Correct Guesses Research Articles

Guess What? The Asker–Guesser Discrepancy in Desire for the Right Guess

The practice of initiating conversations with “guess what” questions is common across various social settings. This study examines whether askers and guessers share similar desires for correct guesses during these interactions, a question previously unexplored in behavioral sciences. Across five studies, our research uncovered a significant discrepancy: Askers generally exhibited a lower desire for correct guesses compared to guessers. This pattern holds true across diverse social contexts. Moreover, the results of guesses impact the outcomes of conversations, with askers experiencing more enjoyment and being more willing to continue the conversation when guesses are incorrect, whereas guessers have the opposite experience. Further, while individuals may recognize this disparity, adopting a perspective-taking approach does not alter the guesser's desire to guess correctly; however, guessers do decrease that desire when reminded to protect the asker's emotions.

Guess what? Only correct choices forge immediate stimulus–response bindings in guessing scenarios

A central mechanism of human action control is the prompt binding between actions and the stimuli provoking them. Perceiving the same stimuli again retrieves any bound responses, facilitating their execution. An open question is whether such binding and retrieval only emerges when stimulus–response rules are known upon taking action or also when agents are forced to guess and receive feedback about whether they were successful or not afterward. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that knowing rules before responding would boost binding between stimuli and responses during action-taking relative to guessing situations. Second, we assessed whether the content of the feedback matters for binding in that agents might use feedback to build correct stimulus–response bindings even for wrong guesses. We used a sequential prime-probe design to induce stimulus–response binding for prime responses that were either rule-based or guesses, and to measure retrieval of these bindings in response times and errors in the probe. Results indicate that binding and retrieval emerge for successful but not for wrong guesses. Binding effects for correct guesses were consistently small in effect size, suggesting that pre-established stimulus–response bindings from instructed rules might indeed boost binding when taking action.

Understanding an impact of patient enrollment pattern on predictability of central (unstratified) randomization in a multi-center clinical trial.

In a multi-center randomized controlled trial (RCT) with competitive recruitment, eligible patients are enrolled sequentially by different study centers and are randomized to treatment groups using the chosen randomization method. Given the stochastic nature of the recruitment process, some centers may enroll more patients than others, and in some instances, a center may enroll multiple patients in a row, for example, on a given day. If the study is open-label, the investigators might be able to make intelligent guesses on upcoming treatment assignments in the randomization sequence, even if the trial is centrally randomized and not stratified by center. In this paper, we use enrollment data inspired by a real multi-center RCT to quantify the susceptibility of two restricted randomization procedures, the permuted block design and the big stick design, to selection bias under the convergence strategy of Blackwell and Hodges (1957) applied at the center level. We provide simulation evidence that the expected proportion of correct guesses may be greater than 50% (i.e., an increased risk of selection bias) and depends on the chosen randomization method and the number of study patients recruited by a given center that takes consecutive positions on the central allocation schedule. We propose some strategies for ensuring stronger encryption of the randomization sequence to mitigate the risk of selection bias.

Selecting a randomization method for a multi-center clinical trial with stochastic recruitment considerations

