Virtual Peer Research Articles

Peer review of health research funding proposals: A systematic map and systematic review of innovations for effectiveness and efficiency.

ObjectiveTo investigate methods and processes for timely, efficient and good quality peer review of research funding proposals in health.MethodsA two-stage evidence synthesis: (1) a systematic map to describe the key characteristics of the evidence base, followed by (2) a systematic review of the studies stakeholders prioritised as relevant from the map on the effectiveness and efficiency of peer review ‘innovations’. Standard processes included literature searching, duplicate inclusion criteria screening, study keyword coding, data extraction, critical appraisal and study synthesis.ResultsA total of 83 studies from 15 countries were included in the systematic map. The evidence base is diverse, investigating many aspects of the systems for, and processes of, peer review. The systematic review included eight studies from Australia, Canada, and the USA, evaluating a broad range of peer review innovations. These studies showed that simplifying the process by shortening proposal forms, using smaller reviewer panels, or expediting processes can speed up the review process and reduce costs, but this might come at the expense of peer review quality, a key aspect that has not been assessed. Virtual peer review using videoconferencing or teleconferencing appears promising for reducing costs by avoiding the need for reviewers to travel, but again any consequences for quality have not been adequately assessed.ConclusionsThere is increasing international research activity into the peer review of health research funding. The studies reviewed had methodological limitations and variable generalisability to research funders. Given these limitations it is not currently possible to recommend immediate implementation of these innovations. However, many appear promising based on existing evidence, and could be adapted as necessary by funders and evaluated. Where feasible, experimental evaluation, including randomised controlled trials, should be conducted, evaluating impact on effectiveness, efficiency and quality.

"Leading Better Care": An evaluation of an accelerated coaching intervention for clinical nursing leadership development.

Outcomes of an accelerated co-active coaching intervention for senior clinical nursing leadership development. Co-active coaching is characterized by a whole person approach, commitment to deep learning and conscious action through supportive compassionate and courageous coach-coachee partnership. The national leadership capabilities framework, "Step into Leadership", was used for development and evaluation. 116 senior clinical nurse leaders attended one face-to-face induction day and received a total of 3hours of one-to-one telephone coaching and two virtual peer group facilitated sessions. Evaluation used primarily qualitative descriptive methods with iterative review of emerging themes. Capability mapping indicated self-leadership development as the most frequently cited need. Improvements in self-confidence, capacity for reflection and bringing whole self into the work were reported to deliver enhancement in team and service performance. Co-active coaching supported deep analysis by individuals. Focus on self, rather than behaviours provoked reflection on perspectives, mindsets, beliefs and approaches which can lead to more sustainable behaviour and support service change. Investment in a co-active coaching approach offers bespoke support for clinical leaders to develop self-leadership capability, a precursor to delivering positive impacts on care.

Combined effects of peer presence, social cues, and rewards on cognitive control in adolescents.

Developmental scientists have examined the independent effects of peer presence, social cues, and rewards on adolescent decision-making and cognitive control. Yet, these contextual factors often co-occur in real world social situations. The current study examined the combined effects of all three factors on cognitive control, and its underlying neural circuitry, using a task to better capture adolescents' real world social interactions. A sample of 176 participants ages 13-25, was scanned while performing an adapted go/no-go task alone or in the presence of a virtual peer. The task included brief positive social cues and sustained periods of positive arousal. Adolescents showed diminished cognitive control to positive social cues when anticipating a reward in the presence of peers relative to when alone, a pattern not observed in older participants. This behavioral pattern was paralleled by enhanced orbitofrontal activation. The results demonstrate the synergistic impact of social and reward influences on cognitive control in adolescents.

