Multiple Response Alternatives Research Articles

Resurgence Following Traditional and Interdependent Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behavior.

Clinicians frequently prescribe functional communication training (FCT) as a treatment for severe destructive behavior. Recent research has shown that FCT treatments are susceptible to treatment relapse in the form of resurgence of destructive behavior when individuals contact periods in which reinforcers are unavailable. Results of preliminary studies suggest that teaching multiple response alternatives can mitigate the resurgence of target behavior. The current evaluation serves as a preliminary study in which we used a laboratory arrangement to evaluate the effects of a novel approach to training multiple alternative responses on the resurgence of target behavior. Findings showed that multiple-response training did not decrease resurgence of target responding consistently; however, it increased the total amount of target and alternative responding observed during the resurgence phase and decreased the overall probability of the target response.

Synergistic Effects of Cognitive Training and Physical Exercise on Dual-Task Performance in Older Adults.

Studies report benefits of physical exercise and cognitive training to enhance cognition in older adults. However, most studies did not compare these interventions to appropriate active controls. Moreover, physical exercise and cognitive training seem to involve different mechanisms of brain plasticity, suggesting a potential synergistic effect on cognition. This study investigated the synergistic effect of cognitive training and aerobic/resistance physical exercise on dual-task performance in older adults. Intervention effects were compared to active controls for both the cognitive and the exercise domain. Eighty-seven older adults completed one of 4 different combinations of interventions, in which computer lessons was active control for cognitive training and stretching/toning exercise control for aerobic/resistance training: (a) cognitive dual-task training and aerobic/resistance training (COG+/AER+), (b) computer lessons and aerobic/resistance training (COG-/AER+), (c) cognitive dual-task training and stretching/toning exercises (COG+/AER-), and (d) computer lessons and stretching/toning exercises (COG-/AER-). The primary outcome was performance in an untrained transfer dual task. Stepwise backward removal regression analyses were used to predict pre- versus post-test changes in groups that have completed the dual-task training, aerobic/resistance or both interventions. Participation in AER+ did not predict improvement in any dual-task outcomes. Participation in COG+ predicted reduction in dual-task cost and participation in COG+/AER+ predicted reduction in task-set cost. Results suggest that the combination of cognitive and physical training protocols exerted a synergistic effect on task-set cost which reflects the cost of maintaining multiple response alternatives, whereas cognitive training specifically improved dual-task cost, which reflects the ability of synchronizing concurrent tasks.

Competencias del Emprendedor Social Aliado de las Comunidades del Entorno Empresarial Petrolero Venezolano.

El emprendimiento, es una actividad que se concibe como una oportunidad que aporta al desarrollo socio -económico de los países, y donde el emprendedor social se convierte en un agente transformador de las comunidades con ideas que coadyuvan a solventar sus necesidades, es por ello que el presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar las competencias del emprendedor social como aliado de las comunidades del entorno empresarial petrolero venezolano Sustentada metodológicamente en un paradigma cuantitativo, enfoque positivista, tipo de investigación descriptiva, diseño no experimental, transaccional, de campo. Los sujetos de la población estuvieron representados por 130 personas de los consejos comunales asentadas en zonas adyacentes de la actividad petrolera, obteniendo su opinión con la aplicación de la técnica de la encuesta e instrumento un cuestionario de 15 ítems con alternativas múltiples de respuesta, validado previamente por 10 profesionales expertos, el cual luego la confabilidad alcanzando un nivel de 96% de fabilidad. Para el análisis de los resultados de la información manifestada por los sujetos encuestados, se utilizó la estadística inferencial. A modo de conclusión, se pudo determinar la presencia de competencias del emprendedor social en comunidades en Venezuela, el cual se manifesta con un espíritu emprendedor caracterizada por un sentido innovador, aplicado estrategias creativas que articula con los grupos de interés, de manera responsable, visionaria y planifcada representando sus actividades ideas que dinamizan el desarrollo de las comunidades; para contribuir a solventar sus necesidades.

