Context Of Task Research Articles

End users' rating of a mHealth app prototype for paediatric speech pathology clinical assessment.

BackgroundPrevious studies reported the efficacy of the implementation of information technology in clinical evaluation. No research has addressed the development of mobile applications for the clinical evaluation and diagnosis of paediatric language disorders.PurposeThis study aims to investigate the usability of a clinical assessment mobile application (app) prototype, the “Paediatric Arabic Language Test” (PALT), to diagnose language disorders among paediatric patients.MethodsUsing the Lewis Computer Software Usability Questionnaire (CSUQ) and a 5-point Likert Scale, data was collected and scored on the usability of the app prototype developed on two mobile platforms- iPhone and iPad- across a general operating system, iOS. A sample of 77 potential end-users rated the usability of the app prototype that they used between 2017 and 2019.ResultsThe average CSUQ rating for the app prototype was 75.68 and 53.2% strongly agreed that the information and its organization was clear and easy to understand; 75% of the end users were very satisfied (p < 0.0001). Out of the total items, 68% of studied items on the scale loaded on factor 1 even after subjecting the scale to three standardization methods.ConclusionThe prototype design was judged to be usable. Users reported an effective user interface that allows effective operation. Differences in the factor loading may be explained by cultural factors, type of task and field context.

Production of Narratives by At-Risk American Indian Children in the Midwest

The narratives of two groups of 28 American Indian children attending a Midwestern Bureau of Indian Affairs school (16 with a mean age of 5;10 years, and 12 with a mean age of 7;8 years) were examined in three contexts: retell, fictional with sequence pictures, and fictional with one picture. The narratives were examined in terms of microstructure (e.g., total number of utterances, total number of words, total number of communication units, and mean length of utterance in words and morphemes), macrostructure, and evaluative elements, which are used by speakers to link events, comment on events and characters, and inform the listener on how to interpret the story. Differences among story task contexts also were evaluated. The narratives of American Indian students differed between age groups and across tasks. The older children produced narratives with longer mean length of utterances in morphemes and more evaluative elements. The older children also produced more end-at-high-point stories, whereas the younger children produced more chronological narratives. Both age groups responded with longer and more complex narratives when generating fictional stories with visual support. Clinical implications are provided for adjusting narrative assessment tasks to be more culturally appropriate for children by modifying the task demands, increasing the role of the listener, and adding cultural relevance to stories.

Structuralist mental representation of dual-action demands: Evidence for compositional coding from dual tasks with low cross-task dimensional overlap

The present study asks how behavioral (dual-action) demands in dual tasks are mentally represented and whether changes in representation might govern practice-related dual-task performance improvements. Three different representation accounts were empirically tested based on the idea that dual-action demands required in a dual-task trial might be represented in different ways. According to a compositional (Structuralist) account, component tasks remain structurally intact when combined with another task. In contrast, a holistic (Gestalt) account posits that dual-action requirements in dual tasks are represented holistically and entirely distinct from its component action requirements. Finally, a contextual change account assumes that a change in context (e.g., from single- to dual-action requirement) generally impedes response retrieval, similar to repeating a response while the task context switches. To address this issue, we analyzed trial-by-trial effects in a single/dual switch paradigm (SDS paradigm, involving a randomized mix of single- and dual-task trials within blocks). Specifically, we analyzed performance in an extensive dual-task training setting (involving training sessions across several days) combining an auditory-vocal task and a visual-manual task. The results indicated that, throughout practice, nearly all relevant comparisons of performance between complete switch trials (e.g., between the two single tasks) and partial repetition trials (e.g., from dual to single task) revealed partial repetition benefits, that is, for both the auditory-vocal and the visual-manual task, and for both single- and dual-task performance analyses. Therefore, dual-action requirements in the present dual-task setting are mentally represented in a compositional, Structuralist fashion, probably due to low between-task dimensional overlap.

