Goal-Based Construction of Preferences: Task Goals and the Prominence Effect

Rapid instructed task learning (RITL) is the uniquely human ability to transform task information into goal-directed behavior without relying on trial-and-error learning. RITL is a core cognitive process supported by functional brain networks. In patients with schizophrenia, RITL ability is impaired, but the role of functional network connectivity in these RITL deficits is unknown. We investigated task-based connectivity of eight a priori network pairs in participants with schizophrenia ( n = 29) and control participants ( n = 31) during the performance of an RITL task. Multivariate pattern analysis was used to determine which network connectivity patterns predicted diagnostic group. Of all network pairs, only the connectivity between the cingulo-opercular network (CON) and salience network (SAN) during learning classified patients and control participants with significant accuracy (80%). CON-SAN connectivity during learning was significantly associated with task performance in participants with schizophrenia. These findings suggest that impaired interactions between identification of salient stimuli and maintenance of task goals contributes to RITL deficits in participants with schizophrenia.

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Walking humans trade off different task goals to regulate lateral stepping

Journal of Biomechanics ◽

10.1016/j.jbiomech.2021.110314 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 119 ◽

pp. 110314

Author(s):

Anna C. Render ◽

Meghan E. Kazanski ◽

Joseph P. Cusumano ◽

Jonathan B. Dingwell

Keyword(s):

Trade Off ◽

Task Goals

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Valence Asymmetries in the Human Amygdala: Task Relevance Modulates Amygdala Responses to Positive More than Negative Affective Cues

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00756 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 27 (4) ◽

pp. 842-851 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Paul E. Stillman ◽

Jay J. Van Bavel ◽

William A. Cunningham

Keyword(s):

Goal Pursuit ◽

Relative Increase ◽

Task Relevance ◽

Functional Perspective ◽

Appetitive Stimuli ◽

Affective Cues ◽

Amygdala Activity ◽

Task Goals ◽

Positive Stimuli ◽

Negative Stimuli

Organisms must constantly balance appetitive needs with vigilance for potential threats. Recent research suggests that the amygdala may play an important role in both of these goals. Although the amygdala plays a role in processing motivationally relevant stimuli that are positive or negative, negative information often appears to carry greater weight. From a functional perspective, this may reflect the fact that threatening stimuli generally require action, whereas appetitive stimuli can often be safely ignored. In this study, we examine whether amygdala activation to positive stimuli may be more sensitive to task goals than negative stimuli, which are often related to self-preservation concerns. During fMRI, participants were presented with two images that varied on valence and extremity and were instructed to focus on one of the images. Results indicated that negative stimuli elicited greater amygdala activity regardless of task relevance. In contrast, positive stimuli only led to a relative increase in amygdala activity when they were task relevant. This suggests that the amygdala may be more responsive to negative stimuli regardless of their relevance to immediate goals, whereas positive stimuli may only elicit amygdala activity when they are relevant to the perceivers' goals. This pattern of valence asymmetry in the human amygdala may help balance approach-related goal pursuit with chronic self-preservation goals.

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Reversal of Bimanual Feedback Responses With Changes in Task Goal

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.90887.2008 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 101 (1) ◽

pp. 283-288 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Jörn Diedrichsen ◽

Samantha Gush

Keyword(s):

Force Field ◽

Covariance Structure ◽

Direct Interaction ◽

Virtual Object ◽

Upward Movement ◽

Finish Line ◽

Task Goal ◽

The Right ◽

Task Goals ◽

Feedback Responses

We show that fast bimanual coordinative feedback responses can be reversed with changes in task goals. Participants moved a flexible virtual object across a finish line with an upward movement of both hands. In one condition, the middle of the object had to be aligned with a spatial goal at the end of the movement. In the second condition, the object had to be kept at a specific length. During the movement, a velocity-dependent force field was applied randomly to one of the hands to the left or to the right. Depending on the task condition, the unperturbed hand showed fast feedback corrections, either in or against the direction of the force field on the other hand. In the object-length condition we found evidence for a mixture of task goals: early in the movement the correction of the unperturbed hand was aimed at stabilizing object length; later in the movement, the correction reversed direction to reach a symmetric body posture in the end of the movement. The observed differences in feedback responses between task conditions also influenced the covariance structure of unperturbed movements and the adaptation when a specific force field was applied repeatedly to one of the hands. The results are congruent with the notion that coordination is established flexibly through a representation of the task-relevant controlled variables, rather than through a direct interaction between motor commands.

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Working memory capacity and task goals modulate error-related ERPs

Psychophysiology ◽

10.1111/psyp.12805 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 55 (3) ◽

pp. e12805 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

James R. Coleman ◽

Jason M. Watson ◽

David L. Strayer

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Working Memory Capacity ◽

Memory Capacity ◽

Task Goals ◽

And Task

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Studying the prominence effect amid the COVID-19 crisis: implications for public health policy decision-making.