BackgroundThe design of a multi-center randomized controlled trial (RCT) involves multiple considerations, such as the choice of the sample size, the number of centers and their geographic location, the strategy for recruitment of study participants, amongst others. There are plenty of methods to sequentially randomize patients in a multi-center RCT, with or without considering stratification factors. The goal of this paper is to perform a systematic assessment of such randomization methods for a multi-center 1:1 RCT assuming a competitive policy for the patient recruitment process.MethodsWe considered a Poisson-gamma model for the patient recruitment process with a uniform distribution of center activation times. We investigated 16 randomization methods (4 unstratified, 4 region-stratified, 4 center-stratified, 3 dynamic balancing randomization (DBR), and a complete randomization design) to sequentially randomize n=500\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$n=500$$\\end{document} patients. Statistical properties of the recruitment process and the randomization procedures were assessed using Monte Carlo simulations. The operating characteristics included time to complete recruitment, number of centers that recruited a given number of patients, several measures of treatment imbalance and estimation efficiency under a linear model for the response, the expected proportions of correct guesses under two different guessing strategies, and the expected proportion of deterministic assignments in the allocation sequence.ResultsMaximum tolerated imbalance (MTI) randomization methods such as big stick design, Ehrenfest urn design, and block urn design result in a better balance–randomness tradeoff than the conventional permuted block design (PBD) with or without stratification. Unstratified randomization, region-stratified randomization, and center-stratified randomization provide control of imbalance at a chosen level (trial, region, or center) but may fail to achieve balance at the other two levels. By contrast, DBR does a very good job controlling imbalance at all 3 levels while maintaining the randomized nature of treatment allocation. Adding more centers into the study helps accelerate the recruitment process but at the expense of increasing the number of centers that recruit very few (or no) patients—which may increase center-level imbalances for center-stratified and DBR procedures. Increasing the block size or the MTI threshold(s) may help obtain designs with improved randomness–balance tradeoff.ConclusionsThe choice of a randomization method is an important component of planning a multi-center RCT. Dynamic balancing randomization with carefully chosen MTI thresholds could be a very good strategy for trials with the competitive policy for patient recruitment.

On card guessing with two types of cards

We consider a card guessing strategy for a stack of cards with two different types of cards, say m1 cards of type red (heart or diamond) and m2 cards of type black (clubs or spades). Given a deck of M=m1+m2 cards, we propose a refined counting of the number of correct colour guesses, when the guesser is provided with complete information, in other words, when the numbers m1 and m2 and the colour of each drawn card are known. We decompose the correct guessed cards into three different types by taking into account the probability of making a correct guess, and provide joint distributional results for the underlying random variables as well as joint limit laws.

The second-order football-pool problem and the optimal rate of generalized-covering codes

The goal of the classic football-pool problem is to determine how many lottery tickets are to be bought in order to guarantee at least n−r correct guesses out of a sequence of n games played. We study a generalized (second-order) version of this problem, in which any of these n games consists of two sub-games. The second-order version of the football-pool problem is formulated using the notion of generalized-covering radius, recently proposed as a fundamental property of linear codes. We consider an extension of this property to general (not necessarily linear) codes, and provide an asymptotic solution to our problem by finding the optimal rate function of second-order covering codes given a fixed normalized covering radius. We also prove that the fraction of second-order covering codes among codes of sufficiently large rate tends to 1 as the code length tends to ∞.

You read my mind: Generating and minimizing intention uncertainty under different social contexts in a two-player online game.

We investigate an ecologically pertinent form of social uncertainty regarding the ability to read another's intentions. We use classic measures (response time, accuracy) and dynamic measures (mouse trajectories) to investigate how people generate or minimize uncertainty regarding their own intentions under different social contexts, and how uncertainty regarding other's intentions affects decision making. Ninety-six participants (N = 48 dyads) completed a two-player online card game, where the goal was to collect cards with a certain feature (e.g., triangles), with participant cursor movements projected to both players. Participants played six games, three cooperatively and three competitively (Social Decision Context). Points were awarded for two decisions: collecting a card matching one's goal (ability to achieve personal goal) and correctly guessing the other player's goal (ability to guess intention). Data revealed: (a) Card scores did not vary with Social Decision Context, (b) Guess scores did vary with Social Decision Context, with more correct guesses when cooperating compared to competing, and (c) Mouse trajectories (durations and mouse distance traveled) decreased when cooperating compared to competing. These results indicate that better guessing during cooperative play is not due to explicit communication (i.e., circling desired cards), but may be due to increased speed and confidence when making decisions in a cooperative context. Additionally, participants could be actively hiding their intention in a competitive context. Thus, social uncertainty when reading another's intentions is both adaptive-affected by the prescribed social context, and automatic-indirectly inferred from the way another moves their mouse when acting with intention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Iconicity Perception under the Lens of Iconicity Rating and Transparency Tasks in Israeli Sign Language (ISL)

