Task Goals Research Articles

Evidence for a Cultural Mindset: Combining Process Data, Theory, and Simulation.

Despite large literature on Cross-Cultural Competence (3C) there is a gap in understanding learning processes and mechanisms by which people arrive at successful 3C. We present a novel perspective for 3C learning and decision-making in innovative assessment contexts. We use Mindset theory (i.e., believing ability is fixed or changeable) because it is shown to be a powerful motivator for general learning and performance and in cross-cultural contexts. We propose the notion of cultural mindsets – beliefs, affect, and cognition that govern how people adapt, learn, and update cultural information. To understand how cultural mindset affects learning and performance, we apply computational cognitive modeling using Markov decision process (MDP). Using logfile data from an interactive 3C task, we operationalize behavioral differences in actions and decision making based on Mindset theory, developing cognitive models of fixed and malleable cultural mindsets based on mechanisms of initial beliefs, goals, and belief updating. To explore the validity of our theory, we develop computational MDP models, generate simulated data, and examine whether performance patterns fit our expectations. We expected the malleable cultural mindset would be better at learning the cultural norms in the assessment, more persistent in cultural interactions, quit less before accomplishing the task goal, and would be more likely to modify behavior after negative feedback. We find evidence of distinct patterns of cultural learning, decision-making, and performance with more malleable cultural mindsets showing significantly greater cultural learning, persistence, and responsiveness to feedback, and more openness to exploring current cultural norms and behavior. Moreover, our model was supported in that we were able to accurately classify 83% of the simulated records from the generating model. We argue that cultural mindsets are important mechanisms involved in effectively navigating cross-cultural situations and should be considered in a variety of areas of future research including education, business, health, and military institutions.

Context and attention control determine whether attending to competing information helps or hinders learning in school-aged children.

Attention control regulates efficient processing of goal-relevant information by suppressing interference from irrelevant competing inputs while also flexibly allocating attention across relevant inputs according to task demands. Research has established that developing attention control skills promote effective learning by minimizing distractions from task-irrelevant competing information. Additional research also suggests that competing contextual information can provide meaningful input for learning and should not always be ignored. Instead, attending to competing information that is relevant to task goals can facilitate and broaden the scope of children's learning. We review this past research examining effects of attending to task-relevant and task-irrelevant competing information on learning outcomes, focusing on relations between visual attention and learning in childhood. We then present a synthesis argument that complex interactions across learning goals, the contexts of learning environments and tasks, and developing attention control mechanisms will determine whether attending to competing information helps or hinders learning. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Psychology > Learning Psychology > Development and Aging.

Absence of covert face valuation in Autism

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition defined on clinical criteria related to diminished social reciprocity and stereotyped behavior. An influential view explains autism as a social motivation disorder characterized by less attention paid to the social environment and less pleasure experienced with social rewards. However, experimental attempts to validate this theory, by testing the impact of social reward on behavioral choice and brain activity, has yielded mixed results, possibly due to variations in how explicit instructions were about task goals. Here, we specified the putative motivation deficit as an absence of spontaneous valuation in the social domain, unexplained by inattention and correctible by explicit instruction. Since such deficit cannot be assessed with behavioral measures, we used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to readout covert subjective values, assigned to social and nonsocial stimuli (faces and objects), either explicitly asked to participants (during a likeability judgment task) or not (during age or size estimation tasks). Value-related neural activity observed for objects, or for faces under explicit instructions, was very similar in autistic and control participants, with an activation peak in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), known as a key node of the brain valuation system. The only difference observed in autistic participants was an absence of the spontaneous valuation normally triggered by faces, even when they were attended for age estimation. Our findings, therefore, suggest that in autism, social stimuli might fail to trigger the automatic activation of the brain valuation system.

Working memory prioritization: Goal-driven attention, physical salience, and implicit learning

Items in working memory (WM) are prioritized if they are relevant to task goals, are physically salient, or have acquired importance from implicit learning. We propose that all forms of prioritization increase the likelihood of recall, but only goal-driven attention will affect the quality of those representations. In a delayed-estimation task with four colors, prioritization was manipulated via a predictive spatial cue (goal-driven attention), a non-predictive peripheral cue (physical salience), or implicit learning of a previously relevant target location. Probabilities of recalling the target (Ptarget) and memory precision were estimated using a Bayesian implementation of the mixture model. Strong evidence was observed that all forms of prioritization increased Ptarget, whereas physical salience and implicit learning had only weak or negligible effects on precision compared to goal-driven attention. We propose that generating and maintaining high-resolution memories is an effortful process that will primarily be invoked when participants voluntarily prioritize memory items.

