Online Paradigm Research Articles

Deep learning classification of EEG-based BCI monitoring of the attempted arm and hand movements.

The primary objective of this research is to improve the average classification performance for specific movements in patients with cervical spinal cord injury (SCI). The study utilizes a low-frequency multi-class electroencephalography (EEG) dataset from Graz University of Technology. The research combines convolutional neural network (CNN) and long-short-term memory (LSTM) architectures to uncover neural correlations between temporal and spatial aspects of the EEG signals associated with attempted arm and hand movements. To achieve this, three different methods are used to select relevant features, and the proposed model's robustness against variations in the data is validated using 10-fold cross-validation (CV). The research also investigates subject-specific adaptation in an online paradigm, extending movement classification proof-of-concept. The combined CNN-LSTM model, enhanced by three feature selection methods, demonstrates robustness with a mean accuracy of 75.75 % and low standard deviation (+/- 0.74 %) in 10-fold cross-validation, confirming its reliability. In summary, this research aims to make valuable contributions to the field of neuro-technology by developing EEG-controlled assistive devices using a generalized brain-computer interface (BCI) and deep learning (DL) framework. The focus is on capturing high-level spatiotemporal features and latent dependencies to enhance the performance and usability of EEG-based assistive technologies.

Preregistered Replication and Extension of "Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue".

The tendency for people to consider themselves morally good while behaving selfishly is known as moral hypocrisy. Influential work by Valdesolo and DeSteno (2007) found evidence for intergroup moral hypocrisy such that people were more forgiving of transgressions when they were committed by an in-group member than an out-group member. We conducted two experiments to examine moral hypocrisy and group membership in an online paradigm with Prolific workers from the United States: a direct replication of the original work with minimal groups (N = 610; nationally representative) and a conceptual replication with political groups (N = 606; 50% Democrats and 50% Republicans). Although the results did not replicate the original findings, we observed evidence of in-group favoritism in minimal groups and out-group derogation in political groups. The current research finds mixed evidence of intergroup moral hypocrisy and has implications for understanding the contextual dependencies of intergroup bias and partisanship.

Utilising online paradigms to explore the effect of boredom and sadness on children's snack choice: The role of parental feeding practices and child temperament

Emotional eating (EE) is defined as eating in response to negative emotions (e.g., sadness and boredom). Child temperament and parental feeding practices are predictive of child EE and may interact to shape child EE. Previous research has demonstrated that children eat more when they are experiencing sadness, however, boredom-EE (despite how common boredom is in children) has yet to be explored experimentally using remote methodologies. The current study explores whether feeding practices and child temperament interact with mood to predict children's snack selection in an online hypothetical food choice task. Using online experimental methods, children aged 6-9-years (N = 347) were randomised to watch a mood-inducing video clip (control, sadness, or boredom). Children completed a hypothetical food choice task from images of four snacks in varying portion sizes. The kilocalories in children's online snack choices were measured. Parents reported their feeding practices and child's temperament. Results indicated that the online paradigm successfully induced feelings of boredom and sadness, but these induced feelings of boredom and sadness did not significantly shape children's online food selection. Parental reports of use of restriction for health reasons (F = 8.64, p = .004, n2 = 0.25) and children's negative emotionality (F = 6.81, p = .009, n2 = 0.020) were significantly related to greater total kilocalorie selection by children. Three-way ANCOVAs found no evidence of any three-way interactions between temperament, feeding practices, and mood in predicting children's online snack food selection. These findings suggest that children's hypothetical snack food selection may be shaped by non-responsive feeding practices and child temperament. This study's findings also highlight different methods that can be successfully used to stimulate emotional experiences in children by using novel online paradigms, and also discusses the challenges around using online methods to measure children's intended food choice.