GPGPU Task Scheduling Technique for Reducing the Performance Deviation of Multiple GPGPU Tasks in RPC-Based GPU Virtualization Environments

In remote procedure call (RPC)-based graphic processing unit (GPU) virtualization environments, GPU tasks requested by multiple-user virtual machines (VMs) are delivered to the VM owning the GPU and are processed in a multi-process form. However, because the thread executing the computing on general GPUs cannot arbitrarily stop the task or trigger context switching, GPU monopoly may be prolonged owing to a long-running general-purpose computing on graphics processing unit (GPGPU) task. Furthermore, when scheduling tasks on the GPU, the time for which each user VM uses the GPU is not considered. Thus, in cloud environments that must provide fair use of computing resources, equal use of GPUs between each user VM cannot be guaranteed. We propose a GPGPU task scheduling scheme based on thread division processing that supports GPU use evenly by multiple VMs that process GPGPU tasks in an RPC-based GPU virtualization environment. Our method divides the threads of the GPGPU task into several groups and controls the execution time of each thread group to prevent a specific GPGPU task from a long time monopolizing the GPU. The efficiency of the proposed technique is verified through an experiment in an environment where multiple VMs simultaneously perform GPGPU tasks.

Increased visual and cognitive demands emphasize the importance of meeting visual needs at all distances while driving.

Having an optimal quality of vision as well as adequate cognitive capacities is known to be essential for driving safety. However, the interaction between vision and cognitive mechanisms while driving remains unclear. We hypothesized that, in a context of high cognitive load, reduced visual acuity would have a negative impact on driving behavior, even when the acuity corresponds to the legal threshold for obtaining a driving license in Canada, and that the impact observed on driving performance would be greater with the increase in the threshold of degradation of visual acuity. In order to investigate this relationship, we examined driving behavior in a driving simulator under optimal and reduced vision conditions through two scenarios involving different levels of cognitive demand. These were: 1. a simple rural driving scenario with some pre-programmed events and 2. a highway driving scenario accompanied by a concurrent task involving the use of a navigation device. Two groups of visual quality degradation (lower/ higher) were evaluated according to their driving behavior. The results support the hypothesis: A dual task effect was indeed observed provoking less stable driving behavior, but in addition to this, by statistically controlling the impact of cognitive load, the effect of visual load emerged in this dual task context. These results support the idea that visual quality degradation impacts driving behavior when combined with a high mental workload driving environment while specifying that this impact is not present in the context of low cognitive load driving condition.

Both Default and Multiple-Demand Regions Represent Semantic Goal Information.

We used a semantic feature-matching task combined with multivoxel pattern decoding to test contrasting accounts of the role of the default mode network (DMN) in cognitive flexibility. By one view, DMN and multiple-demand cortex have opposing roles in cognition, with DMN and multiple-demand regions within the dorsal attention network (DAN) supporting internal and external cognition, respectively. Consequently, while multiple-demand regions can decode current goal information, semantically relevant DMN regions might decode conceptual similarity regardless of task demands. Alternatively, DMN regions, like multiple-demand cortex, might show sensitivity to changing task demands, since both networks dynamically alter their patterns of connectivity depending on the context. Our task required human participants (any sex) to integrate conceptual knowledge with changing task goals, such that successive decisions were based on different features of the items (color, shape, and size). This allowed us to simultaneously decode semantic category and current goal information using whole-brain searchlight decoding. As expected, multiple-demand cortex, including DAN and frontoparietal control network, represented information about currently relevant conceptual features. Similar decoding results were found in DMN, including in angular gyrus and posterior cingulate cortex, indicating that DMN and multiple-demand regions can support the same function rather than being strictly competitive. Semantic category could be decoded in lateral occipital cortex independently of task demands, but not in most regions of DMN. Conceptual information related to the current goal dominates the multivariate response within DMN, which supports flexible retrieval by modulating its response to suit the task demands, alongside regions of multiple-demand cortex.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT We tested contrasting accounts of default mode network (DMN) function using multivoxel pattern analysis. By one view, semantically relevant parts of DMN represent conceptual similarity, regardless of task context. By an alternative view, DMN tracks changing task demands. Our semantic feature-matching task required participants to integrate conceptual knowledge with task goals, such that successive decisions were based on different features of the items. We demonstrate that DMN regions can decode the current goal, as it is applied, alongside multiple-demand regions traditionally associated with cognitive control, speaking to how DMN supports flexible cognition.

