering effects (besides simulator sickness) during our qualitative analysis: perceptual effects, behavioral effects, and changes in dreams. The perceptual and behavioral categories were further divided into sub-themes: disruption of body ownership and proprioception, loss of a sense of depth in the real world, visual aftereffects, the need to verify the reality of the real world through touch, hesitation when moving in the real world, and attempts to apply VR interaction metaphors to real life interactions. Users were nearly unanimous that these lingering effects only occurred after spending at least 1 h in VR, and that these effects completely disappeared several weeks after they first appeared (assuming the user continued to spend time in VR). There was less agreement about how long these effects lasted after exiting a specific VR session. The results of our analysis suggest that users feel that there are no long-term side effects to the use of VR. We pair this analysis with an analysis of interviews conducted with 20 novice users who were loaned Oculus Quest HMDs to use for 4 weeks. Semi-structured interviews with participants further substantiated the findings of our analysis of online discussions.

AbstractThe design of robot motion is one of the most important questions in social robotics as it underpins successful human–robot interaction. Human-inspired motion design based on anthropomorphic models, through which human motion features are identified and implemented in a robot, is dominant in social robotics. The article considers perceptual, communicational and social dimensions of motion and suggests going beyond anthropomorphising robot motion and towards the quest of robot-specific motion. Robot-specific motion, as opposed to motion designed using an anthropomorphic model, can be characterised as motion that is designed and generated by robot features drawn through its mobility, materiality, and electro-mechanical ability. Through research on robot-specificity in motion it is possible to consider expressive and communicative features of motion independently of an anthropomorphic model. With this aim, the article stresses the importance of the artistic approach, especially in collaboration with dancers who are expert in motion, pointing out two specificities in art: non-efficiency centred approach and experiences. The article argues for renewing the traditional robotics approach by illustrating some artistic work and research which explore robot-specific motion.

AbstractThis article reflects on the importance of being aware of one’s own situatedness when carrying out empirical research. The unforeseen outcome of a project in which we studied converting refugees’ encounter with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark provoked these reflections. The fieldwork was carried out in a particular congregation in Copenhagen that has attracted many asylum seekers, primarily of Muslim background. The empirical work revealed that the scholars, as participant observers, experienced the situation in the congregation quite differently than did the refugees. Initially, the scholars did not recognise conflicts and problems related to ethnicity, gender and class among the various groups of refugees. However, interviews based on the refugees’ documentation of their experiences with and within the congregation allowed different perspectives to be articulated. On one hand, perceptual blind spots inspired reflection on the epistemological deficit that characterised the scholarly habitus. On the other, our theological training did enable us to understand the migrant converts’ specific interpretation of the Christian Gospel. The article concludes that it is important to see informants as collaborators with regard to both scholarly reflexivity and the concrete outcome of research in a shared quest for ecclesiological knowledge.

Here is how the movie project named On Otto (2007) starts: with a poster for a film that is yet to be made, a film that no one, at this stage, knows if it is even possible to make (fig. 1). No names (of actors, directors, producers) are mentioned. But, like all movie posters, it takes film itself for granted; in fact, it takes the whole cinematic context or apparatus as absolutely self-evident. There is, and will be, cinema: beyond individual productions, cinema is something akin to a paradigm—a generative set of rules organizing the production of phenomena at once scientific, perceptual, aesthetic, technological, economic, and existential. There will be titles, music, editing, stage design, sound. Something will be directed by, produced by, photographed by, acted by. The poster advertises this certainty and spells it out in letters that visually frame “the cinema” that they promise: A screening space, seen from the back of the row of seats so that attention is directed towards the movie screen. On this screen the enormous head of a film diva—apparently caught at the moment of death—clings to the foreground of the screen-image; due to the play of shadow and light, a lock of her hair actually seems to have spilled over into spectator space, as if to make contact. And the quest for contact is reciprocated. A boy, a lone figure among otherwise empty seats, points a fish in the direction of the screen, directly in the angle of the blonde coils of diva hair. Between the screen and this spectator, a space of action is established: the poster, none too subtly, marks this space with a red markered circle. Demarcating an “expanded” notion of cinema, the poster for On Otto announces a cinematic production process that will reformulate the place and status of so-called “moving images.”

