Familiar Tasks Research Articles

Some Thoughts Concerning Transfer Learning, with Applications to Meta-Analysis and Data-Sharing Estimation

A deeply entrenched axiom in the theory of learning states that the more one learns the easier it is to learn. In other words, the more proficient one becomes in performing familiar tasks, the easier it is to learn new tasks. This phenomenon, long recognized by psychologists and educators, has also been demonstrated in machine learning, especially in self-taught classification tasks, where unlabeled samples are used during training (Thrun, 1996; Ando and Zhang 2005; Caruana 1997). It has been shown, for example, that the performance of an image classifier can be improved by initially giving it unlimited access to unlabeled, randomly chosen images downloaded from the Internet (Raina etal 2007). Evidently, at this initial stage of the process the classifier learns generic relationships, applicable to all visual patterns and, subsequently, when the classifier is trained with limited samples from a specific target domain (say, to distinguish elephants from rhinos), the classifier makes use of its previously learned knowledge to perform the target task more efficiently.

Testing the hierarchical SDT model: the case of performance-oriented classrooms

The self-determination theory (SDT) assumes that healthy motivation needs to be intrinsic in nature and that the basic psychological needs competence, autonomy and relatedness are prerequisites for intrinsically motivated behaviour. Intrinsically motivated students in turn show more persistence and understanding of classroom material. However, in secondary education, students often participate in performance-oriented classrooms with an extrinsic orientation and it cannot be assumed that the principles advocated by the SDT are automatically applicable in this context. We tested a model relating basic psychological needs via intrinsic motivation to persistence and performance at two waves using data from 476 students (aged 11–17 years) attending pre-vocational secondary education. Structural equation analysis showed that a partial mediation model with perceived competence also directly associated with persistence and performance fitted the data best at both waves. Interestingly, the strength of the effects varied across waves, such that relatedness and autonomy became negative predictors of intrinsic motivation for a familiar task. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Self-Evaluation of Driving Simulator Performance After Stroke

Background and Purpose: Despite the potential dangers associated with premature return to driving after stroke, very little research has examined the relationship between impaired self-awareness (ISA) and driving. This study examined self-awareness of driving simulator and neuropsychological performance among stroke patients, comparing them with healthy control participants. Methods: Thirty stroke survivors and 30 controls each were asked for prediction and postdiction ratings of their performance on various driving simulator and neuropsychological tasks. Self-estimates versus actual performance discrepancy scores were calculated for various simulator and neuropsychological measures by converting scores to a shared metric. Results: Across all measures, the stroke survivors greatly overestimated their performance in comparison with the accuracy of self-evaluations among the controls, thus suggesting ISA. This pattern of overestimating was observed on both novel (neuropsychological) and familiar (driving) tasks. However, there was some evidence to suggest that stroke survivors can benefit from feedback, as seen by increased accuracy in postdiction versus prediction self-evaluation scores. Both stroke survivors and controls also showed a greater shift toward accurate self-estimation on postdiction of driving performance than on postdiction of neuropsychological test performance. Conclusion: Although the temporal stability of the shift in awareness is not known, these results support the use of driving simulators as a useful and safe method of assessing and potentially improving stroke survivors’ ISA.

Occupational Therapy Services to Enable Liver Patients to Thrive Following Transplantation

ABSTRACTTransplantation is the only viable treatment for end-stage liver failure. With advances in biomedicine and surgical technique, survival rates have improved and current research is beginning to focus on patient-related outcomes such as of quality of life (QOL) and life satisfaction. However, attention to the rehabilitation needs of those patients whose lives are saved, is lagging. Pretransplantation, there are serious strains to role function and limitations to mental and physical capacity. Following transplantation, the ability to perform once easy familiar tasks is difficult for a prolonged recovery period. Within a year many people do well, others do not. Little has been done for this latter group. The purpose of this article is to systematically describe the contributions occupational therapy can make to the people struggling with the challenges faced during the transplantation process. The first part presents a framework for understanding the impact of end-stage liver disease, then the transplant, and the subsequent recovery through the combination of two frameworks: the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) and the Model of Human Occupation. The second part of this article will present the implications for occupational therapists throughout seven stages: (1) decline in health, (2) organ failure, (3) referral for transplantation, (4) the waiting period, (5) the transplant surgery, (6) recovery, and (7) return of health. Attention to the needs of transplant recipients who lack the adaptive skills to resume productive lifestyles has the capacity to improve participation outcomes for this population.

