Representation Of Alternatives Research Articles

The neural instantiation of spontaneous counterfactual thought.

Many of the most interesting cognitive feats that humans perform require us to consider not just the things that actually occur but also alternative possibilities. We often do this explicitly (e.g., when imagining precisely how a first date could have gone better), but other times we do it spontaneously and implicitly (e.g., when thinking, "I have to catch this bus," implying bad alternatives if the bus is not caught). A growing body of research has identified a core set of neural processes involved in explicit, episodic counterfactual thinking. Little is known, however, about the processes supporting the spontaneous, possibly implicit representation of alternatives. To make progress on this question, we induced participants to spontaneously generate counterfactual alternatives by asking them to judge whether agents were forced to make a particular choice or chose freely-a judgment that implicitly depends on their alternative options. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found 14 clusters that were preferentially engaged when participants were making force judgments (which elicit the spontaneous consideration of alternatives) compared to judgments of what actually occurred (which do not elicit alternatives). These clusters were widely distributed throughout the brain, including in the bilateral prefrontal cortex, bilateral inferior parietal lobule, bilateral middle and inferior temporal gyri, bilateral posterior cingulate, and bilateral caudate. In many of these regions, we additionally show that variability in the neural signal correlates with trial-by-trial variability in participants' force judgments. Our findings provide a first characterization of the neural substrates of the spontaneous representation of counterfactual alternatives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A Comprehensive Business Location Choice Model Leveraging Machine Learning in Systematic Choice Set

This study develops a comprehensive two-stage location choice framework for business establishments as part of a goods movements modeling. This study aims to formulate a systematic methodology for investigating the location choice of business establishments within Halifax Regional Municipality. This study presents a novel approach that leverages machine learning techniques to generate a systematic choice set, thereby improving the representation of realistic and reasonable location alternatives. Info Canada Business Establishments dataset 2022 is employed to achieve the aim of this study. Combining an unsupervised machine learning technique with the mixed multinomial logit model facilitates a data-driven approach to enhance the precision and robustness of business establishment location choice models. This approach possesses the potential to unveil latent patterns and heterogeneity among potential choice alternatives that may remain obscured when utilizing a conventional multinomial logit model. This thorough analysis offers robust insights into the factors influencing the location choice of business establishments. The findings obtained from this comprehensive study suggest that wholesalers prioritize proximity to highways and positions within business parks for their operations while avoiding higher population density and central business district proximity. Transportation businesses seek larger sites and locations near highways, favoring clustering with related transport companies and valuing accessibility and cost-effectiveness over proximity to business parks or rural settings. The findings of this study could provide valuable insights for commercial vehicle and goods movement modeling, business location strategies, and policymaking concerning sustainable urban development.

Integrating Variety, Assembly, and Lightweight Design in Product Architecture of Cabin Monument

In aircraft cabin design, particularly in the design of aircraft monuments such as galleys, there are specific conflicting objectives that needs to be balanced. The key objectives are to meet customer requirements, optimise assembly processes for increased production and achieve lightweight design for efficient operations. The paper presents a methodical approach that integrates variety, assembly efficiency and lightweight design considerations into the early stages of product architecture design. Using the after monument of the Airbus A320 family as an example, the paper proposes specific module drivers such as ‘common unit’, ‘different specification’ and ‘load path compatible modules’ to guide the design process. These module drivers aim to harmonise the different objectives of stakeholders, including aircraft manufacturers, cabin manufacturers and airlines. The method is illustrated using a geometric representation of product architecture alternatives optimised for each of the variety, assembly and lightweighting objectives. Overall, the paper contributes to the advancement of a stakeholder-oriented modularisation approach and provides a starting point for future developments. It highlights the importance of defining module drivers and visualising the trade-offs to achieve a balanced product architecture in the aviation industry.

Medical choice of chronic patients in a large Russian сity: Situations, practices, factors

