Success Feedback Research Articles

Experience in Spain with local-national fora for better post-accident preparedness

In recent years, in the framework of the European Research projects EURANOS, NERIS-TP and more recently PREPARE, CIEMAT and UPM have been working together in close collaboration with the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) of Spain to develop a coherent framework for post-accident rehabilitation by involving national, regional and local stakeholders. The framework was tested in preparedness exercises organized in 2007 and 2013. The aim is the development of appropriate protection strategies as part of the consequence management and the transition to recovery. Different issues were the focus of the exercises, such as management of contamination in water, inhabited areas and agricultural areas, rehabilitation of livelihood and production, and communication issues. The main lesson from the exercises is that forums are the key mechanism for successful interaction and feedback along the chain local − regional − national levels. Using scenarios built on realistic assumptions is of great help. Decision support systems facilitate identifying the main challenges, functions to fulfil and management alternatives, in the search for the best management strategies.

The impact of the feedback source on developing oral presentation competence

While previous research in higher education emphasized the essence of feedback by the teacher, the peer or the self, it remains unclear whether the acquisition of students' oral presentation competence differs depending on the feedback source. This quasi-experimental study examines the effectiveness of the feedback source on 144 first-year undergraduate students' progression in cognition, behaviour and attitude towards presenting, as three interrelated elements of oral presentation competence. Mixed methods of multiple-choice tests and performance assessments using rubrics were used for data collection. Results demonstrated the superiority of teacher feedback for encouraging students' presentation behaviour, while cognition and attitude towards presenting developed significantly irrespective of the particular feedback source. However, the self-assessment condition revealed less impact on developing presentation behaviour and attitude compared to other feedback sources. Optimizing peer feedback and self-assessment in curricula requires knowledge about underlying feedback processes characterizing successful feedback of the various sources.

An Extended Validity Argument for Assessing Feedback Culture

NEGEA 2015 CONFERENCE ABSTRACT (EDITED)Measuring an Organization's Culture of Feedback: Can It Be Done?Steven Rougas and Brian ClyneConstruct: This study sought to develop a construct for measuring formative feedback culture in an academic emergency medicine department. Four archetypes (Market, Adhocracy, Clan, Hierarchy) reflecting an organization's values with respect to focus (internal vs. external) and process (flexibility vs. stability and control) were used to characterize one department's receptiveness to formative feedback. The prevalence of residents' identification with certain archetypes served as an indicator of the department's organizational feedback culture. Background: New regulations have forced academic institutions to implement wide-ranging changes to accommodate competency-based milestones and their assessment. These changes challenge residencies that use formative feedback from faculty as a major source of data for determining training advancement. Though various approaches have been taken to improve formative feedback to residents, there currently exists no tool to objectively measure the organizational culture that surrounds this process. Assessing organizational culture, commonly used in the business sector to represent organizational health, may help residency directors gauge their program's success in fostering formative feedback. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is widely used, extensively validated, applicable to survey research, and theoretically based and may be modifiable to assess formative feedback culture in the emergency department. Approach: Using a modified Delphi technique and several iterations of focus groups amongst educators at one institution, four of the original six OCAI domains (which each contain 4 possible responses) were modified to create a 16-item Formative Feedback Culture Tool (FFCT) that was administered to 26 residents (response rate = 55%) at a single academic emergency medicine department. The mean score of each item on the FFCT (range = 0–100) was analyzed. Convergent and divergent properties of the four archetypes were assessed using a multitrait–multimethod matrix of Pearson's coefficients. Expecting that items in one archetype would diverge from the others, whereas items within an archetype should have strong convergent properties, convergent validity was assessed by comparing items across domains that all related to the same archetype. Similarly, divergent validity was assessed by comparing the correlation of items within an archetype to the correlations of those items within a hetero-domain block (i.e., to other items within the same domain). Results: Three of the four domains of the FFCT (Overall Departmental Characteristics 35.4 ± 15.4, Departmental Foundation of Feedback 46.1 ± 16.7, and Departmental Emphasis of Feedback 30.3 ± 17.7) had the highest mean in the Market archetype (results/achievement oriented), whereas the final domain (Departmental Definition of Successful Feedback 34.8 ± 22.1) had the highest mean in the Clan archetype (personal growth/team achievement). Item responses in the Clan and Hierarchy archetypes had the strongest convergent and divergent validity, respectively. Item responses in the Adhocracy archetype had the weakest convergent and divergent validity. Conclusions: Although the sample size was small, this initial study demonstrates that a modified organizational culture assessment tool can feasibly be utilized to identify the primary formative feedback archetype of a cohort of residents. This may have future implications for measuring changes in culture after the implementation of strategic programs to address formative feedback. Future studies should examine the generalizability of the FFCT to other institutions, as well as address the weak validity evidence of the Adhocracy archetype in the FFCT.

