The Specificity and Reliability of Conflict Adaptation: A Mouse-Tracking Study

Researchers have recently begun to question the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation effects, also known as sequential congruency effects (SCEs), a highly cited effect in cognitive psychology. Some have even used the lack of reliability across tasks (e.g., Flanker, and Stroop) to argue against models of cognitive control that have dominated the field for decades. The present study tested the possibility that domain-general processes across tasks might appear on more sensitive mouse-tracking metrics rather than overall reaction times. The relationship between SCE effects on the Stroop and Flanker tasks were examined for the first time using a mouse-tracking paradigm. Three main findings emerged: (1) Robust SCEs were observed for both the Stroop and Flanker tasks at the group level, (2) Within-task split-half reliabilities for the SCE across dependent variables were weak at best and non-existent in many cases, and (3) SCEs for the Flanker and Stroop tasks did not correlate with each other for overall reaction times, but did show significant correlations between tasks on more dynamic measures that captured processes before response execution. These findings contribute to the literature by highlighting how mouse-tracking may be a fruitful avenue by which future studies can examine the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation and tease apart different theoretical models producing the effects.

Resilience as a Determinant of Healthspan and Lifespan in Mice

Dynamic measures of physical resilience—the ability to resist and recover from a challenge—may be informative of biological age far prior to overt manifestations such as age-related diseases and geriatric syndromes (i.e., frailty). If true, physical resilience at younger or middle ages may be predictive of future healthspan and lifespan, and provide a unique paradigm in which interventions targeting the fundamental biology of aging can be tested. This seminar will discuss research on the development of clinically relevant measures of physical resilience in mice, including anesthesia, surgery, and cytotoxic drugs. It will further highlight how these measures compare between young, middle-aged, and older mice, and how mid-life resilience relates to later-life healthspan and even lifespan. Finally, it will provide insight into whether interventions targeting the biology of aging can modify physical resilience in mice.

Grid Quality Measures for PEBI Grids

Combining the Perpendicular Bisector (PEBI) grids with the Two Point Flux Approximation (TPFA) scheme demonstrates a potential to accurately model on unstructured grids, conforming to the geological and engineering features of real grids. However, with the increased complexity and resolution of the grids, the PEBI conditions will inevitably be violated in some cells and the approximation properties will be compromised. The objective is to develop accurate and practical grid quality measures that quantify such errors. We critically evaluated the existing grid quality measures and found them lacking predictive power in several areas. The available k-orthogonality measures predict error for flow along the strata, although TPFA provides an accurate approximation. The false-positive results are not only misleading but can overwhelm further analysis. We developed the so-called "truncation error" grid measure which is probably the most accurate measure for flow through a plane face and accurately measures the error along the strata. We also quantified the error due to the face curvature. Curved faces are bound to exist in any real grid. The impact of the quality of the 2-D Delaunay triangulation on TPFA approximation properties is usually not taken into account. We investigate the impact of the size of the smallest angles that can cause considerable increase of the condition number of the matrix and an eventual loss of accuracy, demonstrated with simple examples. Based on the analysis, we provide recommendations. We also show how the size of the largest angles impacts the approximation quality of TPFA. Furthermore, we discuss the impact of the change of the permeability on the TPFA approximation. Finally, we present simple tools that reservoir engineers can use to incorporate the above-mentioned grid quality measures into a workflow. The grid quality measures discussed up to now are static. We also sketch the further extension to dynamic measures, that is, how the static measures can be used to detect change in the flow behavior, potentially leading to increased error. We investigate a comprehensive set of methods, several of them new, to measure the static grid quality of TPFA on PEBI grids and possible extension to dynamic measures. All measures can be easily implemented in production reservoir simulators and examined using the suggested tools in a workflow.

Measuring Affect Dynamics: An Empirical Framework

A fast-growing body of evidence from experience sampling studies suggests that affect dynamics are associated with well-being and psychological health. But heterogeneity in experience sampling approaches impedes reproducibility and scientific progress. Leveraging a large dataset of 7016 individuals, each providing over 50 affect reports, we introduce an empirically-derived framework to help researchers design well-powered and efficient experience sampling studies. Our research reveals three general principles. First, a sample of 200 participants and 20 observations per person yields sufficient power to detect medium size associations for most affect dynamic measures. Second, for trait and time-independent variability measures of affect (e.g., S.D.), distant sampling study designs (i.e., a few daily measurements spread out over several weeks) leads to more accurate estimates than close sampling study designs (i.e., several daily measurements concentrated over a few days), whereas differences in accuracy across sampling methods were inconsistent and of little practical significance for temporally dependent affect dynamic measures (i.e., RMSSD, autocorrelation coefficient, TKEO, and PAC). Third, across all affect dynamics measures, sampling exclusively on specific days or time windows leads to little to no improvement over sampling at random times. Because the ideal sampling approach varies for each affect dynamics measure, we provide a companion R-package, an online calculator, and a series of benchmark effect sizes to help researchers address three fundamental how’s of experience-sampling: How many participants to recruit? How often to solicit them? And for how long?

There and Back Again? Exploring the Real-Time Cognitive Journey of Narrative Transportation

Prior research has produced seemingly conflicting indications of whether or not audience members who are transported into a narrative leave themselves and the real world behind. This study proposes that a dynamic perspective can help resolve that conflict. Both traditional static post-exposure and real-time dynamic measures were used to examine four cognitive processes: attention, presence, self-referencing, and real world-referencing. Participants ( N = 118) were randomly assigned to view one of two television dramas. They provided continuous rating responses during viewing, as well as post-exposure measures of the overall viewing experience. Post-exposure measures indicated that self and real world-referencing were strongly positively correlated with transportation. The dynamic approach to understanding narrative processing, while exploratory in nature, likewise indicated links between the self, the real world, and the narrative world. Presence in the narrative predicted real world-referencing, and self-referencing predicted attention to the narrative, suggesting that when audience members link story content to their own lives, transportation may be enhanced rather than diminished. Strengths, limitations and future directions are discussed.

Dynamic entropy of human blood

Temperature control is a process that is used by biological systems to maintain a stable internal state for survival. People have an individually variable physiological temperature of about 36.6 °C, which can be modified by many undesirable factors. Based on an analysis of a time series of extracellular ionic fluxes that were obtained using the non-invasive solute-semiconductor interface technique, I show that this extremely specific (critical) temperature is encoded by a local minimum in the dynamic entropy of an isolated drop of human blood. Moreover, a dynamic zeroth-order normal fluid/“superfluid” nonequilibrium phase transition, which was reflected by a spontaneous symmetry breaking that occurred in the phase space, was revealed. The critical scaling of the dynamic measures for the covariates such as the spectral signature and Lyapunov exponent was also determined.

Some common and dynamic properties of logarithmic Pareto distribution with applications

The Pareto distribution satisfies the power law, which is widely used in physics, biology, earth and planetary sciences, economics, finance, computer science, and many other fields. In this article, the logarithmic Pareto distribution, a logarithmic transformation of the Pareto distribution, is presented and studied. The moments, percentiles, skewness, kurtosis, and some dynamic measures such as hazard rate, mean residual life, and quantile residual life are discussed. The parameters were estimated by quantile and maximum likelihood methods. A simulation study was conducted to investigate the efficiency, consistency, and behavior of the maximum likelihood estimator. Finally, the proposed distribution was fitted to some datasets to show its usefulness.