Impact of Native Language on Musical Working Memory

Music and language share similar sound features and cognitive processes, which may lead to bidirectional transfer effects of training in one domain on the processing in the other domain. We investigated the impact of native language on musical working memory by comparing nontonal language (Finnish) speakers and tonal language (Chinese) speakers. For both language backgrounds, musicians and nonmusicians were recruited. In an experimenter-monitored online paradigm, participants performed a forward-memory task measuring the maintenance of musical sequences, and a backward-memory task measuring the manipulation of musical sequences. We found that maintenance of music sequences was facilitated in Chinese participants compared with Finnish participants, with musicians outperforming nonmusicians. However, performance in the backward-memory task did not differ between Chinese and Finnish participants, independently of music expertise. The presence or absence of tonal structure in the musical sequences did not affect the advantage of Chinese over Finnish participants in either maintenance or manipulation of the musical sequences. Overall, these findings suggest that Mandarin Chinese speakers have facilitated maintenance of musical sounds, compared with Finnish speakers, regardless of musical expertise and the presence of tonal structure. Our study furthers the understanding of language-to-music transfer and provides insights into cross-cultural differences in music cognition.

Underpinning the On-Line Processing of (Non-)Canonical Sentences in German-Speaking Four-Year-Olds: The Interplay of Cognitive Control and Memory Capacity

ABSTRACT This study investigates the interpretation of object-initial sentences in German-speaking children. We addressed the following questions: (1) Which morphosyntactic cues do children deploy to process object-initial sentences? (2) Which executive function (EF) abilities support them during this task? This study examined the effect of case and number agreement morphology in 4;6-year-old German-speaking children (N = 27) on their interpretation of unambiguous S(ubject)-V(erb)-O(bject) and OVS sentences by combining an offline (sentence-picture matching) and an online (looking-while-listening) paradigm. Participants’ working memory and cognitive control abilities were assessed by means of a (forward) digit-span test and a flanker task. Case-marked OVS sentences were processed more accurately than number-marked ones, although both conditions were less accurate than SVO sentences. We found a comprehension facilitation driven by higher cognitive control skills that enhances, specifically the interpretation of the more demanding number cue in OVS structures already in 4;6-year-olds. Higher working memory skills are generally associated with children’s processing skills as they support the correct parsing of all online conditions and of both SVO and OVS in the offline case condition. We conclude that while case-marking appears to be processed more reliably than number by preschoolers, also number information alone can be processed, especially by children with higher cognitive control skills.

A Case Study of the Validity of Web-based Visuomotor Rotation Experiments.

Web-based experiments are gaining momentum in motor learning research because of the desire to increase statistical power, decrease overhead for human participant experiments, and utilize a more demographically inclusive sample population. However, there is a vital need to understand the general feasibility and considerations necessary to shift tightly controlled human participant experiments to an online setting. We developed and deployed an online experimental platform modeled after established in-laboratory visuomotor rotation experiments to serve as a case study examining remotely collected data quality for an 80-min experiment. Current online motor learning experiments have thus far not exceeded 60 min, and current online crowdsourced studies have a median duration of approximately 10 min. Thus, the impact of a longer-duration, web-based experiment is unknown. We used our online platform to evaluate perturbation-driven motor adaptation behavior under three rotation sizes (±10°, ±35°, and ±65°) and two sensory uncertainty conditions. We hypothesized that our results would follow predictions by the relevance estimation hypothesis. Remote execution allowed us to double (n = 49) the typical participant population size from similar studies. Subsequently, we performed an in-depth examination of data quality by analyzing single-trial data quality, participant variability, and potential temporal effects across trials. Results replicated in-laboratory findings and provided insight on the effect of induced sensory uncertainty on the relevance estimation hypothesis. Our experiment also highlighted several specific challenges associated with online data collection including potentially smaller effect sizes, higher data variability, and lower recommended experiment duration thresholds. Overall, online paradigms present both opportunities and challenges for future motor learning research.

