Author Archives: samgregory

Applied Cognition

North west visual cognition group meeting

On June 7th 2024 we are hosting the North West Visual Cognition Group at an all day research event. At the event we will share our current research and foster new collaborations. Please see the abstracts below.

Using mobile eye tracking to investigate the psychological benefits of an urban green space in central Manchester

Dr Catherine Thompson, Momina Ijaz, and Neil Harrison

The psychological benefits of spending time in nature are well-documented, with many studies showing improvements to mood, enhanced wellbeing, and attention restoration. Efforts to understand and explain the advantages of engaging with nature, particularly in densely populated urban areas, are becoming increasingly important as more people live in urban environments with limited access to green space. This study investigates the psychological impact of spending time in the Castlefield Viaduct, a National Trust site in the centre of Manchester. Described as a ‘sky garden’, the site is a Victorian Grade-II listed railway viaduct that has been transformed from a derelict space into a green oasis. Visitors (so far data has been collected from >25 participants) complete short questionnaires about their mood and their connectedness to nature, and then they explore the Viaduct while their eye movements are recorded using mobile eye tracking glasses. After their visit, they complete the same questionnaires again and a questionnaire measuring perceived restorativeness of the space. Positive and negative emotion and nature connectedness will be compared pre- and post-visit to assess the benefits of spending time in the Viaduct. Viewing behaviour will also be correlated with nature connectedness and perceived restoration and this analysis will contribute to knowledge regarding the mechanisms through which psychological restoration occurs. The research may provide empirical evidence for the psychological benefits of urban greening that can be used by the National Trust and other organisations to support the design and creation of future green-space initiatives.  

The impact of interior space design on incidental memory

Nooshin Momenzadeh, Tobiasz Trawinski, Letizia Palumbo

It has been demonstrated that there is preference for interior designs based on their aesthetic and space features [1], [2]. This study examines whether interior design preference can predict incidental memory performance in relation to participants personality traits.

To select the stimuli, in the first experiment 26 participants rated 114 pictures of interior designs on ceiling height (low vs. high), space openness (enclosed vs. open), appearance (rectilinear vs. curvilinear), and distinctiveness. In the second experiment, 40 participants rated 40 pictures on a scale from 0 (dislike) to 100 (like). Following, participants completed an incidental memory block with additional 40 new pictures, indicating whether they had seen or not seen each picture before. Participants completed the Desire for Aesthetics Scale [3] (DFAS), the Openness to Experience and Extraversion scales of the Big Five Aspect Scales [4].

Linear Mixed Effects Models revealed that higher scores in DFAS, high ceiling, open space, and rectilinear appearance significantly predicted a higher preference for interior environments. The incidental memory performance was significantly influenced by the longer viewing duration in the first block. The experiment was repeated in the laboratory with slightly different results which are discussed in relation to the links between preference and cognitive performance for interior spaces.

[1]   L. Palumbo, G. Rampone, M. Bertamini, M. Sinico, E. Clarke, and O. Vartanian, “Visual preference for abstract curvature and for interior spaces: Beyond undergraduate student samples,” Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 577–593, 2022, doi: 10.1037/aca0000359.

[2]   O. Vartanian et al., “Impact of contour on aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions in architecture,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., vol. 110, no. supplement_2, pp. 10446–10453, Jun. 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1301227110.

[3]   D. E. Lundy, M. B. Schenkel, T. N. Akrie, and A. M. Walker, “How important is beauty to you? The development of The Desire for Aesthetics Scale,” Empir. Stud. Arts, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 73–92, 2010, doi: 10.2190/EM.28.1.e.

[4]   C. G. DeYoung, L. C. Quilty, and J. B. Peterson, “Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five,” J. Pers. Soc. Psychol., vol. 93, no. 5, pp. 880–896, Nov. 2007, doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880.

