Atypical scan paths on emotional faces and reduced eye contact represent a prominent feature of autism symptomatology, yet the reason for these abnormalities remains a puzzle. Do individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) fail to orient toward the eyes or do they actively avoid direct eye contact? Here, we used a new task to investigate reflexive eye movements on fearful, happy, and neut...

We report a series of studies on the role of eye contact in video-mediated communication. These are part of an ongoing research program, which is investigating the usefulness of the technological mediated collaborative problem solving for distance learning. Technological mediation consists of access to shared simulations and access to a variety of means of communication. The means of communicat...

Nocardia farcinica is one of the more recently identified species of the Nocardia genus. Nocardia farcinica keratitis is a rare occurrence, with only eight previously reported cases. Semi-permeable rigid contact lens use was associated with one of these reported cases. We report the first case of an extended wear soft contact lens-related Nocardia farcinica keratitis and recommend a new treatme...

Sixty-seven psychology faculty, graduates and undergraduates, were presented a silent videotape film of 5 depressed and 5 nondepressed psychiatric patients and were asked to identify which patients appeared depressed on the basis of nonverbal cues alone. Ratings of frequency and duration of eye contact were made by 2 raters independent of the investigator. Results showed depressed patients main...

PURPOSE To report a case of severe bilateral deep stromal neovascularization and opacification associated with unmonitored contact lens wear. DESIGN Observational case report. METHODS A 46-year-old woman who had been using hydrogel contact lenses bought on the Internet without a prescription for 5 years was found to have dense, bilateral corneal opacities with deep stromal neovascularizatio...

We hereby present a study whose aim is to evaluate the efficiency and flexibility of virtual reality as a therapeutic tool in the confines of a social phobia behavioural therapeutic program. Our research protocol, accepted by the ethical commission of the cantonal hospices’ psychiatry service, is identical in content and structure for each patient. This study’s second goal is to use the confine...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between the self-reported symptoms and objective signs of dry eye disease in long-term rigid gas-permeable (RGP) or soft contact lens (SCL) wearers. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The study included 84 eyes of Caucasian RGP and SCL wearers between the age of 15 and 71 who wore contact lenses on a continuous daily basis for more than 1 year...

We consider the technical possibility of an adaptive contact lens and an adaptive eye lens implant based on the modal liquid crystal wavefront corrector, aimed to correct the accommodation loss and higher-order aberrations of the human eye. Our first demonstrator with 5 mm optical aperture is capable of changing the focusing power in the range of 0 to +3 diopters and can be controlled via a wir...

In this paper we present a sensor, which is designed for application in a tonometer, an instrument for the measurement of intraocular pressure. The sensor measures diameter and position of a part of the eye globe that is flattened by the tonometer. The sensor principle is based on a change in resistance of four resistor arrays due to contact with a metallized foil, which flattens a part of the ...

This paper provides evidence for theories of grounding and dialogue management in human conversation. For each utterance in a corpus of task-oriented dialogues, we calculated integration costs, which are based on syntactic sentence complexity. We compared the integration costs and grounding behavior under two conditions, namely face-to-face and a no-eye-contact condition. The results show that ...