A new online paradigm to measure spontaneous pointing in infants and caregivers

Index-finger pointing is a milestone in the development of referential communication. Previous research has investigated infants’ pointing with a variety of paradigms ranging from parent reports to field observations to experimental settings, suggesting that lab-based semi-natural interactional settings seem especially suited to elicit and measure infant pointing. With the Covid-pandemic the need for a comparable online tool became evident enabling also efficient, low-cost, large-scale, diverse data collection. The current study introduces a remote online paradigm, based on the established live ‘decorated-room’ paradigm. In Experiment 1, 12-months old infants and their caregivers (N = 24) looked at digitally presented stimuli together while being recorded with their webcam. We coded pointing gestures of infants and caregivers as well as caregivers’ responses to infants’ pointing. In Experiment 2 (N = 47), we optimized stimuli and investigated influences of stimulus characteristics. We systematically varied the style of depiction, stimulus complexity, motion, and facial stimuli. Main findings were that infants and caregivers pointed spontaneously, with mean behaviors ranging within the benchmarks of previously reported findings of the live decorated-room paradigm. Further, the social setting was preserved as revealed by significant relations between parents’ responsive points and infants’ pointing frequency. Analyses of stimuli characteristics revealed that infants pointed more to stimuli depicting faces than to other stimuli. The new remote online paradigm proves a useful addition to established paradigms. It offers novel opportunities for simplified assessments, large-scale sampling, and worldwide, diversified data collection.

Effects of two different social exclusion paradigms on ambiguous facial emotion recognition

ABSTRACT Social exclusion is an emotionally painful experience that leads to various alterations in socio-emotional processing. The perceptual and emotional consequences that may arise from experiencing social exclusion can vary depending on the paradigm used to manipulate it. Exclusion paradigms can vary in terms of the severity and duration of the leading exclusion experience, thereby classifying it as either a short-term or long-term experience. The present study aimed to study the impact of exclusion on socio-emotional processing using different paradigms that caused experiencing short-term and imagining long-term exclusion. Ambiguous facial emotions were used as socio-emotional cues. In study 1, the Ostracism Online paradigm was used to manipulate short-term exclusion. In study 2, a new sample of participants imagined long-term exclusion through the future life alone paradigm. Participants of both studies then completed a facial emotion recognition task consisting of morphed ambiguous facial emotions. By means of Point of Subjective Equivalence analyses, our results indicate that the experience of short-term exclusion hinders recognising happy facial expressions. In contrast, imagining long-term exclusion causes difficulties in recognising sad facial expressions. These findings extend the current literature, suggesting that not all social exclusion paradigms affect socio-emotional processing similarly.

Data-driven reduced order modeling for parametric PDE eigenvalue problems using Gaussian process regression

In this article, we propose a data-driven reduced basis (RB) method for the approximation of parametric eigenvalue problems. The method is based on the offline and online paradigms. In the offline stage, we generate snapshots and construct the basis of the reduced space, using a POD approach. Gaussian process regressions (GPR) are used for approximating the eigenvalues and projection coefficients of the eigenvectors in the reduced space. All the GPR corresponding to the eigenvalues and projection coefficients are trained in the offline stage, using the data generated in the offline stage. The output corresponding to new parameters can be obtained in the online stage using the trained GPR. The proposed algorithm is used to solve affine and non-affine parameter-dependent eigenvalue problems. The numerical results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed non-intrusive method.

The more things change, the more they stay the same: an exploratory study of prevalence induced concept change in caregivers of children with autism