Teesid: 20. sajandil on esile kerkinud mitmeid teatrisuundi, mis on kritiseerinud ja püüdnud ületada Lääne traditsioonilise teatri väidetavat sõnakesksust ning samuti selle võimetust täita n-ö püha kunsti funktsioone. Kuigi seda pühadusedefitsiiti on püütud leevendada ennekõike orientaalsetest teatrivormidest inspiratsiooni ammutades, aitab selle võimalikku tekkelugu mõista ka katoliikliku kultuuri mõjuväljas võrsunud teatrikunsti ning teatrivaenulikuma ortodoksi teoloogia kontekstis välja töötatud ikooniteoloogia võrdlus. Kõrvutades nende kahe konfessiooni teoloogilis-esteetilisi arusaamu, saame analüüsida ka performatiivsuse esteetika seisukohast olulisi kunstiteose loome- ja tajutingimuste vormilisi ja meelelisi aspekte ning nende toimet sakraalse kunsti sihtide seisukohast.SU M M A R YIn the 21st century Western society has seen an increasing interest in topics related to religion. In this context, the connection between the concept of sacrality in Western culture and freedom of verbal and artistic expression has been reconsidered; the very possibility of so-called sacred art within Western culture has been called into question.Already in the 20th century several theatrical movements in the West have expressed the need to strive for religious (or at least quasi-religious) goals by means of the stage. This can already be seen in the work of the symbolists, but such experiments accelerated and became more forceful under the influence of Antonin Artaud’s visions and under the aegis of intercultural theatre. In all of these different quests one can find common elements: discontent with the discursivity of the theatrical canon, a need for a metaphysical dimension in the theatre, and the belief that channels of perception can be opened through contact with exotic ritual cultures.In his book Sacred Theatre Ralph Yarrow has attempted to define the criteria of sacrality in the theatre, drawing upon William S. Haney’s prior determinations, which emphasizes first, that sacred theatre induces a change of consciousness in which the subject and the object merge; second, the liminality of the intersubjective environment surrounding the experience of the sacred, in which the verbal and the transcendental unite. When describing the influence of the logocentrism of Christian culture on the experience of sacredness, Yarrow draws on the views of Mark C. Taylor, Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade and Georges Bataille. All of these thinkers critique the rationalism attributed to monotheistic religion, which gives an important place to Christ as the mediator of God’s transcendental truth, the logos, and sacred scripture, all of which differ from the numinous experience of the mystic. The art of so-called sacred theatre, where, at least according to tradition, the performative mission, dramaturgy, stage design, and public reception are all part of a unified contemplative whole seems to be missing in Western culture. Indeed, this is what several Western stage experimenters have been looking for, and in their search they have looked eastward.New viewpoints with respect to the perception of a work of art were gained in the „performative turn“ of the end of the 20th century; besides the text, proponents of this new direction became interested in the sensory and bodily processes of creativity and reception. Erika Fischer-Lichte and others have conceptualized these processes on a more general level and reflected upon the aesthetics of performativity; insodoing they have pointed to a dualism in the Western aesthetics of performativity, recognizing that there is a contradiction between the referential, semiotic pole of art and its performative dimension. Although the reasons for this split can be sought in the very origins of Western art as well as that of medieval Christian art, relations between theatre and the church differ according to confession; Yarrow’s definitions do not apply to Christianity as a whole. As distinct from the Catholic church, which, occasional polemics notwithstanding, has been a good neighbour to theatre from the medieval period onward, Orthodox theology has been more wary of theatre, or at least regarded the media and goals of theatre as incompatible with the goals of sacred art.Despite this difference of context, the iconographer of Eastern art and the theatre avant-gardist who longs for sacrality in Western logocentric theatre focus on similar mechanisms and processes. With respect to the origin and development of medieval religious art one might generalize that while the centre of Orthodox liturgy is the fellowship of holy communion, in the Western Church a drive toward analysis and interpretation arose alongside the experience of communion. This analytic drive facilitated the development of interpretive scholastics which translated theology by means of formal logic. Also, a dramaturgic aspect began increasingly to differentiate itself from the Mass and holy communion, finding more commonality with theatre as an independent art form. In the Eastern Church, which preserved the theological heritage of the Church Fathers was preserved, the theology of the icon was developed. According to this, sacred art could not be regarded apart from its liturgical context, nor could an independent aesthetic value be attached to it. The platonic roots of Orthodox theology led to the perpetuation of the attitude of the Church Fathers: theatre could endanger the health of the soul or prevent the pursuit of spiritual goals, that is theosis, because the fictional world of theatre blurs truth and human identity, drawing both the performer and the viewer toward affectivity and escapism. However, despite its conservative theology of the icon, which deplored realism and emotionality, the Orthodox church had its own aesthetic of performativity, which in addition to content draws attention to the creative, functional and perceptual prerequisites for sacred art.The theological and aesthetic differences between Catholicism and the Orthodox church are also reflected today in the theologically-inclined reception of works with religious content. For example, based on the lively theological feedback to Mel Gibson’s 2004 film, The Sufferings of Christ one might claim that the judgments of Catholics mostly concern the m e s s a g e of the work, the appropriateness of its content, that is the referential pole; Orthodox theologians rather place more emphasis on the appropriateness of the m e d i u m to theological goals, that is, the performative effect of the work of art. Besides differences in pure artistic representation, it is also worth examining such questions as Catholic and Orthodox interpretations of the Trinity or the teaching of Gregorius Palamas (1296–1359) on divine energies, which were later declared to be heretical. Thus Orthodox liturgical practice seems to contradict many of the stereotypes that eastward-turning seekers of sacred theatre have attributed to Western sacral culture as a whole, overlooking aspects of dynamism that can be found in the Eastern Christian church. This topic has been discussed in several recent accounts of iconography, which examine the performativity of the icon, distinguishing its processes of creation and perception from the Western representation-oriented concept of the picture (eg Bissera V. Pencheva, Adrian Gorea).Granted, one should be careful when drawing parallels between the strictly rule-bound theology of the icon and aesthetics of performativity focused on the sensory aspect of art. However, this article takes the position that what should be emphasized are the differences between Orthodox and Catholic views of art, by means of which one can elucidate the points of departure of the Western quest for sacred theatre and the performative level to which it aspires.