Coordination of fingertip forces in object transport during gait in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy

Coordination of fingertip forces in object transport during gait in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy

The impact of the amount of work in process on the use of cross-training

Cross-training is becoming increasingly important to firms in order to cope with the more stringent performance requirements they are faced with in today's market. However, many firms put considerable effort into cross-training their workers only to find out that their workers favour the familiar tasks and hardly use and maintain the newly acquired skills. In this paper we explore the hypothesis that reducing the amount of work in process in a constant work in process (CONWIP) controlled job shop with worker preferences forces workers to make a more balanced use of the skills they possess. We test this hypothesis by means of a simulation study with the level of cross-training as moderating variable. Based on this study, it can be concluded that the control and limitation of the amount of work in process breaks the pattern of workers remaining at their preferred machines and constrains the workers to use and maintain their other skills more.

Decision Support System for the Intelligient Identification of Alzheimer using Neuro Fuzzy logic

Alzheimer Disease (AD) is a form of dementia; it is a progressive, degenerative disease. Alzheimer is a brain disease that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. It is severe enough to interfere with daily activities. Alzheimer symptoms are characterized by memory loss that affects day-to-day function, difficulty performing familiar tasks, problems with language, disorientation of time and place, poor or decreased judgment, problems with abstract thinking, misplacing things, changes in mood and behavior, changes in personality and loss of initiative. Neuro-Fuzzy Logic explores approximation techniques from neural networks to find the parameter of a fuzzy system. In this paper, the traditional procedure for the medical diagnosis of Alzheimer employed by physician is analyzed using neuro-fuzzy inference procedure. The proposed system is a useful decision support approach for the diagnosis of Alzheimer .

Management of suspected Alzheimer’s disease patients by specialist physicians at the first visit in Spain: First Consultation Study

Objective: To assess the management of suspected Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients at the first visit by Spanish specialist physicians. Materials & methods: Epidemiological, cross-sectional and multicenter study. A total of 200 specialists (neurologists, psychiatrists and geriatricians) from hospitals and specialized centers across Spain included a total of 1851 patients of both sexes older than 18 years suspected to be suffering from AD. Data of clinical and demographic characteristics, methods of diagnosis, treatments and follow-up were collected in one visit. Results: The mean age of the population was 75.2 ± 7.9 years. The most frequent symptoms were difficulty in performing familiar tasks (76.7%), memory loss (76.0%) and misplacing items (72.7%). The assessment of suspected AD subjects included: neurological examination (walk apraxia [10.8%] and extrapyramidal signs [10.7%]), evaluation of cognition (mean of the Mini-Mental State Examination score was 19.9 ± 5.2 [mild AD]), function and behavior, and supplementary diagnostic tests (blood test [90%] and computerized axial tomography [66.8%]). In total, 69.5% of the patients were diagnosed with AD according to Spanish Society of Neurology criteria. Principal treatment was cholinesterase inhibitors (87.8%). The mean time for follow-up visit: 4 ± 2.4 months; with the same physician (95.5%), neurologist (68.2%), psychiatrist (19%) and geriatrician (11.7%). Conclusions: Several possible areas are amenable to improvement by means of reducing the time to diagnosis, increasing the number of patients treated with nonpharmacological therapy, and providing more information on the benefits of treatment, care and providing the best therapeutic options available. In this study, almost half of the patients took 1–3 years to visit a physician after appearance of the first symptoms. Significant differences were observed between the medical specialty and treatments provided; nevertheless, the majority of physicians used cholinesterase inhibitors (87.8%) as the principal treatment.

Pressure and Perverse Flights to Familiarity

Under pressure, people often prefer what is familiar, which can seem safer than the unfamiliar. We show that such favoring of familiarity can lead to choices precisely contrary to the source of felt pressure, thus exacerbating, rather than mitigating, its negative consequences. In Experiment 1, time pressure increased participants’ frequency of choosing to complete a longer but incidentally familiar task option (as opposed to a shorter but unfamiliar alternative), resulting in increased felt stress during task completion. In Experiment 2, pressure to reach a performance benchmark in a chosen puzzle increased participants’ frequency of choosing an incidentally familiar puzzle that both augured and delivered objectively worse performance (i.e., fewer points obtained). Participants favored this familiar puzzle even though familiarity was established through unpleasant prior experience. This “devil you know” preference under pressure contrasted with disfavoring of the negatively familiar option in a pressure-free situation. These results demonstrate that pressure-induced flights to familiarity can sometimes aggravate rather than ameliorate pressure, and can occur even when available evidence points to the suboptimality of familiar options.

