scholarly journals Belief in Control: Voluntary Choice Enhances Subsequent Task Performance under Undefeated Choice-Outcome Causation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxiao Luo ◽  
Lihui Wang ◽  
xiaolin zhou
Keyword(s):  
Search Task ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Blank Screen ◽  
Subsequent Behavior ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
Voluntary Choice ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Subsequent Task

Humans are believed to have volition through which they act upon and change the external environment. As an exercise of volition, making a voluntary choice facilitates the subsequent behavioral performance relative to a forced choice. However, it is unclear how this facilitation is constrained by the perceived relationship between a choice and its outcome. In a series of experiments, participants were free or forced to choose one of two presented pictures. The outcome of the choice was then revealed, which could be always the chosen picture or always the unchosen picture (i.e., a confirmed choice-outcome causation), a blank screen with no picture at all (i.e., an unrevealed choice-outcome relation), the chosen or unchosen picture with equal probability (i.e., a defeated choice-outcome causation), or a third picture different from the two preceding options (again, a defeated choice-outcome causation). Participants then complete a visual search task with the task-irrelevant picture (or the blank screen) serving as a background. Results showed that the search performance was improved after a voluntary choice under both the confirmed causation and the unrevealed relation, but not under the defeated causation. Over individuals, the improved performance due to voluntary choice under confirmed causation positively correlated with the improved performance under the unrevealed relation, and with the reported belief in controlling the outcome of the choice. Our findings suggest that the exercise of volition motivates subsequent behavior, and this motivation is restricted to an “undefeated” choice-outcome causation which affords a belief in controlling the outcome by exerting volition.

scholarly journals Stable individual differences in strategies within, but not between, visual search tasks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair D F Clarke ◽  
Jessica Irons ◽  
Warren James ◽  
Andrew B. Leber ◽  
Amelia R. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
The Other ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Test Retest Reliability ◽  
Over Time

A striking range of individual differences has recently been reported in three different visual search tasks. These differences in performance can be attributed to strategy, that is, the efficiency with which participants control their search to complete the task quickly and accurately. Here we ask if an individual's strategy and performance in one search task is correlated with how they perform in the other two. We tested 64 observers in the three tasks mentioned above over two sessions. Even though the test-retest reliability of the tasks is high, an observer's performance and strategy in one task did not reliably predict their behaviour in the other two. These results suggest search strategies are stable over time, but context-specific. To understand visual search we therefore need to account not only for differences between individuals, but also how individuals interact with the search task and context. These context-specific but stable individual differences in strategy can account for a substantial proportion of variability in search performance.

Improving Recommendation Accuracy and Diversity via Multiple Social Factors and Social Circles

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-154
Author(s):  
Yong Feng ◽  
Heng Li ◽  
Zhuo Chen ◽  
Baohua Qiang
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Information Discovery ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Probabilistic Matrix Factorization ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Networks Analysis ◽  
Recommendation Accuracy ◽  
Improved Performance

Recommender systems have been widely employed to suggest personalized online information to simplify users' information discovery process. With the popularity of online social networks, analysis and mining of social factors and social circles have been utilized to support more effective recommendations, but have not been fully investigated. In this chapter, the authors propose a novel recommendation model with the consideration of more comprehensive social factors and topics. To further enhance recommendation accuracy, four social factors are simultaneously injected into the recommendation model based on probabilistic matrix factorization. Meanwhile, the authors explore several new methods to measure these social factors. Moreover, they infer explicit and implicit social circles to enhance the performance of recommendation diversity. Finally, the authors conduct a series of experiments on publicly available data. Experimental results show the proposed model achieves significantly improved performance over the existing models in which social information have not been fully considered.

The Relationship of Near-Vision Peripheral Acuity and Far-Vision Search Performance

1967 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-303
Author(s):  
Dorothy M. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Search Task ◽  
Contact Lenses ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Near Vision ◽  
Low Correlation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Acuity Test

Thirty-five subjects who did not wear glasses or contact lenses and with foveal acuity of 20/30 or better monocular and binocular far and near vision were given a near-vision peripheral acuity test and a farvision search task. The results, which showed a low correlation between near-vision peripheral acuity and far-vision search performance, are consistent with Giese's findings of low correlations between near and far foveal acuity.

scholarly journals The Effect of Information Organization on Cognitive Workload and Visual Search Performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 302-306
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Joe ◽  
Casey R. Kovesdi ◽  
Andrea Mack ◽  
Tina Miyake
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Information Organization ◽  
Cognitive Workload ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Speed Accuracy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Accuracy Tradeoff

This study examined the relationship between how visual information is organized and people’s visual search performance. Specifically, we systematically varied how visual search information was organized (from well-organized to disorganized), and then asked participants to perform a visual search task involving finding and identifying a number of visual targets within the field of visual non-targets. We hypothesized that the visual search task would be easier when the information was well-organized versus when it was disorganized. We further speculated that visual search performance would be mediated by cognitive workload, and that the results could be generally described by the well-established speed-accuracy tradeoff phenomenon. This paper presents the details of the study we designed and our results.

