Movement control, decision-making, and the building of Roman roads to link them

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reza Shadmehr ◽  
Alaa A. Ahmed

Abstract In science, as in life, one can only hope to both inform others, and be informed by them. The commentaries associated with our book Vigor have highlighted the many ways in which the theory that we proposed can be improved. For example, there are a myriad of factors that need to be considered in a fully encompassing objective function. The neural mechanisms underlying the links between movement and decision-making have yet to be unraveled. The implications of a two-way interaction between movement and decisions at both the individual and social levels remain to be understood. The commentaries outline future questions, and encouragingly highlight the diversity of science communities that may be linked via the concept of vigor.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yumiko Hasegawa ◽  
Ayako Okada ◽  
Keisuke Fujii

Because of the challenges associated with measuring human perception and strategy, the process of human performance from perception to motion to results is not fully understood. Therefore, this study clarifies the phase at which errors occur and how differences in skill level manifest in a motor task requiring an accurate environmental perception and fine movement control. We assigned a golf putting task and comprehensively examined various errors committed in five phases of execution. Twelve tour professionals and twelve intermediate amateur golfers performed the putting task on two surface conditions: flat and a 0.4-degree incline. The participants were instructed to describe the topographical characteristics of the green before starting the trials on each surface (environmental perception phase). Before each attempt, the participants used the reflective markers to indicate their aim point from which the ball would be launched (decision-making phase). We measured the clubface angle and impact velocity to highlight the pre-motion and motion errors (pre-motion and motion phase). In addition, mistakes in the final ball position were analyzed as result errors (post-performance phase). Our results showed that more than half of the amateurs committed visual–somatosensory errors in the perception phase. Moreover, their aiming angles in the decision-making phase differed significantly from the professionals, with no significant differences between slope conditions. In addition, alignment errors, as reported in previous studies, occurred in the pre-motion phase regardless of skill level (i.e., increased in the 0.4-degree condition). In the motion phase, the intermediate-level amateurs could not adjust their clubhead velocity control to the appropriate level, and the clubhead velocity and clubface angle control were less reproducible than those of the professionals. To understand the amateur result errors in those who misperceived the slopes, we checked the individual results focusing on the final ball position. We found that most of these participants had poor performance, especially in the 0.4-degree condition. Our results suggest that the amateurs’ pre-motion and strategy errors depended on their visual–somatosensory errors.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly A Shevinsky ◽  
Pamela Reinagel

AbstractA stochastic visual motion discrimination task is widely used to study rapid decision-making in humans and animals. Among trials of the same sensory difficulty within a block of fixed decision strategy, humans and monkeys are widely reported to make more errors in the individual trials with longer reaction times. This finding has posed a challenge for the drift-diffusion model of sensory decision-making, which in its basic form predicts that errors and correct responses should have the same reaction time distributions. We previously reported that rats also violate this model prediction, but in the opposite direction: for rats, motion discrimination accuracy was highest in the trials with the longest reaction times. To rule out task differences as the cause of our divergent finding in rats, the present study tested humans and rats using the same task and analyzed their data identically. We confirmed that rats’ accuracy increased with reaction time, whereas humans’ accuracy decreased with reaction time in the same task. These results were further verified using a new temporally-local analysis method, ruling out that the observed trend was an artifact of non-stationarity in the data of either species. The main effect was found whether the signal strength (motion coherence) was varied in randomly interleaved trials or held constant within a block. The magnitude of the effects increased with motion coherence. These results provide new constraints useful for refining and discriminating among the many alternative mathematical theories of decision-making.


2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Igor Brajdić

The managerial structure in the hospitality trade varies according to levels of management, and types of educational degrees held by the managers. The question is whether the type of educational degree can influence the traits of decision-making within a given managerial level. Among the many features of decision-making, we will focus our research on those that have considerable impact on the quality of decision-making. These are: managerial styles, the influence of individual factors of decision-making, certain types of decisions made, the reaction of enterprises regarding the use of information technology, and the application of scientific methods and techniques of decision-making. Our analysis is based on data obtained from empirical research of hotel management predominantly in the Istria County and the Primorsko-goranska County, and to a smaller extent in the continental part of Croatia, during the years 1998 and 2000. Given a significance degree of 5%, we applied statistical methods to test whether, within the individual levels, educational degrees could be correlated to those features of decision-making that impact on the quality of decision-making. We established that the educational degree has no influence on the studied features of decision-making, but that there is a rather notable deviation between the individual features of decision-making and the managerial levels at which decisions are made.