Symbolic mediation in cognitive activity

This article used two studies to investigate sign and symbol mediation in children aged 8–11 years. In role play, children exist at one at the same time in objective reality and their representation of reality. We cannot observe their mental representation directly, but the issue of whether signs or symbols mediate early role play is an important theoretical question. The Piagetian perspective is that the symbolic representation develops alongside the sign representation, whereas the psychoanalytic perspective is that symbolic representation of the world precedes sign representation. Work by Venger, DeLoache and Van Oers shows that young children have access to one type of modelling that approximates to sign representation. In this type of model the children can only map relations between the model and the reality that it represents. Models with no direct relation to reality require symbolic mediation, in which children are aware of the model as a representation and explore features of the model itself. Uncertainty provokes the use of symbols or emotional images, and these two studies were designed to assess the effect of uncertainty on the representations children used to solve problems. In the first study, 57 children aged between 8 and 11 were shown a box which lit up red and green lights in an invariant sequence which could only be predicted by memorisation. Children were asked to guess the colour of the next light. Their strategies were classified as ‘random’, ‘objective symbolisation’, ‘modelling’ and ‘subjective symbolisation’. The study showed that many children used sign representations (the modelling strategy) and that the use of symbols as a cognitive tool was uncommon. In the second study 84 children aged between 8 and 11 were asked to match cards thematically. Their strategies were defined as ‘similarity’, ‘common criterion’, ‘objective symbolisation’ or ‘subjective symbolisation’, with ‘similarity’ being the most frequent strategy used. Correlations showed that ‘common criterion’ and ‘objective symbolisation’ (symbolic representation) strategies tended not to be used along with ‘similarity’ and ‘subjective symbolisation’ (sign representation) strategies. Factor analysis revealed two factors that confirmed this analysis. Results show that in familiar tasks children used sign mediation, whereas in more uncertain situations children used symbolic mediation.

Covert face recognition in congenital prosopagnosia: A group study

IntroductionEven though people with congenital prosopagnosia (CP) never develop a normal ability to “overtly” recognize faces, some individuals show indices of “covert” (or implicit) face recognition. The aim of this study was to demonstrate covert face recognition in CP when participants could not overtly recognize the faces. MethodsEleven people with CP completed three tasks assessing their overt face recognition ability, and three tasks assessing their “covert” face recognition: a Forced choice familiarity task, a Forced choice cued task, and a Priming task. ResultsEvidence of covert recognition was observed with the Forced choice familiarity task, but not the Priming task. In addition, we propose that the Forced choice cued task does not measure covert processing as such, but instead “provoked-overt” recognition. ConclusionsOur study clearly shows that people with CP demonstrate covert recognition for faces that they cannot overtly recognize, and that behavioural tasks vary in their sensitivity to detect covert recognition in CP.

ボールバウンシング課題の速度増加局面における動作特性の変容

The present study aimed to examine the difference in upper limb movement characteristics between basketball players and novices during the speed-increase phase in a basketball bouncing task. Two-dimensional video analysis and electromyography were used to clarify the motor control with increase in bouncing speed. The participants were 9 college basketball players and 6 novice subjects. The basketball players had approximately 10 years of experience in playing basketball and were now in training for approximately 5 days per week in their college basketball team. The novices had learned how to play basketball in their physical education class, but the ball bouncing movement was not a familiar task for them. The subjects were instructed to synchronize their movement with an external audio signal (100 bpm), and to change the bouncing speed as quickly as possible when a LED signal was lighted. During the bouncing task, two-dimensional body kinematics (joint angular displacements) were measured using a high-speed camera at 100 frames/s. Electromyographic changes were measured by surface electromyograms (EMGs) obtained at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist muscles; the co-contraction index (CI) was calculated on the basis of the activities of the flexor and extensor muscles of each joint. We found that the amplitude of angular displacement in the elbow and wrist joints was greater in the basketball players than in the novices. In each group, EMG activities, especially those of the elbow and wrist muscles, showed different changes with increased bouncing speed. In the speed-increase phase, the wrist muscles CI in the basketball players was less than that in the novices. The results of this study indicate that basketball players bounce the ball with a greater range of motion and less joint stiffness. In contrast, novices have a more restricted range of motion and higher co-contraction in the speed-increase phase. Thus it appears that basketball players can control a ball with a longer ball contact time and lower co-contraction, and can produce a more effective bouncing movement in the speed-increase phase.