Vision for action after sight restoration from congenital cataracts

Dr Irene Senna

Could individuals who were born blind but gained sight through surgical intervention learn to integrate vision with other senses to perceive and interact with their environment? To address this question, we studied perceptual and visuomotor development in Ethiopian children and adolescents who underwent surgical treatment for congenital dense bilateral cataracts several years after birth. In this presentation, I will discuss two studies assessing their ability to use vision for action. In the first study, we investigated their capacity to recalibrate their sensorimotor system once an optical distortion is introduced. Participants performed a pointing task while wearing prismatic goggles shifting the apparent location of the target. While their sensorimotor recalibration performance was impaired right after surgery, it showed some gradual improvement within a few years after surgery. In the second study, we tested whether they could use visually estimated object properties to make predictions for feedforward control of grasping. Participants were asked to repetitively grasp equally weighted objects differing in size. Unlike typically sighted controls, cataract-treated participants did not learn to adjust grip force and hand aperture to the visually estimated object size even years after surgery. These findings suggest that while certain aspects of action development occur, others may remain underdeveloped. On one hand, the partial development of recalibration abilities highlights the importance of sensorimotor experience, even when acquired later in life. On the other hand, the apparent impairment in the ability to rely on visually estimated object properties to pre-program actions suggests that structured visual input during early developmental stages may be crucial for the full development of action planning capabilities.

Aesthetic cognition: the role of an emotional relationship with the natural world in the processing of visual stimuli in nature environments

David Beevers

The ability of nature to restore psychological resources is well-established. However, most research into the visual appeal of nature has focused on the objective assessment of a nature environment in terms of content, with less emphasis on the subjective perception-based assessment by the observer. The objective assessment of an environment’s visual aesthetic quality is expert-based and reliant on the observer assessing the scene using their knowledge of nature settings they have previously viewed. Based on this knowledge of nature, they isolate and identify the elements which they regard as most appealing. In contrast, a perception-based assessment sees environmental value as a product of the human mind. It is not a top-down knowledge-based assessment, but rather a bottom-up emotional reaction to the scene. Subjective responses are either a direct and immediate aesthetic sensory reaction or are indirectly generated through other personal cognitive constructs such as individual interpretations of mystery, legibility, and compatibility. Further exploration of the role of aesthetic cognition in the visual processing of nature environments may be important in understanding the psychological benefits of engaging with nature.

The effect of social and non-social cues on attention and working memory in a busy visual environment

Dr Samantha Gregory

Sharing attention, i.e. looking at objects together, leads to beneficial processing of objects under shared gaze, this is sometimes termed joint attention. Using social gaze cues, it is found that jointly attended objects are liked more, processed quicker, and remembered better in both long term and working memory. Interestingly, non-social arrow cues show similar effects on attention to gaze cues, but do not affect how much objects are liked or remembered.  However, these tasks are often conducted using very simple displays where information appears in only one location in a screen-based task, yet the real world is cluttered. Therefore, we need to understand how social and non-social cues impact attention and subsequent working memory in a cluttered environment.  Here I will present a series of studies investigating the effects of social gaze cues as well as non-social arrow and motion cues on attention and working memory in more cluttered target displays where task relevant information occurs on both sides of the attention cue. Results will be discussed in relation to cue purpose.

Keynotes

KEYNOTE 1.

The effects of visual impairment on sensorimotor control: the efficacy of second-eye cataract surgery

Dr Rachel Coats, – University of Leeds 

The incidence of visual impairments increases with age. Cataracts offer a common, real-life example of a visual impairment that affects sensorimotor function. Although cataract surgery is cheap, it costs the NHS millions due to its high prevalence, causing restricted access to second-eye cataract surgery within the UK (to save money) and leaving people with one blurred eye. Critically, due to limited research on the impact of this kind of visual impairment on visuomotor skills, decisions to remove cataracts are currently based on arbitrary and geographically variable visual thresholds. We want to improve NHS protocols on recommending cataract surgery by studying the effects of cataracts/blurred vision on visual and motor function and support the development of more effective, data-driven assessment and intervention protocols. I will present recent data from our labs looking at the effects of blurred vision on visual function, heading perception and prehension, and discuss future study plans.

