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Potential of a laser pointer contact lens to improve the reliability of video-based eye-trackers in indoor and outdoor conditions
Get PDFMany video-based eye trackers rely on detecting and tracking ocular features, a task that can be negatively affected by a number of individual or environmental factors. In this context, the aim of this study was to practically evaluate how the use of a scleral contact lens with two integrated near-infrared lasers (denoted CLP) could improve the tracking robustness in difficult lighting conditions, particularly outdoor ones.
We assessed the ability of the CLP (on a model eye) to detect the lasers and to deduce a gaze position with an accuracy better than 1° under four lighting conditions (1 lx, 250 lx, 50 klux and alternating 1lx /250 lx) on an artificial eye. These results were compared to the ability of a commercial eye tracker (Pupil Core) to detect the pupil on human eyes with a confidence score equal to or greater than 0.9.
CLP provided good results in all conditions (tracking accuracy and detection rates). In comparison, the Pupil Core performed well in all indoor conditions (99% detection) but failed in outdoor conditions (9.85% detection).
In conclusion, the CLP presents strong potential to improve the reliability of video-based eye-trackers in outdoor conditions by providing easy trackable feature
Advancing dynamic-time warp techniques for correcting eye tracking data in reading source code
Get PDFBackground: Automated eye tracking data correction algorithms such as Dynamic-Time Warp always made a trade-off between the ability to handle regressions (jumps back) and distortions (fixation drift). At the same time, eye movement in code reading is characterized by non-linearity and regressions.
Objective: In this paper, we present a family of hybrid algorithms that aim to handle both regressions and distortions with high accuracy.
Method: Through simulations with synthetic data, we replicate known eye movement phenomena to assess our algorithms against Warp algorithm as a baseline. Furthermore, we utilize two real datasets to evaluate the algorithms in correcting data from reading source code and see if the proposed algorithms generalize to correcting data from reading natural language text.
Results: Our results demonstrate that most proposed algorithms match or outperform baseline Warp in correcting both synthetic and real data. Also, we show the prevalence of regressions in reading source code.
Conclusion: Our results highlight our hybrid algorithms as an improvement to Dynamic-Time Warp in handling regressions
Book Review: Lea Hagmann: Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall: Cornu-Copia (= SOAS Studies in Music), London and New York: Routledge.
No full textBook Review: Hagmann, Lea (2002): Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall: Cornu-Copia (= SOAS Studies in Music), London and New York: Routledge. Book Review Book Review Book Review 
Assessing the relationship between a web application-based load and recovery score and training load, considering the menstrual cycle: A longitudinal observational study in elite women’s soccer
No full textIntroduction
Recovery monitoring is a fundamental component for continuous performance enhancement in sports and exercise (Bourdon et al., 2017). Given that recovery is considered a multifaceted restorative process, various physiological and psychological measures should be tracked daily (Heidari et al., 2018). Digital applications can aid in effortlessly collecting, integrating, and summarizing this data. In a collaborative research project, a web application was developed to monitor the load and recovery of athletes engaged in team sports. This study assesses the relationship between the web-application-based Load and Recovery Score (LRS) and training load among elite female soccer players in Switzerland. Furthermore, it explores the potential influence of the menstrual cycle on the individual training responses of these players.
Methods
A total of 49 female soccer players (age: 19 ± 2 years, height: 166 ± 5 cm, body mass: 59 ± 5 kg) were recruited for this 6-week longitudinal observational study. The LRS was recorded daily using a web application, and players recorded their basal temperature each morning. Training load was assessed based on trainer-intended ratings of perceived exertion. Linear mixed models were employed, accounting for individual responses as random effects in the analysis.
Results
A significant negative relationship was found between training load and players\u27 LRS (Est. = -0.009, 95% CI -0.011, -0.007, p < .001). When controlling for training load, no significant effect of the menstrual cycle on players\u27 LRS was found (F = 1.274, p = .283). Variance explained by the residual factor of both models was 46.59% and 50.07%, respectively, with a high proportion of variance attributed to random effects (43.67%, and 47.43% respectively).
