Impact of Shared Control Modalities on Performance and Usability of Semi-autonomous Prostheses

Semi-autonomous (SA) control of upper-limb prostheses can improve the performance and decrease the cognitive burden of a user. In this approach, a prosthesis is equipped with additional sensors (e.g., computer vision) that provide contextual information and enable the system to accomplish some tasks automatically. Autonomous control is fused with a volitional input of a user to compute the commands that are sent to the prosthesis. Although several promising prototypes demonstrating the potential of this approach have been presented, methods to integrate the two control streams (i.e., autonomous and volitional) have not been systematically investigated. In the present study, we implemented three shared control modalities (i.e., sequential, simultaneous, and continuous) and compared their performance, as well as the cognitive and physical burdens imposed on the user. In the sequential approach, the volitional input disabled the autonomous control. In the simultaneous approach, the volitional input to a specific degree of freedom (DoF) activated autonomous control of other DoFs, whereas in the continuous approach, autonomous control was always active except for the DoFs controlled by the user. The experiment was conducted in ten able-bodied subjects, and these subjects used an SA prosthesis to perform reach-and-grasp tasks while reacting to audio cues (dual tasking). The results demonstrated that, compared to the manual baseline (volitional control only), all three SA modalities accomplished the task in a shorter time and resulted in less volitional control input. The simultaneous SA modality performed worse than the sequential and continuous SA approaches. When systematic errors were introduced in the autonomous controller to generate a mismatch between the goals of the user and controller, the performance of SA modalities substantially decreased, even below the manual baseline. The sequential SA scheme was the least impacted one in terms of errors. The present study demonstrates that a specific approach for integrating volitional and autonomous control is indeed an important factor that significantly affects the performance and physical and cognitive load, and therefore these should be considered when designing SA prostheses.

The Manifestation of Aggressiveness in Students of Technical University

This article examines the current student problem of our time – ways to implement intrapersonal conflict in aggressive forms of behavior, mechanisms of manifestation, gender characteristics of aggressiveness in the student environment. The theoretical part of the research defines the main concepts and modern concepts that the authors adhere to. Practical research is based on the identification and study of groups in the University student environment that are most prone to aggression; on the selection in groups of students who are prone to various types of aggression in the form of deviant behavior. The main tools of the research were methods and techniques: the Express survey developed by the authors; the A. bass-A. darky aggression questionnaire (BD); methods for diagnosing the tendency to deviate behavior (SOP); observation; Spearman's rank correlation coefficient method. In the course of the study, the following reliable conclusions were obtained. The girls were found to have weak volitional control of the emotional sphere in the manifestation of verbal, physical, indirect aggression, as well as irritability and suspicion. In young men, weakness of volitional control is correlated with irritability, indirect aggression, negativism, and resentment. Delinquent behavior is typical only for young men. Propensity to aggression and violence in the female sample of the risk group is associated with verbal, physical and indirect aggression as a way of detente. Female aggressiveness can manifest itself in a willingness to display negative reactions and an oppositional manner in behavior. In the male sample of the "risk" group, the propensity to aggression and violence have less pronounced correlations with negativism, and the most specific way to solve the situation is physical aggression. The authors suggest ways to conduct psychological and pedagogical work in higher education with students who have various forms of aggression.

Addiction and Fair Opportunity

To decide whether and, if so, under what conditions addiction might excuse misconduct, we need to understand addiction. Three complementary models of addiction are examined—the conception in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Ainslie’s hyperbolic discounting model, and Berridge’s and Holton’s model of impaired control. The law’s skepticism about an addiction excuse is examined and questioned. Duress models of how addiction might excuse are rejected. However, the cravings that are part of addiction might affect cognitive (attentional) competence or volitional control. This excuse would be at most partial, and it would be limited to those who are not substantially responsible for becoming or remaining addicted.

