Resonating Minds—Emergent Collaboration Through Hierarchical Active Inference

Working together on complex collaborative tasks requires agents to coordinate their actions. Doing this explicitly or completely prior to the actual interaction is not always possible nor sufficient. Agents also need to continuously understand the current actions of others and quickly adapt their own behavior appropriately. Here we investigate how efficient, automatic coordination processes at the level of mental states (intentions, goals), which we call belief resonance, can lead to collaborative situated problem-solving. We present a model of hierarchical active inference for collaborative agents (HAICA). It combines efficient Bayesian Theory of Mind processes with a perception–action system based on predictive processing and active inference. Belief resonance is realized by letting the inferred mental states of one agent influence another agent’s predictive beliefs about its own goals and intentions. This way, the inferred mental states influence the agent’s own task behavior without explicit collaborative reasoning. We implement and evaluate this model in the Overcooked domain, in which two agents with varying degrees of belief resonance team up to fulfill meal orders. Our results demonstrate that agents based on HAICA achieve a team performance comparable to recent state-of-the-art approaches, while incurring much lower computational costs. We also show that belief resonance is especially beneficial in settings where the agents have asymmetric knowledge about the environment. The results indicate that belief resonance and active inference allow for quick and efficient agent coordination and thus can serve as a building block for collaborative cognitive agents.

Instructional Level and Engagement in Students With Behavioral Disorders

This study examined the effects of adjusting the difficulty level of instructional materials on the time on-task and comprehension of four students with emotional and behavioral disorders. All participants previously exhibited low rates of on-task behavior during reading assignments. Students were presented with reading materials at their instructional, frustration, and independent levels to assess the effect on time on-task and comprehension. All four students demonstrated the highest percent of on-task behavior when presented with reading materials at their instructional level. Comprehension scores were highest for all four students at the independent level and lowest at the frustration level.

The Use of Stimulus Preference Assessments to Determine Procedural Acceptability for Participants

The social validity of behavior intervention is rooted in consumer perception. This information is typically garnered through questionnaires and interviews conducted with relevant consumers such as teachers or caregivers. Often, the participants (i.e., the individuals with disabilities receiving the intervention) play less of a role in the assessment of social validity, despite their primary role in intervention. This study examines a procedure for including participants in the assessment of social validity, namely procedural acceptability. Three participants selected their preferred intervention in a paired stimulus preference assessment. Videos presented the intervention options, and participants’ preferred interventions were implemented. These interventions decreased target behavior(s) and increased on-task behavior for all participants. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for use of this procedure and considerations for including participants in social validity assessments.

ANALYSIS OF LEADERSHIP STYLE BY USING THE MODEL OF HERSEY AND BLANCHARD

Introduction/Main Objectives: This research raises human resources management within the crediting bank, where employees require reliable and competent leadership. Leadership is categorized as the concept of empowering when the leader shares direction, a support system, friendly, synergizing, and providing exemplary examples to his subordinates.Background Problems: Through scientific ways, this study attempted to respond to the research questions, which are: 1) how is the maturity of employees in the Anugerah rural bank located in Purwosari, 2) what are the applications of leadership styles, duty behavior, and relationship behaviors at there, and 3) in which quadrant of leadership styles of the chief of operational, general, administrations, and marketing department? Novelty: The current study engaged four situational leadership in a model. Research Methods: The survey design administered the questionnaire, interviews, and observation to the target samples. The data, then analyzed using descriptive analysis and the range scale. Finding/Results: The operational and general divisions reflect their leadership styles in quadrant II representing a consultation or low task and relationship behavior. Besides, quadrant III, which implies a participating leadership style with high task and relationship behavior, has been practiced by the marketing department. The administrative division tends to use the leadership style from quadrant IV or delegating with high task behavior relationship. Conclusion: Leaders can select any leadership style, but they must remain aware of task and relationship behavior. This recent study has many limitations; hence, the future researcher can apply other leadership styles under different conditions.

Effects of Middle School Teachers’ Praise-to-Reprimand Ratios on Students’ Classroom Behavior

Middle school teachers frequently struggle with positively managing student behavior. However, praise-to-reprimand ratios (PRRs) have received little research attention. PRRs studied in elementary school have been positively associated with improvements in on-task and prosocial behavior, but limited research has been conducted on optimal PRRs in middle schools. We conducted this study in the context of a randomized control trial of Class-wide Function-related Intervention Teams Middle School (CW-FIT MS) to isolate the effects of one of the main components of the intervention, PRR. After controlling for the intervention, we examined the effects of PRRs in 28 middle school classrooms on (a) class-wide on-task behavior, (b) on-task behavior of students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), and (c) disruptive behavior of students at risk for EBD. Multivariate regressions revealed a statistically significant linear relationship between middle school PRRs and the variables of interest: As PRRs increased, on-task behavior of the entire class improved, on-task behavior and grades of students at risk for EBD increased, and disruptive behavior of students at risk for EBD decreased. We discuss the implications of our findings and suggest areas for future research.

Modulation of Trust in Borderline Personality Disorder by Script-Based Imaginal Exposure to Betrayal

Interpersonal and trust-related difficulties are central features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). In this study, we applied script-driven betrayal imagery to evoke mistrustful behavior in a social reinforcement learning task. We compared this approach to the standard confederate paradigm in twenty-one BPD and twenty healthy control (HC) participants. The script-driven imagery evoked transient negative affect and decreased trusting behavior in both groups. Across conditions, we also replicated previously reported between-group differences in affect and task behavior, results that support the validity of script-driven imagery as an alternative social task stimulus. This approach is appealing for eliminating deception, scaling easily, and evoking disorder-specific states of social difficulty.