Discussion/Conclusion
The LRS appears to be a practical tool for monitoring load and recovery status in women\u27s soccer. Its ability to depict training load at an individual and multifactorial level can assist coaches in recognizing players\u27 responses to training. However, further studies that determine the relationship between the LRS and other load and recovery parameters are highly warranted.
The menstrual cycle did not show a significant effect on the LRS. Hence, the sensitivity of the LRS to menstrual cycle phases and its overall influence on recovery processes remains questionable. Nonetheless, we recommend systematic monitoring of the menstrualcycle as an extension of the LRS, as irregularities or the absence of menstrual bleeding may indicate serious health issues.
References
Bourdon, P. C., Cardinale, M., Murray, A., Gastin, P., Kellmann, M., Varley, M. C., Gabbett, T. J., Coutts, A. J., Burgess, D. J., Gregson, W., & Cable, N. T. (2017). Monitoring athlete training loads: Consensus statement. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 12(Suppl 2), S2161–S2170. https://doi.org/10.1123/IJSPP.2017-0208
Heidari, J., Beckmann, J., Bertollo, M., Brink, M., Kallus, W., Robazza, C., & Kellmann, M. (2019). Multidimensional monitoring of recovery status and implications for performance. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 14(1), 2-8. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2017-066
Associations between aerobic exercise, muscle strength training and the prevalence of shoulder pain in manual wheelchair users with spinal cord injury
No full textIntroduction
The primary objective of this study is to explore associations between meeting spinal cord injury (SCI)-specific exercise guidelines and the prevalence of shoulder pain in manual wheelchair users (MWU) with SCI in Switzerland. The rationale behind this investigation lies in the high prevalence of shoulder pain among MWU with SCI, impacting their daily activities, leisure- and labor participation, and overall quality of life. Understanding the association between exercise adherence and shoulder pain is crucial, not only for the well-being of the individuals but also for managing healthcare costs associated with pain treatments.
Methods
The study utilizes data from the SwiSCI Community Survey 2022 (Gross-Hemmi et al., 2021), focusing on a cohort of 593 manual wheelchair users (MWU) for a cross-sectional analysis, investigating the reporting of shoulder pain, and adherence to SCI-specific exercise guidelines (Martin Ginis et al., 2018). The guidelines, proposed by Martin-Ginis et al. (2018), encompass aerobic exercise and muscle-specific strength training. Logistic regression analyses were employed to assess the association of meeting these guidelines and the prevalence of shoulder pain, while considering potential confounding factors.
Results
High prevalence of shoulder pain was observed, affecting 40% of the MWU surveyed, which is in line with previous observations. Additionally, the study found that a significant proportion of the population did not meet the recommended guidelines for aerobic exercise (46%) and muscle strength training (64%). Logistic regression analyses showed that non-adherence to aerobic exercise guidelines was associated with 1.55 to 1.97 higher odds of reporting shoulder pain. No association of muscle strength training with the shoulder pain could be found. Therefore, meeting both aerobic and muscle strength guidelines did not yield any association with shoulder pain. Adjustments for potential confounders such as sex, age, lesion level, completeness, time since injury, and mobility scores, did not change the association between adherence to guidelines and shoulder pain.
Discussion/Conclusion
The prevalence of shoulder pain in the study sample is high (40%) and in line with previous publications. Compared to 75% of the Swiss general population being physical active for more than 2.5 hour a week (Bundesamt für Statistik, 2019), only 54% of the study sample is meeting the guidelines for at least the “Starter level” on aerobic exercise (cardiorespiratory, ≥ 2x 20 min/week). Those who are not meeting the aerobic exercise guidelines have 1.55 to 1.97 higher odds to have shoulder pain. Despite foreseen shoulder fitness benefit, 64% is not meeting the guidelines on muscle strength training. To further examine the relation between shoulder use, -exercise and shoulder pain, longitudinal studies on dose-effect are needed.