Acute pain impairs sustained attention.

Pain affects the lives of many individuals by creating physical, psychological, and economic burdens. A critical psychological factor negatively affected by pain is one's ability to sustain attention. In order to better understand the effect of pain on sustained attention we conducted three experiments utilizing the psychomotor vigilance task, thought probes, and pupillometry. In Experiment 1, participants in acute pain exhibited overall poorer task performance. However, this effect was localized to the relative frequency and duration of the participants' slowest responses with their faster responses being equivalent to a no-pain control group. In Experiment 2, we replicated the procedure and included periodic thought probes to overtly measure subjective experiences during the task. Participants in pain reported fewer "on-task" thoughts and more thoughts directed toward the source of their pain. In Experiment 3, we replicated the procedure while simultaneously tracking pupillary dynamics using an eye-tracker. Participants in pain had smaller task-evoked pupillary responses, which is thought to be an indicator of task engagement. However, the behavioral effects of pain from Experiments 1 and 2 were not replicated in Experiment 3. Taken together, pain led to poorer performance in the form of an increase in the relative frequency and extremeness of slow responses, increases in off-task thoughts, and reductions in a physiological indicator of task engagement. These data speak to theories of how pain competes with task goals for attention and negatively impacts behavior. The broader implications of this work are the identification of a low-level mechanism by which pain can interfere with normal cognitive functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The performance costs of interruption during visual search are determined by the type of search task

Prior research has shown that interruptions lead to a variety of performance costs. However, these costs are heterogenous and poorly understood. Under some circumstances, interruptions lead to large decreases in accuracy on the primary task, whereas in others task duration increases, but task accuracy is unaffected. Presently, the underlying cause of these costs is unclear. The Memory for Goals model suggests that interruptions interfere with the ability to represent the current goal of the primary task. Here, we test the idea that working memory (WM) may play a critical role in representing the current goal and thus may underlie the observed costs associated with interruption. In two experiments, we utilized laboratory-based visual search tasks, which differed in their WM demands, in order to assess how this difference influenced the observed interruption costs. Interruptions led to more severe performance costs when the target of the search changed on each trial. When the search target was consistent across trials, the cost of interruption was greatly reduced. This suggests that the WM demands associated with the primary task play an important role in determining the performance costs of interruption. Our findings suggest that it is important for research to consider the cognitive processes a task engages in order to predict the nature of the adverse effects of interruption in applied settings such as radiology.

Body-Space Interactions: Same Spatial Encoding but Different Influence of Valence for Reaching and Defensive Purposes.

The space around our body, the so-called peripersonal space, is where interactions with nearby objects may occur. "Defensive space" and "Reaching space", respectively, refer to two opposite poles of interaction between our body and the external environment: protecting the body and performing a goal-directed action. Here, we hypothesized that mechanisms underlying these two action spaces are differentially modulated by the valence of visual stimuli, as stimuli with negative valence are more likely to activate protective actions whereas stimuli with positive valence may activate approaching actions. To test whether such distinction in cognitive/evaluative processing exists between Reaching and Defensive spaces, we measured behavioral responses as well as neural activations over sensorimotor cortex using EEG while participants performed several tasks designed to tap into mechanisms underlying either Defensive (e.g., respond to touch) or Reaching space (e.g., estimate whether object is within reaching distance). During each task, pictures of objects with either positive or negative valence were presented at different distances from the participants' body. We found that Defensive space was smaller for positively compared with negatively valenced visual stimuli. Furthermore, sensorimotor cortex activation (reflected in modulation of beta power) during tactile processing was enhanced when coupled with negatively rather than positively valenced visual stimuli regarding Defensive space. On the contrary, both the EEG and behavioral measures capturing the mechanisms underlying Reaching space did not reveal any modulation by valence. Thus, although valence encoding had differential effects on Reaching and Defensive spaces, the distance of the visual stimulus modulated behavioral measures as well as activity over sensorimotor cortex (reflected in modulations of mu power) in a similar way for both types of spaces. Our results are compatible with the idea that Reaching and Defensive spaces involve the same distance-dependent neural representations of sensory input, whereas task goals and stimulus valence (i.e., contextual information) are implemented at a later processing stage and exert an influence on motor output rather than sensory/space encoding.