Negative emotions are typically high, and typically stay high over time, in caregivers of children with autism. The severity of autism-related symptoms on the other hand tends to improve over time, reducing as the child gets older. Why caregivers’ negative emotions continue to be high at a time when autism symptom severity is improving remains puzzling. This exploratory study asks whether prevalence-induced concept change (PICC) might provide one plausible explanation. A sample of N = 34 participants, of which 17 were caregivers of children with autism and 17 were non-caregiving controls, completed questionnaires assessing negative emotions. PICC was assessed via an online paradigm; participants were shown a face on screen for 500ms and asked, following its disappearance, whether it conveyed a negative (i.e., sad) or a neutral expression. Neutral faces mistaken for sad faces, as our outcome variable of interest, were summed across trials. The prevalence of negative faces was gradually reduced across four experimental blocks (50 trials per block). Mixed ANOVA yielded a significant main effect of block. That is, neutral faces were more likely to be mistaken for sad faces as sad faces became less prevalent across blocks. This pattern of change varied by group; caregivers were more likely to mistake neutral faces for sad faces as sad faces reduced in prevalence across blocks. Errors made by the control group did not vary across blocks. Caregivers’ concept of ‘negative, therefore, seems sensitive to change, redefining its parameters as negative events become less prevalent. PICC might explain why caregivers’ negative emotions remain high when autism symptom severity, as one well-known predictor of those negative emotions, is reducing in prevalence. The implications of these findings for caregivers’ psychological well-being and, by association, care recipient quality of life are considered.

Examining Attentional Biases Elicited by Sexual Stimuli Using MouseView.js: An Online Paradigm to Mimic Eye Movements

ABSTRACT Attention is a key mechanism underlying many aspects of sexuality, with eye-tracking studies revealing that attention is both sustained by sexual stimuli and corresponds with sexual interest. Despite its utility, eye-tracking experiments typically require specialized equipment and are conducted in a laboratory setting. The overarching objective of this research was to assess the utility of a novel online method, MouseView.js, for assessing attentional processing of sexual stimuli outside of a laboratory context. MouseView.js is an open-source, web-based application where the display is blurred to mimic peripheral vision and an aperture is directed using a mouse cursor to fixate on regions of interest within the display. Using a discovery (Study 1, n = 239) and replication (Study 2, n = 483) design, we examined attentional biases to sexual stimuli among two diverse samples with respect to gender/sex and sexual orientation. Results revealed strong attentional biases toward processing sexual stimuli relative to nonsexual stimuli, as well as dwell times that correlated with self-report sexuality measures. Results mirror those observed for laboratory-based eye-tracking research, but using a freely available instrument that mirrors gaze tracking. MouseView.js offers important advantages to traditional eye-tracking methods, including the ability to recruit larger and more diverse samples, and minimizes volunteer biases.

Proctor net: An AI framework for suspicious activity detection in online proctored examinations

Due to recent pandemic and other factors, global Education System transiting from traditional paradigm to online paradigm in learning as well as assessment. Online proctored examinations have ensured continuity in assessing learners in award of various global certifications and university degrees. Traditional human proctored examination requires huge infrastructure, human resources, effort, and physical presence of examinees. To overcome these limitations, an automated AI-based proctoring system “Proctor Net” proposed in this work for detecting suspicious behavior of the examinee. The proposed system captures live video of the examinee and generate alerts based on three aspects, 1. Examinee Recognition, 2. Eye-gaze Tracking, and 3. Mouth Opening Detection. In first phase, Proctor Net recognizes examinee faces using inception-Resnet v1 blocks. In next phase, the Proctor Net calculates the pitch and yaw of the authenticated examinee face from the spatial landmarks extracted by hour-glass model. Further, Mouth Aspect Ratio was verified to check if examinee is speaking to others. The proposed model generate alters to proctor if found any deviation in examinee’s behavior. The proposed Proctor Net is evaluated using standard data sets such as Labelled Faces in the wild Dataset (LFW), Unity Eyes Dataset and real time data - “Proctor Dataset” with various types of malpractices. Extensive experimentation is carried out and results demonstrate that proposed work with the combination of Inception-Resnet-v1 blocks with Hourglass modules is more accurate with an accuracy rate of 91%, making it reliable and robust.