The Effect of Positive and Negative Feedback on Risk-Taking across Different Contexts.

Preferences for risky choices have often been shown to be unstable and context-dependent. Though people generally avoid gambles with mixed outcomes, a phenomenon often attributed to loss aversion, contextual factors can impact this dramatically. For example, people typically prefer risky options after a financial loss, while generally choosing safer options after a monetary gain. However, it is unclear what exactly contributes to these preference shifts as a function of prior outcomes, as these gain/loss outcomes are usually confounded with participant performance, and therefore it is unclear whether these effects are driven purely by the monetary gains or losses, or rather by success or failure at the actual task. Here, we experimentally separated the effects of monetary gains/losses from performance success/failure prior to a standard risky choice. Participants performed a task in which they experienced contextual effects: 1) monetary gain or loss based directly on performance, 2) monetary gain or loss that was randomly awarded and was, crucially, independent from performance, and 3) success or failure feedback based on performance, but without any monetary incentive. Immediately following these positive/negative contexts, participants were presented with a gain-loss gamble that they had to decide to either play or pass. We found that risk preferences for identical sets of gambles were biased by positive and negative contexts containing monetary gains and losses, but not by contexts containing performance feedback. This data suggests that the observed framing effects are driven by aversion for monetary losses and not simply by the positive or negative valence of the context, or by potential moods resulting from positive or negative contexts. These results highlight the specific context dependence of risk preferences.

Manipulating target size influences perceptions of success when learning a dart-throwing skill but does not impact retention.

Positive feedback or experiences of success during skill acquisition have been shown to benefit motor skill learning. In this study, our aim was to manipulate learners’ success perceptions through a minor adjustment to goal criterion (target size) in a dart-throwing task. Two groups of novice participants practiced throwing at a large (easy) or a small (difficult) target from the same distance. In reference to the origin/center of the target, the practice targets were alike in objective difficulty and indeed participants in both groups were not different in their objective practice performance (i.e., radial error from the center). Although the groups experienced markedly different success rates, with the large target group experiencing more hits and reporting greater confidence (or self-efficacy) than the small target group, these practice effects were not carried into longer-term retention, which was assessed after a 1-week delay. For success perceptions to moderate or benefit motor learning, we argue that unambiguous indicators of positive performance are necessary, especially for tasks where intrinsic feedback about objective error is salient.

The effect of emotions, promotion vs. prevention focus, and feedback on cognitive engagement

Abstract The purpose of the study was to explore the role of emotions, promotion-prevention orientation and feedback on cognitive engagement. In the experiment participants had the possibility to engage in a categorization task thrice. After the first categorization all participants were informed that around 75% of their answers were correct. After the second categorization, depending on the experimental condition, participants received feedback either about success or failure. Involvement in the third categorization was depended on participants’ decision whether to take part in it or not. Each time, before and after categorization, the emotional state was assessed. Results showed that promotion orientation predicted experiencing curiosity before the task, which in turn led to a higher cognitive engagement in the first categorization. Promotion and prevention orientation moderated the type of emotional response to positive feedback. Promotion orientation also predicted cognitive engagement after the feedback of success was provided. Generally results confirmed the positive effect of positive emotions as well as promotion orientation on cognitive engagement.

Feasibility study of a local active correction system of magnetic field errors in RFX-mod

In magnetic confinement fusion devices, close-fitting structures surrounding the plasma are needed to slow down the growth rate of MHD unstable modes to time scales accessible to real time feedback control systems. However, error fields are generated as the response of the passive structures to the dynamic equilibrium field configuration, due to the presence of the cuts needed to allow the penetration of electric and magnetic fields. Considerable improvements have been achieved in RFX-mod after starting operation of the active MHD control system, allowing the successful simultaneous feedback control of a wide spectrum of MHD instabilities. In this paper, a feasibility study of a new local active correction system of magnetic field errors is presented, together with a comparison of three different configurations of the passive structure cuts.