A data-efficient goal-directed deep reinforcement learning method for robot visuomotor skill

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has provided an effective end to end approach for autonomous robot skill learning. However, the task goal in most DRL approaches is always single and fixed which restricts the flexibility of policy. In addition, the data inefficiency also makes it impractical to applied on real-world robots. To address these problems, this paper proposes a data-efficient goal-directed DRL method for robotic skill learning. First, an asymmetric deep deterministic policy gradients algorithm is constructed as the basic framework of the method by taking advantage of the low-dimensional physical state accessible in simulations. Then, a Siamese representation learning network is designed to embed the RGB observation and the human intention at the same feature space to realize human-robot intention transfer. And, an auxiliary similarity evaluation network is added to the DRL algorithm to accelerate representation learning. Finally, a domain randomization method is employed to transfer the learned policies from simulation to reality. In experiments, two typical robotic tasks are set up to evaluate the proposed method. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The trained robot can switch among multiple goals automatically according to human intentions. And, the Siamese representation learning network and auxiliary similarity evaluation network can improve data efficiency effectively.

СОВЕРШЕНСТВОВАНИЕ МЕТОДИЧЕСКОГО ОБЕСПЕЧЕНИЯ КОНТРОЛЯ НАЛИЧИЯ И СОХРАННОСТИ ЗАПАСОВ В СИСТЕМЕ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ ПРЕДПРИЯТИЕМ

Stocks are one of the key factors ensuring the constancy and continuity of reproduction. In this regard, their internal control serves as the most important element of enterprise management and ensures stable and secure financial and economic activities. The purpose of the study is to improve the methodological support of internal control of the availability and safety of stocks to prevent distortions and illegal actions in terms of their movement, to ensure the reliability of information in accounting, operational and management accounting. To prove the effectiveness of accounting and analytical support for controlling the acquisition, storage, write-off of inventories, it is advisable to use the working document “Test for assessing the inventory accounting system”, which contains topical issues that allow assessing the effectiveness of organizing inventory accounting at the enterprise. The working document of internal control, proposed in the framework of the study, “The program of internal control of the availability and safety of stocks”, includes a list of control areas, a regulatory framework and sources of information, determines the nature of the audit and control procedures that are necessary to achieve the goal and practical solution of the audit tasks. The working document of internal control “Questionnaire for checking the state of storage facilities and safety of stocks” contains questions that allow the internal controller to fully assess the conditions of storage of stocks, the state of fire safety of warehouses, the equipment of warehouses with equipment, machinery, instruments and the correctness of their operation, the state of security warehouse premises. At the same time, the controller has the ability to clarify and concretize the options for answering the questions posed in the working document. This, in turn, will allow, based on the results of the audit, to provide the manager with all the information necessary for making effective management decisions

Solving problems in the processing of users’ requests in human-machine interactions: Cases of system-initiated repair

This study uses conversation analysis to explore how problems of understanding are solved through talk-in-interaction between users and systems in human-machine interactions. The data were collected during a corpus-building procedure intended to improve the Sogang Dialogue System, an AI assistant program. The study focuses on cases of system-initiated repair addressing communication breakdown in a particular activity: creating a new event or finding and changing a previously scheduled event on a calendar. The analysis shows the precise nature of the troubles that arise in accomplishing the task goals of this activity, and how the system and its users coordinate to solve the problems of understanding through talk-in-interaction. The system displays trouble undertaking a user’s request when the user’s first turn does not provide all the information the system needs to process the request. The system’s repair initiations and confirmation-check questions play a pivotal role in establishing mutual understanding. The paper concludes by discussing practical implications for the design and modeling of the building blocks of human-machine interaction.

Learning a family of motor skills from a single motion clip

We present a new algorithm that learns a parameterized family of motor skills from a single motion clip. The motor skills are represented by a deep policy network, which produces a stream of motions in physics simulation in response to user input and environment interaction by navigating continuous action space. Three novel technical components play an important role in the success of our algorithm. First, it explicitly constructs motion parameterization that maps action parameters to their corresponding motions. Simultaneous learning of motion parameterization and motor skills significantly improves the performance and visual quality of learned motor skills. Second, continuous-time reinforcement learning is adopted to explore temporal variations as well as spatial variations in motion parameterization. Lastly, we present a new automatic curriculum generation method that explores continuous action space more efficiently. We demonstrate the flexibility and versatility of our algorithm with highly dynamic motor skills that can be parameterized by task goals, body proportions, physical measurements, and environmental conditions.