KEYNOTE 2.

Acting by looking: Gaze control in the context of assistive communication

Dr David Souto, University of Leicester

The last twenty years or so have seen the development of gaze-controlled computer interfaces for augmentative communication and other assistive technologies. In many applications, users need to look at symbols on an on-screen keyboard and maintain their gaze to make a selection. A major challenge, known as the “Midas touch” problem, arises because users must suppress the natural tendency to look for its own sake. We don’t normally look to act upon the world but to acquire visual information. This raises questions about how individuals learn use gaze to operate an interface and how this compares to learning a new control mode using our hands, such as selection by hovering rather than pointing. I will present evidence showing the difference between those two types of control and how learning takes place. I will then present an ongoing project seeking to understand how this type of research can inform the design of novel interfaces through various kind of consultations with stakeholders. I will end with some thoughts on the challenges and rewards of doing research that attempts to address practical needs. 

BPS Psychology of Education Annual Conference 2023

Dr Simon Cassidy presented a paper at the BPS PoE annual conference examining the value of self-report threat appraisal as an indicator of future educational attainment, retention, and progression in students in higher education. Threat appraisal, involving cognitive appraisal and evaluation of situational task demands versus available personal resources in high-value motivated performance situations, is conventionally measured using cardiovascular response output (heart rate for instance) as an objective measure of an individual’s response to stress. However, evidence suggests that subjective self-report measures also offer a valid measure of threat appraisal that correspond with objective measures but offer the advantage of being relatively quick and easy to administer in applied settings. Threat appraisal has previously been applied in areas such as commercial aviation, elite sport, and emergency medicine where it has been shown to predict future performance, possibly operating via a mechanism of increased anxiety and disrupted attention control. With fewer applications in the field of education, the paper offered insight into the value of threat appraisal in an applied educational context, highlighting potential implications for both future research and practice.

The power of nature in enhancing well-being and facilitating cognitive restoration

The Salford Applied Cognition Research Group will be hosting an interactive event at the 2023 Festival of Social Science. The event will take place at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on Friday 27th October from 12pm – 4pm.

Activities, aimed at both children and adults, will encourage reflection on the properties that make natural environments beneficial to our mental and physical health. The event is open to all and no booking is required. More details can be found by clicking the link below.

https://festivalofsocialscience.com/events/the-power-of-nature-in-enhancing-well-being-and-facilitating-cognitive-restoration/

The Salford Nature Environments Database (SNED)

Written by Draco Graham-Kevan, edited by Samantha Gregory

Through the Salford Nature Environments Database (SNED) project we aim to provide a large selection of rated environmental images for research into nature restoration. Studies have shown that natural environments are restorative to both mental and physical health, and research has also shown that viewing images or videos of natural scenes can affect people in similar ways to being present in the scene themselves. Despite knowing that these natural environments are restorative, we do not yet fully understand how these restorative effects occur. Therefore, to help understand this, we need to look more at what is going on inside people’s heads when presented with these differing environments. To do this, we need to make use of images of environments in controlled lab settings.

Image of a lake with mountains and trees in the background. The sun glints in the corner and the mountains and trees are reflected in the lake
An example nature image

While environmental image databases exist, there is generally a lack of standardization of the levels of the properties that have previously been attributed to the restorative effects of nature, addressing this disparity would allow more accurate conclusions to be made about why and how natural environments are restoring. Further, current databases are also generally lacking in demographic detail and sample diversity, yet we also need to know if there are individual differences in these restorative properties. We hope that the Salford Nature Environments Database can address some of these concerns.

