Task Feedback Research Articles

Beta oscillations following performance feedback predict subsequent recall of task-relevant information

Reward delivery in reinforcement learning tasks elicits increased beta power in the human EEG over frontal areas of the scalp but it is unclear whether these 20–30 Hz oscillations directly facilitate reward learning. We previously proposed that frontal beta is not specific to reward processing but rather reflects the role of prefrontal cortex in maintaining and transferring task-related information to other brain areas. To test this proposal, we had subjects perform a reinforcement learning task followed by a memory recall task in which subjects were asked to recall stimuli associated either with reward feedback (Reward Recall condition) or error feedback (Error Recall condition). We trained a classifier on post-feedback beta power in the Reward Recall condition to discriminate trials associated with reward feedback from those associated with error feedback and then tested the classifier on post-feedback beta power in the Error Recall condition. Crucially, the model classified error-related beta in the Error Recall condition as reward-related. The model also predicted stimulus recall from post-feedback beta power irrespective of feedback valence and task condition. These results indicate that post-feedback beta power is not specific to reward processing but rather reflects a more general task-related process.

Attentional Resource Associated With Visual Feedback on a Postural Dual Task in Parkinson’s Disease

Background Restricted attentional resource and central processing in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) may reduce the benefit of visual feedback in a dual task. Objectives Using brain event-related potentials (ERPs), this study aims to investigate the neural mechanisms of posture visual feedback and supraposture visual feedback during performing of a posture-motor dual task. Methods Eighteen patients with PD and 18 healthy controls stood on a mobile platform (postural task) and executed a manual force-matching task (suprapostural task) concurrently with provided visual feedback of platform movement (posture-feedback condition) or force output (force-feedback condition). The platform movement, force-matching performance, and ERPs (P1, N1, and P2 waves) were recorded. Results Both PD and control groups had superior force accuracy in the force-feedback condition. Decreased postural sway by posture-feedback was observed in healthy controls but not in PD. Force-feedback led to a greater frontal area N1 peak in PD group but smaller N1 peaks in control group. In addition, force-feedback led to smaller P2 peaks of the frontal and sensorimotor areas among PD patients but greater P2 peaks of the sensorimotor and parietal-occipital areas among healthy controls. However, P1 modulations was present only in healthy controls. Conclusions Force-feedback had positive effect on force accuracy in both PD and healthy individuals; however, the beneficial effect of posture-feedback on posture balance is not observed in PD. These findings are the first to suggest that PD could recruit more attentional resources in dual-task preparation to enhance suprapostural accuracy and avoid degrading postural stability by supraposture visual feedback.

Improving reference cohesion in young EFL learners’ collaboratively written narratives: Is there a role for reformulation?

This article reports an empirical study in which we explore the role played by reformulation as a written corrective feedback technique on the use of reference cohesion in the collaboratively written narratives of young foreign language learners. The study was carried out with 11-to-12-year-old low proficiency pairs divided into a reformulation (RG) and a control group (CG), all of whom engaged in two multi-stage writing and feedback tasks over a three-month period. Features of reference cohesion were examined in four sets of narrative picture-story texts written by all the children before and after a treatment period during which the RG pairs completed a weekly writing task and received reformulated feedback, which they compared with their original drafts. The CG pairs also performed the weekly writing task and self-edited their texts. Results showed that the feedback proved useful in significantly promoting the accurate use of pronominal reference and sequence markers in the L2 by RG pairs and in contributing to a significant decrease in the misuse of articles in comparison to the CG. These findings are discussed and conclusions drawn for the role of reformulation in fostering cohesion in children’s L2 writing.

BFM: A Bus-Like Data Feedback Mechanism Between Graphics Processor and Host CPU

Graphics processors have received an increasing attention with the growing demand for gaming, video streaming, and many other applications. During the graphics rendering with OpenGL, host CPU needs the runtime attributes to move on to the next procedure of rendering, which covers almost all the function units of graphics pipeline. Current methods suffer from the memory capacity issues to hold the variables or huge amount of data passing paths which can cause congestion on the interface between graphics processor and host CPU. This paper refers to the operation principle of commuting bus, and proposes a bus-like data feedback mechanism (BFM) to traverse all the pipeline stages and collect the run-time status data or execution error of graphics rendering, then send them back to the host CPU. BFM can work in parallel with the graphics rendering logic. This method can complete the data feedback task easily with only 0.6% increase of resource utilization and has no negative impact on performance, which also obtains 1.3 times speed enhancement compared with a traditional approach.