Multiple facets of learning a skill - Amalgamation of learning theories in cadaveric surgical skill lab.

Multiple facets of learning a skill - Amalgamation of learning theories in cadaveric surgical skill lab.

Spatial cueing effects are not what we thought: On the timing of attentional deployment.

Extensive research has shown that objects that are salient or match our task goals are most likely to capture our attention. But are we at the mercy of the constant changes occurring in our environment, and automatically move our attention to the ever-changing location with the highest priority? Or do we wait for clues that the appropriate moment has arrived to deploy our attention? We addressed this hitherto neglected issue in three experiments. Using a spatial-cuing paradigm, we examined whether attention is deployed as soon as a salient change occurs (the cue), or only when the context signaling that attention should be deployed appears (the search display). The cue matched the target color and was expected to enjoy high attentional priority. We used two separate response compatibility manipulations, one pertaining to the cue, in the cuing display, and the other to the cued distractor, in the search display. Neutral conditions allowed us to disentangle the respective effects of these manipulations. Participants deployed their attention in the search display when they could rely on contextual information, and in the cue display when such information was absent. These findings challenge the traditional interpretation of spatial-cuing effects. They are discussed within the Priority Accumulation Framework (PAF) that we confront to other attention models. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Automatic object-based spatial selection depends on the distribution of sustained attention

Several space-based and object-based attention studies suggest these selection mechanisms may be voluntarily deployed, depending on task parameters and the attentional scope of the observer. Here, we sought to elucidate factors related to involuntary deployment of object-mediated space-based attention through two experiments. Experiment 1 used a modified flanker task where a target and nearby distractor were presented within the same or different object frames, such that an object-based attentional spread should be detrimental to performance. Results showed the presence of a flanker effect with no significant difference in magnitude between grouping conditions, indicating participants may have uniformly used a diffused attentional spotlight regardless of object segmentation. In a second experiment, we manipulated the extent of the observer’s sustained attentional scope via an inducer task to determine whether object-based selection depends on the initial spotlight size. The results revealed object-based effects solely when attention narrowly encompassed the target, but not when it was widened to include the distracting flanker. This suggests the deployment of object-based attention may occur when spatial attention is initially focused narrowly. Because selecting the whole object frame directly interfered with task goals, we conclude that object-based attention may not always fully conform to relevant task goals or operate in a goal-oriented manner. We discuss these results in the context of existing literature while proposing a reconciliation of previously inconsistent findings of object-based selection.

A Critical Review of Network-Based and Distributional Approaches to Semantic Memory Structure and Processes.

Some of the earliest work on understanding how concepts are organized in memory used a network-based approach, where words or concepts are represented as nodes, and relationships between words are represented by links between nodes. Over the past two decades, advances in network science and graph theoretical methods have led to the development of computational semantic networks. This review provides a modern perspective on how computational semantic networks have proven to be useful tools to investigate the structure of semantic memory as well as search and retrieval processes within semantic memory, to ultimately model performance in a wide variety of cognitive tasks. Regarding representation, the review focuses on the distinctions and similarities between network-based (based on behavioral norms) approaches and more recent distributional (based on natural language corpora) semantic models, and the potential overlap between the two approaches. Capturing the type of relation between concepts appears to be particularly important in this modeling endeavor. Regarding processes, the review focuses on random walk models and the degree to which retrieval processes demand attention in pursuit of given task goals, which dovetails with the type of relation retrieved during tasks. Ultimately, this review provides a critical assessment of how the network perspective can be reconciled with distributional and machine-learning-based perspectives to meaning representation, and describes how cognitive network science provides a useful conceptual toolkit to probe both the structure and retrieval processes within semantic memory.

Superficial lumbar muscle recruitment strategies to control the trunk with delayed-onset muscle soreness.

