scholarly journals Decoding collective communications using information theory tools

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (164) ◽  
pp. 20190563 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. R. Pilkiewicz ◽  
B. H. Lemasson ◽  
M. A. Rowland ◽  
A. Hein ◽  
J. Sun ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Situational Awareness ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Ecological Constraints ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Social Coordination ◽  
Collective Communications ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
Benefits And Costs

Organisms have evolved sensory mechanisms to extract pertinent information from their environment, enabling them to assess their situation and act accordingly. For social organisms travelling in groups, like the fish in a school or the birds in a flock, sharing information can further improve their situational awareness and reaction times. Data on the benefits and costs of social coordination, however, have largely allowed our understanding of why collective behaviours have evolved to outpace our mechanistic knowledge of how they arise. Recent studies have begun to correct this imbalance through fine-scale analyses of group movement data. One approach that has received renewed attention is the use of information theoretic (IT) tools like mutual information , transfer entropy and causation entropy , which can help identify causal interactions in the type of complex, dynamical patterns often on display when organisms act collectively. Yet, there is a communications gap between studies focused on the ecological constraints and solutions of collective action with those demonstrating the promise of IT tools in this arena. We attempt to bridge this divide through a series of ecologically motivated examples designed to illustrate the benefits and challenges of using IT tools to extract deeper insights into the interaction patterns governing group-level dynamics. We summarize some of the approaches taken thus far to circumvent existing challenges in this area and we conclude with an optimistic, yet cautionary perspective.

Saccadic Eye Movements of Dyslexic and Normal Reading Children

Perception ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Biscaldi ◽  
Burkhart Fischer ◽  
Franz Aiple
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Saccadic Eye Movements ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Express Saccades ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Fixation Durations ◽  
Normal Reading ◽  
Single Target ◽  
The Right

Twenty-four children made saccades in five noncognitive tasks. Two standard tasks required saccades to a single target presented randomly 4 deg to the right or left of a fixation point. Three other tasks required sequential saccades from the left to the right. 75 parameters of the eye-movement data were collected for each child. On the basis of their reading, writing, and other cognitive performances, twelve children were considered dyslexic and were divided into two groups (D1 and D2). Group statistical comparisons revealed significant differences between control and dyslexic subjects. In general, in the standard tasks the dyslexic subjects had poorer fixation quality, failed more often to hit the target at once, had smaller primary saccades, and had shorter reaction times to the left as compared with the control group. The control group and group D1 dyslexics showed an asymmetrical distribution of reaction times, but in opposite directions. Group D2 dyslexics made more anticipatory and express saccades, they undershot the target more often in comparison with the control group, and almost never overshot it. In the sequential tasks group D1 subjects made fewer and larger saccades in a shorter time and group D2 subjects had shorter fixation durations than the subjects of the control group.

scholarly journals Mobile ear-EEG to study auditory attention in everyday life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hölle ◽  
Joost Meekes ◽  
Martin G. Bleichner
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
P3 Component ◽  
Mobile Smartphone

AbstractMost research investigating auditory perception is conducted in controlled laboratory settings, potentially restricting its generalizability to the complex acoustic environment outside the lab. The present study, in contrast, investigated auditory attention with long-term recordings (>6 h) beyond the lab using a fully mobile, smartphone-based ear-centered electroencephalography (EEG) setup with minimal restrictions for participants. Twelve participants completed iterations of two variants of an oddball task where they had to react to target tones and to ignore standard tones. A rapid variant of the task (tones every 2 seconds, 5 minutes total time) was performed seated and with full focus in the morning, around noon and in the afternoon under controlled conditions. A sporadic variant (tones every minute, 160 minutes total time) was performed once in the morning and once in the afternoon while participants followed their normal office day routine. EEG data, behavioural data, and movement data (with a gyroscope) were recorded and analyzed. The expected increased amplitude of the P3 component in response to the target tone was observed for both the rapid and the sporadic oddball. Miss rates were lower and reaction times were faster in the rapid oddball compared to the sporadic one. The movement data indicated that participants spent most of their office day at relative rest. Overall, this study demonstrated that it is feasible to study auditory perception in everyday life with long-term ear-EEG.