2008 ◽  
Vol 363 (1511) ◽  
pp. 3767-3769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfram Schultz

Neuroeconomics investigates the neural mechanisms underlying decisions about rewarding or punishing outcomes (‘economic’ decisions). It combines the knowledge about the behavioural phenomena of economic decisions with the mechanistic explanatory power of neuroscience. Thus, it is about the neurobiological foundations of economic decision making. It is hoped that by ‘opening the box’ we can understand how decisions about gains and losses are directed by the brain of the individual decision maker. Perhaps we can even learn why some decisions are apparently paradoxical or pathological. The knowledge could be used to create situations that avoid suboptimal decisions and harm.


Author(s):  
Olga Olegovna Eremenko ◽  
Lyubov Borisovna Aminul ◽  
Elena Vitalievna Chertina

The subject of the research is the process of making managerial decisions for innovative IT projects investing. The paper focuses on the new approach to decision making on investing innovative IT projects using expert survey in a fuzzy reasoning system. As input information, expert estimates of projects have been aggregated into six indicators having a linguistic description of the individual characteristics of the project type "high", "medium", and "low". The task of decision making investing has been formalized and the term-set of the output variable Des has been defined: to invest 50-75% of the project cost; to invest 20-50% of the project cost; to invest 10-20% of the project cost; to send the project for revision; to turn down investing project. The fuzzy product model of making investment management decisions has been developed; it adequately describes the process of investment management. The expediency of using constructed production model on a practical example is shown.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 1202-1222
Author(s):  
M.V. Grechko ◽  
L.A. Kobina ◽  
S.A. Goncharenko

Subject. The article focuses on the decision-making mechanism used by economic agents given the existing social constraints. Objectives. We devise applied toolkit to study how socio-economic constraints transform the decision-making mechanism used by economic agents. Methods. The study involves means of the expert survey, the method that streamlines economic knowledge. Results. Social constraints are illustrated to influence the decision-making mechanism used by economic agents, assuming that the individual mind relies on specific mechanisms to make judgments and decisions. Generally, the mechanisms are very useful, however they may generate serious errors during the decision-making process. Given the social constraints, economic agents were found to follow four mental models to make their decisions in case of the full or partial uncertainty, i.e. the representative relevance, accessibility, relations, heuristics (modeling). Conclusions and Relevance. The scientific ideas herein show that the inner architecture of a choice an individual makes determines his or her decisions. The decisions often depend on the contextual environment that gives external signals perceived by the individual while evaluating alternative ways. The findings can possibly be used as a mechanism to manage the consumer choice.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 366-366
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

Eddic poetry constitutes one of the most important genres in Old Norse or Scandinavian literature and has been studied since the earliest time of modern-day philology. The progress we have made in that field is impressive, considering the many excellent editions and translations, not to mention the countless critical studies in monographs and articles. Nevertheless, there is always a great need to revisit, to summarize, to review, and to digest the knowledge gained so far. The present handbook intends to address all those goals and does so, to spell it out right away, exceedingly well. But in contrast to traditional concepts, the individual contributions constitute fully developed critical article, each with a specialized topic elucidating it as comprehensively as possible, and concluding with a section of notes. Those are kept very brief, but the volume rounds it all off with an inclusive, comprehensive bibliography. And there is also a very useful index at the end. At the beginning, we find, following the table of contents, a list of the contributors, unfortunately without emails, a list of translations and abbreviations of the titles of Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and then elsewhere, and a very insightful and pleasant introduction by Carolyne Larrington. She briefly introduces the genre and then summarizes the essential points made by the individual authors. The entire volume is based on the Eddic Network established by the three editors in 2012, and on two workshops held at St. John’s College, Oxford in 2013 and 2014.


Author(s):  
Benedetta Zavatta

Based on an analysis of the marginal markings and annotations Nietzsche made to the works of Emerson in his personal library, the book offers a philosophical interpretation of the impact on Nietzsche’s thought of his reading of these works, a reading that began when he was a schoolboy and extended to the final years of his conscious life. The many ideas and sources of inspiration that Nietzsche drew from Emerson can be organized in terms of two main lines of thought. The first line leads in the direction of the development of the individual personality, that is, the achievement of critical thinking, moral autonomy, and original self-expression. The second line of thought is the overcoming of individuality: that is to say, the need to transcend one’s own individual—and thus by definition limited—view of the world by continually confronting and engaging with visions different from one’s own and by putting into question and debating one’s own values and certainties. The image of the strong personality that Nietzsche forms thanks to his reading of Emerson ultimately takes on the appearance of a nomadic subject who is continually passing out of themselves—that is to say, abandoning their own positions and convictions—so as to undergo a constant process of evolution. In other words, the formation of the individual personality takes on the form of a regulative ideal: a goal that can never be said to have been definitively and once and for all attained.


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