Social Facilitation with Non-Human Agents: Possible or not?

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hertz ◽  
Eva Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Still Images ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Task Conditions ◽  
Performance Results ◽  
Task Types

As interactions with non-human agents increase, it is important to understand and predict the consequences of human interactions with them. Social facilitation has a longstanding history within the realm of social psychology and is characterized by the presence of other humans having a beneficial effect on performance on easy tasks and inhibiting performance on difficult tasks. While social facilitation has been shown across task types and experimental conditions with human agents, very little research has examined whether this effect can also be induced by non-human agents and, if so, to what degree the level of humanness and embodiment of those agents influences that effect. In the current experiment, we apply a common social facilitation task (i.e., numerical distance judgments) to investigate to what extent the presence of agents of varying degrees of humanness benefits task performance. Results show a significant difference in performance between easy and difficult task conditions, but show no significant improvement in task performance in the social presence conditions compared to performing the task alone. This suggests that the presence of others did not have a positive effect on performance, at least not when social presence was manipulated via still images. Implications of this finding for future studies, as well as for human-robot interaction are discussed.

Exploring the Effects of Extraversion on Social Facilitation and Vigilance Task Performance

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 1216-1220
Author(s):  
Victoria L. Claypoole ◽  
Grace E. Waldfogle ◽  
Alexis R. Neigel ◽  
James L. Szalma
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Vigilance Task ◽  
Task Design ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Vigilance Performance ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Design Factors ◽  
And Task

Vigilance, or sustained attention, is the ability to maintain attention for extended periods of time. Recently, research on vigilance has focused on identifying individual differences and task design factors that may improve cognitive-based vigilance performance. One such factor is social facilitation, which leads to improved task performance when at least one individual is present. But, relatively little is known about the personality factors, such as extraversion or introversion, which may influence the effects of social presence, and in turn affect vigilance performance. Given this gap in the literature, the present research seeks to determine how personality, specifically extraversion, is related to vigilance performance in the presence of another individual. A total of 39 observers completed a 24-minute vigilance task either alone, in the mere presence of another person, or in the evaluative presence of another person (i.e., an individual monitoring their performance). The results indicated that extraversion was negatively correlated to the proportion of correct detections and sensitivity ( A’).

scholarly journals Effect of Prior Performance Experience before Audiences on a Dominant and Nondominant Motor Response

1982 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Lucinda Hollifield
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Motor Response ◽  
Rotary Pursuit ◽  
Task Groups ◽  
Prior Performance ◽  
Experience Effects ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Mediating Factor ◽  
Performance Results

The purpose of this study was to determine if children's prior performance experience was a mediating factor in their performance of a dominant or novel task in an audience or no audience situation. Eighty 9-year-old boys were divided into experienced (n = 40) and nonexperienced (n = 40) groups based on prior youth sport experience and the absence of any performance experience before a formal audience. Half of each group learned a rotary pursuit task until they could perform the task with at least 60% accuracy. The other half did not practice the task. Groups were again divided for task performance in an audience or no audience situation so that the following treatments were observed for both experienced and nonexperienced groups: dominant task, no audience; dominant task, evaluative audience; novel task, no audience; novel task, evaluative audience. Task performance for each subject was five 20-sec trials on the photoelectric rotary pursuit task. The mean score of each set of five was used for data analysis. An audience of four passive adults was present in each audience condition and made evaluative notations following each performance. Results of a 2 × 2 × 2 (experience × task dominance × audience) ANOVA failed to support Zajonc's (1965) social facilitation theory and Cottrell's (1968) modification of this theory. The well-learned task was inhibited by the presence of an evaluative audience while performance of a novel task was enhanced. No significant experience effects were evident.