Experiential and Strategic Emotional Intelligence Are Implicated When Inhibiting Affective and Non-Affective Distractors: Findings from Three Emotional Flanker N-Back Tasks.

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to a set of competencies to process, understand, and reason with affective information. Recent studies suggest ability measures of experiential and strategic EI differentially predict performance on non-emotional and emotionally laden tasks. To explore cognitive processes underlying these abilities further, we varied the affective context of a traditional letter-based n-back working-memory task. In study 1, participants completed 0-, 2-, and 3-back tasks with flanking distractors that were either emotional (fearful or happy faces) or non-emotional (shapes or letters stimuli). Strategic EI, but not experiential EI, significantly influenced participants’ accuracy across all n-back levels, irrespective of flanker type. In Study 2, participants completed 1-, 2-, and 3-back levels. Experiential EI was positively associated with response times for emotional flankers at the 1-back level but not other levels or flanker types, suggesting those higher in experiential EI reacted slower on low-load trials with affective context. In Study 3, flankers were asynchronously presented either 300 ms or 1000 ms before probes. Results mirrored Study 1 for accuracy rates and Study 2 for response times. Our findings (a) provide experimental evidence for the distinctness of experiential and strategic EI and (b) suggest that each are related to different aspects of cognitive processes underlying working memory.

Manual motor reaction while being absorbed into popular music

In three experiments, we investigated the behavioral consequences of being absorbed into music on performance in a concurrent task. We tested two competing hypotheses: Based on a cognitive load account, captivation of attention by the music and state absorption might slow down reactions in the decisional task. Alternatively, music could induce spontaneous motor activity, and being absorbed in music might result in a more autonomous, flow-driven behavior with quicker motor reactions. Participants performed a simple, visual, two-alternative forced-choice task while listening to popular musical excerpts. Subsequently, they rated their subjective experience using a short questionnaire. We presented music in four tempo categories (between 80 and 140 BPM) to account for a potential effect of tempo and an interaction between tempo and absorption. In Experiment 1, absorption was related to decreased reaction times (RTs) in the visual task. This effect was small, as expected in this setting, but replicable in Experiment 2. There was no effect of the music’s tempo on RTs but a tendency of mind wandering to relate to task performance. After slightly changing the study setting in Experiment 3, flow predicted decreased RTs, but absorption alone — as part of the flow construct — did not predict RTs. To sum up, we demonstrated that being absorbed in music can have the behavioral consequence of speeded manual reactions in specific task contexts, and people seem to integrate the music into an active, flow-driven and therefore enhanced performance. However, shown relations depend on task settings, and a systematic study of context is necessary to understand how induced states and their measurement contribute to the findings.

Information Rate in Humans during Visuomotor Tracking.

Previous investigations concluded that the human brain’s information processing rate remains fundamentally constant, irrespective of task demands. However, their conclusion rested in analyses of simple discrete-choice tasks. The present contribution recasts the question of human information rate within the context of visuomotor tasks, which provides a more ecologically relevant arena, albeit a more complex one. We argue that, while predictable aspects of inputs can be encoded virtually free of charge, real-time information transfer should be identified with the processing of surprises. We formalise this intuition by deriving from first principles a decomposition of the total information shared by inputs and outputs into a feedforward, predictive component and a feedback, error-correcting component. We find that the information measured by the feedback component, a proxy for the brain’s information processing rate, scales with the difficulty of the task at hand, in agreement with cost-benefit models of cognitive effort.

Maintaining verbal short-term memory representations in non-perceptual parietal regions

Buffer accounts of verbal short-term memory (STM) assume dedicated buffers for maintaining different types of information (e.g., phonological, visual) whereas embedded processes accounts argue against the existence of buffers and claim that STM consists of the activated portion of long-term memory (LTM). We addressed this debate by determining whether STM recruits the same neural substrate as LTM, or whether additional regions are involved in short-term storage. Using fMRI with representational similarity analysis (RSA), we examined the representational correspondence of multi-voxel neural activation patterns with the theoretical predictions for the maintenance of both phonological and semantic codes in STM. We found that during the delay period of a phonological STM task, phonological representations could be decoded in the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) but not the superior temporal gyrus (STG), a speech processing region, for word stimuli. Whereas the pattern in the SMG was specific to phonology, a different region in the left angular gyrus showed RSA decoding evidence for the retention of either phonological or semantic codes, depending on the task context. Taken together, the results provide clear support for a dedicated buffer account of phonological STM, although evidence for a semantic buffer is equivocal.

