Time-restricted eating improves health because of energy deficit and circadian rhythm: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Time-restricted eating (TRE) is an effective way to lose weight and improve metabolic health in animals. Yet whether and how these benefits apply to humans is unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the effect of TRE in people with overweight and obesity statuses. The results showed that TRE led to modest weight loss, lower waist circumference and energy deficits. TRE also improved body mass index, fat mass, lean body mass, systolic blood pressure, fasting glucose levels, fasting insulin levels, and HbA1c%. Subgroup analysis demonstrated more health improvements in the TRE group than the control group under the ad libitum intake condition than in the energy-prescribed condition. Eating time-of-day advantages were only seen when there was considerable energy reduction in the TRE group than the control group (ad libitum condition), implying that the benefits of TRE were primarily due to energy deficit, followed by alignment with eating time of day.

Use of minimal working memory in visual comparison: An eye-tracking study.

In this study, we used a novel application of the previous paradigm provided by Pomplun to examine the eye movement strategies of using minimal working memory in visual comparison. This paradigm includes two tasks: one is a free comparison and the other is a single sequential comparison. In the free comparison, participants can freely view two horizontally presented stimuli until they judge whether the two stimuli are the same or not. In the single sequential comparison, participants can only view the left-side stimuli one time, and when their eyes cross the invisible boundary at the center of the screen, the left-side stimuli disappear and the right-side stimuli appear. Participants need to judge whether the right-side stimuli are the same as the disappeared left-side stimuli. Eye movement data showed significant differences between the single sequential comparison and free comparison tasks that suggests the use of minimal working memory in free comparison. Moreover, when the number of items was more than three, an average of 2.87 items would be processed in each view sequence. Participants also used the alternating left-right reference strategy that made the shortest scan path with the use of minimal working memory. The typical eye movement strategy in visual comparison and its theoretical significance were discussed.

Pedestrians' road-crossing behavior towards eHMI-equipped autonomous vehicles driving in segregated and mixed traffic conditions.

Pedestrians' road-crossing behavior can be influenced by eHMIs (external Human-Machine Interfaces) on autonomous vehicles (AVs). In this research, we developed a novel eHMI concept that aimed to support pedestrians' risk evaluation by displaying predicted real-time risk levels. In a virtual reality environment, we measured pedestrians' road-crossing behavior when they encountered AVs with this eHMI and manual-driven vehicles (MVs) in the same lane. Results showed that pedestrians exhibited typical crossing behaviors based on gap size for both vehicle types. In segregated traffic conditions, compared to MVs, eHMI-equipped AVs made pedestrians more sensitive to the changes in gap size by rejecting more small gaps and accepting more large gaps. Pedestrians also walked faster and kept larger safety margins for smaller gaps. Similar results were observed for AVs in mixed traffic conditions. However, in mixed traffic conditions, pedestrians faced more challenges when interacting with MVs as they tended to accept smaller gaps, walk more slowly, and maintain smaller safety margins. These findings indicate that dynamic risk information could be conducive to pedestrians' road-crossing behavior, but the use of eHMIs on AVs might disrupt pedestrians' interactions with MVs in complex traffic conditions. This potential risk shift among vehicles also poses the question of whether AVs should use segregated lanes to reduce their indirect impacts on pedestrian-MV interactions.

Food word processing in Chinese reading: A study of restrained eaters.

Food-related attentional bias refers that individuals typically prioritize rewarding food-related cues (e.g. food words and food images) compared with non-food stimuli; however, the findings are inconsistent for restrained eaters. Traditional paradigms used to test food-related attentional bias, such as visual probe tasks and visual search tasks, may not directly and accurately enough to reflect individuals' food-word processing at different cognitive stages. In this study, we introduced the boundary paradigm to investigate food-word attentional bias for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. Eye movements were recorded when they performed a naturalistic sentence-reading task. The results of later-stage analyses showed that food words were fixated on for less time than non-food words, which indicated a superiority of foveal food-word processing for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. The results of early-stage analyses showed that restrained eaters spent more time on pre-target regions in the food-word valid preview conditions, which indicated a parafoveal food-word processing superiority for restrained eaters (i.e. the parafoveal-on-foveal effect). The superiority of foveal food-word processing provides new insights into explaining food-related attentional bias in general groups. Additionally, the enhanced food-word attentional bias in parafoveal processing for restrained eaters illustrates the importance of individual characteristics in studying word recognition.

Advantages of graphical nutrition facts label: faster attention capture and improved healthiness judgement.

