Dynamic Microworld Research Articles

Physiological Synchrony Revealed by Delayed Coincidence Count: Application to a Cooperative Complex Environment

Synchrony at the physiological level is an objective measure that can be used to investigate cooperation between human agents. This physiological synchrony has been experimentally observed in different dyadic contexts through measures of the autonomous system such as cardiac measures. Various metrics are used to characterize synchrony between participants such as cross-correlation, weighted coherence, or cross recurrence quantification analysis and with a wide variety of paradigms. We propose the delayed coincidence count as a new method for assessing cardiac synchrony. Delayed coincidence count has already been used to characterize synchrony in firing neurons populations. While being straightforward and computationally light, this method has already been formally proven to be statistically robust. A complex dynamic microworld is designed with two difficulty levels and two cooperation conditions. A total of 40 participants, i.e., 20 teams, voluntarily has conducted the experiment. The delayed coincidence count method (with a coincidence threshold $\delta$ of 20 ms) reveals a significant synchrony ( $p ) during the cooperative and high difficulty condition only, while the other methods did not. The results are interpreted in terms of interaction intensity in accordance with recent literature.

A computational model of scientific discovery in a very simple world, aiming at psychological realism

ABSTRACTWe propose a computational model of human scientific discovery and perception of the world. As a prerequisite for such a model, we simulate dynamic microworlds in which physical events take place, as well as an observer that visually perceives and makes interpretations of events in the microworld. Moreover, we give the observer the ability to actively conduct experiments in order to gain evidence about natural regularities in the world. We have broken up the description of our project into two pieces. The first piece deals with the interpreter constructing relatively simple visual descriptions of objects and collisions within a context. The second phase deals with the interpreter positing relationships among the entities, winding up with elaborated construals and conjectures of mathematical laws governing the world. This paper focuses only on the second phase. As is the case with most human scientific observation, observations are subject to interpretation, and the discoveries are influenced by these interpretations.

A computer model of context-dependent perception in a very simple world

We propose the foundations of a computer model of scientific discovery that takes into account certain psychological aspects of human observation of the world. To this end, we simulate two main components of such a system. The first is a dynamic microworld in which physical events take place, and the second is an observer that visually perceives entities and events in the microworld. For reason of space, this paper focuses only on the starting phase of discovery, which is the relatively simple visual inputs of objects and collisions.

The Experimental Study on the Ability to Manage Unexpected Events Using Micro-world Simulation

Abstract: An experimental study has been performed to examine the inherent ability to manage unexpected events using micro-world simulation. Unexpected events are defined as the events occurring without prior training and description in the operation manual. The hypothesis that the subjects who can perform better in the preliminary stage of skill development tend to perform better in unexpected situations after acquiring the necessary skill has been tested on the basis of cognitive experiments. The dynamic micro-world simulation of a smart grid system (SGS), in which the subjects are instructed to maintain a grid voltage under dynamically changing conditions, has been utilized. In the preliminary experiment, the unexpected events and situations in SGS have been prepared and the level of task difficulty has been calibrated such that the task completion rate is equal to the intended rate. In the main experiment that followed the preliminary runs, 18 subjects participated in the experiments. The experimental results supported the raised hypothesis, which emphasizes the importance of an initial screening process for the human resources against the events beyond design expectation.

History’s Restless Ruins: On Socialist Public Monuments in Postsocialist Bulgaria

What do we do with the monuments from the socialist past? This question continues to resurface with relentless persistence in Bulgaria’s public life. For the past twenty-five years, socialism’s monuments have suffered severe neglect, yet they have provided open terrains upon which different political forces have taken on grassroots forms to articulate their perspectives against each other and vis-à-vis the country’s socialist history. Thus, while discarded as remnants of a failed political experiment, they have become those peculiar sites without which postsocialist political and everyday life is hard to imagine. This essay focuses on two particularly contested monuments from two distinct periods of Bulgaria’s socialist era, Plovdiv’s Monument to the Soviet Army, or “Aliosha,” from 1957, and Sofia’s Monument to 1300 Years of Bulgaria, from 1981. It offers a historical reconstruction of their creation and a critical interpretation of their political and cultural meanings under socialism, while also chronicling their reconfigured everyday and political uses during the postsocialist years. Studying their intricate governing functions in public space, the essay argues that these open and dynamic microworlds continue to organize community life and leisure in particular ways, while defying the privatization of public space and the normative imperatives of neoliberal urban development in the postsocialist city.