Effects of conceptual and contextual task characteristics on students’ activation of mechanics conceptions

For promoting student learning in Newtonian mechanics, tailoring instruction to students’ conceptual needs is important. Although students’ conceptions can be inferred from research results, planning instruction is challenged by the fact that students may activate different conceptions for similar mechanics phenomena. For instance, changing the context or the wording of a task can evoke different conceptions. This article describes an approach to understanding how specific conceptual task characteristics (variations in the underlying concept or how the concept is approached) and contextual task characteristics (variations in the situation to which a concept applies) correlate with the activation of students’ conceptions in Newtonian mechanics. We employed a total of 72 single-choice tasks varying systematically conceptual and contextual task characteristics. Tasks were distributed over four test booklets and administered to a sample of undergraduates with physics as a major (N = 85) and minor subject (N = 114) as well as to high school students (age: ∼ 16, N = 157). Inferential statistical analysis was conducted to investigate if tasks with specific characteristics differed in their mean solution probabilities, revealing varying conceptions. Our findings suggest that even slight differences in how a task is situated (contextual characteristics), which law it addresses, and whether we ask for forces or for the state of motion (conceptual characteristics) result in significant differences regarding activated conceptions. For example, for Newton’s 1st law (with v = const. but ≠ 0) students activate more appropriate conceptions (higher solution probability) when tasks describe forces and ask for the resulting motion than vice versa. For planning instruction, it seems to be important to pay attention to the task characteristics used, to select them consciously, and to explicitly compare tasks that vary according to a particular characteristic.

Using reduced-processing training to improve decision efficiency among perfectionists

Previous research has demonstrated performance inefficiencies among perfectionists, which may be mitigated via the adoption of ‘good enough’ heuristic-based information acquisition strategies; particularly in complex tasks. This study investigated whether training perfectionists to use reduced-processing strategies during decision-making could reduce their checking and maximising tendencies, improve their accuracy, and reduce time on task. Sixty participants completed eight decision scenarios; two at pre-training, four during training, and two at post-training. Scenarios were from firefighting and crime scene investigation (CSI) contexts, which required participants to access feature-related text boxes to acquire information on three possible options. Firefighting and CSI scenarios were used to gauge performance and mental demand at both pre- and post-training. Participants were assigned to one of the three training conditions: Control (i.e., no training), Elimination by Aspects, and Satisficing. All participants completed four firefighting tasks, receiving feedback on each. Participants then completed two perfectionism measures to assess their relative levels of Perfectionistic Concerns and Perfectionistic Strivings. Components of perfectionism significantly predicted changes in accuracy, latency, unique features accessed, and recursions made during decision-making. Participants who trained in reduced-processing strategies did not significantly improve task performance (compared to control), however did show a reduction in the number of unique features accessed. Further, perfectionism did significantly explain variability in change scores but to different extents depending on task context. While training translated to greater reductions in the number of unique features accessed, other proposed benefits of using reduced-processing strategies were not observed. The study contributes to knowledge of human-centred design and elucidates the factors that may influence the successful introduction and adoption of reduced-processing or other training strategies.

Should We Just Let the Machines Do It? The Benefit and Cost of Action Recommendation and Action Implementation Automation.