4. SISTEMA HIPERMEDIA ADAPTATIVO PARA EL APRENDIZAJE DE BÚSQUEDAS AVANZADAS DE INFORMACIÓN EN INTERNET

Este estudio tuvo como objetivo diseñar un software educativo para el aprendizaje de búsquedas avanzadas de información en Internet, dirigido a los estudiantes de la UCLA. La metodología se fundamentó en la modalidad de proyecto especial desarrollado en tres (3) fases: Fase I: Estudio diagnóstico, sustentado en una investigación de campo de tipo descriptivo. Para la recolección de datos se utilizó la técnica de la encuesta y un cuestionario de opinión con múltiples alternativas de respuesta, aplicado a una muestra aleatoria de 30 estudiantes pertenecientes a la población objeto de estudio. La validez de contenido se realizó a través de la técnica de juicio de expertos, y la confiabilidad con el método de consistencia interna, con un resultado α=0,88. La información recolectada se analizó e interpretó por medio de estadísticos descriptivos a través de frecuencias, porcentajes y gráficas. Los resultados del estudio comprobaron la pertinencia del diseño propuesto. En la Fase II, fue diseñado el Software sobre la base del modelo MOOHM propuesto por Benigni, para su implementación se utilizó Microsoft Visual Studio. La Fase III, comprendió la validación del Software Educativo a través de expertos y usuarios, utilizando (4) instrumentos adaptados del modelo propuesto por Marquès. El diseño e implementación del Software redundará en el desarrollo de competencias en los estudiantes para la búsqueda pertinente de información.

Communicative interactions in point-light displays: Choosing among multiple response alternatives.

Vision scientists are increasingly relying on the point-light technique as a way to investigate the perception of human motion. Unfortunately, the lack of standardized stimulus sets has so far limited the use of this technique for studying social interaction. Here, we describe a new tool to study the interaction between two agents starting from point-light displays: the Communicative Interaction Database - 5AFC format (CID-5). The CID-5 consists of 14 communicative and seven non-communicative individual actions performed by two agents. Stimuli were constructed by combining motion capture techniques and 3-D animation software to provide precise control over the computer-generated actions. For each action stimulus, we provide coordinate files and movie files depicting the action as seen from four different perspectives. Furthermore, the archive contains a text file with a list of five alternative action descriptions to construct forced-choice paradigms. In order to validate the CID-5 format, we provide normative data collected to assess action identification within a 5AFC tasks. The CID-5 archive is freely downloadable from http://bsb-lab.org/research/ and from the supplementary materials of this article.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0669-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

An examination of matching with multiple response alternatives in professional hockey.

Over the past decade researchers in behavior analysis have begun to consider the role of the matching law in describing choice behavior in sports. To date this has been examined in baseball, basketball, and football. These sports are amenable to the study of matching in that they provide dichotomous

Advanced mouse-tracking analytic techniques for enhancing psychological science

Computer mouse-tracking is a relatively recently developed behavioral methodology that can contribute unique insight into a wide variety of psychological phenomena. By recording mouse movements en route to specific responses on a screen, researchers glean continuous information about tentative commitments to multiple response alternatives over time. This approach yields a richness of data that can be fully explored with a variety of sophisticated analytic techniques, but these approaches are relatively underutilized and can be difficult to adopt. Here we describe several techniques for researchers to examine the onset and timing of evolving decision processes; test the degree of response competition at different time points; assess trajectory complexity with spatial disorder analyses; identify qualitatively distinct psychological processes during response generation; and finally to distill unique and meaningful components from mouse-tracking data for subsequent analysis. With this guide, we hope researchers can address novel hypotheses otherwise inaccessible with more traditional methods.

Measuring decision weights in recognition experiments with multiple response alternatives: Comparing the correlation and multinomial-logistic-regression methods

Psychophysical "reverse-correlation" methods allow researchers to gain insight into the perceptual representations and decision weighting strategies of individual subjects in perceptual tasks. Although these methods have gained momentum, until recently their development was limited to experiments involving only two response categories. Recently, two approaches for estimating decision weights in m-alternative experiments have been put forward. One approach extends the two-category correlation method to m > 2 alternatives; the second uses multinomial logistic regression (MLR). In this article, the relative merits of the two methods are discussed, and the issues of convergence and statistical efficiency of the methods are evaluated quantitatively using Monte Carlo simulations. The results indicate that, for a range of values of the number of trials, the estimated weighting patterns are closer to their asymptotic values for the correlation method than for the MLR method. Moreover, for the MLR method, weight estimates for different stimulus components can exhibit strong correlations, making the analysis and interpretation of measured weighting patterns less straightforward than for the correlation method. These and other advantages of the correlation method, which include computational simplicity and a close relationship to other well-established psychophysical reverse-correlation methods, make it an attractive tool to uncover decision strategies in m-alternative experiments.

