Older adults typically exhibit poorer face recognition compared to younger adults. These recognition differences may be due to underlying age-related changes in eye movement scanning. We examined whether older adults’ recognition could be improved by yoking their eye movements to those of younger adults. Participants studied younger and older faces, under free viewing conditions (bases), through a gaze-contingent moving window (own), or a moving window which replayed the eye movements of a base participant (yoked). During the recognition test, participants freely viewed the faces with no viewing restrictions. Own-age recognition biases were observed for older adults in all viewing conditions, suggesting that this effect occurs independently of scanning. Participants in the bases condition had the highest recognition accuracy, and participants in the yoked condition were more accurate than participants in the own condition. Among yoked participants, recognition did not depend on age of the base participant. These results suggest that successful encoding for all participants requires the bottom-up contribution of peripheral information, regardless of the locus of control of the viewer. Although altering the pattern of eye movements did not increase recognition, the amount of sampling of the face during encoding predicted subsequent recognition accuracy for all participants. Increased sampling may confer some advantages for subsequent recognition, particularly for people who have declining memory abilities.

Face recognition is impaired when changes are made to external face features (e.g., hairstyle), even when all internal features (i.e., eyes, nose, mouth) remain the same. Eye movement monitoring was used to determine the extent to which altered hairstyles affect processing of face features, thereby shedding light on how internal and external features are stored in memory. Participants studied a series of faces, followed by a recognition test in which novel, repeated, and manipulated (altered hairstyle) faces were presented. Recognition was higher for repeated than manipulated faces. Although eye movement patterns distinguished repeated from novel faces, viewing of manipulated faces was similar to that of novel faces. Internal and external features may be stored together as one unit in memory; consequently, changing even a single feature alters processing of the other features and disrupts recognition.

BackgroundServing sizes on the Nutrition Facts table (NFt) on Canadian packaged foods have traditionally been unregulated and non-standardized. The federal government recently passed legislation to regulate the serving sizes listed on the NFt. The objective of this study was to compare the serving sizes on food product NFts to the recommendations in the 2003 Nutrition Labelling regulation (Schedule M) reference amounts, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) ranges, and Canada’s Food Guide recommendations. An additional objective was to determine if food and beverage products that report smaller serving sizes have a higher calorie density, compared to similar products with a larger serving size.MethodsData for 10,487 products were retrieved from the 2010 Food Label Information Program (FLIP) database and categorized according to Schedule M categories. Correlations between calorie density and manufacturer stated serving size were tested and the proportion of products meeting recommendations were tabulated.Results35% of products had serving sizes on the NFt that were smaller than the Schedule M reference amount and 23% exceeded the reference amount. 86% of products fell within the CFIA’s recommended serving size ranges; however, 70% were within the lower-half of the range. Several bread and juice categories exceeded CFG’s recommendations, while several dairy product categories were smaller than the recommendations. Of the 50 Schedule M sub-categories analyzed, 31 (62%) exhibited a negative correlation between serving size and calorie density.ConclusionWhile most products fell within the CFIA’s recommended serving size ranges, there was a tendency for products with a higher calorie density to list smaller serving sizes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4362-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Collaboration between the Haitian government and NGOs after the 2010 earthquake contributed to a more accurate and complete master health facility list, which helped coordinate emergency response operations as well as strengthen the routine health information system. Open data and social networks facilitated the collection and sharing of health facility information and in maintenance of the list over time.

The processing of emotional as compared to neutral information is associated with different patterns in eye movement and neural activity. However, the ‘emotionality’ of a stimulus can be conveyed not only by its physical properties, but also by the information that is presented with it. There is very limited work examining the how emotional information may influence the immediate perceptual processing of otherwise neutral information. We examined how presenting an emotion label for a neutral face may influence subsequent processing by using eye movement monitoring (EMM) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) simultaneously. Participants viewed a series of faces with neutral expressions. Each face was followed by a unique negative or neutral sentence to describe that person, and then the same face was presented in isolation again. Viewing of faces paired with a negative sentence was associated with increased early viewing of the eye region and increased neural activity between 600 and 1200 ms in emotion processing regions such as the cingulate, medial prefrontal cortex, and amygdala, as well as posterior regions such as the precuneus and occipital cortex. Viewing of faces paired with a neutral sentence was associated with increased activity in the parahippocampal gyrus during the same time window. By monitoring behavior and neural activity within the same paradigm, these findings demonstrate that emotional information alters subsequent visual scanning and the neural systems that are presumably invoked to maintain a representation of the neutral information along with its emotional details.