To develop this database we first had to dive into the theory around nature restoration and decide which properties could be captured and rated. First, it is believed that we respond to environments with an immediate judgment of whether we like or dislike them. Relatedly, Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (ART), states that restorative properties of nature are related to instant preferences towards natural imagery, as well as a person’s desire to be in the environment. Further, coherence of the environment is important, as is how much mystery there is in the environment, in terms of gaining new information through further exploration. Further work based on the attention restoration theory led to development of the Perceived Restoration Scale (PRS) of natural environments which digs further into these properties of the attention restoration theory such as fascination and compatibility. In addition, there are evolutionary theories about why we find nature restorative in terms of prospect and refuge theory which says we like environments that give a place of shelter or safety from which to explore. From these theories we therefore chose to target properties of immediate judgement, as well as properties related to perceived restoration and evolutionary theories. To measure immediate judgment, we chose to assess whether we find the environment positive or negative (valence), whether we want to approach or avoid an environment, how aroused we feel by that environment and whether we generally find the environment pleasant. To investigate the other properties we chose to assess the familiarity of the environment, how much mystery was perceived in the environment in terms of how much there was to explore, how interesting the environment was and whether a person would feel at ease in the environment (relating to prospect/ refuge).

Image of a street with cars parked next to a building site where a building has been partially demolished
An example urban image

In addition to this, we had to think about what types of images we wanted to assess and then gather these images. We wanted to have a range of images that captured the variety of natural environments from naturally formed rivers to urban parks, as well as environments across seasons and region, thus including deserts, snowy scenes, and autumnal forests. In addition, we needed a control condition that captured the built environment effectively.

To gather the images, we recruited three research assistants who were each allocated two types of images to search for. The categories searched for were natural images; caves, woodland, mountains, deserts, snowy landscapes, images containing water (rivers, waterfalls, oceans, lakes), fields, managed landscapes (gardens, golf courses, parks), and also control images containing human architecture. Images were searched for using the website Flickr, this is because Flickr allows anybody to search for images matching a certain description and filter for copyright status. For this database it was important that we only used images with a creative commons licence, meaning that they can be replicated and adjusted for use in different ways by other researchers. Images also had to be over a certain size and quality for the same reasons. We initially collected over 800 images, and then these were curated over three phases, to check for any missed watermarks or distracting features (like people or man-made structures within nature images, for example), check for any duplicates, and check that the images could be cropped and resized without losing any of the necessary qualities. These curations left the database with 500 images.

The next phase of this project was to allow these 500 images to be rated on their restorative qualities. To do this, we recruited 800 participants using Prolific’s participant pool. This allowed us to gather people from all regions of the world, ensuring that there was a more diverse and not just a WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) sample, which is often a problem in research. Using experiment building site Gorilla, participants each viewed 100 out of the 500 images and were asked to rate each using a sliding Likert-scale system. Ratings were on the properties outlined above and on average each image was rated on each parameter 160 times, well above the necessary 41 ratings that similar databases have calculated as the minimum per image.

Preliminary results have shown that overall participants found the natural images more pleasant, approachable, and calming than the urban control images. This clear distinction of scores between the different environments provides us with evidence of their potential usefulness. The natural images seem calming enough and urban images stressful enough to be used to measure their effects in future studies. The next step is to publish an article on this database and share the images. You can keep up with the progress of the project through the OSF page.

Internship Experience with the Applied Cognition Research Group

James Dodds, who graduated from University of Salford in 2022 with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology has spent the last 5 and a half months on a paid internship with the Applied Cognition Group, under the supervision of Dr Samantha Gregory. James has written the following piece describing his experience of the internship.

After completing my psychology undergraduate degree at the university, I left with a keen interest in research. However, like many others, not having any ideas for what my next steps were. When I saw the GAP internship programme, I thought it would be a good chance to gain some valuable experience in a topic I was interested in, and also weigh up the options for my future. The GAP programme is aimed at recent Salford graduates and helps provide relevant experience for a chosen career. Alongside this, the GAP team provide weekly careers and development workshops and match you with a mentor and careers advisor to help you throughout the internship.