Abstract: This study undertook iconicity ratings and conducted transparency experiments on Israeli Sign Language (ISL). Experiment 1 compared the iconicity ratings of 520 lexical signs of ten Deaf ISL signers and thirteen hearing nonsigners. Ratings were found to be affected by language knowledge, lexical class, and type of iconic mapping, as well as by factors less connected to iconicity, such as a sense of familiarity with a form. In experiment 2, twenty nonsigners guessed the meaning of the 520 signs, and the correct guesses were correlated with the iconicity scores. Overall, nonsigners tended to interpret signs as representing actions. The results demonstrated that (1) signers' ratings reflect the diverse semiotic ways that meanings are represented in the lexicon, predictably more so than nonsigners' ratings, and (2) when meanings are not provided, the perception of iconicity is attuned mostly to the movement aspect of the forms. It is recommended that both studies be conducted together in order to achieve a more nuanced picture concerning the perception of iconicity and its role in the lexicon.

Preschoolers selectively trust and selectively share with others based on their past accuracy and intentions

This study investigated whether preschool-age children consider both an individual’s past accuracy and intentions when deciding whether to trust and share with that individual. The participants, 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 168), played a searching game with partners who varied in both accuracy (accurate or inaccurate) and intentions (prosocial or antisocial). Children received advice from partners about where to look for a hidden object, earning prizes for correct guesses. Then they were given an opportunity to share their prizes with their partner. Results indicated that children trusted sources who provided accurate advice (regardless of intentions) and shared with sources who provided accurate advice or demonstrated prosocial intentions. These findings suggest that children attend to both an individual’s accuracy and intentions when deciding how to interact with social partners and may weigh this information differently to make different social decisions.

The card guessing game: A generating function approach

Consider a card guessing game with complete feedback in which a deck of n cards ordered 1,…,n is riffle-shuffled once. With the goal to maximize the number of correct guesses, a player guesses cards from the top of the deck one at a time under the optimal strategy until no cards remain. We provide an expression for the expected number of correct guesses with arbitrary number of terms, an accuracy improvement over the results of Liu (2021). In addition, using generating functions, we give a unified framework for systematically calculating higher-order moments. Although the extension of the framework to k≥2 shuffles is not immediately straightforward, we are able to settle a long-standing McGrath's conjectured optimal strategy described in Bayer and Diaconis (1992) by showing that the optimal guessing strategy for k=1 riffle shuffle does not necessarily apply to k≥2 shuffles.

The impact of cognate strategy training on guessing accuracy for unknown visually-presented words: The case of Japanese learners of English

When inferring the meaning of unknown words in a second language, learners make use of a variety of cues including the cross-linguistic formal similarities of loanwords and cognates. However, because learners do not always recognize these cross-linguistic relationships, cognate strategy training has been recommended. The present study investigated the impact of cognate strategy training on Japanese speakers’ accuracy when guessing the meaning of unknown English words. The findings revealed that participants were significantly more accurate in responding to cognates after training than prior to it, while responses to noncognates were similar in both rounds. Moreover, participants were more accurate in identifying cognates with common grapheme–phoneme correspondences in English (e.g. fleece) after training than those that had less-common correspondences (e.g. gauge). Considering error rates, the benefit-cost ratio of applying the strategy was four correct guesses to one incorrect guess. Together with insights from a small-scale qualitative follow-up study, the results reveal that both phonological decoding of English words and conversion into katakana script in Japanese contribute to difficulties in noticing cognate relationships. The primary implication of the study is that cognate strategy training may contribute positively to language teaching pedagogy in Japan and other contexts.

Closing the Gaps in Cloze Letters to Editor: A Verbal Protocol Study

Originally, cloze procedure was introduced by Taylor (1953) in order to assess reading comprehension in the first language. The usefulness of close procedure has often been asserted as it is considered easy to administer and evaluate (Sadeghi, 2021) L1 and L2 reading comprehension. The present study was conducted to find out the impact of cloze instruction on the success in guessing abilities of L2 learners. The impact of function words and content words on the correct guesses of the deleted words was also explored. The theoretical framework given by Bengleil and Paribakht (2004) was adopted with some modifications. The study employed the texts of letters published in newspaper Pakistan Observer. Both control and experimental groups were asked to think aloud their thoughts processes during their hunt for the missing words. The instructional model CALLA___ presented by Chamot and O’ Malley (1994) _ was used. While the experimental group received cloze instruction, the control group was taught in the traditional way.The findings have revealed that after receiving instruction treatment the experimental group outperformed the control group in finding out the appropriate words for the blanks. Furthermore, the subjects of study made more successful attempts for the deleted function words than the deleted content words in the cloze texts.