To examine the effects of action recommendation and action implementation automation on performance, workload, situation awareness (SA), detection of automation failure, and return-to-manual performance in a submarine track management task. Theory and meta-analytic evidence suggest that with increasing degrees of automation (DOA), operator performance improves and workload decreases, but SA and return-to-manual performance declines. Participants monitored the location and heading of contacts in order to classify them, mark their closest point of approach (CPA), and dive when necessary. Participants were assigned either no automation, action recommendation automation, or action implementation automation. An automation failure occurred late in the task, whereby the automation provided incorrect classification advice or implemented incorrect classification actions. Compared to no automation, action recommendation automation benefited automated task performance and lowered workload, but cost nonautomated task performance. Action implementation automation resulted in perfect automated task performance (by default) and lowered workload, with no costs to nonautomated task performance, SA, or return-to-manual performance compared to no automation. However, participants provided action implementation automation were less likely to detect the automation failure compared to those provided action recommendations, and made less accurate classifications immediately after the automation failure, compared to those provided no automation. Action implementation automation produced the anticipated benefits but also caused poorer automation failure detection. While action implementation automation may be effective for some task contexts, system designers should be aware that operators may be less likely to detect automation failures and that performance may suffer until such failures are detected.

Temporal orienting in Parkinson's disease.

Temporal orienting of attention can affect multiple stages of processing to guide adaptive behaviour. We tested whether temporal expectation in different task contexts is compromised in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). In Experiment 1 two temporal‐orienting tasks were used: a speeded task emphasizing motor preparation and a non‐speeded task emphasizing perceptual discrimination using rapid serial visual presentation. In both tasks, auditory cues indicated the likelihood of a target appearing after a short or long interval. In the speeded‐response task, participants used the cues to anticipate an easily detectable target stimulus. In the non‐speeded perceptual‐discrimination task, participants used the cues to help discriminate a target letter embedded in a stream of letters. Relative to healthy participants, participants with PD did not show altered temporal orienting effects in the speeded‐response task. However, they were impaired in using temporal cues to improve perceptual discrimination. In Experiment 2, we tested whether the temporal‐orienting deficits in the perceptual‐discrimination task depended on the requirement to ignore temporally distracting stimuli. We replicated the impaired temporal orienting for perceptual discrimination in an independent group of individuals with PD, and showed the impairment was abolished when individuals were on their dopaminergic medication. In a task without any distracting letters, however, patients off or on medication benefited normally from temporal orienting cues. Our findings suggest that deficits in temporal orienting in individuals with PD interact with specific task demands, such as the requirement to select target from temporally competing distractors.

Multimodal modeling of collaborative problem-solving facets in triads

Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) is ubiquitous in everyday life, including work, family, leisure activities, etc. With collaborations increasingly occurring remotely, next-generation collaborative interfaces could enhance CPS processes and outcomes with dynamic interventions or by generating feedback for after-action reviews. Automatic modeling of CPS processes (called facets here) is a precursor to this goal. Accordingly, we build automated detectors of three critical CPS facets—construction of shared knowledge, negotiation and coordination, and maintaining team function—derived from a validated CPS framework. We used data of 32 triads who collaborated via a commercial videoconferencing software, to solve challenging problems in a visual programming task. We generated transcripts of 11,163 utterances using automatic speech recognition, which were then coded by trained humans for evidence of the three CPS facets. We used both standard and deep sequential learning classifiers to model the human-coded facets from linguistic, task context, facial expressions, and acoustic–prosodic features in a team-independent fashion. We found that models relying on nonverbal signals yielded above-chance accuracies (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, AUROC) ranging from .53 to .83, with increases in model accuracy when language information was included (AUROCS from .72 to .86). There were no advantages of deep sequential learning methods over standard classifiers. Overall, Random Forest classifiers using language and task context features performed best, achieving AUROC scores of .86, .78, and .79 for construction of shared knowledge, negotiation/coordination, and maintaining team function, respectively. We discuss application of our work to real-time systems that assess CPS and intervene to improve CPS outcomes.

Contemporary methods in delayed discounting: Applications for suicidology with simulation

To present an approach for integrating recently developed methods in behavioral economics into suicidology research. At present, existing applications of delay discounting in suicidology have focused predominantly on hypothetical choices related to monetary value as a proxy to "risky" choices linked to unsafe or suicidal behavior. In this report, we outline a more targeted approach that directly indexes choices related to treatment in suicide prevention initiatives and incorporates the strengths afforded by multi-level modeling. This more targeted approach precludes the need for multi-step comparisons (improving power), avoids compressing choice variability across delays into individual values (improving precision), and better accommodates decision-making at the upper and lower extremes (improving reliability). We present this analytical approach within the context of a Hypothetical Firearm Decision-making Task with simulated participants. A simulated study is provided to illustrate how this approach can be used to evaluate how individuals make temporally delayed decisions related to treatment for suicidal behavior (i.e., temporarily limiting their access to firearms while undergoing treatment). The results of this simulated study are provided to illustrate how more advanced behavioral decision-making models can be used to supplement existing research methods in suicidology.