References
Gross-Hemmi, M. H., Gemperli, A., Fekete, C., Brach, M., Schwegler, U., & Stucki, G. (2021). Methodology and study population of the second Swiss national community survey of functioning after spinal cord injury. Spinal Cord, 59, 363-372. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41393-020-00584-3
Martin Ginis, K. A., van der Scheer, J. W., Latimer-Cheung, A. E., Barrow, A., Bourne, C., Carruthers, P., Bernardi, M., Ditor, D. S., Gaudet, S., de Groot, S., Hayes, K. C., Hicks, A. L., Leicht, C. A., Lexell, J., Macaluso, S., Manns, P. J., McBride, C. B., Noonan, V. K., Pomerleau, P. … Goosey-Tolfrey, V. L. (2018). Evidence-based scientific exercise guidelines for adults with spinal cord injury: an update and a new guideline. Spinal Cord, 56(4), 308-321. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41393-017-0017-3
Bundesamt für Statistik. (Ed.). (2019). Schweizerische Gesundheitsbefragung 2017. Körperliche Aktivität und Gesundheit [Swiss Health Survey 2017: Physical activity and health]. Bundesamt für Statistik. https://www.sportobs.ch/inhalte/Downloads/213-1708.pd
Mental health in rock climbing
No full textIntroduction
Rock climbing is an increasingly popular sport in the alpine region. It consists of different disciplines such as sport climbing, trad climbing or bouldering. Besides the professionally organized Olympic disciplines of indoor lead/speed climbing and bouldering, there is a large number of athletes who participate in advanced outdoor climbing without professional supervision. Due to this, rock climbing is associated with specific risks and heterogenous attitudes towards risk-taking and management of emotional reactions such as fear. Rock climbing also contains some risk factors for mental health problems, such as the importance of the athlete’s weight and the possibility of traumatic situations.
Methods
We systematically reviewed the current literature using the keywords “rock climbing» and eating disorder, depression, drugs, anxiety disorder, psychosis, bipolar disorder, ADHD, personality traits, and psychology.
Results
From the initial findings, we included 29 papers in the review.
Discussion
We found that rock climbers are at increased risk for eating disorders. Furthermore, there was a surprisingly high number of athletes who practiced the sport while under the influence of drugs. Several models of risk-taking behavior and neurobiological stress reactions are discussed. Finally, rock climbers showed some risk of becoming addicted to the sport.
Conclusion:
There is a lack of evidence regarding the prevalence and risk factors of psychiatric diagnoses in rock climbers. Further research is needed to support these athletes
Discriminant ability of novel cognitive-motor assessments to distinguish between fallers and non-fallers – Preliminary findings
No full textIntroduction
Falls are a major cause for injuries in older adults and are associated with motor and cognitive impairments (Hsu, 2012). Thus, sensitive assessment tools capturing subtle changes in motor and cognitive functioning are crucial for the prediction of falls. Aim of this study was to test the ability of a novel, instrumented, cognitive-motor assessment battery, to distinguish between older persons who experienced a fall in the past 12 months (fallers) and persons who did not (non-fallers) as well as its added value to predict fall status compared to gold-standard clinical fall risk assessments.
Methods
This is a secondary analysis using baseline data of an international randomized controlled trial. Participants (age > 60, categorized in two groups: fallers and non-fallers) performed five instrumented tests (Reaction time test (psychomotor speed), Flexibility test (mental flexibility), Go/No-Go task (inhibition), Sway test (postural control), and Coordinated Stability test (dynamic balance control), as well as the Timed-up and Go (TUG) test as a gold standard assessment. Binominal logistic regression analyses were conducted for each cognitive-motor assessment separately to identify test variables significantly associated with group assignment which could then be included in a further logistic regression model. Furthermore, a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed.