How Teachers integrate Dashboards into their Feedback Practices

In technology empowered classrooms teachers receive real-time data about students' performance and progress on teacher dashboards. Dashboards have the potential to enhance teachers' feedback practices and complement human-prompted feedback that is initiated by teachers themselves or students asking questions. However, such enhancement requires teachers to integrate dashboards into their professional routines. How teachers shift between dashboard- and human-prompted feedback could be indicative of this integration. We therefore examined in 65 K-12 lessons: i) differences between human- and dashboard-prompted feedback; ii) how teachers alternated between human- and dashboard-prompted feedback (distribution patterns); and iii) how these distribution patterns were associated with the given feedback type: task, process, personal, metacognitive, and social feedback. The three sources of feedback resulted in different types of feedback: Teacher-prompted feedback was predominantly personal and student-prompted feedback mostly resulted in task feedback, whereas dashboard-prompted feedback was equally likely to be task, process, or personal feedback. We found two distribution patterns of dashboard-prompted feedback within a lesson: either given in one sequence together (blocked pattern) or alternated with student- and teacher-prompted feedback (mixed pattern). The distribution pattern affected the type of dashboard-prompted feedback given. In blocked patterns, dashboard-prompted feedback was mostly personal, whereas in mixed patterns task feedback was most prevalent. Hence, both sources of feedback instigation as well as the distribution of dashboard-prompted feedback affected the type of feedback given by teachers. Moreover, when teachers advanced the integration of dashboard-prompted feedback in their professional routines as indicated by mixed patterns, more effective types of feedback were given.

THE LEVEL OF TEACHER'S FEEDBACK IN ENGLISH TEACHING: AN EFL CLASSROOM DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The objectives of this research are to know the level of feedback applied by the EFL teacher at a junior high school in speaking class and to know the most frequent level of feedback employed by the EFL teacher. Moreover, this research conducts a qualitative research where the data of this research are the English teacher’s utterances when the teacher taught speaking for VII grade students at one of state junior high school at Sentani, Papua. Meanwhile, the data was gathered through observing and transcribing the video of English teaching and learning process. The analysis of the transcript revealed that: (1) there arethree levels of feedbacks employed by the teacher: feedback of task (6.25%), feedback of process (37.5%), and feedback of self as a person (56.25%) and (2) the most frequent level of feedback employed by the teacher is the feedback of self as a person since it gathered 56.25% during the teaching and learning activity. Based on the result of this study, it can be concluded that teacher’s feedback is an important tool to facilitate the learning process become more active. Therefore, It is suggested the teacher may use more collaboration of feedback toward students’ response or performance in the learning process.

Intermittent Absence of Control during Reinforcement Learning Interferes with Pavlovian Bias in Action Selection.

The ability to control the occurrence of rewarding and punishing events is crucial for our well-being. Two ways to optimize performance are to follow heuristics like Pavlovian biases to approach reward and avoid loss or to rely more on slowly accumulated stimulus-action associations. Although reduced control over outcomes has been linked to suboptimal decision-making in clinical conditions associated with learned helplessness, it is unclear how uncontrollability of the environment is related to the arbitration between different response strategies. This study directly tested whether a behavioral manipulation designed to induce learned helplessness in healthy adults (intermittent loss of control over feedback in a reinforcement learning task; "yoking") would modulate the magnitude of Pavlovian bias and the neurophysiological signature of cognitive control (frontal midline theta power) in healthy adults. Using statistical analysis and computational modeling of behavioral data and electroencephalographic signals, we found stronger Pavlovian influences and alterations in frontal theta activity in the yoked group. However, these effects were not accompanied by reduced performance in experimental blocks with regained control, indicating that our behavioral manipulation was not potent enough for inducing helplessness and impaired coping ability with task demands. We conclude that the level of contingency between instrumental choices and rewards/punishments modulates Pavlovian bias during value-based decision-making, probably via interfering with the implementation of cognitive control. These findings might have implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying helplessness in various psychiatric conditions.

Developing critical thinking skills: Using Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats in formative peer assessment & feedback

Increasingly, management students are required to demonstrate their critical thinking and problem-solving skills upon entering the workforce. This prompts educators to ask how can students be taught to think critically and what kind of exercises can be built into undergraduate learning to ensure critical thinking and problem-solving are practiced? As such, peer assessment as learning promotes active critical thinking and problem-solving via collaborative assessment and exchange of feedback amongst peers. This classroom exercise is designed for students on any management undergraduate course to develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills through a peer assessment and feedback task. Adopting Edward de Bono’s approach to thinking encourages students to think in a focused, deep and critical way about the piece of work they are assessing. Through this exercise they obtain the benefits of developing critical thinking skills and further learn to develop a collaborative approach to problemsolving in the provision of feedback and feedforward.

