We compared effects of information about a stereotypical service provider with that about a counterstereotypical service provider on inferences about the similarity of employees within the firm and the firm’s similarity to other firms (across-brand differentiation). Our three experiments varied the provider’s gender so that it was either stereotypical or counterstereotypical for an occupation. ...

To overcome problems with traditional methods for measuring stereotypical motor movements in persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), we evaluated the use of wireless three-axis accelerometers and pattern recognition algorithms to automatically detect body rocking and hand flapping in children with ASD. Findings revealed that, on average, pattern recognition algorithms correctly identified...

While language conveys meaning largely symbolically, actual communication acts typically contain iconic elements as well: People gesture while they speak, or may even draw sketches while explaining something. Image retrieval prima facie seems like a task that could profit from combined symbolic and iconic reference, but it is typically set up to work either from language only, or via (iconic) s...

Several investigations 11, 16, 19{21] have recently been un-dertaken into object recognition based on matching image intensity neighborhoods rather than geometric matching of features extracted from the images. These projects have used small subwindows or complete image regions and matching has been based on the similarity of extracted descriptors to previously stored descriptors. One character...

Among the factors posing new and complex challenges to coupled natural –human components of iconic parks systems are globalization, climate and environmental change, economic development, population migration, international tourism, land use/land cover dynamics, and political instability of governments and institutions. These challenges are evident in almost all settings and are certainly emerg...

Human reasoning is often biased by stereotypical intuitions. The nature of such bias is not clear. Some authors claim that people are mere heuristic thinkers and are not aware that cued stereotypes might be inappropriate. Other authors claim that people always detect the conflict between their stereotypical thinking and normative reasoning, but simply fail to inhibit stereotypical thinking. Hen...

This study examines the intergenerational transfer of human communication systems. It tests if human communication systems evolve to be easy to learn or easy to use (or both), and how population size affects learnability and usability. Using an experimental-semiotic task, we find that human communication systems evolve to be easier to use (production efficiency and reproduction fidelity), but h...

Currently designed Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) propose both iconic and symbolic tangible objects (TO). Since iconic TOs should enable to interact more naturally like in the real world and, hypothetically, require less learning time than symbolic TOs, some questions arise: Why do symbolic TOs exist? When to use iconic or symbolic representation in TOs? This paper discusses these questions an...

A foundational assumption in linguistics has been that words and their meanings are arbitrarily related; however, this position has been challenged recently. Experiments have shown that both systematic (where similar objects have similar labels) and iconic (words ‘resemble’ the objects they label) associations between words and objects facilitate learning. However, these two literatures remain ...

We investigated the use of iconic and deictic gestures during the communication of spatial information. Expert structural geologists were asked to explain one portion of a geologic map. Spatial gestures used in each expert’s response were coded as deictic (indicating an object in the conversational space), iconic (depicting an aspect of an object or event), or both deictic and iconic (indicatin...