Goals and guesses as reference points: a field experiment on student performance

In this paper, we study overconfidence and goal-setting in academic performance, with and without monetary incentives. Students enrolled in a microeconomics course were offered the possibility of setting their own target grade before taking part in the final exam. They were also asked to guess their grade immediately after they had taken the exam (“post-diction”). In general, students overestimated their performance, both at the goal-setting and at the post-diction stages. Controlling for several sources of this bias (cognitive abilities, academic record and self-reported academic confidence), we find that the use of monetary rewards mitigates the overestimation of potential achievements and eliminates overestimation of actual achievements through the improvement of actual performance. Our results suggest that monetary incentives do not cause subjects to put more effort into correct guesses but make them put more effort into academic performance. Using students’ academic records to measure overall skill, we find a strong Dunning–Kruger bias which is intensified in the presence of monetary rewards.

Online card games

Consider the following one player game. A deck containing m copies of n different card types is shuffled uniformly at random. Each round the player tries to guess the next card in the deck, and then the card is revealed and discarded. It was shown by Diaconis, Graham, He, and Spiro that if m is fixed, then the maximum expected number of correct guesses that the player can achieve is asymptotic to Hmlogn, where Hm is the mth harmonic number. In this paper we consider an adversarial version of this game where a second player shuffles the deck according to some (possibly non-uniform) distribution. We prove that a certain greedy strategy for the shuffler is the unique optimal strategy in this game, and that the guesser can achieve at most lognexpected correct guesses asymptotically for fixed m against this greedy strategy..

A novel blinding protocol to test participant and therapist blinding during dry needling: a randomised controlled experiment

ObjectivesDry needling is widely used in physiotherapy. Lack of blinding in clinical trials means that dry needling effects and mechanisms remain unclear, with blinding issues accepted as an unavoidable barrier to better evidence. The authors aimed to overcome this barrier by designing a protocol to double-blind dry needling trials. DesignA prospectively registered randomised experiment tested a novel blinding protocol for blinding effectiveness. SettingUniversity physiotherapy clinic. ParticipantsTherapists (n=15) and asymptomatic volunteers (‘recipients’) (n=45) were randomly allocated to real and/or sham interventions. InterventionsThe protocol involved custom-made needles and cognitive and multisensory blinding techniques. Main outcome measuresThe primary outcome was guesses about allocation. The a priori criterion for successful blinding was ≤50% correct guesses (random chance). Secondary analyses explored blinding patterns using blinding indices. ResultsCorrect guesses were not different from 50% for therapists [41% (95%CI 30 to 50), n=120 guesses] or recipients [49% (95%CI 38 to 60), n=90 guesses]. Blinding indices supported the primary result but revealed that recipients were better at detecting real dry needling than sham. ConclusionBoth therapists and recipients were successfully blinded, which contrasts with the widely held assumption that double-blinding is impossible for needling interventions. The authors recommend that any future trials can, and therefore should, blind therapists. However, secondary analyses revealed that recipients receiving real dry needling were less blinded than sham recipients, which may still create bias in clinical trials and suggests further work is needed to improve recipient blinding. Nonetheless, the current findings offer an opportunity to gain better evidence concerning the effects and mechanisms of dry needling.Study registration: https://osf.io/rkzeb/.

Evolution of conventional communication. A cross-cultural study of pantomimic re-enactments of transitive events

This study addresses the postulate of non-conventionality of pantomime, inherent in pantomimic scenarios of language origin. Since lack of semiotic conventions does not preclude micro-conventions resulting from cultural differences, pantomimes should be easier to interpret when the actor and recipient share the same culture than between two different cultures. In the study, Italian and Polish amateur “actors” re-enacted transitive events from a matrix of cartoon-like drawings. Randomly selected clips were matched by Polish and Italian participants to the corresponding drawings. We found no difference in the number of correct guesses when the actors and matchers were from the same versus from different cultures. We discuss this result in the context of the core assumptions of pantomimic scenarios of language origin.