Sharing One Biographical Detail Elicits Priming between Famous Names: Empirical and Computational Approaches

In this paper three experiments and corresponding model simulations are reported that investigate the priming of famous name recognition in order to explore the structure of the part of the semantic system dealing with people. Consistent with empirical findings, novel computational simulations using Burton et al.’s interactive activation and competition model point to a conceptual distinction between how priming is initiated in single- and double-familiarity tasks, indicating that priming should be weaker or non-existent for the single-familiarity task. Experiment 1 demonstrates that, within a double-familiarity framework using famous names, categorical, and associative priming are reliable effects. Pushing the model to the limit, it predicts that pairs of celebrities who are neither associatively nor categorically related but who share single biographical features, both died in a car crash for example, should prime each other. Experiment 2 investigated this in a double-familiarity task but the effect was not observed. We therefore simulated and realized a pairwise learning task that was conceptually similar to the double-familiarity-decision task but allowed to strengthen the underlying connections. Priming based on a single biographical feature could be found both in simulations and the experiment. The effect was not due to visual or name similarity which were controlled for and participants did not report using the biographical links between the people to learn the pairs. The results are interpreted to lend further support to structural models of the memory for persons. Furthermore, the results are consistent with the idea that episodic features known about people are stored in semantic memory and are automatically activated when encountering that person.

What Corporate Training Professionals Think About eLearning: Practitioners' Views on the Potential of eLearning in the Workplace

An exploratory study of 954 mostly veteran workplace learning professionals sought to determine why respondents adopt e-learning. The results indicated that they see e-learning was most valuable for delivering instruction governing familiar company tasks, such as providing information about products, fulfilling compliance requirements, and securing standardization. While the results were largely predicted by the investigators, respondents offered one surprising conclusion. Respondents believe that e-learning is useful in capturing and sharing best practices. They concluded that technology-mediated learning is less capable of providing instruction in tackling murky challenges, such as teaming, cultural understanding and passion for the work.

Prefrontal dynamics underlying rapid instructed task learning reverse with practice.

The ability to rapidly reconfigure our minds to perform novel tasks is important for adapting to an ever-changing world, yet little is understood about its basis in the brain. Furthermore, it is unclear how this kind of task preparation changes with practice. Previous research suggests that prefrontal cortex (PFC) is essential when preparing to perform either novel or practiced tasks. Building upon recent evidence that PFC is organized in an anterior-to-posterior hierarchy, we postulated that novel and practiced task preparation would differentiate hierarchically distinct regions within PFC across time. Specifically, we hypothesized and confirmed using functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography with humans that novel task preparation is a bottom-up process that involves lower-level rule representations in dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) before a higher-level rule-integrating task representation in anterior PFC (aPFC). In contrast, we identified a complete reversal of this activity pattern during practiced task preparation. Specifically, we found that practiced task preparation is a top-down process that involves a higher-level rule-integrating task representation (recalled from long-term memory) in aPFC before lower-level rule representations in DLPFC. These findings reveal two distinct yet highly inter-related mechanisms for task preparation, one involving task set formation from instructions during rapid instructed task learning and the other involving task set retrieval from long-term memory to facilitate familiar task performance. These two mechanisms demonstrate the exceptional flexibility of human PFC as it rapidly reconfigures cognitive brain networks to implement a wide variety of possible tasks.

When Music and Long-Term Memory Interact: Effects of Musical Expertise on Functional and Structural Plasticity in the Hippocampus

The development of musical skills by musicians results in specific structural and functional modifications in the brain. Surprisingly, no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study has investigated the impact of musical training on brain function during long-term memory retrieval, a faculty particularly important in music. Thus, using fMRI, we examined for the first time this process during a musical familiarity task (i.e., semantic memory for music). Musical expertise induced supplementary activations in the hippocampus, medial frontal gyrus, and superior temporal areas on both sides, suggesting a constant interaction between episodic and semantic memory during this task in musicians. In addition, a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) investigation was performed within these areas and revealed that gray matter density of the hippocampus was higher in musicians than in nonmusicians. Our data indicate that musical expertise critically modifies long-term memory processes and induces structural and functional plasticity in the hippocampus.