Directed abstraction: Encouraging broad, personal generalizations following a success experience.

People with negative self-views may fail to generalize appropriately from success experiences (e.g., Wood, Heimpel, Newby-Clark, & Ross, 2005). We drew on theories regarding self-views (Swann, Griffin, Predmore, & Gaines, 1987) and abstraction (Semin & Fiedler, 1991), as well as past linguistic framing work (e.g., Marigold, Holmes, & Ross, 2007, 2010; Salancik, 1974), to create a new technique to encourage people with negative self-views to generalize broadly from a success experience to the self-concept. We call this technique directed abstraction. In Experiment 1, participants with negative self-views who completed a directed abstraction writing task following success feedback regarding a novel laboratory task generalized more from that success, reporting higher ability levels and greater expectations of future success in the relevant domain. In Experiment 2, directed abstraction produced similar results (including more positive self-related affect, e.g., pride) after participants recalled a past public speaking success. In Experiment 3, participants high in fear of public speaking gave two speeches in a context designed to be challenging yet also to elicit successful performances. Directed abstraction helped these participants generalize from their success to beliefs about their abilities, expectations about the future, and confidence as a speaker. In Experiment 4, directed abstraction following success on a verbal task increased persistence in the face of failure on a subsequent verbal task. We discuss implications for understanding how and when people generalize from a success, compare directed abstraction to existing interventions, and suggest practical applications for this influence technique.

Effect of failure/success feedback and the moderating influence of personality on reward motivation

While motivation to pursue goals is often assumed to be a trait-like characteristic, it is influenced by a variety of situational factors. In particular, recent experiences of success or failure, as well as cognitive responses to these outcomes, may shape subsequent willingness to expend effort for future rewards. To date, however, these effects have not been explicitly tested. In the present study, 131 healthy individuals received either failure or success feedback on a cognitive task. They were then instructed to either ruminate or distract themselves from their emotions. Finally, they completed the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task, a laboratory measure of reward motivation. Results indicate that participants who received failure feedback relied more strongly on the reward magnitude when choosing whether to exert greater effort to obtain larger rewards, though this effect only held under conditions of significant uncertainty about whether the effort would be rewarded. Further, participants with high levels of trait inhibition were less responsive to reward value and probability when choosing whether to expend greater effort, results that echo past studies of effort-based decision-making in psychological disorders.

A High-PSRR Low Dropout Regulator for LNB Using the First-Stage Reference-Included Coarse-Filtering Technique

A high-PSRR low dropout regulator using the first-stage reference-included coarse-filtering technique is presented, for the reduced output ripple of the low noise block (LNB) power supply in the satellite set-top box. Compared with the conventional system, the regulator with the technique is characterized by the two successive negative feedback loops, so as to alleviate the output ripple of the power supply caused by the preceding DC–DC converter's modulation signal. With the technique, the ripple near to the frequency of the LNB supply voltage tuning signal (22 kHz) can be significantly alleviated. To further enhance the PSRR performance without the reference-by-pass capacitor, the bipolar-loop buffer amplifier and the reference-included coarse-filtering regulator are proposed. The circuits are extracted from the LDO layout and simulated with a 0.35 μm BCD process in Cadence. With the typical 16.3 V input supply voltage and loading current 100 mA, the line regulation corresponding to the DC supply voltage is achieved at -72 dB; the PSRR performance of the supply voltage ripple up to the frequency (100 kHz) is better than -70 dB; Moreover, the quiescent current without the loading impedance is less than 153 μA.

Correcting Spoken Errors in English Language Teaching: Preferences of Turkish EFL Learners at Different Proficiency Levels

Understanding the process of correcting spoken errors in language classrooms is quite important because there is always the risk of disturbing the flow of communication and the risk of decreasing motivation and willingness of students to communicate in the target language. The proficiency level of language learners is an important factor on their anxiety and self-confidence in oral communication. For this reason, insights about the preferences of students at different proficiency levels will help implementing more successful corrective feedback sessions in teaching any foreign language. This study investigated the preferences of Turkish learners of English about the correction of spoken errors. Data collected from students at two different proficiency levels revealed that both groups of students preferred receiving corrective feedback for spoken errors. However, significant differences were observed between low and high-level students regarding the types of spoken errors, the time, ways and source of corrective feedback. The results obtained were discussed in terms of the contributions to the findings in the field of teaching English as a foreign language.