Interpretation bias in health anxiety: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Interpretation bias (i.e. the selective negative interpretation of ambiguous stimuli) may contribute to the development and maintenance of health anxiety. However, the strength of the empirical evidence for this association remains a topic of debate. This study aimed to estimate the association between health anxiety and interpretation bias and to identify potential moderators of this association. Chinese-language databases (CNKI, VIP, and Wanfang), English-language databases (Web of Science, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus), and German-language databases (Psyndex and PubPsych) were searched for relevant studies. There were 36 articles (39 studies) identified by this search (N = 8984), of which 32 articles (34 studies) were included in the meta-analysis (N = 8602). Results revealed a medium overall effect size (g = 0.67). Statistically equivalent effect sizes were observed for patients diagnosed with clinical health anxiety (g = 0.58) and subclinical health anxiety (g = 0.72). The effect sizes for threat stimuli that were health related (g = 0.68) and not health related (g = 0.63) did not differ significantly. The effect size for studies using an offline paradigm (g = 0.75) was significantly higher than that for studies using an online paradigm (g = 0.50). It is concluded that health anxiety is significantly and robustly associated with interpretation bias. These findings are of central importance for the advancement of models and treatment of health anxiety.

Text-Based Interactive Recommendation via Offline Reinforcement Learning

Interactive recommendation with natural-language feedback can provide richer user feedback and has demonstrated advantages over traditional recommender systems. However, the classical online paradigm involves iteratively collecting experience via interaction with users, which is expensive and risky. We consider an offline interactive recommendation to exploit arbitrary experience collected by multiple unknown policies. A direct application of policy learning with such fixed experience suffers from the distribution shift. To tackle this issue, we develop a behavior-agnostic off-policy correction framework to make offline interactive recommendation possible. Specifically, we leverage the conservative Q-function to perform off-policy evaluation, which enables learning effective policies from fixed datasets without further interactions. Empirical results on the simulator derived from real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed offline training framework.

WISP, Wearable Inertial Sensor for Online Wheelchair Propulsion Detection.

Manual wheelchair dance is an artistic recreational and sport activity for people with disabilities that is becoming more and more popular. It has been reported that a significant part of the dance is dedicated to propulsion. Furthermore, wheelchair dance professionals such as Gladys Foggea highlight the need for monitoring the quantity and timing of propulsions for assessment and learning. This study addresses these needs by proposing a wearable system based on inertial sensors capable of detecting and characterizing propulsion gestures. We called the system WISP. Within our initial configuration, three inertial sensors were placed on the hands and the back. Two machine learning classifiers were used for online bilateral recognition of basic propulsion gestures (forward, backward, and dance). Then, a conditional block was implemented to rebuild eight specific propulsion gestures. Online paradigm is intended for real-time assessment applications using sliding window method. Thus, we evaluate the accuracy of the classifiers in two configurations: “three-sensor” and “two-sensor”. Results showed that when using “two-sensor” configuration, it was possible to recognize the propulsion gestures with an accuracy of 90.28%. Finally, the system allows to quantify the propulsions and measure their timing in a manual wheelchair dance choreography, showing its possible applications in the teaching of dance.

Social trust and the discounting of gains and losses in prolonged grief

Prolonged grief (PG) is a potentially debilitating consequence of bereavement. Previous studies have associated PG severity with relative deficits in key future-oriented cognitive processes, including the discounting of future rewards. Individual differences in the rate at which one devalues the future have been associated with a range of important economic and health outcomes. To extend understanding of the mechanisms underlying discounting behaviour in PG, this study investigated discounting behaviour using an online paradigm where future consequences were made salient at the time of the decision. Ninety-four bereaved participants made choices to accept or reject offers that involved either an immediate gain and a long-term loss, or an immediate loss and a longer-term gain. Lower levels of social trust and higher PG severity were associated with greater discounting of future losses. Social trust but not PG severity was related to discounting of future gains. Results replicate and extend on previous findings in PG, and suggest potentially modifiable factors to reduce the biases in decision making processes that may contribute to ongoing dysfunction in PG.