A functional source separation algorithm to enhance error-related potentials monitoring in noninvasive brain-computer interface

Background and objectivesAn Error related Potential (ErrP) can be noninvasively and directly measured from the scalp through electroencephalography (EEG), as response, when a person realizes they are making an error during a task (as a consequence of a cognitive error performed from the user). It has been shown that ErrPs can be automatically detected with time-discrete feedback tasks, which are widely applied in the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) field for error correction or adaptation. In this work, a semi-supervised algorithm, namely the Functional Source Separation (FSS), is proposed to estimate a spatial filter for learning the ErrPs and to enhance the evoked potentials. MethodsEEG data recorded on six subjects were used to evaluate the proposed method based on FFS algorithm in comparison with the xDAWN algorithm. FSS- and xDAWN-based methods were compared also to the Cz and FCz single channel. Single-trial classification was considered to evaluate the performances of the approaches. (Both the approaches were evaluated on single-trial classification of EEGs.) ResultsThe results presented using the Bayesian Linear Discriminant Analysis (BLDA) classifier, show that FSS (accuracy 0.92, sensitivity 0.95, specificity 0.81, F1-score 0.95) overcomes the other methods (Cz - accuracy 0.72, sensitivity 0.74, specificity 0.63, F1-score 0.74; FCz - accuracy 0.72, sensitivity 0.75, specificity 0.61, F1-score 0.75; xDAWN - accuracy 0.75, sensitivity 0.79, specificity 0.61, F1-score 0.79) in terms of single-trial classification. ConclusionsThe proposed FSS-based method increases the single-trial detection accuracy of ErrPs with respect to both single channel (Cz, FCz) and xDAWN spatial filter.

Cognitive flexibility training has direct and near transfer effects, but no far transfer effects, in preschoolers

The current project studied the direct, near transfer, and far transfer effects of cognitive flexibility training in two experiments with 117 3-year-olds. In both Experiments 1 and 2, children performed three Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) tasks in a pre-training/training/post-training design. The training consisted of giving corrective feedback in the training DCCS task. In Experiment 2, in addition, three other executive control tasks were administered during pre-training and post-training. Results showed a direct effect of feedback in the training DCCS task and transfer of this effect to the post-training DCCS task after 1 week with different sorting rules and different stimuli. These findings show that preschoolers learned to switch sorting rules in the context of the DCCS task, independent of the specific sorting rules, and that this effect is not transient. No support was found for transfer to the other executive control tasks. A possible explanation is that the feedback mainly improved rule switching, an ability that is specifically required for performing a cognitive flexibility task but not the other executive control tasks.

The effects of job characteristics on perceived organizational identification and job satisfaction of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games employees

ABSTRACTThis research examined how job characteristics affect employee satisfaction through the perceived organizational identification (OID) of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (OCOG) employees. By conducting structural equation modeling and bootstrapping, the proposed model was tested with a sample of 280 full-time employees from the 2018 PyeongChang OCOG. The results confirmed that task significance (SIG; β = .52, p < .001) and feedback (FB; β = .19, p < .05) were significant antecedents affecting employee OID and that OID (β = .55, p < .001) explained 29.8% of the variance in job satisfaction (JSAT). The bootstrapping results indicated a significant indirect effect of SIG on JSAT, mediated by OID (β = .28, p < .001), confirming the importance of OID in JSAT. The findings revealed the importance of highlighting the values of the Olympic Movement as a human resources management strategy in the OCOG context.

In the Face of Negative Data, the Effects of Goal Type and Feedback Type on the Willingness to Continue to Participate Quantified-Self

In order to ensure the continuous participation of consumers in quantified-self, this paper studies the influence of target type and feedback type on the intention of quantified-self continuous participation in the face of negative data. The interaction between quantified-self goals and feedback types was taken as an independent variable, and self-efficacy was introduced as an intermediary to explain the influence of independent variables on the quantified willingness to continue to participate. In this study, the experimental method was used to prove the research hypothesis through two experiments. The results showed that in the face of negative data, when the type of quantified-self goal was promotion, compared with the task feedback, the adoption of ability feedback would lead to a higher willingness of quantified-self involvement due to a higher sense of self-efficacy. When the quantized-self goal type is prevention, compared with the task feedback, the adoption of capability feedback results in a lower willingness of quantified-self involvement due to a lower sense of self-efficacy. The results of relevant studies have positive guiding significance for enterprises to improve design methods to promote consumers’ willingness to participate in quantified-self sustainability.