Working with Dr Samantha Gregory has been an amazing experience, with my main role being to recruit participants and collect data for a study looking at gaze cueing effects and working memory. This utilized a VR headset to place participants in a realistic setting where they completed a memory task. Engaging first hand with participants and seeing the study progress has been exciting to be a part of and something I look forward to pursuing further in the future.

I was also welcomed into the applied cognition research group and attended bi-weekly meetings, which ultimately led to being involved in a group project developing a database of nature images to be used in research involving attentional restoration. My contributions included creating a search procedure for images to be used in the database, curating the collected images for the final database, and assisting with various other aspects within the project.

As part of this, I participated in a writing retreat where we attempted to follow a paper in a day plan. We split into groups, depending on where we felt we were most useful, and managed to get the majority of a first draft written in one day.

Another task I undertook was the development of a volunteer database, this involved researchers across the school of health and society and a large part of this included altering operating procedures with hopes to sign volunteers up entirely online. I was also involved in some administrative tasks for the project including filling application forms and preparing social media advertisements.

Alongside the work tasks, I was regularly offered opportunities and experiences that I would not have been able to do otherwise. Including attending a training day for psychophysiological equipment, the North West Visual Cognition conference held in MediaCityUK and numerous talks held at the university. As well as this I was able to complete multiple online courses during the internship to aid my professional development mainly focussed around learning Python.

Overall, the internship was more than I could have hoped for and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Finally, I want to thank Dr Samantha Gregory for the opportunity to work with her, and also thank the Psychology department for making me feel very welcome and providing lots of support over my time here.

North-West Visual Cognition Group BPS Research Seminar Series, Seminar 3: Visual cognition and Spectatorship

The visual cognition group at The University of Salford is part of a wider group of visual cognition researchers in the North West, known as the North-West Visual Cognition Group (NWVC)

From July 2022 until July 2023 the NWVC are hosting 4 research seminars across universities in the North West of England funded by the BPS. This week it’s Salfords turn!

On Friday 24th March we will host the third seminar at our Media City campus. The seminar will focus on how knowledge and expertise influence the way in which we represent the world. Topics include exploration of cognition and eye movements during spectatorship of the environment, improving perception and visuomotor control in elite sport, attention and eye movements in social interactions, and visual search during navigation. More details and full schedule on the NWVC site.

Funding to co-create research into improving the mental health of dads and their children

Dr Robert Bendall has recently received funding for an exciting project through The Ideas Fund. Rob will be working with Oldham-based organisation Men Behaving Dadly to co-create a research project aimed at maximising the positive impact of play. Additional project partners are Oldham Play Action Group and Greenacres Community Centre. Read more here.

Psychology Open Science Working Group

A key ethos of the research activity in the Visual Cognition Research group is the practice of open science. As part of this, a long with Salford’s local UK Reproducibility Network Lead, Dr Sharon Coen, the Co-Chairs of the Visual Cognition Research Group, Dr Samantha Gregory and Dr Robert Bendall, are also co-chairs of the University of Salford Psychology Open Science working group.

We promote open and reproducible research practice by working to create a community where open research practice is the norm. We offer workshops on open science practice as well as keeping this practice at the front of research discussion. We also practice what we preach by using the OSF to pre-register research studies, upload pre-prints of submitted work, and upload open data and resources related to our research.

As part of our activities, we are collaborating with other networks in the North of England, including being part of a joint ReproducibiliTea. ReproducabiliTea is a journal club where we discuss papers and ideas related to the Open Science movement. We are launching this initiative on December 15th with mince pies and festive cheer.

If you want to get involved, please contact us on local-salford@ukrn.org

For more information on UKRN, please visit https://www.ukrn.org/

Industry 4.0

Group members Dr Adam Galpin, Dr Maria Panagiotidi, and Dr Catherine Thompson presented the work of the Visual Cognition research group at the Industry 4.0 event, part of the annual Festival of Research. The audience was very different to that of the workshop in which we demonstrated the equipment, and it is great to share research with a wide range of individuals.