Single Review on past events

On 14 December 2021, the Assembly of Members elected Abena Yalley (Postdoctoral Fellow / Dept. of Literature & Politics and Public Administration) as new member to the Executive Committee. The election was conducted digitally with an anonymous voting procedure. 

After the election, Stephan Streuber (Associated Fellow / Computer and Information Science), Lorenz Assländer (Postdoc / Sports Science) and Alejandra Quiros (Associated Fellow / Computer and Information Science) presented two projects on “Augmented Reality”.

Abstract: 

Falls in the elderly are a major problem for individuals and the society. When aging, sensory and motor systems deteriorate through losses in receptor density and sarcopenia, a loss in muscle mass. This also affects the balance control mechanism leading to an increase in spontaneous sway and to changes in the feedback control mechanisms maintaining balance. We hypothesize that reliable and valid augmented visual orientation (AVO) cues improve the sensory input available to the central nervous system and thereby improve balance. The proposed project investigates, whether augmenting visual orientation with additional space veridical cues projected into the field of view can improve balance and prevent falls. The basic idea of augmented visual orientation (AVO) is analogous to that of an artificial horizon in an aircraft. Technical sensors are used to extract the position of a device in gravito-inertial space and augmented reality techniques are used to provide space veridical visual cues for a user. To the best of our knowledge, using AVO or similar techniques to improve balance has not been described in the literature and therefore may be a novel approach for fall prevention.

Red shape, blue shape: political ideology influences the social perception of body shape
Alejandra Quiros / Stephan Streuber / Michael Black

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00817-7

Political elections have a profound impact on individuals and societies. Optimal voting is thought to be based on informed and deliberate decisions yet, it has been demonstrated that the outcomes of political elections are biased by the perception of candidates’ facial features and the stereotypical traits voters attribute to these. Interestingly, political identification changes the attribution of stereotypical traits from facial features. This study explores whether the perception of body shape elicits similar effects on political trait attribution and whether these associations can be visualized. In Experiment 1, ratings of 3D body shapes were used to model the relationship between perception of 3D body shape and the attribution of political traits such as ‘Republican’, ‘Democrat’, or ‘Leader’. This allowed analysing and visualizing the mental representations of stereotypical 3D body shapes associated with each political trait. Experiment 2 was designed to test whether political identification of the raters affected the attribution of political traits to different types of body shapes. The results show that humans attribute political traits to the same body shapes differently depending on their own political preference. These findings show that our judgments of others are influenced by their body shape and our own political views. Such judgments have potential political and societal implications.