Results
Preliminary results of n = 38 showed among the instrumented assessments only inhibition (p = .016) and dynamic balance control (p = .014) were significantly associated with fall status and therefore included in the second regression model. In this second model, both functions contributed significantly in predicting fall status (inhibition: p = .040, dynamic balance control: p = .028). This regression model was statistically significant and resulted in a good amount of explained variance (χ2(2) = 14.283 (p = .001), R2 = .418) with a sensitivity of 84.2% and a specificity of 73.7%. Similarly, the ROC analysis showed significant Area under the Curve (AUC) values only for inhibition (AUC = .751, p = .008) and dynamic balance control (AUC = .765, p = .005), whereas the AUC value of the TUG test remained non-significant (AUC = .681, p = .056).
Discussion/Conclusion
Based on this preliminary analysis, two tests of the novel instrumented cognitive-motor assessment battery assessing inhibition and dynamic balance control were able to distinguish between fallers and non-fallers and these tests showed better discriminative properties compared with the TUG. This supports the results of previous research which showed only limited discriminant validity of the TUG in terms of fall risk (Schoene et al., 2013). Therefore, the cognitive-motor assessments might provide an added value for clinical fall risk assessment. The study is still ongoing, and thus, the complete results (of N = 145) will be presented at the conference.
References
Hsu, C. L., Nagamatsu, L. S., Davis, J. C., & Liu-Ambrose, T. (2012). Examining the relationship between specific cognitive processes and falls risk in older adults: A systematic review. Osteoporosis International, 23, 2409-2424. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-012-1992-z
Schoene, D., Wu, S. M. S., Mikolaizak, A. S., Menant, J., Smith, S. T., & Delbaere, K. (2013). Discriminative ability and predictive validity of the timed up and go test in identifying older people who fall: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 61, 202-208. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.1210
Gaze behavior is influenced by task demands rather than football players creativity
No full textIntroduction
The “most creative” football players seem to make more fixations of shorter durations than “least creative” players, indicating a broader attentional focus (Roca et al., 2018, 2021). In these studies, however, players are classified as “creative” based on their ability to name many, diverse and unusual solutions rather than to execute these options and they were only provided with a third-person viewing perspective when making decisions. In our study, funded by a FIFA scholarship, players experienced a first-person viewing perspective and when executing their most functional solution in virtual-reality game scenarios. Contrasting the idea of a distinct gaze strategy generally used by creative players, we expected that task demands would better explain gaze behavior than creativity.
Methods
We developed an immersive, 360° virtual reality (VR) setup using the Unreal engine to animate real football scenes and a 6 x 12 m cave-like laboratory with wall and floor projections. In five “mother scenes”, the location of teammates off the ball was systematically manipulated leading to 80 trials; each being occluded 1 s after the virtual ball was at the participants’ foot. We examined the originality, decision-quality, and creativity of the participants’ initial response; response time and gaze behavior (i.e., average number of fixations, the time interval between fixations, and the distance between fixations to examine the breadth of fixations). We expected that distances would be large when scanning the environment and small shortly before and after the ball must be played. Based on expert ratings of players’ executed options, we ranked participants to a more (n = 7) and less creative group (n = 7). Groups were significantly different in overall creativity (p < .0001), originality (p < .0001) and quality (p < .001).
Results
The results show that groups did not differ in response times (p = 0.34), mean number of fixations (p = .48) or mean fixation duration (p = .68). The fixation distance in the entire trial was significantly higher than shortly before (p < 0.01) or shortly after (p < 0.01) the (virtual) ball is received, with no difference between more and less creative players. There was a significant difference in fixation distances for the 5 “mother scenes” (p < 0.01).
Discussion/Conclusion
All players, not only the creative ones, have a wide fixation pattern before the ball is played to them, presumably to identify the most functional passing option. They then concentrate on the reception of the ball with a narrow fixation pattern. This pattern remains also in the pass execution phase. Creative players seem to better select and execute the best (and most creative) option rather than showing a distinct gaze behavior. Overall, our results suggest that players should be able to adjust their gaze pattern to the task demands to foster creative actions.