F1000Research ◽

10.12688/f1000research.27324.2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

pp. 1356

Author(s):

Yossi Maaravi ◽

Ben Heller

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Policy Decision ◽

Matching Condition ◽

Decision Makers ◽

The Other ◽

Choice Condition ◽

Health Concerns ◽

Prominence Effect ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

The Cost

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought with it crucial policy- and decision-making situations, especially when making judgments between financial and health concerns. One particularly relevant decision-making phenomenon is the prominence effect, where decision-makers base their decisions on the most prominent attribute of the object at hand (e.g., health concerns) rather than weigh all the attributes together. This bias diminishes when the decision-making mode inhibits heuristic processes. In this study, we tested the prominence of health vs. financial concerns across two decision-making modes - choice (prone to heuristics) and matching (mitigates heuristics) - during the peak of the COVID-19 in the UK using Tversky et al.’s classic experimental paradigm. We added to the classic experimental design a priming condition. Participants were presented with two casualty-minimization programs, differing in lives saved and costs: program X would save 100 lives at the cost of 55-million-pound sterling, whereas program Y would save 30 lives at the cost of 12-million-pound sterling. Half of the participants were required to choose between the programs (choice condition). The other half were not given the cost of program X and were asked to determine what the cost should be to make it as equally attractive as the program Y. Participants in both groups were primed for either: a) financial concerns; b) health concerns; or c) control (no priming). Results showed that in the choice condition, unless primed for financial concerns, health concerns are more prominent. In the matching condition, on the other hand, the prominence of health concerns did not affect decision-makers, as they all “preferred” the cheaper option. These results add further support to the practical relevance of using the proper decision-making modes in times of consequential crises where multiple concerns, interests, and parties are involved.

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Online Gain Adaptation of Whole-Body Control for Legged Robots with Unknown Disturbances

Frontiers in Robotics and AI ◽

10.3389/frobt.2021.788902 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

Author(s):

Jaemin Lee ◽

Junhyeok Ahn ◽

Donghyun Kim ◽

Seung Hyeon Bang ◽

Luis Sentis

Keyword(s):

Legged Robots ◽

Whole Body ◽

Tracking Errors ◽

Loop Control ◽

Gain Adaptation ◽

Closed Loop Control System ◽

Unknown Disturbances ◽

Loop Control System ◽

External Forces ◽

Task Goals

This paper proposes an online gain adaptation approach to enhance the robustness of whole-body control (WBC) framework for legged robots under unknown external force disturbances. Without properly accounting for external forces, the closed-loop control system incorporating WBC may become unstable, and therefore the desired task goals may not be achievable. To study the effects of external disturbances, we analyze the behavior of our current WBC framework via the use of both full-body and centroidal dynamics. In turn, we propose a way to adapt feedback gains for stabilizing the controlled system automatically. Based on model approximations and stability theory, we propose three conditions to ensure that the adjusted gains are suitable for stabilizing a robot under WBC. The proposed approach has four contributions. We make it possible to estimate the unknown disturbances without force/torque sensors. We then compute adaptive gains based on theoretic stability analysis incorporating the unknown forces at the joint actuation level. We demonstrate that the proposed method reduces task tracking errors under the effect of external forces on the robot. In addition, the proposed method is easy-to-use without further modifications of the controllers and task specifications. The resulting gain adaptation process is able to run in real-time. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of our method both in simulations and experiments using the bipedal robot Draco2 and the humanoid robot Valkyrie.

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Cognitive-Inspired Conversational-Strategy Reasoner for Socially-Aware Agents

Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.24963/ijcai.2017/532 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Oscar J. Romero ◽

Ran Zhao ◽

Justine Cassell

Keyword(s):

Social Psychology ◽

Decision Making ◽

Conversational Agent ◽

Conversational Analysis ◽

Dialogue System ◽

The Social ◽

Conversational Style ◽

Prior Literature ◽

Task Goals ◽

The Relationship

In this work we propose a novel module for a dialogue system that allows a conversational agent to utter phrases that do not just meet the system's task intentions, but also work towards achieving the system's social intentions. The module - a Social Reasoner - takes the task goals the system must achieve and decides the appropriate conversational style and strategy with which the dialogue system describes the information the user desires so as to boost the strength of the relationship between the user and system (rapport), and therefore the user's engagement and willingness to divulge the information the agent needs to efficiently and effectively achieve the user's goals. Our Social Reasoner is inspired both by analysis of empirical data of friends and stranger dyads engaged in a task, and by prior literature in fields as diverse as reasoning processes in cognitive and social psychology, decision-making, sociolinguistics and conversational analysis. Our experiments demonstrated that, when using the Social Reasoner in a Dialogue System, the rapport level between the user and system increases in more than 35% in comparison with those cases where no Social Reasoner is used.

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Chronic sleep curtailment impairs the flexible implementation of task goals in new parents

Journal of Sleep Research ◽

10.1111/j.1365-2869.2010.00878.x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 20 (2) ◽

pp. 279-287 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

FRANZISKA PLESSOW ◽

ANDREA KIESEL ◽

ANTJE PETZOLD ◽

CLEMENS KIRSCHBAUM

Keyword(s):

Task Goals ◽

Chronic Sleep

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