Consumers have to rely on the traditional back-of-package nutrition facts label (NFL) to obtain nutrition information in many countries. However, traditional NFLs have been criticised for their poor visualisation and low efficiency. This study redesigned back-of-package NFLs integrated with bar graphs (black or coloured) to visually indicate nutrient reference values (NRVs). Two eye movement studies were performed to evaluate the ergonomic advantages of the graphical NFLs. Our findings suggested that the newly designed NFLs led to faster and better healthiness evaluation performance. The newly designed graphical labels led to a shorter time to first fixation duration and offered a higher percentage of fixation time in the nutrient reference values region compared with that observed using traditional text labels. Nowadays, many chronic diseases are associated with poor eating habits, therefore, the importance of visualisation design to nudge healthier food choices could be paid more attention to by policymakers and food manufacturers.Practitioner summary: To improve the ergonomic design of traditional nutrition facts panel (NFL), this study assessed a newly designed graphical NFL. The results showed that graphical NFL captured consumers' attention faster and improved their healthiness judgement. Moreover, a brief nutrition education can improve consumers' attention and understanding of nutrition information.

Dynamic attentional bias for pictorial and textual food cues in the visual search paradigm.

Previous studies have found that individuals have an attentional bias for food cues, which may be related to the energy level or the type of stimulus (e.g., pictorial or textual food cues) of the food cues. However, the available evidence is inconsistent, and there is no consensus about how the type of stimulus and food energy modulate food-related attentional bias. Searching for food is one of the most important daily behaviors. In this study, a modified visual search paradigm was used to explore the attentional bias for food cues, and eye movements were recorded. Food cues consisted of both food words and food pictures with different energy levels (i.e., high- and low-calorie foods). The results showed that there was an attentional avoidance in the early stage but a later-stage attentional approach for all food cues in the pictorial condition. This was especially true for high-calorie food pictures. Participants showed a later-stage conflicting attentional bias for foods with different energy levels in the textual condition. They showed an attentional approach to high-calorie food words but an attentional avoidance of low-calorie food words. These data show that food-related attentional bias varied along with different time courses, which was also modulated by the type of stimulus and food energy. These findings regarding dynamic attentional bias could be explained using the Goal Conflict Model of eating behavior.

Development and Validity of a General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire (GNKQ) for Chinese Adults.

Nutrition knowledge refers to understanding concepts and processes related to nutrition and health, proven to be an essential determinant of healthy eating. However, partially due to the lack of nutrition knowledge and unhealthy eating patterns, more and more Chinese people face overweight, obesity, and a high risk of suffering from various chronic diseases. This study aimed to develop a general nutritional knowledge questionnaire (GNKQ) in a Chinese context to diagnose and improve nutrition knowledge education for Chinese people. The newly adapted questionnaire was based on the Turkey version of GNKQ, and absorbed dietary recommendations in a Chinese context. It was first validated by four nutrition experts, then tested by eleven volunteers (one public nutritionist, one preventive medicine graduate student, and nine psychology graduate students). Finally, the questionnaire was tested by 278 participants, including 175 adults, to determine internal consistency, content validity, and convergent validity. Moreover, the construct validity was evaluated by comparing the differences between 50 students in nutrition-related majors and 53 students in nutrition-unrelated majors. The final Chinese version of GNKQ kept 32 questions with 68 items after deleting some questions based on item difficulty and discrimination. The data showed that the overall internal consistency coefficient was 0.885, and the test-retest reliability was 0.769, p < 0.001. Students majoring in nutrition had larger scores than in nutrition-unrelated majors. The convergent validity for each demographic variable was consistent with previous studies, such as larger nutrition knowledge scores for females and those with a higher education. Therefore, the revised Chinese version of GNKQ showed good reliability and validity, indicating that it could be an effective tool to assess the nutrition knowledge of Chinese adults.

Nutrition label processing in the past 10 years: Contributions from eye tracking approach.

Healthy eating plays a critical role in preventing diet-related chronic diseases. To promote healthy eating, nutrition labels have been mandated to certain foods in many countries. To test how different designs of nutrition labels affect consumer behavior, eye tracking technique has been increasingly used to overcome the limitations of subjective report which are susceptible to different biases and a poor indicator of nutrition label use in reality. In this review, we reviewed 45 eye-tracking studies on nutrition label processing. Besides a summary of eye tracking methodology, we found three emerged topics from these studies: attention capture, nutrition label comprehension and food choice. Overall, updated designs of nutrition labels improve attention capture and nutrition label comprehension, but it does not necessarily lead to healthier food choices. The discrepancy between attention capture and food choice also indicate potential limitation in promoting healthy food choice via the indirect attention route (exposure - attention - nutrition label processing - food choice). Instead, actual food choice may be a consequence of a direct heuristic route and modulated by person-, product- and context-related factors. These findings can not only guide future studies, but also have implications on making nutrition label policy and improving human health in eastern developing countries.