The Sooner the Better: Drivers’ Reactions to Two-Step Take-Over Requests in Highly Automated Driving

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 1883-1887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Epple ◽  
Fabienne Roche ◽  
Stefan Brandenburg
Keyword(s):  
Human Factors ◽  
Situational Awareness ◽  
Driver Behavior ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Vehicle Control ◽  
Driving Behavior ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Automated Driving ◽  
One Step ◽  
Highly Automated Driving

Driving behavior after take-over requests (TORs) is one of the most popular subjects in human factors re-search on highly automated driving. Many studies utilized one-step TOR procedures to prompt drivers to resume vehicle control. The present paper examines driver behavior when experiencing a two-step TOR procedure in different modalities. A two-step TOR gives drivers a choice to resume vehicle controls be-tween a warning (first step) and an alarm (second step). Our findings indicate that a substantial number of drivers resumes vehicle controls after the second step, resulting in a higher number of crashes. More generally, criticality of the driving situation increases with increasing reaction times. Driving and interview data suggest that step two of the TOR should be presented earlier. Alternatively, a multi-step TOR could be used to increase drivers’ situational awareness. Auditory TORs are associated with shorter reaction times than visual-auditory TORs. Implications on TOR design are discussed.

Study of Automatic Anomalous Behaviour Detection Techniques for Maritime Vessels

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 847-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdoulaye Sidibé ◽  
Gao Shu
Keyword(s):  
Situational Awareness ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Automatic Identification ◽  
Identification System ◽  
Statistical Machine Learning ◽  
Maritime Safety ◽  
Detection Techniques ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Important Concern ◽  
Made In

The maritime domain is the most utilised environment for bulk transportation, making maritime safety and security an important concern. A major aspect of maritime safety and security is maritime situational awareness. To achieve effective maritime situational awareness, recently many efforts have been made in automatic anomalous maritime vessel movement behaviour detection based on movement data provided by the Automatic Identification System (AIS). In this paper we present a review of state-of-the-art automatic anomalous maritime vessel behaviour detection techniques based on AIS movement data. First, we categorise some approaches proposed in the period 2011 to 2016 to automatically detect anomalous maritime vessel behaviour into distinct categories including statistical, machine learning and data mining, and provide an overview of them. Then we discuss some issues related to the proposed approaches and identify the trend in automatic detection of anomalous maritime vessel behaviour.

scholarly journals Mobile ear-EEG to study auditory attention in everyday life

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hölle ◽  
Joost Meekes ◽  
Martin G. Bleichner
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
P3 Component ◽  
Mobile Smartphone

AbstractMost research investigating auditory perception is conducted in controlled laboratory settings, potentially restricting its generalizability to the complex acoustic environment outside the lab. The present study, in contrast, investigated auditory attention with long-term recordings (> 6 h) beyond the lab using a fully mobile, smartphone-based ear-centered electroencephalography (EEG) setup with minimal restrictions for participants. Twelve participants completed iterations of two variants of an oddball task where they had to react to target tones and to ignore standard tones. A rapid variant of the task (tones every 2 s, 5 min total time) was performed seated and with full focus in the morning, around noon and in the afternoon under controlled conditions. A sporadic variant (tones every minute, 160 min total time) was performed once in the morning and once in the afternoon while participants followed their normal office day routine. EEG data, behavioral data, and movement data (with a gyroscope) were recorded and analyzed. The expected increased amplitude of the P3 component in response to the target tone was observed for both the rapid and the sporadic oddball. Miss rates were lower and reaction times were faster in the rapid oddball compared to the sporadic one. The movement data indicated that participants spent most of their office day at relative rest. Overall, this study demonstrated that it is feasible to study auditory perception in everyday life with long-term ear-EEG.

scholarly journals People Do Not Just Plan,They Plan to Plan

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (02) ◽  
pp. 1300-1307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Ho ◽  
David Abel ◽  
Jonathan Cohen ◽  
Michael Littman ◽  
Thomas Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Reasoning Problem ◽  
Long Term Consequences ◽  
State Abstraction ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Insight Into

