Search results for "pattern"
showing 10 items of 4203 documents
Second study on the recurrence risk of isolated esophageal atresia with or without trachea-esophageal fistula among first-degree relatives: no eviden…
2013
BACKGROUND Esophageal atresia with/without trachea-esophageal fistula (EA/TEF) denotes a spectrum of severe congenital malformations. The aim of this systematic study was to determine both the recurrence risk for EA/TEF, and the risk for malformations of the VATER/VACTERL association spectrum, in first-degree relatives of patients with isolated EA/TEF. METHODS A total of 108 unrelated patients with isolated EA/TEF were included. These individuals had 410 first-degree relatives including 194 siblings. The presence of EA/TEF and malformations of the VATER/VACTERL association spectrum in relatives was systematically assessed. Data from the EUROCAT network were used for comparison. RESULTS None…
Dissociating spatial and letter-based word length effects observed in readers’ eye movement patterns
2011
In previous eye movement research on word length effects, spatial width has been confounded with the number of letters. McDonald (2006) unconfounded these factors by rendering all words in sentences in constant spatial width. In the present study, the Arial font with proportional letter spacing was used for varying the number of letters while equating for spatial width, while the Courier font with monospaced letter spacing was used to measure the contribution of spatial width to the observed word length effect. Number of letters in words affected single fixation duration on target words, whereas words’ spatial width determined fixation locations in words and the probability of skipping a wo…
Does Extra Interletter Spacing Help Text Reading in Skilled Adult Readers?
2016
AbstractA number of experiments have shown that, in skilled adult readers, a small increase in interletter spacing speeds up the process of visual word recognition relative to the default settings (i.e., judge faster than judge). The goal of the present experiment was to examine whether this effect can be generalized to a more ecological scenario: text reading. Each participant read two stories (367 words each) taken from a standardized reading test. The stories were presented with the standard interletter spacing or with a small increase in interletter spacing (+1.2 points to default) in a within-subject design. An eyetracker was used to register the participants’ eye movements. Comprehens…
Geographical pattern of chronic liver diseases in Italy: Results from two pooled national surveys
2019
Background: The information on the geographical characteristics of chronic liver diseases (CLD) in Italy is out-dated. Aim: To provide up-dated information on the geographical pattern of patients with CLD born in Italy. Methods: Patients with CLD were enrolled in two national surveys performed in 2001 and 2014, which prospectively recruited subjects aged ≥18 years referring to Italian liver units located throughout the country that apply a similar clinical approach and analytical methods. Results: The total number of patients enrolled was 11,676. Alcohol-related CLD was more frequently observed in northern/central areas (25.0% vs. 20.7%, p < .001), while HBV-related (15.4% vs. 13.3%, p =…
Size invariance in visual number discrimination
1991
This study deals with the observer's ability to discriminate the numerosity of two random dot-patterns irrespective of their relative size. One of these two patterns was a reference one that was always composed of 32 dots randomly distributed within a K x K invisible square window (K = 1.92 degrees). The second one was the test pattern with one of the five magnifications (K = 0.64 degrees, 1.28 degrees, 1.92 degrees, 2.56 degrees, 3.20 degrees) and the relative number of dots varied on 11 levels (N = -15, -12, -9, -6, -3, 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15 dots). The observer's task was to indicate which of the two patterns contained more dots. The results show that the stimulus size, as an irrelevant s…
Validation of ThermoHuman automatic thermographic software for assessing foot temperature before and after running
2020
The aim of the study was to evaluate an automatic thermographic software package (ThermoHuman®) for assessing skin temperature on the soles of the feet before and after running and to compare it with two manual definitions of the regions of interest (ROIs). 120 thermal images of the soles of the feet of 30 participants, at two measurement points (before and after running 30 min) and on two measurement days were analyzed. Three different models of thermographic image analyses were used to obtain the mean temperature of 9 ROIs: A) ThermoHuman (automatic definition of ROIs using ThermoHuman® software), B) Manual (manual delimitation of ROIs by proportion criteria), and C) Manual-TH (manual del…
A semi-automatic approach for epicardial adipose tissue segmentation and quantification on cardiac CT scans
2019
Abstract Many studies have shown that epicardial fat is associated with a higher risk of heart diseases. Accurate epicardial adipose tissue quantification is still an open research issue. Considering that manual approaches are generally user-dependent and time-consuming, computer-assisted tools can considerably improve the result repeatability as well as reduce the time required for performing an accurate segmentation. Unfortunately, fully automatic strategies might not always identify the Region of Interest (ROI) correctly. Moreover, they could require user interaction for handling unexpected events. This paper proposes a semi-automatic method for Epicardial Fat Volume (EFV) segmentation a…
The influence of scene and object orientation on the scene consistency effect
2019
Abstract Contextual regularities help us make sense of our visual environment. In scenes, semantically consistent objects are typically better recognized than inconsistent ones (e.g., a toaster vs. printer in a kitchen). What is the role of object and scene orientation in this so-called scene consistency effect? We presented consistent and inconsistent objects either upright (Experiment 1) or inverted (rotated 180°; Experiment 2) on upright, inverted, and scrambled background scenes. In Experiment 1, on upright scenes, consistent objects were recognized with higher accuracy than inconsistent ones, and we observed N300/N400 event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting object-scene semantic pro…
Sign effect in adolescents: Within‐subject comparison of delay discounting of hypothetical monetary gains and losses
2020
The purpose of this article is to contribute to the research on the sign effect, steeper discounting of gains compared to losses, by offering results from an experiment using a "double-delay" procedure on adolescents. Twenty-four 14-year-old schoolchildren completed a computer-based test consisting of choices of Smaller-Sooner (SS) and Larger-Later (LL) hypothetical monetary gains and losses. Within-subject comparison and analysis of the aggregated data were conducted. Current results were also examined in light of prior research with adult participants, and variations in behavioral patterns were identified. Although the sign effect appears to be more profound in adolescents compared to adu…
Evidence for a spatial bias in the perception of sequences of brief tones
2013
Listeners are unable to report the physical order of particular sequences of brief tones. This phenomenon of temporal dislocation depends on tone durations and frequencies. The current study empirically shows that it also depends on the spatial location of the tones. Dichotically testing a three-tone sequence showed that the central tone tends to be reported as the first or the last element when it is perceived as part of a left-to-right motion. Since the central-tone dislocation does not occur for right-to-left sequences of the same tones, this indicates that there is a spatial bias in the perception of sequences. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.