This article is devoted to the main results of a quantitative empirical study of patients’ choice in a large Russian city. The object of this study was the chronic patients of Samara city, selected using a two-step sample method according to the following criteria: disease type, gender, age (N = 510 p). Research was conducted using the semi-formal interview method. Methodologically the study goes back to an approach which was developed within the framework of cognitive medical anthropology in the theoretical and empirical works of American anthropologists Lynda Garro and James Young, which formulated the principles of the Study of Medical Choice, and the Decision-Making Approach. For this research the problem matter of “remission society”, developed by sociologists and anthropologists Anselm Strauss, Arthur Kleinman and Arthur Frank, is very much relevant. In the article, the results of the choices that chronic patients make out of the alternatives available (appeal to state and non-state biomedicine, to different forms of unconventional medicine, medical and non-medical self-treatment) are structured according to three main situations in an ill patient’s life. These are the following: the situation of first encountering the disease (“the debut of the disease”); the situation of diagnosis and prescription of treatment; the situation of the illness transitioning to a chronic state (exacerbation or control over the disease). It is shown that these situations of choice differ from each other not only by the range of available alternatives for making medical decisions by chronic patients (this conclusion was obtained at the first qualitative stage of the study, brief results of which are also presented in the article), but also by quantitative representation of identical alternatives . Thus, we can observe a significant increase in self-treatment in the third situation, caused by a number of subjective and objective reasons, as well as a significant increase in the proportion of respondents who turned to practitioners of unconventional medicine in a situation after a diagnosis was made. The principles of Study of Medical Choice are adapted in the study to the institutional conditions of the Russian healthcare system, with its inherent range of choices and factors that influence the patient’s medical decision-making. Knowledge of these decisions is necessary in order to understand the direction for reforming the Russian healthcare system and in order to organize medical care which satisfies the needs of patients. This article also presents the results of analyzing certain factors that have seriously affected, based on the respondents’ opinions, a specific solution in the situations studied. A hierarchy of representation of these factors is described for each disease situation. A quantitative representation of solutions inherent to noncompliance was revealed, such as refusing drugs, searching for another doctor, double-checking the diagnosis.

Speeded multielement decision-making as diffusion in a hypersphere: Theory and application to double-target detection.

We generalize the circular 2D diffusion model of Smith (Psychological Review, 123, 425-451: 2016) to provide a new model of speeded decision-making in multielement visual displays. We model decision-making in tasks with multielement displays as evidence accumulation by a vector-valued diffusion process in a hypersphere, whose radius represents the decision criterion for the task. We show that the methods used to derive response time and accuracy predictions for the 2D model can be applied, with only minor changes, to predict performance in higher-dimensional spaces as well. We apply the model to the double-target deficit paradigm of Duncan (Psychological Review, 87, 272-300: 1980) in which participants judge whether briefly presented four-element displays contain one- or two-digit targets among letter distractors. A 4D version of the hyperspherical diffusion model correctly predicted distributions of response times and response accuracy as a function of task difficulty in single-target and double-target versions of the task. The estimated drift rate parameters from the model imply that the mental representation of the decision alternatives, which we term the "decision template" for the task, encodes configural stimulus properties that reflect the number of targets in the display. Along with its application to multielement decision-making, the model has the potential to characterize the speed and accuracy of multiattribute decisions in studies of cognitive categorization, visual attention, and other areas.

Formation of the Development Options for Energy Systems by Combinatorial Modeling Methods

Under discussion are the requirements from the tools for analysis of long-term strategies for the development of energy systems and the possibility of using combinatorial modeling methods for studying discrete solutions in this development. The basis of the methods is the representation of the development of the modeled system in the form of a directed graph whose nodes correspond to possible states of the system at certain time, whereas the links characterize the admissibility of transitions from one state to another. The methods of combinatorial modeling, as a visual form of representation of dynamic discrete branching alternatives, allow us to simulate a long-term process of the development of the investigated system under various possible external and internal conditions and then determine a rational strategy for its development. We describe an algorithm for formation of the graph of feasible options for the development of the system. The approach is illustrated by an example. The described algorithms are implemented in the software package for a distributed computing environment.

On a Geometric Extension of the Notion of Exchangeability Referring to Random Events

The notion of exchangeability referring to random events is investigated by using a geometric scheme of representation of possible alternatives. When we distribute among them our sensations of probability, we point out the multilinear essence of exchangeability by means of this scheme. Since we observe a natural one-to-one correspondence between multilinear maps and linear maps, we are able to underline that linearity concept is the most meaningful mathematical concept of probability theory. Exchangeability hypothesis is maintained for mixtures of Bernoulli processes in the same way. We are the first in the world to do this kind of work and for this reason we believe that it is inevitable that our references limit themselves only to those pioneering works which do not keep the real and deep meaning of probability concept a secret, unlike the current ones.

A modeling strategy for integrated batch process development based on mixed-logic dynamic optimization

This paper introduces an optimization-based approach for the simultaneous solution of batch process synthesis and plant allocation, with decisions like the selection of chemicals, process stages, task-unit assignments, operating modes, and optimal control profiles, among others. The modeling strategy is based on the representation of structural alternatives in a state-equipment network (SEN) and its formulation as a mixed-logic dynamic optimization (MLDO) problem. Particularly, the disjunctive multistage modeling strategy by Oldenburg and Marquardt (2008) is extended to combine and organize single-stage and multistage models for representing the sequence of continuous and batch units in each structural alternative and for synchronizing dynamic profiles in input and output operations with material transference. Two numerical examples illustrate the application of the proposed methodology, showing the enhancement of the adaptability potential of batch plants and the improvement of global process performance thanks to the quantification of interactions between process synthesis and plant allocation decisions.