MouseTracker: Software for studying real-time mental processing using a computer mouse-tracking method

In the present article, we present a software package, MouseTracker, that allows researchers to use a computer mouse-tracking method for assessing real-time processing in psychological tasks. By recording the streaming x-, y-coordinates of the computer mouse while participants move the mouse into one of multiple response alternatives, motor dynamics of the hand can reveal the time course of mental processes. MouseTracker provides researchers with fine-grained information about the real-time evolution of participant responses by sampling 60-75 times/sec the online competition between multiple response alternatives. MouseTracker allows researchers to develop and run experiments and subsequently analyze mouse trajectories in a user-interactive, graphics-based environment. Experiments may incorporate images, letter strings, and sounds. Mouse trajectories can be processed, averaged, visualized, and explored, and measures of spatial attraction/curvature, complexity, velocity, and acceleration can be computed. We describe the software and the method, and we provide details on mouse trajectory analysis. We validate the software by demonstrating the accuracy and reliability of its trajectory and reaction time data. The latest version of MouseTracker is freely available at http://mousetracker.jbfreeman.net.

Psychophysical reverse correlation with multiple response alternatives.

Psychophysical reverse-correlation methods such as the "classification image" technique provide a unique tool to uncover the internal representations and decision strategies of individual participants in perceptual tasks. Over the past 30 years, these techniques have gained increasing popularity among both visual and auditory psychophysicists. However, thus far, principled applications of the psychophysical reverse-correlation approach have been almost exclusively limited to two-alternative decision (detection or discrimination) tasks. Whether and how reverse-correlation methods can be applied to uncover perceptual templates and decision strategies in situations involving more than just two response alternatives remain largely unclear. Here, the authors consider the problem of estimating perceptual templates and decision strategies in stimulus identification tasks with multiple response alternatives. They describe a modified correlational approach, which can be used to solve this problem. The approach is evaluated under a variety of simulated conditions, including different ratios of internal-to-external noise, different degrees of correlations between the sensory observations, and various statistical distributions of stimulus perturbations. The results indicate that the proposed approach is reasonably robust, suggesting that it could be used in future empirical studies.

Exploring cerebral asymmetries for the verb generation task.

This study investigated potential right hemisphere involvement in the verb generation task. Six divided visual field experiments explored cerebral asymmetries for word retrieval in the verb generation task as well as in rhyme generation and immediate and delayed word pronunciation. The typical right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH) advantage was observed for pronunciation and rhyme generation. For verb generation, the RVF/LH advantage was obtained only when stimulus items had a single prepotent response and not when there were multiple response alternatives. A semantic priming experiment suggested that activation for less common, related verbs was maintained for a longer time course within the right than within the left hemisphere. The authors suggest that the right hemisphere may play a role in continued activation of semantically related response alternatives in word generation and discuss methodological implications of their findings.

Beating them or joining them: Your radiology group’s path to the future

Radiologists and hospital and health system (HHS) administrators and trustees are facing significant threats and opportunities in the rapidly changing health care environment. Although multiple response alternatives exist for both groups, some of the options seem more likely than others to lead to long-term success. The choices available range from cooperation to competition, from bargaining to blaming, from offering hope to providing criticism, from standing together to standing apart, and from focusing on beating them to investing in joining them for the benefit of all. Many physicians and HHS administrators and trustees acknowledge that their relationship with each other is central to their long-term success, as well as the interests of patients and their communities. This article discusses the major forces for change faced by radiologists and HHS administrators and trustees. It examines the collaborative and competitive responses available to each, provides a review of the typical consequences of these responses, and identifies the assumptions underlying the major alternatives.

An encoding multiple-key response unit

Many computer-controlled psychophysical studies allow subjects multiple response alternatives. Encoding the activated response key before signalling the computer makes possible more rapid stimulus/response interaction, simplifies software interrogation of response-key status, and automatically resolves double strikes. We describe an inexpensive unit which uses a priority encoder for up to seven response alternatives.