A Novel Application of Levenshtein Distance for Assessment of High-Level Motor Planning Underlying Performance During Learning of Complex Motor Sequences

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa C. Hauge ◽  
Garrett E. Katz ◽  
Gregory P. Davis ◽  
Kyle J. Jaquess ◽  
Matthew J. Reinhard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Workload ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Reference Sequence ◽  
Levenshtein Distance ◽  
Complex Action ◽  
Action Sequence ◽  
Motor Efficiency ◽  
Practice Performance ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
High Level

Few studies have examined high-level motor plans underlying cognitive-motor performance during practice of complex action sequences. These investigations have assessed performance through fairly simple metrics without examining how practice affects the structures of action sequences. By adapting the Levenshtein distance (LD) method to the motor domain, we propose a computational approach to accurately capture performance dynamics during practice of action sequences. Practice performance dynamics were assessed by computing the LD based on the number of insertions, deletions, and substitutions of actions needed to transform any sequence into a reference sequence (having a minimal number of actions to complete the task). Also, combining LD-based performance with mental workload metrics allowed assessment of cognitive-motor efficiency dynamics. This approach was tested on the Tower of Hanoi task. The findings revealed that throughout practice this method could capture: i) action sequence performance improvements as indexed by a reduced LD (decrease of insertions and substitutions), ii) structural modifications of the high-level plans, iii) an attenuation of mental workload, and iv) enhanced cognitive-motor efficiency. This effort complements prior work examining the practice of complex action sequences in healthy adults and has potential for probing cognitive-motor impairment in clinical populations as well as the development/assessment of cognitive robotic controllers.

High-Level Motor Planning Assessment During Performance of Complex Action Sequences in Humans and a Humanoid Robot

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa C. Hauge ◽  
Garrett E. Katz ◽  
Gregory P. Davis ◽  
Di-Wei Huang ◽  
James A. Reggia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Humanoid Robot ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Complex Action ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
High Level

scholarly journals Habits as action sequences: hierarchical action control and changes in outcome value

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1655) ◽  
pp. 20130482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Dezfouli ◽  
Nura W. Lingawi ◽  
Bernard W. Balleine
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Neural Structure ◽  
Action Sequence ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
Directed Action ◽  
Sequence Boundaries ◽  
High Level ◽  
Step Over ◽  
Two Sides

Goal-directed action involves making high-level choices that are implemented using previously acquired action sequences to attain desired goals. Such a hierarchical schema is necessary for goal-directed actions to be scalable to real-life situations, but results in decision-making that is less flexible than when action sequences are unfolded and the decision-maker deliberates step-by-step over the outcome of each individual action. In particular, from this perspective, the offline revaluation of any outcomes that fall within action sequence boundaries will be invisible to the high-level planner resulting in decisions that are insensitive to such changes. Here, within the context of a two-stage decision-making task, we demonstrate that this property can explain the emergence of habits. Next, we show how this hierarchical account explains the insensitivity of over-trained actions to changes in outcome value. Finally, we provide new data that show that, under extended extinction conditions, habitual behaviour can revert to goal-directed control, presumably as a consequence of decomposing action sequences into single actions. This hierarchical view suggests that the development of action sequences and the insensitivity of actions to changes in outcome value are essentially two sides of the same coin, explaining why these two aspects of automatic behaviour involve a shared neural structure.

scholarly journals The role of action effects in motor sequence planning and execution: exploring the influence of temporal and spatial effect anticipation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel M. Brown ◽  
Erik Friedgen ◽  
Iring Koch
Keyword(s):  
Action Planning ◽  
Spatial Effects ◽  
Motor Sequence ◽  
Action Sequence ◽  
Sequential Action ◽  
Spatial Features ◽  
Temporal Features ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Anticipation Effect

AbstractActions we perform every day generate perceivable outcomes with both spatial and temporal features. According to the ideomotor principle, we plan our actions by anticipating the outcomes, but this principle does not directly address how sequential movements are influenced by different outcomes. We examined how sequential action planning is influenced by the anticipation of temporal and spatial features of action outcomes. We further explored the influence of action sequence switching. Participants performed cued sequences of button presses that generated visual effects which were either spatially compatible or incompatible with the sequences, and the spatial effects appeared after a short or long delay. The sequence cues switched or repeated across trials, and the predictability of action sequence switches was varied across groups. The results showed a delay-anticipation effect for sequential action, whereby a shorter anticipated delay between action sequences and their outcomes speeded initiation and execution of the cued action sequences. Delay anticipation was increased by predictable action switching, but it was not strongly modified by the spatial compatibility of the action outcomes. The results extend previous demonstrations of delay anticipation to the context of sequential action. The temporal delay between actions and their outcomes appears to be retrieved for sequential planning and influences both the initiation and the execution of actions.

scholarly journals The genomic structure of a human chromosome 22 nucleolar organizer region determined by TAR cloning