Planning is useful. It lets people take actions that have desirable long-term consequences. But, planning is hard. It requires thinking about consequences, which consumes limited computational and cognitive resources. Thus, people should plan their actions, but they should also be smart about how they deploy resources used for planning their actions. Put another way, people should also “plan their plans”. Here, we formulate this aspect of planning as a meta-reasoning problem and formalize it in terms of a recursive Bellman objective that incorporates both task rewards and information-theoretic planning costs. Our account makes quantitative predictions about how people should plan and meta-plan as a function of the overall structure of a task, which we test in two experiments with human participants. We find that people's reaction times reflect a planned use of information processing, consistent with our account. This formulation of planning to plan provides new insight into the function of hierarchical planning, state abstraction, and cognitive control in both humans and machines.

scholarly journals Microwave Assisted Biodiesel Production Using Heterogeneous Catalysts

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (23) ◽  
pp. 8135
Author(s):  
Haris Mahmood Khan ◽  
Tanveer Iqbal ◽  
M. A. Mujtaba ◽  
Manzoore Elahi M. Soudagar ◽  
Ibham Veza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Microwave Heating ◽  
Thermal Effects ◽  
Heterogeneous Catalysts ◽  
Plasma Heating ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Biodiesel Production ◽  
Ecological Constraints ◽  
Solid Catalysts ◽  
Speed Up

As a promising renewable fuel, biodiesel has gained worldwide attention to replace fossil-derived mineral diesel due to the threats concerning the depletion of fossil reserves and ecological constraints. Biodiesel production via transesterification involves using homogeneous, heterogeneous and enzymatic catalysts to speed up the reaction. The usage of heterogeneous catalysts over homogeneous catalysts are considered more advantageous and cost-effective. Therefore, several heterogeneous catalysts have been developed from variable sources to make the overall production process economical. After achieving optimum performance of these catalysts and chemical processes, the research has been directed in other perspectives, such as the application of non-conventional methods such as microwave, ultrasonic, plasma heating etc, aiming to enhance the efficiency of the overall process. This mini review is targeted to focus on the research carried out up to this date on microwave-supported heterogeneously catalysed biodiesel production. It discusses the phenomenon of microwave heating, synthesis techniques for heterogeneous catalysts, microwave mediated transesterification reaction using solid catalysts, special thermal effects of microwaves and parametric optimisation under microwave heating. The review shows that using microwave technology on the heterogeneously catalysed transesterification process greatly decreases reaction times (5–60 min) while maintaining or improving catalytic activity (>90%) when compared to traditional heating.

Cognitive training in schizophrenia: PrACTice preparing action with contextual information

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (S2) ◽  
pp. 14-15
Author(s):  
D. Fabre ◽  
A. Vehier ◽  
C. Padovan ◽  
T. d’Amato ◽  
M. Saoud
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Internal Representation ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Voluntary Action ◽  
Software Training ◽  
Directed Action ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
Four Levels

Patients with schizophrenia frequently complain about their difficulty to initiate new activities. In our view, a Δ major cause for difficulties in initiating activities is as deficit of goal directed/voluntary action that requires endogenous or self-triggered attention [2,3]. In the Le Vinatier hospital, Lyon, we designed a new cognitive software training program. The PrACTice program aims at improving the capacity of activating the internal representation related to a goal directed action in patients with schizophrenia [1]. Each trial begins with a goal directed action sentence displayed in the centre of a computer screen (“writing a letter”) followed by a scene containing contextual information. Participants have to imagine themselves performing the goal-directed action. Then pictures of an isolated object (e.g., a pencil) are displayed. Subjects have to answer whether the object is useful or not to achieve the goal-directed action previously presented. Four levels are available. Reaction times of accuracy response are recorded as a measure of the effort made to produce a mental representation of the action. Preliminary results: Results vary by session factor (pre and post training) and nature of target objects (useful and non-useful). Before the cognitive training, RTs to decide that an object is non useful to achieve a goal-directed action are longer than for useful objects. Inversed pattern of response is observed after the cognitive training. We discuss how this result can favour initiation of adequate behaviours. Adequate behaviour implies active mental representation of relevance action that thus facilitates inhibition of non-pertinent information.

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