Cyclical Variation in Digit-Span and Visual-Search Performance in Women Differing in the Severity of Their Premenstrual Symptoms

1992 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Diener ◽  
Francine Linda Greenstein ◽  
P. Diane Turnbough
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Digit Span ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Menstrual Phase ◽  
Premenstrual Symptoms ◽  
Cyclical Variation ◽  
Menstrual Cycles ◽  
Cyclical Fluctuation

Groups of women differing in the severity of reported premenstrual symptoms were compared over two menstrual cycles on a digit-span task, a visual-search task, and a combination of the two. Neither group exhibited large performance changes during the premenstrual phase of the cycle. High-symptom women differed somewhat from low-symptom women in the effect of menstrual phase on digit-span performance, recalling slightly fewer series correctly during the premenstrual phase. The response latency of high-symptom women on the visual-search task was substantially longer than that of the low-symptom women regardless of menstrual phase. These results suggest that there may be stable differences between high-symptom and low-symptom subjects that are greater than the cyclical fluctuation within either group.

Visual search performance in the autism spectrum II: The radial frequency search task with additional segmentation cues

2010 ◽  
Vol 48 (14) ◽  
pp. 4117-4124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renita A. Almeida ◽  
J. Edwin Dickinson ◽  
Murray T. Maybery ◽  
Johanna C. Badcock ◽  
David R. Badcock
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Radial Frequency ◽  
Frequency Search

The Impact of Age on Visual Search Performance

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Manivannan ◽  
Sara Czaja ◽  
Colin Drury ◽  
Chi Ming Ip
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Performance Effect ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Impact

Visual search is an important component of many real world tasks such as industrial inspection and driving. Several studies have shown that age has an impact on visual search performance. In general older people demonstrate poorer performance on such tasks as compared to younger people. However, there is controversy regarding the source of the age-performance effect. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between component abilities and visual search performance, in order to identify the locus of age-related performance differences. Six abilities including reaction time, working memory, selective attention and spatial localization were identified as important components of visual search performance. Thirty-two subjects ranging in age from 18 - 84 years, categorized in three different age groups (young, middle, and older) participated in the study. Their component abilities were measured and they performed a visual search task. The visual search task varied in complexity in terms of type of targets detected. Significant relationships were found between some of the component skills and search performance. Significant age effects were also observed. A model was developed using hierarchical multiple linear regression to explain the variance in search performance. Results indicated that reaction time, selective attention, and age were important predictors of search performance with reaction time and selective attention accounting for most of the variance.

scholarly journals Pupil-linked arousal modulates trial-by-trial motor adaptation in humans

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsushi Yokoi ◽  
Jeff Weiler
Keyword(s):  
Motor Learning ◽  
Force Field ◽  
Learning Rate ◽  
Sudden Increase ◽  
Rapid Reduction ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Arousal System ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Research in reward-based decision-making showed that humans and animals dynamically modulate learning rate according to their belief about environmental change (volatility) and surprise about observation. Recent evidence also suggests that neuromodulator noradrenaline (NA) signals volatility and surprise. Despite the rich anatomical evidence suggesting the potential influence of NA on the motor system, it is still elusive how NA and volatility/surprise affect human motor learning. To address this issue, we ran a series of experiments in which we simultaneously tracked the pupil diameter, a non-invasive proxy for the central NA/arousal activity, during a short-term force-field reach adaptation paradigm. A sudden increase in error due to the force-field resulted in increased pupil dilation during movement followed by an elevated baseline diameter in the following trials. These online and offline pupil responses showed a consistent pattern with surprise and volatility simulated by a recent computational model which dynamically adjusts learning rate according to volatility estimated from experienced error (surprise). However, unlike the model's prediction, when participants experienced frequent reversals in force-field, the size of pupil responses rapidly diminished regardless of large errors induced by reversals. We further confirmed that the causal manipulation of participants' arousal by task-irrelevant auditory stimuli modulated the single-trial motor learning rate. Collectively, these results provide a compelling evidence that NA/arousal system acts as a common modulator of learning rate in both cognitive and motor domains. Rapid reduction in pupil responses at reversals suggests that error sensitivity for computing current environmental uncertainty and surprise is also highly dynamic.

scholarly journals Reward modulates cortical representations of action

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler J. Adkins ◽  
Taraz G. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
List Type ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Sequence Production ◽  
On Line ◽  
Elevated Activity ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
Human Participants

AbstractPeople are capable of rapid on-line improvements in performance when they are offered a reward. The neural mechanism by which this performance enhancement occurs remains unclear. We investigated this phenomenon by offering monetary reward to human participants, contingent on successful performance in a sequence production task. We found that people performed actions more quickly and accurately when they were offered large rewards. Increasing reward magnitude was associated with elevated activity throughout the brain prior to movement. Multivariate patterns of activity in these reward-responsive regions encoded information about the upcoming action. Follow-up analyses provided evidence that action decoding in pre-SMA and other motor planning areas was improved for large reward trials and successful action decoding was associated with improved performance. These results suggest that reward may enhance performance by enhancing neural representations of action used in motor planning.HighlightsReward enhances behavioral performance.Reward enhances action decoding in motor planning areas prior to movement.Enhanced action decoding coincides with improved behavioral performance.

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