A user equilibrium model for combined activity–travel choice under prospect theoretical mechanisms of decision-making under uncertainty

ABSTRACTRather than considering single trips as the unit of analysis, the activity-based modeling paradigm of travel demand analysis has led to reconceptualizations and innovations in traffic flow models by focusing on complete daily activity–travel patterns. The vast majority of these travel demand and traffic flow models have either implicitly or explicitly assumed that travelers choose between alternatives by maximizing their utility under a deterministic representation of the choice alternatives. While this behavioral assumption leads to tractable, easy-to-apply models, the validity of the assumption largely went untested. This paper investigates the user equilibrium of activity–travel patterns under uncertainty from the perspective of prospect theory. A formulation of the static activity-based user equilibrium model is proposed. In particular, we adopt the concept of a multi-state supernetwork to represent the choice space of activity–travel patterns. A numerical example using hypothetical scenarios is presented to illustrate the proposed model and solution algorithm.

Converging evidence for the relevance of alternative sets: data from NPs with focus sensitive particles in German

abstractRecent psycholinguistic studies on the reality of alternative sets in processing focus NPs have shown that focus particles like ‘only’ play a special role in activating the mental representation of alternatives to focused nouns. In this paper we present a new corpus study which provides converging evidence to support psycholinguistic findings and suggests that alternatives preceded by a focus particle are not only more activated in experimental contexts, but are also more likely to be discussed in the subsequent context. To this end we develop and evaluate inter-annotator agreement on two novel annotation tasks in naturally occurring German corpus data: recognition of nominal alternatives in general without any context, and recognition of alternatives in the context of sentence pairs. We show that while annotators agree poorly on the first, they agree strongly on the second. We also develop a concept of ‘alternative density’, the number of alternatives realized in a sentence following a target NP, and present a mixed-effects model showing a very significant rise in density after the presence of German nur ‘only’ independently of other factors.

Integrated vehicle routing: a case study of unmanned aerial vehicle decision making

Time critical vehicle routings, such as with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) routing, are considered as integrated location routing problems where the objective is to simultaneously optimise the location and the routing. Although computer systems are good at providing solutions for optimised routing, they may not have the expert knowledge as that of human operators. Human operators play an important role in ensuring the safety and in achieving operational effectiveness in such systems. Problems such as increased human error, lack of situational awareness, and opacity from poorly automated systems remain; particularly in scenarios where human operators must make decisions in time-pressured planning. Hence, we study joint cognitive problem solving for a class of problems related to supervisory control of integrated vehicle routing. Results indicate that the graphical representation of the routing alternatives led to quicker evaluation time by the operator than tabular representation.

Miscounselling in the German Insurance Market—Utility-Orientated Implications for the Meaning of Miscounselling

Miscounselling results from the fact that consumers have difficulty matching their needs and preferences with the characteristics of the products and have to rely upon an intermediary. The ideal contract can be found by applying the theory of the consumer by Lancaster and, thus, using different amounts of the contract characteristics. Using a spatial representation of the contractual alternatives yields a model framework. The main question is how to differentiate between advice that improves the consumers’ situation and those that are wrong in order to define an accuracy level for the liability rule imposed by the Insurance Contract Act. After identifying the relevant variables via case studies, it is possible to state a general definition of miscounselling: miscounselling can be defined as the provision of any additional information that does not help to reduce the utility loss referring to an initial situation. Considering this definition, one can think about rewording the current liability rule.

Systematic network synthesis and design: Problem formulation, superstructure generation, data management and solution

The developments obtained in recent years in the field of mathematical programming considerably reduced the computational time and resources needed to solve large and complex Mixed Integer Non Linear Programming (MINLP) problems. Nevertheless, the application of these methods in industrial practice is still limited by the complexity associated with the mathematical formulation of some problems. In particular, the tasks of design space definition and representation as superstructure, as well as the data collection, validation and handling may become too complex and cumbersome to execute, especially when large problems are considered. In an earlier work, we proposed a computer-aided framework for synthesis and design of process networks. In this contribution, we expand the framework by including methods and tools developed to structure, automate and simplify the mathematical formulation of the design problem. Furthermore, the models employed for the representation of the process alternatives included in the superstructure are refined, through the inclusion of the energy balance. Finally, the features of the framework are highlighted through the solution of two case studies focusing on food processing and biofuels.