Efficient Time Synchronization in a Wireless Sensor Network by Adaptive Value Tracking

A desirable flooding-based time synchronization protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) should neither demand fast propagation of up-to-date time information nor keeping track of the neighboring nodes. Moreover, such a protocol is strictly required to have low computational and communication overhead as well as small memory footprint. Would there be a protocol which meets these requirements' We answer this question positively by introducing a novel time synchronization protocol whose main component is “adaptive-value tracking”. Thanks to this component, each sensor node synchronizes the rate of its clock to that of a reference clock through successive feedbacks with a considerably low computational and memory overhead. By adjusting time offset of the rate-synchronized clocks, the network-wide synchronization is established even without demanding rapid propagation of the reference clock and keeping track of the neighboring nodes. In the light of our experimental evaluation in a testbed of 20 MICAz sensor nodes, we observed that the proposed protocol provides similar synchronization under the same communication frequency with an approximately 97% less CPU overhead and 80% less memory allocation compared to the recent flooding based time synchronization protocols in WSNs.

Goal projection and giving help

Goal projection is the assumption that other persons share goals that we are currently pursuing. Hypothesizing that the projection of one's goal onto another person should affect actual behavior, we observed that goal projection in a situation where help is called for increased both the quantity and the quality of help given (Studies 1 and 2). An implicit measure of goal projection (i.e., a primed lexical decision task) suggested that participants' goals were indeed projected to the target person (Study 2). Varying goal strength via failure versus success feedback verified that goals rather than other concepts (e.g., personal attributes such as traits or self-concepts) were projected (Study 3). The findings imply that goal projection by feigning that the other person has a similar goal affects actual behavior in line with contextual demands.

Feedback and Goal-Setting Interventions to Reduce Electricity use in the Real World

A field experiment explored the effect of feedback and goal-setting interventions on residential electricity use in households in Northern Ireland. Alternating orders of presentation of feedback and no feedback conditions were used to explore the longer-term effect of feedback on conservation performance. Group 1 received 5 months of feedback followed by 5 months of no feedback, Group 2 underwent 5 months of no feedback followed by 5 months of feedback, and Group 3 experienced alternating 2-month periods of feedback and no feedback over 10 months, using a reversal design. Group 1 saved a mean 9.54% of electricity during the feedback condition, but Group 2 increased their use by a mean 14.24%. Group 3 showed a pattern of cumulative reductions over successive feedback periods, with a mean reduction in electricity use of 33%. Participants in Group 3 did not show a return to baseline levels of electricity use during the no feedback condition. The importance of exploring different reactions to feedback is discussed.

Continuous Curricular Feedback

Curriculum evaluations are used to plan future revisions and other improvements in curriculum design. Most models are summative and occur at the end of a course, so improvements in instruction may be delayed. In this article, the authors describe the formative curriculum evaluation model adopted at the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In their model, representative student feedback is gathered in real time and used to modify courses and improve instruction. The central features of their continuous feedback model include developing a small cadre of preclinical and clinical student evaluators who are trained to obtain classwide input regarding all aspects of the curriculum, including teacher effectiveness, and meet regularly (weekly or monthly) with relevant faculty and administrators. The authors show how this curriculum evaluation approach maximizes student involvement in course development and provides opportunities for rapid improvements in course content and instruction as well as for the identification of barriers to effective clinical and preclinical educational experiences.

Action feedback affects the perception of action-related objects beyond actual action success

Successful object-oriented action typically increases the perceived size of aimed target objects. This phenomenon has been assumed to reflect an impact of an actor's current action ability on visual perception. The actual action ability and the explicit knowledge of action outcome, however, were confounded in previous studies. The present experiments aimed at disentangling these two factors. Participants repeatedly tried to hit a circular target varying in size with a stylus movement under restricted feedback conditions. After each movement they were explicitly informed about the success in hitting the target and were then asked to judge target size. The explicit feedback regarding movement success was manipulated orthogonally to actual movement success. The results of three experiments indicated the participants' bias to judge relatively small targets as larger and relatively large targets as smaller after explicit feedback of failure than after explicit feedback of success. This pattern was independent of the actual motor performance, suggesting that the actors' evaluations of motor actions may bias perception of target objects in itself.