Transparent Windows on Food Packaging Do Not Always Capture Attention and Increase Purchase Intention.

Transparent windows on food packaging can effectively highlight the actual food inside. The present study examined whether food packaging with transparent windows (relative to packaging with food- and non-food graphic windows in the same position and of the same size) has more advantages in capturing consumer attention and determining consumers' willingness to purchase. In this study, college students were asked to evaluate prepackaged foods presented on a computer screen, and their eye movements were recorded. The results showed salience effects for both packaging with transparent and food-graphic windows, which were also regulated by food category. Both transparent and graphic packaging gained more viewing time than the non-food graphic baseline condition for all the three selected products (i.e., nuts, preserved fruits, and instant cereals). However, no significant difference was found between transparent and graphic window conditions. For preserved fruits, time to first fixations was shorter in transparent packaging than other conditions. For nuts, the willingness to purchase was higher in both transparent and graphic conditions than the baseline condition, while the packaging attractiveness played a key role in mediating consumers' willingness to purchase. The implications for stakeholders and future research directions are discussed.

Pedestrian estimation of their crossing time on multi-lane roads.

Estimation of one's own crossing time is an important process in making road-crossing decisions. This study evaluated the pedestrian's (esp. the elderly) ability to estimate crossing time in a field experiment. The estimated crossing time was measured by an interval production method (participants produced an interval to represent their estimated crossing time) and an imagined crossing method. The results showed that while young pedestrians generally had an accurate estimation of their crossing time, old pedestrians consistently underestimated the crossing time in both methods, especially at a wider road. What's worse, even fast walking cannot compensate for the large underestimation. Further analysis showed that although old pedestrians had the declined motor imagery ability and the worse general timing accuracy, none of them can account for the inaccuracy of estimation. These findings suggest that underestimation of crossing time may be one of the important reasons for the acknowledged risky road crossing decision-making in old pedestrians. It also calls for studies on assistive roadway designs and intervention programs targeting old pedestrians.

Do visual word segmentation cues improve reading performance in Chinese reading？.

It is controversial whether providing visual word segmentation cues can improve Chinese reading performance. This study investigated this topic by examining how visual word segmentation cues such as grey highlighting, red colour and interword spacing influence global sentence reading and local word recognition during reading Chinese text in three experiments. The results showed that interword spacing could facilitate local word recognition but could not increase reading speed. In contrast, grey highlighting and red colour could improve neither local word recognition nor global sentence reading performance. Instead, these cues increased the number of fixations and saccades, resulting in slower reading speed. These results suggest that even red colour is not a practically visual cue for Chinese word segmentation and the corresponding mechanisms were discussed. Practitioner Summary: We studied how visual cues such as grey highlighting, red colour and interword spacing influenced Chinese reading performance. Our data showed that even the red colour was not an efficient cue for Chinese word segmentation. The corresponding mechanisms and future direction were discussed regarding how to improve Chinese reading performance.

Shorten pedestrians' perceived waiting time: The effect of tempo and pitch in audible pedestrian signals at red phase.

Long waiting time at red light leads to negative experiences and red-light running behaviors. To shorten pedestrians' experienced waiting time, this study explores how the tempo and pitch in audible pedestrian signals influence time estimation. In a simulated task of waiting at the red light, we compared pedestrians' estimation of waiting time for three durations (30 s, 45 s, 60 s) while the tempo (40 bpm, 60 bpm, 120 bpm, bpm as the number of beats per minute) and pitch (175 Hz, 350 Hz, 700 Hz) of the tone were manipulated. The results show that pedestrians' estimations of waiting time decreased with decreasing tempo in the audible signal, but did not differ significantly across different pitches. To verify the effect of tempo on time estimation in real crossing scenario, we interviewed 217 pedestrians randomly selected at six sites on their waiting time at different tempos. The tempo can still predict pedestrians' time estimation. The findings have implications for auditory signal design of traffic lights.

Display of required crossing speed improves pedestrian judgment of crossing possibility at clearance phase.

At crosswalks with countdown timers, pedestrians arriving at the clearance phase tend to start crossing when the remaining time is too short. It is unclear whether this phenomenon is due to errors in judging the possibility to finish crossing before signal lights turning red. This study evaluated and compared pedestrians' accuracy in judgment of crossing possibility based on two cues: the amount of remaining time, and the minimum required speed to finish crossing within clearance phase (road width / remaining time). The results showed that pedestrians overestimated crossing possibility when they made judgments based on remaining time, especially when the road was narrow. By contrast, the display of required speed resulted in higher overall accuracy and lower false alarm rate, due to higher sensitivity to different crossing possibilities and more conservative set of response criterion. This advantage is consistent across different road widths. These findings suggest that pedestrians' risky decisions based on the countdown timers are partly induced by overestimation of crossing possibilities. The advantages of required-speed display over traditional countdown timers indicate a strong possibility to improve pedestrian judgments by information design.