Priming the self as an agent influences causal, spatial, and temporal events: implications for animacy, cultural differences, and clinical settings

People intentionally engage in goal-directed actions—i.e., set goals, create plans, and execute volitional control, which are fundamental for our understanding of ourselves, others, and events. In three experiments we created a novel sentence unscrambling task that was used to prime the self-as-agent (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun “I”), the self-as-patient (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun “me”), or no prime (i.e., sentences that contain proper names only), and tested whether that priming would influence the interpretation of causal, spatial, and temporal events. Results demonstrated that the self-as-agent primed participants were more likely to attribute causal influence to a kayaker in a river (Study 1), to assign spatial directionality consistent with an agent moving through space (Study 2), and to assign temporal directionality consistent with an agent moving through time (Study 3). Taken together, these three studies demonstrate that situated conceptualizations of the self as an agent can be a springboard for relevant empirical and theoretical contributions to a broad range of ideas and approaches—from theories of agency to embodied cognition, from language systems to metaphoric representation frameworks, with some potentials even in the clinical and mental health field. Along these lines, implications for animacy, cultural differences, and clinical settings are discussed.

Implantable Brain-Computer Interface for Volitional Hand Grasp in Spinal Cord Injury

Loss of hand function after cervical spinal cord injury severely impairs functional independence. We describe a method for restoring volitional control of hand grasp in a subject with complete cervical quadriplegia (C5 ASIA Impairment Scale A) using a portable fully implanted brain-computer interface (BCI) within the home environment. The BCI consists of subdural surface electrodes placed over the dominant-hand motor cortex and connects to a transmitter implanted subcutaneously below the clavicle, which allows continuous reading of the electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity. Movement-intent was used to trigger functional electrical stimulation (FES) of the dominant hand during an initial 29-week laboratory study and subsequently via a mechanical hand orthosis during in-home use. Movement intent information could be decoded consistently throughout the 29-week in-laboratory study with a mean accuracy of 89.0% (range 78-93.3%). Improvements were observed in both the speed and accuracy of various upper extremity tasks, including lifting small objects and transferring objects to specific targets. After study week 23, the subject began to be able to extend his right thumb volitionally in the absence of the FES orthosis. At home decoding accuracy during open-loop trials reached an accuracy of 91.3% (range 80-98.95%) and an accuracy of 88.3% (range 77.6-95.5%) during closed-loop trials. A fully implanted BCI can be safely used to reliably decode movement intent from motor cortex, allowing for accurate volitional control of hand grasp and may potentially re-engage latent neural pathways to allow targeted re-innervation of muscles below the level of injury. (Funded by the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02564419.)

Psychological Determinants of Young People's Attitudes towards Extremist Activity

The article is dedicated to the study of psychological determinants of young people's intolerant behavior towards individuals of other cultures and ethnic groups as a prerequisite to one's inclination to extremist activity. Theoretical analysis revealed that a tendency towards extremist activity is formed from cognitive and behavioral manifestations such as low awareness of the problem of extremism, rejection of other values and cultures, negative attitudes towards other ethnic groups and difficulties in determining legitimacy of one's actions. The empirical study was conducted on a sample of young people from Kaluga aged 18-25. The Volitional Control Questionnaire, the Big Five Personality Inventory and a specially developed questionnaire have been used. It has been established that a large part of the youth is informed about the manifestations of extremism but isn't fully aware of the severity of such crimes. A link between behavioral and cognitive manifestations related to extremism with certain personality determinants such as high sensitivity, inadequate self-assessment, insufficient maturity of outlook-related attitudes, lack of goodwill and rigidity of opinions is demonstrated.

