Background modeling is one of the key steps in any visual surveillance system. A good background modeling algorithm should be able to detect objects/targets under any environmental condition. The influence of illumination variance has been a major challenge in many background modeling algorithms. These algorithms produce poor object segmentation or consume substantial amount of computational ti...

According to grounded cognition, words whose semantics contain sensory-motor features activate sensory-motor simulations, which, in turn, interact with spatial responses to produce grounded congruency effects (e.g., processing the spatial feature of up for sky should be faster for up vs. down responses). Growing evidence shows these congruency effects do not always occur, suggesting instead tha...

The role of perceptual load in selective attention to multidimensional objects was investigated by independently manipulating the load along the task-relevant and the task-irrelevant dimensions in the central search array, which was flanked by congruent, incongruent, or neutral peripheral distractors. The relative bottom-up perceptual saliency of these dimensions in capturing attention was mani...

Some years ago Cheung et al. (2008) proposed the complete design (CD) for measuring the failure of selective attention in composite objects. Since the CD is a fully balanced design, analysis of response bias may reveal potential effects of the experimental manipulation, the stimulus material, and/or attributes of the observers. Here we used the CD to prove whether external features modulate per...

A task-switching paradigm was used to examine differences in attentional control across younger adults, middle-aged adults, healthy older adults, and individuals classified in the earliest detectable stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). A large sample of participants (570) completed a switching task in which participants were cued to classify the letter (consonant/vowel) or number (odd/even) task...

Image features such as step edges, lines and Mach bands all give rise to points where the Fourier components of the image are maximally in phase. The use of phase congruency for marking features has signiicant advantages over gradient based methods. It is a dimension-less quantity that is invariant to changes in image brightness or contrast, hence it provides an absolute measure of the signiica...

Research on the relations between self-monitoring differences and two important areas of consumer behavior, reactions to specific advertising approaches and product evaluation strategies, is reviewed and evaluated. First, research on the responsiveness of high and low self-monitors to image-oriented and product-quality-based advertising attempts is addressed. Although findings generally indicat...

Three experiments are reported that focus on the grammatical and associative relationship between a single word context and a to-be-named target in the SerboCroatian language. Unlike studies using the English language, word class need not be violated in order to obtain grammatical incongruency: all word pairs, therefore, can be semantically plausible. Experiment 1 contrasted naming with lexical...

Information that is congruent with prior knowledge is generally remembered better than incongruent information. This effect of congruency on memory has been attributed to a facilitatory influence of activated schemas on memory encoding and consolidation processes, and hypothesised to reflect a shift between processing in medial temporal lobes (MTL) towards processing in medial prefrontal cortex...

In task-switching paradigms, participants are often slower on incongruent than congruent trials, a pattern known as the task-rule congruency effect. This effect suggests that irrelevant task rules or associated responses may be retrieved automatically in spite of task cues. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the task-rule congruency effect may be modulated via manipulations...