The lumbar region offers various muscle recruitment strategies to achieve a task goal under varying conditions. For instance, trunk movement control can be reorganized under the influence of low back pain. How such task-modulation is obtained is not fully understood. The objective of this study was to characterize superficial lumbar muscle recruitment strategies under the influence of delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) during unexpected trunk perturbations. Healthy participants experienced a series of 15 sudden external perturbations with and without the influence of low back DOMS. During these perturbations, high-density surface electromyography was used to characterize recruitment strategies of superficial lumbar muscles, while kinematics sensors were used to characterize movements of the trunk. Lumbar muscle recruitment strategies, characterized by the amplitude of muscle activity amplitude, the latencies of the reflex activity and the spatial distribution of muscle activity, were compared across perturbations trials and with and without DOMS. An attenuation of lumbar muscle activity amplitude was observed across perturbation trials without DOMS, but not with DOMS. The spatial distribution of muscle activity was similar with and without DOMS. No significant changes in reflex activity latency and trunk flexion movement were observed. Following an unexpected trunk perturbation under DOMS effects, trunk movement are controlled using two different superficial lumbar muscles control strategies: keeping a constant level of their overall muscle activity and using a variable muscle recruitment pattern.

Working memory load reduces corticospinal suppression to former go and trained no-go cues

Environmental cues associated with an action can prime the motor system, decreasing response times and activating motor regions of the brain. However, when task goals change, the same responses to former go-associated cues are no longer required and motor priming needs to be inhibited to avoid unwanted behavioural errors. The present study tested whether the inhibition of motor system activity to presentations of former go cues is reliant on top-down, goal-directed cognitive control processes using a working memory (WM) load manipulation. Applying transcranial magnetic stimulation over the primary motor cortex to measure motor system activity during a Go/No-go task, we found that under low WM, corticospinal excitability was suppressed to former go and trained no-go cues relative to control cues. Under high WM, the cortical suppression to former go cues was reduced, suggesting that the underlying mechanism required executive control. Unexpectedly, we found a similar result for trained no-go cues and showed in a second experiment that the corticospinal suppression and WM effects were unrelated to local inhibitory function as indexed by short-interval intracortical inhibition. Our findings reveal that the interaction between former response cues and WM is complex and we discuss possible explanations of our findings in relation to models of response inhibition.

Research on the Professional Development Attitude of Minority English Teachers

A total of 180 minority English teachers of different ages in middle schools are involved as quantitative research participants in this study. SPSS is applied to analyze the status quo and differences of their professional development attitude among different ages. The results show that they have the strong positive attitude toward their professional development, but teachers of different ages have significant differences in the dimensions of Professional Teaching Knowledge, Flexible Task Goals Consciousness as well as Rigid Task Target Consciousness.

Meta-control: From psychology to computational neuroscience.

Research in the past decades shed light on the different mechanisms that underlie our capacity for cognitive control. However, the meta-level processes that regulate cognitive control itself remain poorly understood. Following the terminology from artificial intelligence, meta-control can be defined as a collection of mechanisms that (a) monitor the progress of controlled processing and (b) regulate the underlying control parameters in the service of current task goals and in response to internal or external constraints. From a psychological perspective, meta-control is an important concept because it may help explain and predict how and when human agents select different types of behavioral strategies. From a cognitive neuroscience viewpoint, meta-control is a useful concept for understanding the complex networks in the prefrontal cortex that guide higher-level behavior as well as their interactions with neuromodulatory systems (such as the dopamine or norepinephrine system). The purpose of the special issue is to integrate hitherto segregated strands of research across three different perspectives: 1) a psychological perspective that specifies meta-control processes on a functional level and aims to operationalize them in experimental tasks; 2) a computational perspective that builds on ideas from artificial intelligence to formalize normative solutions to meta-control problems; and 3) a cognitive neuroscience perspective that identifies neural correlates of and mechanisms underlying meta-control.

Spatial distance of target locations affects the time course of both endogenous and exogenous attentional deployment.

Spatial attention can be deployed exogenously, based on salient events in the environment, or endogenously, based on current task goals. Numerous studies have compared the time courses of these two types of attention, and have demonstrated that exogenous attention is fast and transient and endogenous attention is relatively slow but sustained. In the present study we investigated whether and how the temporal dynamics of exogenous and endogenous attention differ in terms of where attention is deployed in the visual field, in particular at locations nearby or far from fixation. Across a series of experiments, we measured attentional shift times for each type of attention, and found overall slower deployment of endogenous relative to exogenous attention, in line with previous research. Importantly, we also consistently found that it takes longer to deploy attention at more distant locations relative to nearby locations, regardless of how attention was instigated. Overall, our results suggest that the temporal limits of attentional deployment across different spatial distances are similar for exogenous and endogenous attention, pointing to shared constraints underlying both attentional modes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).