Successful human social interactions frequently rely on appropriate interpersonal empathy and eye contact. Here, we report a previously unseen relationship between trait empathy and eye-gaze patterns to affective facial features in video-based stimuli. Fifty-nine healthy adult participants had their eyes tracked while watching a three-minute long "sad" and "emotionally neutral" video. The video stimuli portrayed the head and shoulders of the same actor recounting a fictional personal event. Analyses revealed that the greater participants' trait emotional empathy, the more they fixated on the eye-region of the actor, regardless of the emotional valence of the video stimuli. Our findings provide the first empirical evidence of a relationship between empathic capacity and eye-gaze pattern to the most affective facial region (eyes).

In the past 20 years, research on social cognitive function has grown exponentially, reflecting an increased recognition that social cognitive skills are critical for communicative discourse, and in turn mental health and well-being. Accordingly, a large number of measures are now available to quantify social cognitive function. This review shows that many of these measures have good psychometric properties, and appear to have at least moderate sensitivity. However, the review also highlights the importance of using appropriate control tasks to assess the specificity of any observed social cognitive failures, as well as the need for the continued development of measures with greater ecological validity.

The AASHTO specifications pertaining to bridge design for barge collision loads use a static impact force determination procedure. Incorporated within that static procedure is a force–deformation relationship that represents barge bow stiffness. Recently developed dynamic vessel collision analysis techniques, which include mass-related components of bridge response, also require the use of a force–deformation relationship (or crush curve) to model barge bow stiffness. Whether static or dynamic analysis techniques are used, the vessel crush curve largely governs impact forces and, therefore, plays a critical role in quantifying structural response to impact loads. The basis for the AASHTO crush curve is reviewed, and new crush curves are proposed on the basis of finite element crush simulations of multiple high-resolution barge bow models. The barge models developed for this study are based strictly on structural vessel plans obtained from U.S. barge manufacturers and consist of the two most common types of barges traversing U.S. inland waterways (hopper and tanker). Recommended crush curves are then proposed for use in barge–bridge collision analysis and design.

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