Competing on the Holodeck: The Effect of Virtual Peers and Heterogeneity in Dynamic Tournaments

We propose experiments in virtual reality (VR) as a new approach to examining behavior in an economic context, e.g., heterogeneity in dynamic tournaments. We simulate a realistic working situation in a highly immersive environment. Implementing a tournament in VR, we are able to mitigate the reflection problem, which usually undermines research on dynamic interaction. Moreover, VR allows us to ceteris paribus control for the performance of the virtual peer (humanoid avatar), and thus to get an understanding of the reaction of the subject to the avatar in a really dynamic setting, as the subject is constantly able to observe the avatar's performance. Based on a first experimental phase, we match our subjects with an avatar yielding a specific output. We observe that the subjects' performance is highest in a homogeneous tournament, i.e., when they compete against an avatar achieving the same output as they did in the preceding phase. Interestingly, these results are particularly driven by peer effects rather than by tournament incentives. We extensively track the behavior of subjects and the particular situation and, e.g., examine the role of intermediate score differences and the degree of the subjects' movements.

6- and 8-year-olds’ performance evaluations: Do they differ between self and unknown others?

The current study investigated kindergarteners and second graders’ ability to monitor and evaluate their own and a virtual peer’s performance in a paired-associate learning task. Participants provided confidence judgments (CJs) for their own responses and performance-based judgments (judgments provided after receiving feedback on their performance) for both their own and a virtual peer’s responses. For the performance-based judgments, children were confronted with their own or the peer’s answer as well as the correct answer. Additionally, participants were asked to credit their own and the peer’s correct and incorrect answers while facing feedback. Results indicate an age-related progression in metacognitive monitoring skills, with second graders differentiating more strongly in their confidence judgments between correct and incorrect responses compared to kindergarteners. Regarding performance-based judgments, children of both age groups provided higher judgments for correctly compared to incorrectly recognized items as well as for their own responses in comparison to the responses of the unknown child. Similarly, when crediting, participants of both age groups gave more credits for correct recognition than for incorrect recognition and for their own responses than for the peer’s responses. The significant interaction between age group and recognition accuracy for the crediting shows that second graders gave more credits for correctly recognized items while kindergarteners gave more credits for incorrect answers than the older children – primarily for their own incorrect answers. In conclusion, the study provides new insights into 6- and 8-year-olds’ evaluations of their own and an unknown child’s performance in a paired-associate learning task by showing that children of both age groups generally judged and credited responses in their own favor. These results add to our understanding of biases in children’s performance evaluations, including metacognitive judgments and judgments provided after receiving feedback.

Objective Building Energy Performance Benchmarking Using Data Envelopment Analysis and Monte Carlo Sampling

An objective measure of building energy performance is crucial for performance assessment and rational decision making on energy retrofits and policies of existing buildings. One of the most popular measures of building energy performance benchmarking is Energy Use Intensity (EUI, kwh/m2). While EUI is simple to understand, it only represents the amount of consumed energy per unit floor area rather than the real performance of a building. In other words, it cannot take into account building services such as operation hours, comfortable environment, etc. EUI is often misinterpreted by assuming that a lower EUI for a building implies better energy performance, which may not actually be the case if many of the building services are not considered. In order to overcome this limitation, this paper presents Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) coupled with Monte Carlo sampling. DEA is a data-driven and non-parametric performance measurement method. DEA can quantify the performance of a given building given multiple inputs and multiple outputs. In this study, two existing office buildings were selected. For energy performance benchmarking, 1000 virtual peer buildings were generated from a Monte Carlo sampling and then simulated using EnergyPlus. Based on a comparison between DEA-based and EUI-based benchmarking, it is shown that DEA is more performance-oriented, objective, and rational since DEA can take into account input (energy used to provide the services used in a building) and output (level of services provided by a building). It is shown that DEA can be an objective building energy benchmarking method, and can be used to identify low energy performance buildings.