Cross or wait? Pedestrian decision making during clearance phase at signalized intersections.

Pedestrians arriving at clearance phase (Flashing Don't Walk) face different levels of risk depending on behavioral choice afterwards. However, few studies have focused on the choices pedestrians make during this phase. This field study analyzed pedestrian choices after arrival, evaluated safety of the choices, and built a model to identify the predictors of pedestrian choices. It was found that pedestrians arriving during clearance phase made dynamic decisions based on the changing contexts. Specifically, the majority made the decision to "cross" as opposed to "wait" (85.2% vs. 14.8% respectively), although only the latter choice is legal. Seventy-nine percent of the pedestrians did not finish crossing the intersection before the traffic light turned red, and they walked 41% of the road width during a red light. For those waited, roughly half of them waited until green or crossed at an intersecting crosswalk, while others finally started on red light. Nevertheless, the waited pedestrians still faced lower risk than those crossed prematurely in terms of running behaviors, and conflicts with vehicles. Pedestrians are more likely to cross immediately after arrival when they are younger, are not engaged in secondary tasks, arrived at a position farther from approaching vehicles at the near side of the road, or arrived at a time when there are more pedestrians crossing the road. Although fewer pedestrians choose to cross when the required speed is higher (due to a wider road or less remaining time), the required speed they choose to cross at is far higher than their actual speed. These findings are essential for realistic pedestrian simulations and targeted safety countermeasures. They also imply the need for changes to certain traffic regulations and signal design to facilitate safe decision making at clearance phase.

Pedestrian gestures increase driver yielding at uncontrolled mid-block road crossings.

To protect pedestrians, many countries give them priority at uncontrolled mid-block crosswalks or pedestrian crossings. However, the actual driver yielding rate is not always satisfactory (only 3.5% in this study). To increase the yielding rate, this study proposed eleven pedestrian gestures to inform drivers of their intent to cross. The gestures were evaluated based on the process of human interaction with environment. Four gestures were selected as candidates to test in field experiments based on scores for visibility, clarity, familiarity and courtesy (see illustration in Fig. 2): (1) right elbow bent with hands erect and palm facing left (R-bent-erect), (2) left elbow bent with hands level and palm facing left (L-bent-level), (3) left arm extended straight to left side with palm erect facing left (L-straight-erect), and (4) a 'T' gesture for "Time-out". In the experiment, confederate pedestrians waiting at the roadside displayed the gestures (baseline: no gesture) to 420 vehicles at 5 sites in Beijing, China. When pedestrians used the L-bent-level gesture, the vehicle yielding rate more than tripled of that in the baseline condition. The L-bent-level gesture also resulted in a significant decrease in driving with unchanged speed (63.5-38.8%) and had no significant side effects in terms of drivers' horn use or lane changing. The effects of such gestures in other contexts such as when pedestrians are in the crosswalk and when they are interacting with turning vehicles are discussed, together with the applications in training vulnerable pedestrian groups (children or elderly) and facilitating pedestrian detection by drivers.

Pedestrians' crossing behaviors and safety at unmarked roadway in China.

Pedestrians' crossing out of crosswalks (unmarked roadway) contributed to many traffic accidents, but existing pedestrian studies mainly focus on crosswalk crossing in developed countries specifically. Field observation of 254 pedestrians at unmarked roadway in China showed that 65.7% of them did not look for vehicles after arriving at the curb. Those who did look and pay attention to the traffic did so for duration of time that followed an exponential distribution. Pedestrians preferred crossing actively in tentative ways rather than waiting passively. The waiting time at the curb, at the median, and at the roadway all followed exponential distributions. During crossing, all pedestrians looked at the oncoming vehicles. When interacting with these vehicles, 31.9% of them ran and 11.4% stepped backwards. Running pedestrians usually began running at the borderline rather than within the lanes. Pedestrians preferred safe to short paths and they crossed second half of the road with significantly higher speed. These behavioral patterns were rechecked at an additional site with 105 pedestrians and the results showed much accordance. In terms of safety, pedestrians who were middle aged, involved in bigger groups, looked at vehicles more often before crossing or interacted with buses rather than cars were safer while those running were more dangerous. Potential applications of these findings, including building accurate simulation models of pedestrians and education of drivers and pedestrians in developing countries were also discussed.