In research on music conducting, there is a lack of studies concerning conductors’ score-reading. The present investigation explored the reading strategies of four Swedish choral conductors. Two interconnected studies addressed the conductors’ explicit conceptions about score reading and their silent-reading strategies in actual reading situations. All conductors emphasized overviewing and script-

In the fields of behavioural and psychological research, pupil size and skin conductance are two variables that provide useful information about a participant’s state of mind at a given moment. Both variables are involuntary indicators of psychophysiological responses such as alertness, arousal, or focus. Pupil size is commonly measured with a video-based eye tracker, and skin conductance is measu

Introduction: Most studies determining speakers’ perceived gender as binarily female or male are reliant on F0 perception, although other vocal parameters may also contribute to the perception of gender. The current study focused on the impact of breathiness on the perception of speakers’ gender as a biological variable (feminine or masculine). Methods: n = 31 normal hearing, native English speake

Italian is sexy, German is rough—but how about Páez or Tamil? Are there universal phonesthetic judgments based purely on the sound of a language, or are preferences attributable to language-external factors such as familiarity and cultural stereotypes? We collected 2,125 recordings of 228 languages from 43 language families, including 5 to 11 speakers of each language to control for personal vocal

Political communication research has long sought to understand the effects of cross-cutting exposure on political participation. Here, we argue for a paradigm shift that acknowledges the agency of citizens as producers of cross-cutting expression on social media. We define cross-cutting expression as political communication through speech or behavior within a counter-attitudinal space. After expli

This article provides an overview of the research on morpho-syntactic challenges in Swedish-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD), compared with typically developing (TD) children learning Swedish as their first and second language (L1/L2). Children with DLD show vulnerabilities with verb finiteness, the possessive construction, and noun phrase gender agreement, as well as w

Aim: The risk for language disorder is high in children with all levels of hearing loss (HL). Early identification and intervention should be as important for children with mild HL as for those with more severe HL. Despite new-born hearing screening, a recent survey of speech language therapist services in southern Sweden indicates that children with mild and moderate HL are severely neglected whe

Continuous task engagement generally leads to vigilance decrement and deteriorates task performance. However, how conflict effect is modulated by vigilance decrement has no consistent evidence, and little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. Here we adopted an electroencephalogram dataset collected during a prolonged flanker task to examine the interactions between vigilance and congru

There is a misconception that pictures are easy to comprehend, which is problematic in pedagogical practices that include pictures. For example, if a child has difficulties with verbal narration to picture sequences, it may be interpreted as specific to spoken language even though the child may have additional difficulties with comprehension of visual narratives in the form of picture sequences. T

This paper highlights a current phenomenon reported from preschools placed in multilingual areas in Sweden, namely that some preschoolers with mutually different language backgrounds sometimes use English as lingua franca instead of Swedish during play. The data stems from a study of language environments in Swedish preschools situated in both monolingual and multilingual areas. The analyses revea

This Special Issue describes the impact of visual impairment on visuomotor function. It includes contributions that examine gaze control in conditions associated with abnormal visual development such as amblyopia, dyslexia and neurofibromatosis as well as disorders associated with field loss later in life, such as macular degeneration and stroke. Specifically, the papers address both gaze holding

We discovered nocturnal colour vision in the Asian giant honeybee Apis dorsata - a facultatively nocturnal species - at mesopic light intensities, down to half-moon light levels (approx. 10 -2 cd m -2). The visual threshold of nocturnality aligns with their reported nocturnal activity down to the same light levels. Nocturnal colour vision in A. dorsata is interesting because, despite being primari

Humans are expert percievers of behavioural properties, including the timing of movements. Even short hesitancies and delays can be salient depending on the context. This article presents results from a pilot study on time delays in a human-robot interaction setting using the Wizard of Oz paradigm. Participants (n=17) played Tic-Tac-Toe with the humanoid robot Epi. They were randomized into one of

The spatial distribution of muscle fibre activity is of interest in guiding therapy and assessing recovery of motor function following injuries of the peripheral or central nervous system. This paper presents a new method for stable estimation of motor unit territory centres from high-density surface electromyography (HDsEMG). This completely automatic process applies principal component compressi

Sea urchins can detect light and move in relation to luminous stimuli despite lacking eyes. They presumably detect light through photoreceptor cells distributed on their body surface. However, there is currently no mechanistic explanation of how these animals can process light to detect visual stimuli and produce oriented movement. Here, we present a model of decentralized vision in echinoderms th

Our contribution concerns frictional design in human-social robot interaction. Exploring the use of frictional design in an empirical study, we argue designing friction can contribute to the cognitive empowerment of users.

Moving in straight lines is a behaviour that enables organisms to search for food, move away from threats, and ultimately seek suitable environments in which to survive and reproduce. This study explores a vision-based technique for detecting a change in heading direction using the Milky Way (MW), one of the navigational cues that are known to be used by night-active insects. An algorithm is propo