Expert or peer? Understanding the implications of virtual advisor identity on emergency rescuer empowerment in mobile psychological self-help services

Psychological self-help services on mobile devices play a vital role in supporting emergency rescuers who engage in highly stressful and self-devoting careers with frequent exposure to dangers and traumatic scenes right after disaster strikes. In this study, we propose and design a low-cost and widely deployable strategy for empowering emergency rescuers through an intelligent mobile psychological self-help tool. This tool will help reduce the gap between the limited number of qualified professional counsellors and the high demand for timely psychological support by rescuers. We start with a thorough investigation of user requirements, extant work, and relevant IS design theories to inform our system design choices, among which we identified that “virtual advisor identity” (VAI) needs further research. We then empirically examined how VAI influences the empowerment effect of ERMS. Involving 120 emergency rescuers who have just finished rescue tasks, our experiment shows that VAI has important effects on a user’s cognitive and emotional routes, which are significant empowering enablers that lead to positive empowerment outcomes. Interestingly, virtual peer advisor empowers users mostly through evoking emotional resonance from them, whereas virtual expert advisor is better at empowering users through cognitive channels. Important theoretical and practical implications of the findings are then discussed.

Visual Food Diary for Social Support, Dietary Changes and Weight Loss

Background: To find out to what degree health-improving dietary behavior (eg, increasing consumption of vegetables and fruits) can be furthered in virtual peer support groups moderated by a nutrition professional using a mobile app.

The application of virtual reality technology in the training of peer interaction in children with high functioning autism: attentional bias modification

Objective To explore the effect of virtual reality technology in the promotion of peer interaction ability in children with high functioning autism(HFA). Methods 15 children with HFA were recruited and divided into control group(n=5), experimental group 1(n=5)and experimental group 2(n=5)with IQ and gender matching. The experimental group 1 received the attentional bias modification task, the flash animation technology task using virtual reality technology and the task in the real environment. The experimental group 2 received the flash animation technology task using virtual reality technology and the task in the real environment. The control group received the task in the real environment only. Results (1)After the attentional bias modification, compared with the experimental group 2, the experimental group 1 was shorter on reaction time(T1=16.0, T2=39.0, U=1.0, P=0.016), and was higher on the accuracy(T1=40.0, T2=15.0, U=0.0, P=0.008). (2)The scores of the experimental group 1 in the other-regarding(T1=39.5, T2=15.5, U=0.5, P<0.01)and the using language(T1=38.0, T2=17.0, U=2.0, P<0.05) were higher than the experimental group 2.(3) The scores of the experimental group 1 in the other-regarding, using language and rule executor were higher than those of the control group(all P<0.01). (4) The score of the experimental group 2 in the other-regarding was higher than that of the control group(P<0.05). Conclusion The attention bias correction based virtual reality peer interaction technology can effectively improve the ability of other-regarding, language using and execution rules of children with HFA in the real environment. Key words: High functioning autism; Peer interaction; Attentional bias; Virtual reality technology; Real environment

Increasing citizen science contribution using a virtual peer

Online participation is becoming an increasingly common means for individuals to contribute to citizen science projects, yet such projects often rely on only a small fraction of participants to make the majority of contributions. Here, we investigate a means for influencing the performance of citizen scientists toward enhancing overall participation. Building on past social comparison research, we pair citizen scientists with a software‐based virtual peer in an environmental monitoring project. Through a series of experiments in which virtual peers outperform, underperform, or perform similarly to human participants, we investigate the influence of their presence on citizen science participation. To offer insight into the psychological determinants to the response to this intervention, we propose a new dynamic model describing the bidirectional interaction between humans and virtual peers. Our results demonstrate that participant contribution can be enhanced through the presence of a virtual peer, creating a feedback loop where participants tend to increase or decrease their contribution in response to their peers' performance. By including virtual peers that systematically outperform the participants, we demonstrate a fourfold increase in their contribution to the citizen science project.

Communication of support and critique in Swedish virtual community threads about prenatal diagnoses of fetal anomalies.

BackgroundA prenatal diagnosis of a fetal anomaly involves acute grief and psychological distress. The Internet has the potential to provide virtual support following the diagnosis. The overall aim was to explore communication of support and critique in Swedish virtual community threads about prenatal diagnoses of fetal anomalies.MethodsSystematic searches in Google resulted in 117 eligible threads. Fifteen of these were purposefully selected and subjected to deductive content analysis.ResultsThe virtual support involved mainly emotional support (meaning units n = 1,992/3,688, 54 %) and was described as comforting and empowering. Posters with experience of a prenatal diagnosis appreciated the virtual support, including the opportunity to gain insight into other cases and to write about one’s own experience. Critique of the decision to continue or terminate the pregnancy occurred, primarily against termination of pregnancy. However, it was met with defense.ConclusionsPeer support, mainly emotional, is provided and highly appreciated in threads about prenatal diagnoses of a fetal anomaly. Critique of the decision to terminate the pregnancy occurs in virtual community threads about prenatal diagnoses, but the norm is to not question the decision. Future studies need to investigate if virtual peer support promotes psychosocial function following a prenatal diagnosis and what medium would be most suitable for these types of supportive structures.