The neural substrates of musical memory revealed by fMRI and two semantic tasks

Recognizing a musical excerpt without necessarily retrieving its title typically reflects the existence of a memory system dedicated to the retrieval of musical knowledge. The functional distinction between musical and verbal semantic memory has seldom been investigated. In this fMRI study, we directly compared the musical and verbal memory of 20 nonmusicians, using a congruence task involving automatic semantic retrieval and a familiarity task requiring more thorough semantic retrieval. In the former, participants had to access their semantic store to retrieve musical or verbal representations of melodies or expressions they heard, in order to decide whether these were then given the right ending or not. In the latter, they had to judge the level of familiarity of musical excerpts and expressions. Both tasks revealed activation of the left inferior frontal and posterior middle temporal cortices, suggesting that executive and selection processes are common to both verbal and musical retrievals. Distinct patterns of activation were observed within the left temporal cortex, with musical material mainly activating the superior temporal gyrus and verbal material the middle and inferior gyri. This cortical organization of musical and verbal semantic representations could explain clinical dissociations featuring selective disturbances for musical or verbal material.

Cross-language perception of non-native tonal contrasts: effects of native phonological and phonetic influences.

This study examined the perception of the four Mandarin lexical tones by Mandarin-naïve Hong Kong Cantonese, Japanese, and Canadian English listener groups. Their performance on an identification task, following a brief familiarization task, was analyzed in terms of tonal sensitivities (A-prime scores on correct identifications) and tonal errors (confusions). The A-prime results revealed that the English listeners' sensitivity to Tone 4 identifications specifically was significantly lower than that of the other two groups. The analysis of tonal errors revealed that all listener groups showed perceptual confusion of tone pairs with similar phonetic features (T1-T2, T1-T4 and T2-T3 pairs), but not of those with completely dissimilar features (T1-T3, T2-T4, and T3-T4). Language-specific errors were also observed in their performance, which may be explained within the framework of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007). The findings imply that linguistic experience with native tones does not necessarily facilitate non-native tone perception. Rather, the phonemic status and the phonetic features (similarities or dissimilarities) between the tonal systems of the target language and the listeners' native languages play critical roles in the perception of non-native tones.

Mathematical cognition: individual differences in resource allocation

Individuals scoring higher in tests of general cognitive abilities tend to perform better on novel and familiar mathematical tasks. It has been scarcely investigated how this superior mathematical performance relates to the amount of cognitive resources that is invested to solve a given task. In this study we propose that, on novel tasks, individuals with high cognitive abilities outperform less able individuals, because they allocate a higher amount of resources. On familiar tasks, however, individuals with higher abilities profit from more efficient processes compared to individuals of lower cognitive abilities. We tested this hypothesis by administering to 11th graders a geometric analogy task not practiced at school and an algebraic transformation task comprising operations that are routinely required during mathematical courses. General cognitive abilities were measured with Ravens Advanced Progressive matrices (fluid intelligence), the d2 (focused attention) and KAI-N (working memory capacity). Resource allocation was measured by assessing pupil diameter during the problem-solving process. Performance on both the analogy and the algebra task was correlated with general cognitive abilities, especially fluid intelligence. In line with our assumptions, a positive correlation between fluid intelligence and resource allocation was observed in the novel geometric analogy task, whereas the correlation was not significant in the more familiar algebra task.

Event-Related Potentials Elicited by the Explicit and Implicit Processing of Familiarity in Faces

Brain activity underlying explicit and implicit processing of face familiarity was assessed by Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) elicited by famous and unknown faces with happy or neutral expressions. A set of faces was presented in a familiarity judgment (explicit) task and another in an expression judgment (implicit familiarity) task. After recording, these tasks were repeated exchanging the stimuli, and post-recording behavioral data from the familiarity task were used for re-averaging EEG segments from the expression task. Both explicit and implicit processing of famous faces resulted in an enhanced N250. Explicit processing of famous faces was specifically associated with earlier N400 and P600, with increased activity within brain areas involved in identity processing around 250 and 450 ms. These findings suggest different brain dynamics for explicit and implicit face processing, and that implicit processing of the identity in the context of an expression task is mainly associated with the transient activation of face representations in memory.