Using cluster analysis to explore students' interactions with automated feedback in an online Earth science task

Digitally delivered tasks can provide students opportunities to interact with disciplinary content while their interactions with the tasks can be recorded as time-stamped log events in the system server. Through post-hoc analysis of log data, we can re-enact and discover patterns in students' activities. This study addresses the online Earth science module where students engaged in writing and revising scientific arguments in a structured format. We adopted natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyse students' responses, which enabled us to provide immediate feedback to students on their responses and revisions. Cluster analyses were conducted on the action sequences in four argumentation tasks embedded in the module. For each task, the cluster analyses identified two clusters of students who showed different revision patterns with allocation of time on different items. In addition, students in those two clusters also differed in their initial item scores and item score changes after revision.

Using cluster analysis to explore students' interactions with automated feedback in an online Earth science task

Digitally delivered tasks can provide students opportunities to interact with disciplinary content while their interactions with the tasks can be recorded as time-stamped log events in the system server. Through post-hoc analysis of log data, we can re-enact and discover patterns in students' activities. This study addresses the online Earth science module where students engaged in writing and revising scientific arguments in a structured format. We adopted natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyse students' responses, which enabled us to provide immediate feedback to students on their responses and revisions. Cluster analyses were conducted on the action sequences in four argumentation tasks embedded in the module. For each task, the cluster analyses identified two clusters of students who showed different revision patterns with allocation of time on different items. In addition, students in those two clusters also differed in their initial item scores and item score changes after revision.

Cortical mapping of mirror visual feedback training for unilateral upper extremity: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

IntroductionMirror therapy has been shown to be effective in promoting hemiplegic arm recovery in patients with stroke or unilateral cerebral palsy. This study aimed to explore the cortical mapping associated with mirror therapy in a group of healthy adults by using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy.MethodsFifteen right‐handed healthy adults were recruited by means of convenience sampling. A 2 × 2 factorial design was used: movement complexity with two levels—task‐based (T) and movement‐based (M), and visual direction with two levels—mirror visual feedback task (MT) and covered mirror with normal visual feedback task (NoT) as the control, constituting four conditions, namely TMT, MMT, TNoT, and MNoT. The regions of interest were the sensorimotor cortex (SMC), the supplementary motor area (SMA), the superior parietal cortex (SPL), and the precuneus in both the contralateral and ipsilateral hemispheres.ResultsOur findings showed that in the ipsilateral hemisphere, MT induced a higher activation in the SMA and SPL than NoT. With regard to the activation of the ipsilateral SMC, only one channel was found showing superior effects of MT compared with NoT. In addition, MT can strengthen the functional connectivity between the SMC and SMA. In the contralateral hemisphere, both movement complexity and visual direction showed significant main effects in the SMC, while only movement complexity showed a significant main effect in the SMA and SPL. The precuneus of both sides was deactivated and showed no significant difference among the four conditions.ConclusionsOur experiment implies that the modest activation of ipsilateral SMC during MT is likely to be associated with the enhanced activity of ipsilateral SMA and that the precuneus may not be an essential component of the MT‐related neural network.

Subjective emotional experience and physiological responsivity to posed emotions in people with traumatic brain injury.

Although the presence of empathy deficits following traumatic brain injury (TBI) is well established, there is a paucity of research investigating the underpinning mechanisms. This study investigated whether feedback from posed emotional expressions and psychophysiological responsivity, thought to play a role in emotional empathy, are impaired after TBI. Thirty adults with TBI and 30 demographically matched healthy controls completed 2 feedback tasks while skin conductance and heart rate were recorded. In Feedback Task 1, participants assumed different emotional postures and rated how this made them feel. In Feedback Task 2, participants held a smile or frown while viewing neutral images and rated the pleasantness of each image. Participants with TBI did not differ from controls in their subjective ratings in response to posed emotional expressions. However, we found reduced skin conductance responses to rapid facial manipulations and some evidence of altered physiological arousal to sad emotional postures in participants with TBI. Finally, there was no relationship between emotional empathy and facial feedback or physiological responsivity. We failed to replicate past research that demonstrated an impairment in the feedback effect in people with TBI. These normal subjective responses, though, were in the context of reduced psychophysiological responding to the posed expressions, suggesting that another mechanism can contribute to normal feedback effects after TBI. Finally, we did not find the expected relationship between the feedback effect and emotional empathy but may have been limited by the lower than expected rates of low emotional empathy in our sample. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Utility of Concurrent Bandwidth Feedback in Training Aircraft Flight Tasks