Virtual Peer Effects in Social Learning Theory

The current study examines the differential influence of face-to-face and virtual peers in predicting digital and traditional offending among college students through the lens of social learning theory (SLT). SLT components are explored to discern whether the theory holds for virtual peers, as it has for face-to-face peers using a structural equation modeling framework, thus making a substantial contribution to the social learning literature. Findings provide some support for SLT for both virtual only peers and the face-to-face peers model in relation to digital as well as traditional offending. In addition, findings suggest that virtual peer associations may be as important as traditional peer associations in explaining certain types of deviant behavior.

The Power of the Like in Adolescence

We investigated a unique way in which adolescent peer influence occurs on social media. We developed a novel functional MRI (fMRI) paradigm to simulate Instagram, a popular social photo-sharing tool, and measured adolescents’ behavioral and neural responses to likes, a quantifiable form of social endorsement and potential source of peer influence. Adolescents underwent fMRI while viewing photos ostensibly submitted to Instagram. They were more likely to like photos depicted with many likes than photos with few likes; this finding showed the influence of virtual peer endorsement and held for both neutral photos and photos of risky behaviors (e.g., drinking, smoking). Viewing photos with many (compared with few) likes was associated with greater activity in neural regions implicated in reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and attention. Furthermore, when adolescents viewed risky photos (as opposed to neutral photos), activation in the cognitive-control network decreased. These findings highlight possible mechanisms underlying peer influence during adolescence.

Thumbs up or thumbs down? Effects of neuroticism and depressive symptoms on psychophysiological responses to social evaluation in healthy students.

The effects of neuroticism and depressive symptoms on psychophysiological responses in a social judgment task were examined in a sample of 101 healthy young adults. Participants performed a social judgment task in which they had to predict whether or not a virtual peer presented on a computer screen liked them. After the prediction, the actual judgment was shown, and behavioral, electrocortical, and cardiac responses to this judgment were measured. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) was largest after unexpected feedback. The largest P3 was found after the expected “like” judgments, and cardiac deceleration was largest following unexpected “do not like” judgments. Both the P3 and cardiac deceleration were affected by gender—that is, only males showed differential P3 responses to social judgments, and males showed stronger cardiac decelerations. Time–frequency analyses were performed to explore theta and delta oscillations. Theta oscillations were largest following unexpected outcomes and correlated with FRN amplitudes. Delta oscillations were largest following expected “like” judgments and correlated with P3 amplitudes. Self-reported trait neuroticism was significantly related to social evaluative predictions and cardiac reactivity to social feedback, but not to the electrocortical responses. That is, higher neuroticism scores were associated with a more negative prediction bias and with smaller cardiac responses to judgments for which a positive outcome was predicted. Depressive symptoms did not affect the behavioral and psychophysiological responses in this study. The results confirmed the differential sensitivities of various outcome measures to different psychological processes, but the found individual differences could only partly be ascribed to the collected subjective measures.

IMMERSIVE BICYCLE GAME FOR HEALTH VIRTUAL TOUR OF UIN MAULANA MALIK IBRAHIM MALANG

Cancer is the leading cause of death in the world. More than 10 million people worldwide The goal of this research is to promote UIN Maliki Malang using immersive tools bicycle for human health. The system developed using combination of bicycle and computer with various sensors on the wheels, steering and brakes. The device consists of a mountain bike in front of the monitor are useful to display virtual Tour. Children’s reactions to the virtual peer indicate that their virtual peer framework is a promising platform for future behavioral studies of peer influences on children’s bicycle riding behavior. The system results shows immersive bicycle road in UIN Maliki Malang area. This system is useful for refreshing and relaxing human body.