References
Roca, A., Ford, P. R., & Memmert, D. (2018). Creative decision making and visual search behavior in skilled soccer players. PLoS One, 13(7), Article e0199381. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199381
Roca, A., Ford, P. R., & Memmert, D. (2021). Perceptual-cognitive processes underlying creative expert performance in soccer. Psychological Research, 85(3), 1146–1155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01320-
La «culture de l\u27assemblée» dans le 15M: Un lent apprentissage entre partage de normes et ouverture aux autres
No full textIn Spain, the 15M movement organised itself into self-managed assemblies in public squares, going beyond the militant circles to which these practices had hitherto been confined. Based on an ethnographic study conducted over a ten-year period in Madrid, this article examines the effects of this broadening of audiences on the practice of assemblies. By looking at the difficulties involved in resorting to consensus, it focuses on the main political challenge of building a shared culture of collective decision-making. The question of temporality, central to this process, is expressed at the levels of learning a shared culture of assembly and of decision-making itself. We are thus exploring the tension between, on the one hand, the openness of the 15M assemblies to all, and on the other, the production of norms specific to these meeting practices, which require an apprenticeship that makes participation and integration into the assembly difficult.In Spain, the 15M movement organised itself into self-managed assemblies in public squares, going beyond the militant circles to which these practices had hitherto been confined. Based on an ethnographic study conducted over a ten-year period in Madrid, this article examines the effects of this broadening of audiences on the practice of assemblies. By looking at the difficulties involved in resorting to consensus, it focuses on the main political challenge of building a shared culture of collective decision-making. The question of temporality, central to this process, is expressed at the levels of learning a shared culture of assembly and of decision-making itself. We are thus exploring the tension between, on the one hand, the openness of the 15M assemblies to all, and on the other, the production of norms specific to these meeting practices, which require an apprenticeship that makes participation and integration into the assembly difficult.En Espagne, le mouvement du 15M s’est organisé en assemblées autogérées sur les places publiques, dépassant les cercles militants auxquels ces pratiques étaient jusque-là confinées. À partir d’une enquête ethnographique menée pendant dix ans à Madrid, cet article interroge les effets de cet élargissement des publics sur la pratique de l’assembléisme. En s’intéressant aux difficultés induites par le recours au consensus, il se focalise sur le principal défi politique qui consiste à construire une culture commune de la prise de décision collective. La question de la temporalité, centrale dans ce processus, s’exprime aux niveaux de l’apprentissage d’une culture partagée de l’assemblée et des prises de décisions elles-mêmes. Nous explorons ainsi la tension entre, d’une part, l’ouverture à toutes et tous des assemblées du 15M, et d’autre part, la production de normes spécifiques à ces pratiques de réunions qui nécessitent un apprentissage rendant difficile la participation et l’intégration dans l’assemblée
Effects of inter- and intraindividual compensation-sensitive shot styles on performance in Olympic air rifle shooting
No full textBackground: Aiming point analysis systems (APAS) are commonly used in sports shooting but face four main challenges: they do not account for intra-session variations, they overlook inter-individual shooter preferences, they ignore compensation mechanisms of technical features, and they do not respect the real shot location at the target. Methods: To address the first three challenges, we developed and validated an automated approach detector algorithm (ADA) for movement phase detection. When compared to three independent expert ratings, the ADA demonstrated a high correlation (r = .811). Building on the ADA and addressing challenge 3 and 4, this study applied cluster-analysis and ANOVA to determine the performance relevance of compensation-sensitive shot styles using datasets from a single athlete and 26 advanced to elite level athletes. Results: Significant performance differences in shot styles for both datasets, with each shot style distinctively differing from the others could be found. Conclusions: Shot styles which allow for compensation and intra-individual movement phase differences exhibit performance variations. Coaches and athletes should emphasize holistic training, focusing on combinations of features that allow for compensation
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