Incremental validity of online over offline reports of volitional control in predicting learning success

Volitional control (i. e., efforts to maintain goal striving in the face of obstacles) is an integral part of self-regulated learning and an important factor for explaining individual differences in academic performance. However, differences between the various methods for assessing volitional control have rarely been investigated. Two common methods are (a) offline questionnaires, in which respondents aggregate experiences over a longer period of time, and (b) online questionnaires such as learning diaries, which assess respondents’ experiences close to the learning event. We compared these assessment approaches in 96 medical students who prepared for a high-stakes exam. Achievement of self-set learning goals was measured objectively via log-files of students’ activities on a learning platform. Daily reports of volitional control explained substantial variance in achievement of learning goals over and above the offline questionnaire, indicating incremental validity of online assessments of self-regulation. Moreover, the daily reports of volitional control could explain intra- individual day-to-day variance in goal achievement. The current study, thus, suggests that learning diaries, albeit cumbersome, have clear advantages over offline questionnaires.

DINAMIKA PERSEPSI KARYAWAN TERHADAP ORGANISASI DAN KINERJA DALAM SITUASI PROXIMAL WITDRAWAL STATE

Work performance is a major issue that is widely discussed relating to increase the productivity of a company. In this study, work performance will be reviewed in terms of Perceived Organizational Support (POS) and Perceived Organizational Competence (POC) by considering the Proximal Withdrawal State (PWS) situation felt by employees. PWS is the initial mental state or cognition experienced by a person before leaving an organization (Hom et al., 2012 in Robinson, 2014). PWS consists of two dimensions, namely desired employment status (employees’ preference to keep working or leaving) and perceived volitional control (control of decisions to work or resign). The combination of the two dimensions produces four types of employees, namely Enthusiastic Stayer, Reluctant Leaver, Enthusiastic Leaver, and Reluctant Stayer. The study was a non-experimental study and held using quantitative research method. By employing proportionate stratified random sampling, a total of 326 employees from PT. X participated in a survey. Linear regression analysis was used in data processing and results. Results show that perceived organizational support and perceived organizational competence simultaneously affect the employee work performance in Enthusiastic Stayer and Reluctant Leaver situations. Results also show that POS and POC do not affetc work performance in Enthusiastic Leaver and Reluctant Stayer. Kinerja (work performance) karyawan adalah isu yang terjadi dalam perusahaan-perusahaan di dunia. Kinerja merupakan isu utama yang banyak dibahas berkaitan dengan peningkatan produktivitas suatu perusahaan. Dalam penelitian ini, kinerja ditinjau dari segi persepsi karyawan terhadap dukungan organisasi (perceived organizational support - POS) dan persepsi karyawan terhadap kemampuan organisasi (perceived organizational competence - POC). Selain itu, penelitian juga dilakukan dengan mempertimbangkan situasi proximal withdrawal state yang saat ini dialami oleh karyawan. Proximal Withdrawal States (PWS) adalah kondisi kognitif awal seseorang berkaitan dengan partisipasi dalam organisasi yang mendahului terjadinya turnover. PWS terdiri atas dua dimensi yang saling terkait yaitu desired employment status (preferensi karyawan untuk tetap bekerja pada perusahaan atau meninggalkannya) dan perceived volitional control (kendali karyawan terhadap keputusan untuk tetap bekerja atau mengundurkan diri). Kombinasi dua dimensi tersebut menghasilkan empat tipe karyawan yaitu Enthusiastic Stayers, Reluctant Leavers, Enthusiastic Leavers, dan Reluctant Stayers. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian non eksperimental yang dilakukan secara kuantitatif. Dengan mengunakan proportionate stratified random sampling, sebanyak 326 orang karyawan dari PT. X telah mengikuti survey yang dilakukan. Penelitian ini menggunakan analisa regresi linear dan ditemukan bahwa persepsi terhadap dukungan organisasi (POC) dan kemampuan organisasi (POS) secara bersamaan mempengaruhi kinerja karyawan pada situasi Enthusiastic Stayer dan Reluctant Leaver. Ditemukan pula bahwa POS dan POC tidak memiliki pengaruh signifikan terhadap kinerja karyawan Enthuiastic Leaver dan Reluctant Stayer.