The importance of peer support during the final stages of a PhD

This article offers a reflective account of five friends who supported each other during the final stages of their PhDs. Our supportive group, however, was unique: it was a virtual support group that relied on Whatsapp, Facebook and Skype. Using such online resources allowed five PhD students, based from Glasgow to Kent, to offer each other advice, guidance and friendship. The article recommends that instead of hiding yourself away during the final stages of thesis writing, you should reach out to peers around you for support. Our experiences highlight that this can be in person but can also be successful via the use of social media. Ultimately, this article, therefore, aims to highlight the benefits of our virtual peer support group and how it helped each of the authors at the end of their PhD journey.

Depressed Adolescents' Pupillary Response to Peer Acceptance and Rejection: The Role of Rumination.

Heightened emotional reactivity to peer feedback is predictive of adolescents' depression risk. Examining variation in emotional reactivity within currently depressed adolescents may identify subgroups that struggle the most with these daily interactions. We tested whether trait rumination, which amplifies emotional reactions, explained variance in depressed adolescents' physiological reactivity to peer feedback, hypothesizing that rumination would be associated with greater pupillary response to peer rejection and diminished response to peer acceptance. Twenty currently depressed adolescents (12-17) completed a virtual peer interaction paradigm where they received fictitious rejection and acceptance feedback. Pupillary response provided a time-sensitive index of physiological arousal. Rumination was associated with greater initial pupil dilation to both peer rejection and acceptance, and diminished late pupillary response to peer acceptance trials only. Results indicate that depressed adolescents high on trait rumination are more reactive to social feedback regardless of valence, but fail to sustain cognitive-affective load on positive feedback.

Exploring Adult Learners Usage of Information Communication Technology during a Virtual Peer Coaching Experience

The purpose of this study was to explore how post-graduate students in a fully online business course used information communication technology during a virtual peer coaching experience. In this exploration of technology use it was found students required additional guidance in the use of technologies such as email, telephone calling, and more media rich tools such as Skype and Blackboard Collaborate during a virtual peer coaching session. They did not fully understand how to use these different mediums to guide and structure the coaching experience. They were frustrated by the lack of media richness when using tools with low levels of audio-visual connectivity. The findings suggest that the increasing use of technology in education does not necessarily mean that students will use it appropriately, even if they are adept at learning online or use the technology in their daily lives. Therefore, instructors cannot make assumptions about students’ technological literacy even though these same students may appear to have a high level of competency learning online. Guidelines for using ICT in virtual peer coaching are provided as a result of this exploration.

Accessing Peer Social Interaction

Autism spectrum and related communication and social disorders can severely affect some children's ability to engage in peer social interaction. In this article, we describe and evaluate an Authorable Virtual Peer (AVP), technology designed to help children access peer interactions by supporting them in developing critical social skills. Children interact with the AVP in three ways: (1) engaging in face-to-face interaction with a life-sized, computer-animated child; (2) creating new social behaviors for the AVP; and (3) controlling the AVP using a graphical user interface to select appropriate responses while the AVP interacts with another person. Our evaluation suggests that when an AVP is used as an activity during a social group intervention, a common intervention approach used with children with social and communication difficulties, that children's use of specific social behaviors critical to successful social interaction increases during role-play of common social situations with another child.

A Scalability and Reliability Super Peer Construction Method in Unstructured Distributed System

It is a large challenge to enhance Super Peer (SP) capability in the unstructured distributed system. The current study of this issue is still focused on how to choose a single peer as a SP based on some standards. Though the selected peer has the certain ability of tolerating the higher load, it is short of Scalability and reliability when the load increases dramatically. In order to improve the SP in these two areas, a new method, which uses Virtual Super Peer (VSP), is proposed. Based on the load in a cluster, one or several peers are selected as a SP. During running the system, the number of peers is dynamically adjusted as the load change. The experimental results demonstrate the method is effective in enhancing SP’s scalable and reliable performance.