Taking a Closer Look at the Effects of Failure (and Success) on Self-Handicapping Behavior

Self-handicapping, the claiming or creating of obstacles prior to one's performance in order to influence others' (or one's own) impressions has received increasing attention from scholars because of its paradoxical nature. On the one hand, self-handicapping theoretically provides the self-handicapper with a self-protective benefit in the event of failure; on the other hand, self-handicapping runs the risk of harming the actor's actual performance. In the effort to better understand the cause of self-handicapping, the present research investigated the effects of feedback contingency and valence on individuals' tendencies to engage in self-handicapping. It was hypothesized that individuals would be more likely to self-handicap when they experienced non-contingent as opposed to contingent feedback and that this effect would be stronger in the case of failure as opposed to success feedback. Four experiments were conducted, of which two were conducted in the lab and two were conducted on-line via Amazon's Mec...

How Self-Determined Choice Facilitates Performance: A Key Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Recent studies have documented that self-determined choice does indeed enhance performance. However, the precise neural mechanisms underlying this effect are not well understood. We examined the neural correlates of the facilitative effects of self-determined choice using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants played a game-like task involving a stopwatch with either a stopwatch they selected (self-determined-choice condition) or one they were assigned without choice (forced-choice condition). Our results showed that self-determined choice enhanced performance on the stopwatch task, despite the fact that the choices were clearly irrelevant to task difficulty. Neuroimaging results showed that failure feedback, compared with success feedback, elicited a drop in the vmPFC activation in the forced-choice condition, but not in the self-determined-choice condition, indicating that negative reward value associated with the failure feedback vanished in the self-determined-choice condition. Moreover, the vmPFC resilience to failure in the self-determined-choice condition was significantly correlated with the increased performance. Striatal responses to failure and success feedback were not modulated by the choice condition, indicating the dissociation between the vmPFC and striatal activation pattern. These findings suggest that the vmPFC plays a unique and critical role in the facilitative effects of self-determined choice on performance.

The Innovated Writing Process (IWP) Approach: A Rebuttal to Truscott's (1996, 1999, and 2007) and Ellis's (2009) View

<p><em>The Innovated Writing Process Approach (IWP) is a rebuttal to Truscott's (1996, 1999, and 2007) claim, that corrective feedback does not help L2 learners in the acquiring a second language (SLA), and Ellis’s (2009) concern about which type of feedback will work best with L2 learners. Is it direct or indirect, or metalinguistic feedback? The method used in this study indicates that metalinguistic feedback may be one of the most successful feedback types in helping L2 learners acquire second language linguistic items. The aim of this paper is to present a rebuttal to Truscott's (1996, 1999, and 2007) and Ellis's (2009) view. </em></p> <p><em>Based on the shortcomings found in previous methods of teaching writing and following recent works in applied linguistics and second language acquisition on form-focused instruction, explicit teaching and learning, and types of feedback, the Innovated Writing Process (IWP) approach was designed. This is one of the findings of an empirical study in the context of Arab learners of English (ALEs). It is also an attempt to apply Sociocultural Theory in classroom settings and to show how input can be well-processed which, in turn, can develop the second language (L2) learners’ internalized grammatical system.</em></p>

Seller heterogeneity in electronic marketplaces: A study of new and experienced sellers in eBay

Most online auction studies focus on the buyer side of the marketplace. To bridge the imbalance gap, we investigate seller behavior in this research. Specifically emphasized on seller heterogeneity, an area that has not been well studied in the electronic marketplace literature, this study classifies sellers into new and experienced seller groups and compares their auction performance based on three outcome measures: success rates, ending prices, and feedback ratings. We find that the performance of new sellers is worse than that of experienced sellers in all three measures, namely, lower auction success rates, lower auction ending prices, less likely to receive positive feedback ratings and more likely to receive negative feedback ratings. We also show the dynamics of these auction performances while new sellers evolve into experienced ones. Our empirical analysis reveals structural differences in auction success and price determinants between new and experienced sellers. That is, the determining factors for auction success and ending prices are significantly different between the two seller groups. We also identify several key factors for non-positive (i.e. neutral or negative) feedback ratings received by the two groups and find no significant difference between these factors for both new and experienced sellers. We believe our findings in this study have significant implications to the online auction house and sellers, and contribute towards building more effective and efficient electronic marketplaces.