The effects of concurrent bandwidth feedback on operator performance and workload was analyzed in training an aircraft flight control task. In the experiment, participants completed a simulated flight task consisting of three complexity levels using traditional flight instruments. Thirty participants were divided into equal sized control and feedback groups. The control group controlled simulated aircraft motion with visual guidance for pitch, roll, and altitude provided by traditional flight instruments. The feedback group received additional visual concurrent bandwidth feedback for each controlled degree of freedom. For both groups, performance and workload measurements were evaluated to determine the effects of the feedback on subject learning rate and maximum skill level. To assess short-term retention of learned skill for the feedback group, the concurrent feedback was removed, and performance was again evaluated. Statistical analyses showed that participants in the feedback group immediately performed better than those in the control group, that the performance difference between the two groups was more pronounced for more complex tasks, and that final performance levels for the feedback group significantly exceeded that of the control group. We found that concurrent bandwidth feedback does not reduce workload in our flight tasks, and that for the short periods tested, participants continued to perform at the same performance and workload levels when the feedback was removed.

A Study of the Quality of Feedback Via the Google Classroom-mediated-Anonymous Online Peer Feedback Activity in a Thai EFL Writing Classroom

The current study investigated the quality of feedback produced via anonymous online peer feedback activity in a Thai EFL writing classroom. It also explored how the students perceived the anonymous online peer feedback activity. Peer feedback tasks, questionnaires, and an interview were used to collect the information. The results from the peer feedback tasks showed that the quality of peer feedback significantly improved. The results from the questionnaires showed that the students agreed that the online peer feedback activity helped them to improve their writing although there were some problems that should be improved. The follow-up interview revealed that the anonymity of the writers or the feedback givers would not affect how most students would react to the writings or feedbacks. It could be noted from the study that sufficient training must be provided before implementing the anonymous online peer feedback activity. The findings provide new evidence for scholars and instructors who are interested in implementing an anonymous online peer feedback in a Thai classroom.

I Knew You Weren't Going to Like Me! Neural Response to Accurately Predicting Rejection Is Associated With Anxiety and Depression.

Anxiety and depression often emerge in adolescence. A normative increase in the desire for peer acceptance may be one of many contributing factors. These shifts occur during a phase of development in which neural reward networks, including structures such as the ventral striatum, undergo critical changes. Despite the salience of peer feedback during adolescence, neural responses to reward have largely been examined in the monetary domain, leaving many open questions about responses to social rewards. Moreover, most paradigms do not tease apart different aspects of reward processing (e.g., receiving feedback, being correct). Anxiety and depression are also associated with alterations in reward networks; however, little is known about how anxiety and depression in adolescence relate to differences in social vs. non-social reward processing. In this study, adolescents (n = 28) underwent fMRI while completing novel monetary and social feedback tasks, which tease apart reward domain (social/monetary), valence (positive/negative), and outcome (correct/incorrect). Participants were shown a pair of stimuli (doors/age-matched peers) and asked to indicate which stimulus would provide positive (win money/social like) or negative (lose money/social dislike) feedback. Participants then received feedback about the purported accuracy of their response. Region-of-interest analyses showed that left ventral striatum response varied by domain (social/monetary), valence (positive/negative), and outcome (correct/incorrect) of reward. Additionally, unique associations between anxiety, depression, and brain function were observed for correct, but not for incorrect trials, in the social, but not monetary task. Specifically, adolescents with high anxiety symptoms, but low depression, displayed greater left ventral striatum activation when correctly identifying peers who gave dislike (vs. like) feedback. Thus, anxious youth exhibited enhanced activation in a brain region implicated in reward processing when they accurately predicted someone was going to dislike them. Higher levels of both depression and anxiety symptoms were associated with greater striatal activation to correctly identifying peers who gave like (vs. dislike) feedback. These results suggest a neural mechanism by which negative prediction biases may be reinforced in anxious youth.

Feedback Spillover Effect on Competitiveness Across Unrelated Tasks

ABSTRACTEmployees typically work on multiple tasks that require unrelated skills and abilities. While past research strongly supports that relative performance feedback influences employee performance and effort allocation, little is known about the effect of relative performance feedback on employee competitiveness. Using a lab experiment, we study and confirm a complementary feedback spillover effect—relative performance feedback in the first task positively affects competitiveness in the unrelated second task. Furthermore, we find that the effect operates jointly and independently through belief- and taste-altering mechanisms. The results have important implications for organizations to understand both the power and the limitations of using relative performance feedback as an intervention policy in the design of accounting, control, and reporting systems.JEL Classifications: C72; C91.Data Availability: Go to: https://doi.org/10.17029/654cbcca-6e02-4bb2-aff6-41607a2a23d5