Assessment With Microworlds using MicroDYN: Measurement Invariance and Latent Mean Comparisons

Computer-simulated microworlds have witnessed significant international interest over the last decades as assessment vehicles for complex mental skills. This interest strongly contrasts to what is currently known about measurement characteristics of microworlds. In this study measurement invariance and latent means of the MicroDYN measure, a computer-based assessment instrument containing an entire set of dynamic microworlds, were examined in four German subsamples of junior high school students in 8th–10th grade (n = 309), senior high school students in 11th–13th grade (n = 484), university students (n = 222), and blue-collar workers (n = 181). The findings support satisfactory measurement invariance of a two-dimensional structure of the MicroDYN measure with the dimensions knowledge acquisition and knowledge application across all samples, and yield meaningful comparisons between latent means with university students performing best. It is suggested to further explore measurement characteristics of computer-simulated microworlds to fully exploit their potential as means of modern assessment instruments. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Visual Aids for Merging Mixed Arrival Traffic

Innovative concepts for fuel-efficient and noise-reduced air traffic suggest a better utilization of modern aircraft capabilities, like time-based planning of continuous descent approaches (CDA). One challenge of such concepts is the integration of aircraft flying CDA approaches and conventional air traffic. In this study, we examined the effects of different levels of automation provided by four different variants of visual aids on performance, information acquisition, resultant situation awareness, and workload with N = 78 students in a complex and dynamic microworld setting. While visual assistance had a positive effect on performance, attention was deviated from real aircraft. Nevertheless, attention deviation did not negatively affect conflict detection when assistance was activated manually. Moreover, anticipation of future losses of separation was improved by visual aids.

Individual Ambidexterity: Exploring and Exploiting in Dynamic Contexts

ABSTRACT Previous research regarding the role of individuals within the organizational ambidexterity construct has primarily focused on behavioral characteristics of managers. Drawing from the organizational, psychological, and neuroscience literatures, this study develops and tests hypotheses concerning the formative construct of Individual Ambidexterity (IA), the cognitive abilities necessary to balance efforts of exploration and exploitation. In an initial criterion-related predictive validity laboratory study, 181 undergraduate students completed successive trials in a computer-simulated, real-time dynamic microworld context. Findings explained unique variance beyond measures of general intelligence on the total score of task adaptive performance. The results indicate a novel combination of abilities that may further understanding of how individual abilities contribute to the ambidexterity literature.

Training for Unmanned Vehicle Allocation with Automation in a Dynamic Microworld

Recently, questions about the nature of automation use during training have emerged. Several studies have shown that at best, training with automation does not aid learning, but this has not yet been examined in supervisory control tasks. Using a dynamic microworld program, Networked Fire Chief, we show that vehicle allocation training significantly interacts with automation during training, impacting not only performance, but also situation awareness and the absolute number of vehicles users can allocate.

Vitesse du processus et temps partagé : planification et concurrence attentionnelle

Summary : Process speed and time-sharing : Planning and attentional concurrence. This experiment, carried out on a dynamic microworld described to the subjects as the command of units fighting against forest fires, reproduces the results of a previous experiment (Hoc & Moulin, 1994), which showed a stability in performance between a high and a low process speed. By interposing a medium speed between the two extreme speeds, the present experiment showed an optimum effect that provides us with more evidence in favour of a strategy shift. Performance stability can be interpreted as the result of shifting from a reactive strategy to an anticipative one progressively reaching the subjects' competency limit. On the other hand, by introducing conditions of time-sharing task management (several fires), a progressive improvement in performance was shown in relation to the reduction of attentional concurrence at the planning step. Key words : dynamic situation, process speed, time-sharing, planning, attention.

Dynamic microworlds in Java on the world-wide web

A student today no longer spends his time in a lonely little attic room, a noisy lecture room or the deadly silence in the huge reading room of a university library. These components of his environment still exist but their functionality has changed. In principle all students at the campus of the University of Twente (UT) have an excellent connection with the electronic highway. The world-wide web is extremely popular, both among lecturers and students. It fills the almost natural needs of young people to want to travel all over the world and to try to understand it, and at minimum cost. For many courses, e-mailing with the lecturer is a matter of course; so is publishing educational material on the Web.