Independent Coactors May Improve Performance and Lower Workload: Viewing Vigilance Under Social Facilitation

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 822-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria L. Claypoole ◽  
James L. Szalma
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Vigilance Task ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Future Research ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Improve Performance ◽  
Motivational Interventions ◽  
Perceived Workload

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of an independent coactor on vigilance task performance. It was hypothesized that the presence of an independent coactor would improve performance in terms of the proportion of false alarms while also increasing perceived workload and stress. Background: Vigilance, or the ability to maintain attention for extended periods, is of great interest to human factors psychologists. Substantial work has focused on improving vigilance task performance, typically through motivational interventions. Of interest to vigilance researchers is the application of social facilitation as a means of enhancing vigilance. Social facilitation seeks to explain how social presence may improve performance. Method: A total of 100 participants completed a 24-min vigil either alone or in the presence of an independent (confederate) coactor. Participants completed measures of perceived workload and stress. Results: The results indicated that performance (i.e., proportion of false alarms) was improved for those who completed the vigil in the presence of an independent coactor. Interestingly, perceived workload was actually lower for those who completed the vigil in the presence of an independent coactor, although perceived stress was not affected by the manipulation. Conclusion: Authors of future research should extend these findings to other forms of social facilitation and examine vigilance task performance in social contexts in order to determine the utility of social presence for improving vigilance. Application: The use of coactors may be an avenue for organizations to consider utilizing to improve performance because of its relative cost-effectiveness and easy implementation.

Effects of Concurrent Manual Task Performance on Connected Speech Acoustics in Individuals With Parkinson Disease

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (7) ◽  
pp. 2099-2117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason A. Whitfield ◽  
Zoe Kriegel ◽  
Adam M. Fullenkamp ◽  
Daryush D. Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Motor Task ◽  
Task Condition ◽  
Connected Speech ◽  
Speech Acoustics ◽  
Single Task ◽  
Manual Task ◽  
Task Conditions

Purpose Prior investigations suggest that simultaneous performance of more than 1 motor-oriented task may exacerbate speech motor deficits in individuals with Parkinson disease (PD). The purpose of the current investigation was to examine the extent to which performing a low-demand manual task affected the connected speech in individuals with and without PD. Method Individuals with PD and neurologically healthy controls performed speech tasks (reading and extemporaneous speech tasks) and an oscillatory manual task (a counterclockwise circle-drawing task) in isolation (single-task condition) and concurrently (dual-task condition). Results Relative to speech task performance, no changes in speech acoustics were observed for either group when the low-demand motor task was performed with the concurrent reading tasks. Speakers with PD exhibited a significant decrease in pause duration between the single-task (speech only) and dual-task conditions for the extemporaneous speech task, whereas control participants did not exhibit changes in any speech production variable between the single- and dual-task conditions. Conclusions Overall, there were little to no changes in speech production when a low-demand oscillatory motor task was performed with concurrent reading. For the extemporaneous task, however, individuals with PD exhibited significant changes when the speech and manual tasks were performed concurrently, a pattern that was not observed for control speakers. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8637008

Relevance Predictability in Information Retrieval Systems

1967 ◽  
Vol 06 (02) ◽  
pp. 45-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Kent ◽  
J. Belzer ◽  
M. Kuhfeerst ◽  
E. D. Dym ◽  
D. L. Shirey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Treatment Groups ◽  
Retrieval Systems ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Information Retrieval Systems ◽  
High Predictability ◽  
Intermediate Response ◽  
Quantitative Indicators ◽  
Level Of Processing

An experiment is described which attempts to derive quantitative indicators regarding the potential relevance predictability of the intermediate stimuli used to represent documents in information retrieval systems. In effect, since the decision to peruse an entire document is often predicated upon the examination of one »level of processing« of the document (e.g., the citation and/or abstract), it became interesting to analyze the properties of what constitutes »relevance«. However, prior to such an analysis, an even more elementary step had to be made, namely, to determine what portions of a document should be examined.An evaluation of the ability of intermediate response products (IRPs), functioning as cues to the information content of full documents, to predict the relevance determination that would be subsequently made on these documents by motivated users of information retrieval systems, was made under controlled experimental conditions. The hypothesis that there might be other intermediate response products (selected extracts from the document, i.e., first paragraph, last paragraph, and the combination of first and last paragraph), that would be as representative of the full document as the traditional IRPs (citation and abstract) was tested systematically. The results showed that:1. there is no significant difference among the several IRP treatment groups on the number of cue evaluations of relevancy which match the subsequent user relevancy decision on the document;2. first and last paragraph combinations have consistently predicted relevancy to a higher degree than the other IRPs;3. abstracts were undistinguished as predictors; and4. the apparent high predictability rating for citations was not substantive.Some of these results are quite different than would be expected from previous work with unmotivated subjects.