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung-Hyun Kim ◽  
Vladimir N. Noskov ◽  
Aleksey Y. Ogurtsov ◽  
Ramaiah Nagaraja ◽  
Nikolai Petrov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genomic Structure ◽  
Organizer Region ◽  
Nucleolar Organizer Region ◽  
Nucleolar Organizer ◽  
Chromosome 21 ◽  
Reference Sequence ◽  
Chromosome 22 ◽  
Rdna Variation ◽  
High Level ◽  
Tar Cloning

AbstractThe rDNA clusters and flanking sequences on human chromosomes 13, 14, 15, 21 and 22 represent large gaps in the current genomic assembly. The organization and the degree of divergence of the human rDNA units within an individual nucleolar organizer region (NOR) are only partially known. To address this lacuna, we previously applied transformation-associated recombination (TAR) cloning to isolate individual rDNA units from chromosome 21. That approach revealed an unexpectedly high level of heterogeneity in human rDNA, raising the possibility of corresponding variations in ribosome dynamics. We have now applied the same strategy to analyze an entire rDNA array end-to-end from a copy of chromosome 22. Sequencing of TAR isolates provided the entire NOR sequence, including proximal and distal junctions that may be involved in nucleolar function. Comparison of the newly sequenced rDNAs to reference sequence for chromosomes 22 and 21 revealed variants that are shared in human rDNA in individuals from different ethnic groups, many of them at high frequency. Analysis infers comparable intra- and inter-individual divergence of rDNA units on the same and different chromosomes, supporting the concerted evolution of rDNA units. The results provide a route to investigate further the role of rDNA variation in nucleolar formation and in the empirical associations of nucleoli with pathology.

The Effects of Practice on Navigation Performance and Mental Workload with a Mirror-In-The-Sky Map

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1546-1550
Author(s):  
Holland M. Vasquez ◽  
Justin G. Hollands ◽  
Greg A. Jamieson
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Secondary Task ◽  
Mental Workload ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Practice Performance ◽  
Global Ratings ◽  
Detection Response ◽  
Nasa Tlx ◽  
Response Task ◽  
Completion Times

Some previous research using a new augmented reality map display called Mirror-in-the-Sky (MitS) showed that performance was worse and mental workload (MWL) greater with MitS relative to a track-up map for navigation and wayfinding tasks. The purpose of the current study was to determine—for both MitS and track-up map—how much performance improves and MWL decreases with practice in a simple navigation task. We conducted a three-session experiment in which twenty participants completed a route following task in a virtual environment. Task completion times and collisions decreased, subjective MWL decreased, and secondary task performance improved with practice. The NASA-TLX Global ratings and Detection Response Task Hit Rates showed a larger decrease in MWL with MitS than the track-up map. Additionally, means for performance and workload measures showed that differences between the MitS and track-up map decreased in the first session. In later sessions the differences between the MitS and track-up map were negligible. As such, with practice performance and MWL may be comparable to a traditional track-up map.

scholarly journals Considerations for comparing video-game AI agents with humans

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R Madan
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Game Play ◽  
Complex Action ◽  
Potential Approach ◽  
Video Game Play ◽  
Game Ai ◽  
Strategy Games ◽  
Action Sequences

Video games are sometimes used as environments to evaluate AI agents' ability to develop and execute complex action sequences to maximize a defined reward. However, humans cannot match the fine precision of timed actions of AI agents--in games such as StarCraft, build orders take the place of chess opening gambits. However, unlike strategy games, such as chess and go, video games also rely heavily on sensorimotor precision. If the `finding' was merely that AI agents have superhuman reaction times and precision, none would be surprised. The goal is rather to look at adaptive reasoning and strategies produced by AI agents that may replicate human approaches or even result in strategies not previously produced by humans.Here I will provide: (1) an overview of observations where AI agents are perhaps not being fairly evaluated relative to humans, (2) a potential approach for making this comparison more appropriate, and (3) highlight some important recent advances in video-game play provided by AI agents.

scholarly journals Infants in Control: Prospective Motor Control and Executive Functions in Action Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janna M. Gottwald
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Motion Tracking ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
High Level

This thesis assesses the link between action and cognition early in development. Thus the notion of an embodied cognition is investigated by tying together two levels of action control in the context of reaching in infancy: prospective motor control and executive functions. The ability to plan our actions is the inevitable foundation of reaching our goals. Thus actions can be stratified on different levels of control. There is the relatively low level of prospective motor control and the comparatively high level of cognitive control. Prospective motor control is concerned with goal-directed actions on the level of single movements and movement combinations of our body and ensures purposeful, coordinated movements, such as reaching for a cup of coffee. Cognitive control, in the context of this thesis more precisely referred to as executive functions, deals with goal-directed actions on the level of whole actions and action combinations and facilitates directedness towards mid- and long-term goals, such as finishing a doctoral thesis. Whereas prospective motor control and executive functions are well studied in adulthood, the early development of both is not sufficiently understood.This thesis comprises three empirical motion-tracking studies that shed light on prospective motor control and executive functions in infancy. Study I investigated the prospective motor control of current actions by having 14-month-olds lift objects of varying weights. In doing so, multi-cue integration was addressed by comparing the use of visual and non-visual information to non-visual information only. Study II examined the prospective motor control of future actions in action sequences by investigating reach-to-place actions in 14-month-olds. Thus the extent to which Fitts’ law can explain movement duration in infancy was addressed. Study III lifted prospective motor control to a higher that is cognitive level, by investigating it relative to executive functions in 18-months-olds.Main results were that 14-month-olds are able to prospectively control their manual actions based on object weight. In this action planning process, infants use different sources of information. Beyond this ability to prospectively control their current action, 14-month-olds also take future actions into account and plan their actions based on the difficulty of the subsequentaction in action sequences. In 18-month-olds, prospective motor control in manual actions, such as reaching, is related to early executive functions, as demonstrated for behavioral prohibition and working memory. These findings are consistent with the idea that executive functions derive from prospective motor control. I suggest that executive functions could be grounded in the development of motor control. In other words, early executive functions should be seen as embodied.