Representation of response alternatives in human presupplementary motor area: Multi-voxel pattern analysis in a go/no-go task

A debate exists as to the role of the presupplementary motor area (preSMA) in cognitive control. Recent findings suggest that preSMA plays a central role in conflict resolution and encodes response alternatives as opposed to simply the presence of conflict. Evidence of neuronal heterogeneity within preSMA of non-human primates suggests that univariate analysis of functional MRI data may not provide adequate resolution to fully characterize cognitive control-related responses. Here, multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) is employed to examine the distributed patterns of activity in preSMA associated with both successful go responses and no-go inhibitions. In a go/no-go task, univariate analysis showed undifferentiated activation of preSMA in response to both go and no-go stimuli. However, when an anatomically-defined preSMA ROI was subjected to MVPA, a significant difference in the activation pattern encoded by go as compared to no-go stimuli was observed. These differences in preSMA activation are consistent with the ongoing maintenance and manipulation of stimulus–action representations.

Persistence of Internal Representations of Alternative Voluntary Actions

We have investigated a situation in which externally available response alternatives and their internal representations could be dissociated, by suddenly removing some action alternatives from the response space during the interval between the free selection and the execution of a voluntary action. Choice reaction times in this situation were related to the number of initially available response alternatives, rather than to the number of alternatives available effectively available after the change in the external environment. The internal representations of response alternatives appeared to persist after external changes actually made the corresponding action unavailable. This suggests a surprising dynamics of voluntary action representations: counterfactual response alternatives persist, and may even be actively maintained, even when they are not available in reality. Our results highlight a representational basis for the counterfactual course of action. Such representations may play a key role in feelings of regret, disappointment, or frustration. These feelings all involve persistent representation of counterfactual response alternatives that may not actually be available in the environment.

Modelling and optimisation issues of the energy systems of the future

In this work, we introduce a novel application of an energy systems engineering framework towards the optimal design of such energy systems with improved energy efficiency and environmental performance. The framework features a superstructure representation of the various energy technology alternatives, a mixed-integer optimization formulation of the energy systems design problem, and a multi-objective design optimization solution strategy, where economic and environmental criteria are simultaneously considered and properly traded off. A case study of a supermarket energy systems design is presented to illustrate the key steps and potential of the proposed energy systems engineering approach.

An energy systems engineering approach to the optimal design of energy systems in commercial buildings

Energy consumption in commercial buildings accounts for a significant proportion of worldwide energy consumption. Any increase in the energy efficiency of the energy systems for commercial buildings would lead to significant energy savings and emissions reductions. In this work, we introduce an energy systems engineering framework towards the optimal design of such energy systems with improved energy efficiency and environmental performance. The framework features a superstructure representation of the various energy technology alternatives, a mixed-integer optimization formulation of the energy systems design problem, and a multi-objective design optimization solution strategy, where economic and environmental criteria are simultaneously considered and properly traded off. A case study of a supermarket energy systems design is presented to illustrate the key steps and potential of the proposed energy systems engineering approach.

AUTOMATED SELECTION OF NEW BUSINESS INTERACTIONS

This paper focuses on joint operations of enterprises of various size transporting cargo to pre-determined destinations. Hasse diagrams are used for a graphical representation of collaboration alternatives. Effectiveness of various business alliance partnerships is evaluated employing many-valued logic.

The encoding of alternatives in multiple-choice decision making

During the last decades, research on binary decision making elucidated some of the basic neural mechanisms underlying the decision-making process. Recently, the focus of experimental as well as modeling studies began to shift from simple binary choices to decision making with multiple alternatives. In this article, we address the question how different numbers of choice alternatives might be handled and encoded in the brain. We present a minimal, biophysically realistic spiking neuron model for decision making with multiple alternatives. Our model accounts for the relevant aspects of recent experimental data of a random-dot motion-discrimination task on both the cellular and behavioral level. Notably, all network parameters and inputs in our network are independent of the number of possible alternatives used in the tested experimental paradigms (2 and 4 alternatives and 2 alternatives with an angular separation of 90 degrees ). This avoids the use of extra top-down regulation mechanisms to adapt the network to the number of choices. Furthermore, we show that increasing the number of neurons encoding each choice alternative is positively related to the network's capacity of choice-number-independent decision making. Consequently, our results suggest a physiological advantage of a pooled, multineuron representation of choice alternatives.

`Hot Lesbians': Young People's Talk About Representations of Lesbianism

Media representation of heterosexual alternatives is particularly salient for young people negotiating sexuality, more so for those with limited access to other cultural resources to inform their homosexual understandings. With the centrality of media as resource in mind, we present in this article findings from our focus group research with 25 high school students aged 16—18 in which we invited them to discuss representations of homosexuality in the media. Our analyses, which focus here on lesbian sexuality, used a thematic discursive approach. We found constructions of lesbianism as `heteroflexible', `hot' and experimental to be common patterns in participants' talk, whereas notions of lesbian desire were largely silenced. While most of the talk drew on heteronormativity, we found small pockets of its deconstruction in mobilization of alternative discourses and rejection of sexual categories.