Validation of a monetary Taylor Aggression Paradigm: Associations with trait aggression and role of provocation sequence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Konzok ◽  
L Kreuzpointner ◽  
GI Henze ◽  
L Wagels ◽  
C Kärgel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Random Sequence ◽  
Reactive Aggression ◽  
Reaction Time Task ◽  
Competitive Reaction ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Fixed Sequence ◽  
Taylor Aggression Paradigm ◽  
Trait Aggression ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
In Series

© 2020 Elsevier Inc. The Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) is widely used to measure reactive aggression in laboratory settings. While modified versions (mTAPs) with various stimulus characteristics (shocks, noise, pressure, heat) have already been established, a modified version with monetary stimuli has only been introduced very recently. In this experiment, 209 young healthy participants (104 males, 105 females) completed a mock Competitive Reaction Time Task (CRTT) with a fictional opponent with preprogrammed 40 win and 60 lose trials. In lose trials, participants were provoked by subtracting a low (0–20 euro cents), medium (30–60 cents) or high (70–90 cents) amount of money from their fictitious account. Provocation stimuli were either presented randomly or in a fixed sequence (experimental conditions). In contrast to a random sequence, the fixed sequence was generated by repeating trials from the same provocation category in series of three. Linear mixed models (LMMs) considering aggression trajectories revealed significant effects of provocation (low, medium, high) and trait aggression (K-FAF) on reactive aggression. Men showed significantly higher reactive aggression levels than women. In regard to provocation sequence, we found no significant difference in reactive aggression between the random vs. fixed stimulus sequences. The findings provide new evidence supporting the view that the monetary mTAP is able to induce as well as capture reactive aggression in the laboratory. Additionally, we found no advantage of a fixed sequence as the level of reactive aggression in a given trial appeared to be mainly predicted by the preceding provocation trial.

scholarly journals An eye-tracking based robotic scrub nurse: proof of concept

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Ezzat ◽  
Alexandros Kogkas ◽  
Josephine Holt ◽  
Rudrik Thakkar ◽  
Ara Darzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Technology Acceptance ◽  
Operating Time ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Motion Sensors ◽  
Scrub Nurse ◽  
Task Load ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Nasa Tlx ◽  
Robotic Devices

Abstract Background Within surgery, assistive robotic devices (ARD) have reported improved patient outcomes. ARD can offer the surgical team a “third hand” to perform wider tasks and more degrees of motion in comparison with conventional laparoscopy. We test an eye-tracking based robotic scrub nurse (RSN) in a simulated operating room based on a novel real-time framework for theatre-wide 3D gaze localization in a mobile fashion. Methods Surgeons performed segmental resection of pig colon and handsewn end-to-end anastomosis while wearing eye-tracking glasses (ETG) assisted by distributed RGB-D motion sensors. To select instruments, surgeons (ST) fixed their gaze on a screen, initiating the RSN to pick up and transfer the item. Comparison was made between the task with the assistance of a human scrub nurse (HSNt) versus the task with the assistance of robotic and human scrub nurse (R&HSNt). Task load (NASA-TLX), technology acceptance (Van der Laan’s), metric data on performance and team communication were measured. Results Overall, 10 ST participated. NASA-TLX feedback for ST on HSNt vs R&HSNt usage revealed no significant difference in mental, physical or temporal demands and no change in task performance. ST reported significantly higher frustration score with R&HSNt. Van der Laan’s scores showed positive usefulness and satisfaction scores in using the RSN. No significant difference in operating time was observed. Conclusions We report initial findings of our eye-tracking based RSN. This enables mobile, unrestricted hands-free human–robot interaction intra-operatively. Importantly, this platform is deemed non-inferior to HSNt and accepted by ST and HSN test users.

scholarly journals Evaluation of the apical seal after intraradicular retainer removal with ultrasound or carbide bur

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomie Nakakuki Campos ◽  
Cleber Henrique Inoue ◽  
Elcio Yamamoto ◽  
Ângela Toshie Araki ◽  
Lena Katekawa Adachi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Optical Microscope ◽  
Dental Alloys ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Alloy Type ◽  
Cyanoacrylate Adhesive ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Post And Core ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Apical Leakage ◽  
Cervical Area

