In this paper we advocate a new initial allocation mechanism for a tradable pollution permit market. We outline a Permit Allocation Contest (PAC) that distributes permits to firms based on their rank relative to other firms. This ranking is achieved by ordering firms based on an observable ‘external action’ where the external action is an activity or characteristic of the firm that is independe...

Human infants, like immature members of any species, must be highly selective in sampling information from their environment to learn efficiently. Failure to be selective would waste precious computational resources on material that is already known (too simple) or unknowable (too complex). In two experiments with 7- and 8-month-olds, we measure infants' visual attention to sequences of events ...

We study classification problems where features are corrupted by noise and where the magnitude of the noise in each feature is influenced by the resources allocated to its acquisition. This is the case, for example, when multiple sensors share a common resource (power, bandwidth, attention, etc.). We develop a method for computing the optimal resource allocation for a variety of scenarios and d...

The gaze of a fearful face should be a particularly effective cue to attention; it allows one to rapidly allocate attention to potential threats. Prior data from investigations of this issue have been mixed. We report a novel method in which the gazes of two faces simultaneously cued different directions. Across trials, the emotion expressed by each face varied between happy, neutral, and fearf...

Teaching a new concept with gestures – hand movements that accompany speech – facilitates learning above-and-beyond instruction through speech alone (e.g., Singer & GoldinMeadow, 2005). However, the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are still being explored. Here, we use eye tracking to explore one mechanism – gesture’s ability to direct visual attention. We examine how children allocate th...

Characteristics of perception and cognition in our daily lives can be elucidated through studying misdirection, a technique used by magicians to manipulate attention. Recent findings on the effects of social misdirection induced by joint attention have been disputed, and differences between deceived (failed to detect the magic trick) and undeceived (detected the magic trick) groups remain uncle...

Spatially selective attention allows for the preferential processing of relevant stimuli when more information than can be processed in detail is presented simultaneously at distinct locations. Temporally selective attention may serve a similar function during speech perception by allowing listeners to allocate attentional resources to time windows that contain highly relevant acoustic informat...

Maintaining focused attention in the classroom is considered an important factor for successful learning. Loss of instructional time due to off-task behavior is recognized as a significant challenge by both researchers and practitioners. However, there has been little research into the factors contributing to off-task behavior. This paper reports results from the first large-scale study investi...