scholarly journals Genomic stability among O3:K6 V. parahaemolyticus pandemic strains isolated between 1996 to 2012 in American countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham Guerrero ◽  
Bruno Gomez-Gil ◽  
Marcial Leonardo Lizarraga-Partida
Keyword(s):  
Reference Strain ◽  
Genomic Stability ◽  
Gastrointestinal Illness ◽  
Reference Sequence ◽  
Aquatic Habitats ◽  
Genetic Changes ◽  
Pandemic Strain ◽  
Toxigenic Strains ◽  
Pandemic Strains ◽  
High Level

Abstract Background The V. parahaemolyticus pandemic clone, results in the development of gastrointestinal illness in humans. Toxigenic strains of this species are frequently isolated from aquatic habitats and organisms such as mollusks and crustaceans. Reports on the isolation of the pandemic clone started in 1996, when a new O3:K6 clone was identified in Asia, that rapidly spread worldwide, becoming the predominant clone isolated from clinical cases. In this study whole genome sequencing was accomplished with an Illumina MiniSeq platform, upon six novel V. parahaemolyticus strains, that have been isolated in Mexico since 1998 and three representative genomes of strains that were isolated from reported outbreaks in other American countries, and were deposited in the GenBank. These nine genomes were compared against the reference sequence of the O3:K6 pandemic strain (RIMD 2210633), which was isolated in 1996, to determine sequence differences within American isolates and between years of isolation. Results The results indicated that strains that were isolated at different times and from different countries, were highly genetically similar, among them as well as to the reference strain RIMD 2210633, indicating a high level of genetic stability among the strains from American countries between 1996 to 2012, without significant genetic changes relative to the reference strain RIMD 2210633, which was isolated in 1996 and was considered to be representative of a novel O3:K6 pandemic strain. Conclusions The genomes of V. parahaemolyticus strains isolated from clinical and environmental sources in Mexico and other American countries, presented common characteristics that have been reported for RIMD 2210633 O3:K6 pandemic strain. The major variations that were registered in this study corresponded to genes non associated to virulence factors, which could be the result of adaptations to different environmental conditions. Nevertheless, results do not show a clear pattern with the year or locality where the strains were isolated, which is an indication of a genomic stability of the studied strains.

scholarly journals Considerations for Comparing Video Game AI Agents with Humans

Challenges ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Madan
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Game Play ◽  
Complex Action ◽  
Potential Approach ◽  
Video Game Play ◽  
Game Ai ◽  
Strategy Games ◽  
Action Sequences

Video games are sometimes used as environments to evaluate AI agents’ ability to develop and execute complex action sequences to maximize a defined reward. However, humans cannot match the fine precision of the timed actions of AI agents; in games such as StarCraft, build orders take the place of chess opening gambits. However, unlike strategy games, such as chess and Go, video games also rely heavily on sensorimotor precision. If the “finding” was merely that AI agents have superhuman reaction times and precision, none would be surprised. The goal is rather to look at adaptive reasoning and strategies produced by AI agents that may replicate human approaches or even result in strategies not previously produced by humans. Here, I will provide: (1) an overview of observations where AI agents are perhaps not being fairly evaluated relative to humans, (2) a potential approach for making this comparison more appropriate, and (3) highlight some important recent advances in video game play provided by AI agents.

Assessing the Validity of SWAT as a Workload Measurement Instrument

1983 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Mental Workload ◽  
Measurement Instrument ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Implicit Assumption ◽  
Workload Measurement ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
High Level

The Subjective Workload Asssessment Technique (SWAT) carries with it the implicit assumption that people can accurately predict the amount of mental workload they would experience under various levels of three component dimensions. Research suggests that the perceptions of these dimensions may not be independent. This study was designed to measure the subjective interactions between the dimensions used in SKAT. Mental workload was generated using a text editing task in which the dimensions were manipulated independently. Results revealed significant positive correlations between the subjective levels of the three dimensions. That is, when a subject experienced a high level of one dimension, s/he also tended to rate the other two dimensions high. It may be unreasonable to assume that people can accurately predict the magnitude of these interactions when performing the ranking process which is used to derive the workload scale.

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