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    Are faces processed like words? A diagnostic test for recognition by parts

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    Do we identify an object as a whole or by its parts? This simple question has been surprisingly hard to answer. It has been suggested that faces are recognized as wholes and words are recognized by parts. Here we answer the question by applying a test for crowding. In crowding, a target is harder to identify in the presence of nearby flankers. Previous work has described crowding between objects. We show that crowding also occurs between the parts of an object. Such internal crowding severely impairs perception, identification, and fMRI face-area activation. We apply a diagnostic test for crowding to a word and a face, and we find that the critical spacing of the parts required for recognition is proportional to distance from fixation and independent of size and kind. The critical spacing defines an isolation field around the target. Some objects can be recognized only when each part is isolated from the rest of the object by the critical spacing. In that case, recognition is by parts. Recognition is holistic if the observer can recognize the object even when the whole object fits within a critical spacing. Such an object has only one part. Multiple parts within an isolation field will crowd each other and spoil recognition. To assess the robustness of the crowding test, we manipulated familiarity through inversion and the face- and word-superiority effects. We find that threshold contrast for word and face identification is the product of two factors: familiarity and crowding. Familiarity increases sensitivity by a factor of x1.5, independent of eccentricity, while crowding attenuates sensitivity more and more as eccentricity increases. Our findings show that observers process words and faces in much the same way: The effects of familiarity and crowding do not distinguish between them. Words and faces are both recognized by parts, and their parts -- letters and facial features -- are recognized holistically. We propose that internal crowding be taken as the signature of recognition by parts

    Flicker flutter: Is an illusory event as good as the real thing?

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    erghese and Stone (1995) showed that reducing the perceived number of objects by grouping also reduces objective performance. Shams, Kamitani, and Shimojo (2000) showed that a single flash accompanied by multiple beeps appears to flash more than once. We show that objective orientation-discrimination performance depends solely on the perceived number of flashes, independent of the actual number of beeps and flashes. Thus the unit of perceptual analysis seems to be a perceived event, independent of how it is induced

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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