Blinding, sham, and treatment effects in randomized controlled trials for back pain in 2000-2019: A review and meta-analytic approach.

Blinding aims to minimize biases from what participants and investigators know or believe. Randomized controlled trials, despite being the gold standard to evaluate treatment effect, do not generally assess the success of blinding. We investigated the extent of blinding in back pain trials and the associations between participant guesses and treatment effects. We did a review with PubMed/OvidMedline, 2000-2019. Eligibility criteria were back pain trials with data available on treatment effect and participants' guess of treatment. For blinding, blinding index was used as chance-corrected measure of excessive correct guess (0 for random guess). For treatment effects, within- or between-arm effect sizes were used. Analyses of investigators' guess/blinding or by treatment modality were performed exploratorily. Forty trials (3899 participants) were included. Active and sham treatment groups had mean blinding index of 0.26 (95% confidence interval: 0.12, 0.41) and 0.01 (-0.11, 0.14), respectively, meaning 26% of participants in active treatment believed they received active treatment, whereas only 1% in sham believed they received sham treatment, beyond chance, that is, random guess. A greater belief of receiving active treatment was associated with a larger within-arm effect size in both arms, and ideal blinding (namely, "random guess," and "wishful thinking" that signifies both groups believing they received active treatment) showed smaller effect sizes, with correlation of effect size and summary blinding indexes of 0.35 (p = 0.028) for between-arm comparison. We observed uniformly large sham treatment effects for all modalities, and larger correlation for investigator's (un)blinding, 0.53 (p = 0.046). Participants in active treatments in back pain trials guessed treatment identity more correctly, while those in sham treatments tended to display successful blinding. Excessive correct guesses (that could reflect weaker blinding and/or noticeable effects) by participants and investigators demonstrated larger effect sizes. Blinding and sham treatment effects on back pain need due consideration in individual trials and meta-analyses.

The effects of guessing confidence on anticipatory behaviour in context understanding

Abstract The study investigates the anticipatory behaviour in a word guessing experiment with Slovak L2 speakers of English of varying proficiency levels. The L2 speakers are trying to correctly identify the word that the interlocutor is hinting at with two consecutive cues as soon as they are confident enough to provide the answer. This created a connection between anticipation and guessing confidence. The effect of guessing confidence on the anticipatory behaviour is measured through the change in response latency of how quickly the guessers produce their guesses after listening to the cues. The aim is to study how the response latencies of the listeners are affected by their previous correct or incorrect guesses. The findings suggest that the correctness of guesses has a measurable impact on response latency.

How well do Humans Capture the Sounds of Speech in Writing?

A large body of research on connections between sensory modalities has shown that deep connections exist between sound and vision, such that people have a tendency to associate certain sounds with certain visual properties, including line-drawn shapes. While recognising the role of written language in audio-visual associations, previous research has largely considered written language a potential source of bias rather than a means of gaining deeper in sights into underlying audio-visual associations. We looked to ancient and unfamiliar writing systems spanning recorded human history, to explore whether humans have tried to encode certain characteristics of speech sounds in the letters they created to represent them. Our findings have revealed that modern humans can correctly identify unfamiliar letters at levels higher than would be obtained by chance, and that scripts which encode a particular sound with a particular set of visual characteristics tend to have more correct guesses. This suggests that humans share certain correspondences between sound and sight, which transcend both geographical space and historical time. The present multisensory demonstration aims to provide an interactive experience of the powerful connection between sounds and written letters through a series of activities integrating vision, audition, touch and imagination.

On card guessing game with one time riffle shuffle and complete feedback

This paper studies the game of guessing riffle-shuffled cards with complete feedback. A deck of n cards labeled 1 to n is riffle-shuffled once and placed on a table. A player tries to guess the cards from top and is given complete feedback after each guess. The goal is to find the guessing strategy with maximum reward (expected number of correct guesses). We give the optimal strategy for this game and prove that the maximum expected reward is n∕2+2∕π⋅n+O(1), partially solving an open problem of Bayer and Diaconis (Bayer and Diaconis, 1992).