Heat Conceptions of Elementary School Students and Correct Answer Rate According to Level of Familiarity and Task Contexts

Heat Conceptions of Elementary School Students and Correct Answer Rate According to Level of Familiarity and Task Contexts

The essentials of debriefing in simulation learning: a concept analysis.

Debriefing is essential element of simulation; however, practices vary greatly. Common elements include critique, correction, and evaluation of student performance and discussion of the experience. Learning occurs in simulation through contextual task training and repetition, but significant learning occurs when deep insight is made explicit through reflection during debriefing. The value of the student's learning is in the student's ability to engage in reflection that translates into actionable knowledge. Facilitating debriefing emphasizing reflection is an essential competency, yet little research and resources are available to guide best practices in debriefing. This article analyzes the concept of debriefing and identifies essential components. Examples that demonstrate defining attributes of debriefing are included. This work supports the identification of best practices and future research agendas to enable nurse educators to master the knowledge and strategies needed to provide students with significant learning during simulation.

Examining the Trainability and Transferability of Working-Memory Gating Policies

Internal working memory (WM) gating control policies have been suggested to constitute a critical component of task-sets that can be learned and transferred to very similar task contexts (Bhandari and Badre (Cognition, 172, 33–43, 2018). Here, we attempt to expand these findings, examining whether such control policies can be also trained and transferred to other untrained cognitive control tasks, namely to task switching and AX-CPT. To this end, a context-processing WM task was used for training, allowing to manipulate either input (i.e., top-down selective entry of information into WM) or output (i.e., bottom-up selective retrieval of WM) gating control policies by employing either a context-first (CF) or context-last (CL) task structure, respectively. In this task, two contextual cues were each associated with two different stimuli. In CF condition, each trial began with a contextual cue, determining which of the two subsequent stimuli is target relevant. In contrast, in the CL condition the contextual cue appeared last, preceded by a target and non-target stimulus successively. Participants completed a task switching baseline assessment, followed by one practice and six training blocks with the WM context-processing training task. After completing training, task-switching and AX-CPT transfer blocks were administrated, respectively. As hypothesized, compared to CL training condition, CF training led to improved task-switching performance. However, contrary to our predictions, training type did not influence AX-CPT performance. Taken together, the current results provide further evidence that internal control policies are (1) inherent element of task-sets, also in task switching and (2) independent of S-R mappings. However, these results need to be cautiously interpreted due to baseline differences in task-switching performance between the conditions (overall slower RTs in the CF condition). Importantly though, our results open a new venue for the realm of cognitive enhancement, pointing here for the first time to the potential of control policies training in promoting wider transfer effects.

Choice-dependent cross-modal interaction in the medial prefrontal cortex of rats

Cross-modal interaction (CMI) could significantly influence the perceptional or decision-making process in many circumstances. However, it remains poorly understood what integrative strategies are employed by the brain to deal with different task contexts. To explore it, we examined neural activities of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of rats performing cue-guided two-alternative forced-choice tasks. In a task requiring rats to discriminate stimuli based on auditory cue, the simultaneous presentation of an uninformative visual cue substantially strengthened mPFC neurons' capability of auditory discrimination mainly through enhancing the response to the preferred cue. Doing this also increased the number of neurons revealing a cue preference. If the task was changed slightly and a visual cue, like the auditory, denoted a specific behavioral direction, mPFC neurons frequently showed a different CMI pattern with an effect of cross-modal enhancement best evoked in information-congruent multisensory trials. In a choice free task, however, the majority of neurons failed to show a cross-modal enhancement effect and cue preference. These results indicate that CMI at the neuronal level is context-dependent in a way that differs from what has been shown in previous studies.