Measures of operator performance in complex, dynamic microworlds: advancing the state of the art

Microworld research provides a useful complement to field studies and highly controlled laboratory studies, aiming to strike a balance between representativeness and experimental control. Yet microworld research has associated methodological difficulties, particularly the problem of performance measurement. Researchers generally adopt a variety of measures to provide converging evidence concerning questions of interest. To confront problems with existing measures, this paper examines a series of objective measures used to characterize the performance of human operators in process control. These measures include novel, quantitative extensions to existing graphical analyses and new graphical representations. The measures are applied in the context of a 6-month longitudinal study using an interactive, thermal-hydraulic process control microworld (DURESS II). The following measures are discussed: steady-state time, action transition graph complexity, the path length in state space diagrams, the area under distance-to-goals graphs, divergence from the temperature goal line in mass inventory versus energy inventory graphs, and the proportion of control actions near the beginning of the trials represented by timelines. Two case studies emphasize the performance and strategy differences of individual operators across the battery of measures.

Measures of operator performance in complex, dynamic microworlds: advancing the state of the art

Measures of operator performance in complex, dynamic microworlds: advancing the state of the art

Measures of operator performance in complex, dynamic microworlds: advancing the state of the art

Measures of operator performance in complex, dynamic microworlds: advancing the state of the art

Rapidité du processus contrôlé et planification dans un micro-monde dynamique

Summary : Controlled-process speed and planning in a dynamic micro-world. The effect of controlled-process speed on planning strategies in the management of a dynamic micro-world — Newfire (from Levborg and Brehmer, 1991) — was examined using the metaphor of a fire-fighting command unit battling a forest fire. The comparison between real processes — in particular between a very slow process such as a blast furnace (Hoc, 1991) and a very rapid process such as a fighter aircraft (Amalberti et Deblon, 1992) — suggested some hypotheses. When the process is slow, planning is expected to develop in real-time and at a schematic level to avoid useless commitments because time is available to instantiate plans when they are implemented. When temporal constraints on activity are weak, resource and risk management should be a minimal part of the activity. On the contrary, when the process is rapid, planning should only take place before execution and at a very precise level because replanning may be impossible. Resource and risk management should play a central role. The present experiment shows that : (a) when the process was slow, subjects tended to plan their activity in real-time and at a very precise level, taking the risk of confining themselves within tactical details to the detriment of strategic aspects ; (b) when the process was rapid, they tended to plan their activity at the beginning and in a schematic way, taking the risk of neglecting important tactical details. On the whole, performances observed in the two conditions, with different strategies were at least equivalent. There was decreased operation frequency in the rapid-process condition when the task was difficult. Thus subjects changed their global strategy, which enabled them to be at least as effective. The ecological validity of the results is discussed in relation to expertise that subjects acquired to perform the task. Key words : planning, dynamic micro-world, process speed.

Plan creation, plan execution and knowledge acquisition in a dynamic microworld

This paper discusses a planning system that works in a dynamic geographic microworld (an abstraction of a small city), The planning system simulates a taxi driver who must take a customer to a destination in this small city, despite the possible presence of unpredictable dynamic obstacles such as other cars, red lights, pedestrians, etc. At the heart of the system is a knowledge base where all knowledge of the city is uniformly represented in routes, one for each trip which the simulated taxi driver has previously completed. A plan for a new trip is formulated by appropriately splicing together routes. The plan is then augmented to handle the dynamic features of the world and is executed. After successful execution, the plan is integrated into the knowledge base as a new route. One key aspect of this approach to planning is that plans are hierarchical, thus allowing the appropriate scoping of “demons” to handle the dynamic features of the microworld. Another key aspect is the similarity in structure of both routes and plans which facilitates the route-splicing approach to planning. Both aspects are useful when acquiring new routes, the similarity in structure allowing successfully executed plans to be straightforwardly added to the collection of routes and the hierarchy providing a framework for abstracting and generalizing information gleaned during plan execution. The most important overall lesson to be learned from this research is the usefulness of taking an integrated view of planning, execution and acquisition.