There are situations in which intraradicular retainers have to be removed and replaced. The objective of this research was to evaluate the apical seal after the removal of a custom cast post and core with a carbide bur or with an ultrasound apparatus. Twenty five roots of extracted human incisors were used. They were endodontically treated and prepared to receive the posts. The posts and cores were cast with 2 types of dental alloys, CuAlZn and PdAg, and were cemented with zinc phosphate cement. After 24 hours, they were removed using the two above mentioned techniques. Then, the roots had their external surface made impermeable by two layers of cyanoacrylate adhesive, leaving only the cervical area for dye penetration. The teeth were immersed in rhodamine for 24 hours. They were then cut and observed under an optical microscope and analyzed with appropriate software (Imagelab). The results were submitted to ANOVA, and they evidenced that, regarding the alloy factor, PdAg posts presented a larger mean infiltration value (2.23 ± 0.48 mm) as compared to the posts made of CuAlZn (1.39 ± 0.48 mm) (p = 0.025). Regarding the technique factor, there was no significant difference (p = 0.9) between the removal of the intraradicular retainer using ultrasound (1.99 ± 0.62 mm) or using a rotating cutting instrument (1.62 ± 0.62 mm). Under these experimental conditions, it was possible to conclude that the degree of apical leakage was directly related to the alloy type, and it was present in both techniques used.

scholarly journals Evaluation of platelet-rich plasma gel as an angiogenesis-inducing agent in canineadvancement skin flaps

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 474-478
Author(s):  
Grazielle A.S. Aleixo ◽  
Maria C.O.C. Coelho ◽  
Telga L.A. Almeida ◽  
Márcia F. Pereira ◽  
Miriam N. Teixeira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Vessel ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Platelet Rich Plasma ◽  
Skin Flap ◽  
Skin Flaps ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
Prp Gel ◽  
Made In

ABSTRACT: This work aimed to evaluate the effect of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) on advancement skin flaps in dogs regarding improvement of vascularization, with focus on increasing its viable area, since there are reports that it is a potential angiogenesis stimulator. The experimental group was composed of eight adult bitches, in which two advancement skin flaps were made in the ventral abdominal region. No product was applied in the control flap (CF), while PRP was used in the contralateral flap, called treated flap (TF). The areas were clinically evaluated every two days until the 7th postoperative day regarding skin color and presence of necrosis. At 10 days, both flaps were removed and submitted to histological examination and blood vessel morphometry. The vessels counted in each group were statistically analyzed by the F-test at 1% probability. Results showed no significant difference in macroscopic changes in the wound, or CF and TF vascularization, thus suggesting that PRP gel did not improve advancement skin flap angiogenesis in bitches under the experimental conditions in which this research was developed.

scholarly journals Post-Reading Comprehension Questions and Task Types in Vision: A Locally Developed Textbook for Teaching English as a Foreign Language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mavadat Saidi ◽  
Nilufar Karami ◽  
Morteza Marooy
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Reading Skills ◽  
Kappa Coefficient ◽  
Dominant Type ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Explicit Content ◽  
Task Types ◽  
And Task

Abstract Responding to the call for perusing the post-reading comprehension questions in various EFL textbooks, the current study aimed to investigate the post-reading comprehension questions and task types in the Vision series including three student books and their accompanying workbooks in light of Freeman’s (2014) taxonomy. Following a descriptive content analysis procedure, the post-reading comprehension questions in each student books and its accompanying workbook were categorized and counted by the researchers and the Kappa coefficient was 0.97. The results revealed that Content questions were the most dominant type in all the student books and workbooks except for Vision 3 in which Language questions were the most frequent of all. The results also showed that the highest frequency of post-reading comprehension questions belonged to Explicit (Content) and Form (Language) in student books and Explicit and Implicit (Content), Form (Language), and Personal Response (Affect) in workbooks. The results of Kruskal Wallis test of independent samples indicated a significant difference in terms of Affect type across the student books and workbooks of Vision series. The findings raise the EFL material developers’ awareness of the existing post-reading comprehension questions and tasks to enhance the quality of reading sections of EFL textbooks. The results also help the teachers to supplement the books with the missing types and take a comprehensive approach to developing the learners’ reading skills.

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