The Emerging Challenges for Online Teaching in the Times of COVID-19: An Emerging Market Perspective

Before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, most academic institutions, i.e., schools, colleges, and universities in Kuwait utilized face-to-face settings, and hence, were based on only traditional methods of learning. Although many academic institutions have started employing blended learning, several institutions continue to stick with conventional procedures. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis has shaken the educational sector in Kuwait, and the Middle East and North Africa region by forcing instructors to shift to the online mode of teaching overnight to maintain their status. Many instructors hesitant of readjusting their conventional pedagogical approach have had no option except shifting solely to an online teaching environment. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to shed light on the challenges and highlight the success factors of e-learning and the online teaching approach during the COVID-19 crisis. This study also proposes some useful suggestions for professionals in higher education institutions, i.e., senior managers, leaders, and others, on dealing with the challenges associated with the online paradigm in the post-COVID-19 crisis time-period.

Integrated Mobile Learning Education Supply Chain Management for Higher Learning Institution

The mobile devices are used to execute the teaching-learning-evaluation process in Mobile Learning (m-learning) methodology. M-learning is a trending field in educational organizations, companies, and for individual study. With the explosion of mobile device ownership among the users aged within 18–29 years who are also the attendees of the higher learning institution (HLI), gives us the opportunity to consider the use of m-learning methodology to be embedded in the HLI beside traditional methodologies. Exceptional circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic when traditional face-to-face methodology suddenly changed to online paradigm, is also forcing us to strongly consider the m-learning approach. However, HLI may not have a general policy to implement m-learning into the traditional learning environment. A proper educational outcome needs to be configured to implement a new process into the traditional process. Therefore, a model integrating the m-learning aspects and the education supply chain management factors obtained from this study may benefit the stakeholders of HLI, especially educators and students.

Gamifying Online News in a Senior Online Community: Insights from Designing and Assessing the Readers’ Experience

Aging audiences and the shift of news consumption to an online paradigm have led to the need of finding strategies to engage aging readers with online news by assessing their news consumption habits and identifying the potential for digital platforms to assist the reader’s journey, i.e., the activities performed from access to the information to the relatedness and shareability of the news content. It is well established that the use of game elements and game thinking within the context of a community can capture the user’s attention and lead to behavioral engagement toward repetitive tasks. However, information about the design implications of socially gamified news to the aging reader’s experience is still lacking. Using a development research approach, we implemented a prototype that socially gamifies news to support the aging reader experience based on a pre-assessment survey with 248 participants about their news consumption habits and motivations. We then validated the prototype with six market-oriented representatives of Portuguese newspapers and eleven adults aged 50 and over. A model for onboarding a reader’s 6-step journey (read, react, discuss, share, relate and experience) within the context of a Senior Online Community using gamification is proposed. The game elements used can inform the design of a much more personalized experience of consuming news and news behavioral engagement.

Fear of being near: Fear supersedes sociability when interacting amid a pandemic

In the COVID-19 era, physical interactions ubiquitously pose a disease threat. Using a novel online paradigm, this study tested whether under such unique circumstances, the fundamental motivation to avoid disease-related threats interacts with individual differences in sociability, such that: (i) responses to others are slowed down, particularly among sociable individuals, reflecting motivational tension; (ii) the role of sociability in predicting interaction likelihood is diminished. Participants (Israeli young adults, N = 207) listened to auditory descriptions of everyday social situations, taking place in either the physical or virtual space, and decided quickly whether to interact. Participants also completed the Sociability Scale (Cheek & Buss, 1981). Responses were slower in the physical compared to virtual space, regardless of sociability. The association between interaction likelihood and sociability was stronger in the virtual space, with sociability mirrored by self-reported fear of COVID-19 in predicting interaction likelihood. We propose that when physical contact with others poses a threat to safety, fear supersedes sociability in guiding behavior in physical interactions.