Sungnōmē in Aristotle

Feedback’s effects on behavior during learning are not well understood. Recent research results suggest feedback on incorrect responses may affect cognitive processes and behavior differently than feedback on correct responses (Butler, Karpicke, & Roediger, 2007; Pashler, Cepeda,Wixted, & Rohrer, 2005). In the current study we investigated how feedback on different types of response accuracies affected learning in a simple rule based task under varying difficulty levels. Feedback was manipulated by being provided after correct responses only, incorrect responses only, or all responses. Results suggested feedback on incorrect responses was used differently than feedback on correct responses and was influenced by the difficulty of the task. Specifically, feedback on incorrect responses resulted in more learning than feedback on correct responses when task difficulty was higher; however, this effect was eliminated when task difficulty was lower.

Background: Ergonomics is the scientific study of human work. The objective of ergonomics is to obtain an effective match between the user and work station to improve working efficiency, health, safety, comfort and easiness to use. Ergonomics is a relatively new concept in India yet to be considered an essential component of most enterprises. Objectives: To assess the Computer usage and Knowledge of Ergonomics among Information Technology professionals working in Karnataka, India. Materials and Methods: In this Cross-sectional study, 154 Information Technology with at least 1 year of experience were recruited using convenience sampling technique. After obtaining Informed consent, Data regarding Personal characteristics, Computer Usage and Knowledgeof Ergonomics were collected by face to face interview method using a valid, reliable and pretested Questionnaire. The Ergonomic awareness section of the Questionnaire composed of 35 items related to Knowledge about Musculoskeletal disorders and its risk factors, Working Postures, Seating, Keyboard/Mouse, Monitor, Table and Accessories and finally Rest breaks and Exercises. Results: Majority of the subjects are unaware of Cumulative Trauma Disorders (7% - Correct responses), Goals of Ergonomics (25% - Correct responses), Sign & Symptoms (35% - Correct responses) & Risk factors (30% - Correct responses) of MSDs. With respect to Working Postures, Majority were unaware of Healthy Postures related to Elbow (25% - Correct responses) and Feet (47% - Correct responses). Majority of the subjects are aware of Correct Position (87% - Correct responses) & Distance (90% - Correct responses) of Monitor Placement. 52% of the subjects are unaware of the Use and Placement of Document holder and 61% of the subjects are unaware of Mini breaks. Conclusion: This study highlighted the awareness of ergonomics among Information Technology professionals and emphasize the need for ergonomic training programme to promote the awareness about Musculoskeletal disorders and the healthy postures.

We find that the effectiveness of piece‐rate compensation relative to fixed pay in a laboratory letter‐search task hinges on the presence or absence of a nonbinding statement to participants that the experimenter values correct responses. In the absence of the value statement, participants with piece‐rate rewards for correct responses generate more correct and incorrect responses than do their counterparts with fixed pay, correcting errors as they go along to maximize compensation. Essentially, piece‐rate compensation acts as an output control, incentivizing participants to maximize correct responses through a “produce‐and‐improve” strategy. The value statement suppresses this strategy because participants appear to perceive it as an input constraint, prompting greater initial care at the expense of lower overall productivity. As a result, the value statement eliminates the gains in correct responses that piece‐rate incentivized participants otherwise realize. Thus, in settings in which individuals can gain efficiency by working expeditiously and improving quality when necessary, our results suggest the possibility that organizations could be better off just letting incentive schemes operate, rather than emphasizing quality in ways that could overly constrain productivity.

The data to be presented involve the first four trials in the learning of a discrimination among two non-overlapping patterns of eight lights each, selecred from an array of 24 lights. The procedural details have been described elsewhere (Schoeffler, 1954), and only those points germane to the present discussion are presented here. Discrimination learning.-Two hundred and thirty-four Ss were trained to discriminate between two patterns of lights (SI and SII). In order to accomplish this, a pattern was presented and S moved a lever right or left. After the response had been made, S was informed which response was correct on that trial. The correct response to stimulus SI will be called R~I and the correct response to SII will be called Rsll. The stimulus patterns were presented in a random sequence with the restriction that each block of 10 trials contained 5 SIs and 5 SIIs. The analysis of the data concerns the probability that an S making a correct response on a particular trial will make anochet correct response on the next trial. The data on each trial refer to the correctness or incorrectness of the response of each S. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Table 1 indicates the number of Ss who responded correctly and the number who responded incorrectly on Trial 1. The correct and the incorrect responders on the first trial are then each divided into 2 groups depending on whether they responded correctly or incorrectly on the second trial. In the same way these 4 groups are then further divided into 2 groups each, depending on the correctness of the response on the third trial, yielding 8 groups, and these 8 groups are subdivided to yield 16 groups on the fourth trial each having a different sequence of correct and incorrect responses. These data are entered in the column labeled Observed. The over-all proportion of correct responding on each trial is indicated at the bottom of the table. The concept of response strength is interpreted in the present context as follows. In this experiment, two (and only two) responses are available to S, vzz., RsI and RsI~. The proportion of a group producing a correct response when a given stimulus is presented, is interpreted as the probability for each individual that he has learned the proper response to a stimulus, and chis

Domestic dogs respond correctly to verbal cues issued by an artificial agent

The relation between latency and accuracy in the identification of visual stimuli. I. The effects of task difficulty

Brewe, Bruun, and Bearden first applied network analysis to understand patterns of incorrect conceptual physics reasoning in multiple-choice instruments introducing the Module Analysis for Multiple-Choice Responses (MAMCR) algorithm. Wells {\it et al.} proposed an extension to the algorithm which allowed the analysis of large datasets called Modified Module Analysis (MMA). This method analyzed the network structure of the correlation matrix of the responses to a multiple-choice instrument. Both MAMCR and MMA could only be applied to networks of incorrect responses. In this study, an extension of MMA is explored which allows the analysis of networks involving both correct and incorrect responses. The extension analyzes the network structure of the partial correlation matrix instead of the correlation matrix. The new algorithm, called MMA-P, was applied to the FCI and recovered much of the structure identified by MMA. The algorithm also identified sets of correct answers requiring similar physical reasoning reported in previous studies. Beyond groups of all correct and all incorrect responses, some groups of responses which mixed correct and incorrect responses were also identified. Some of these mixed response groups were produced when a correct response was selected for incorrect reasons; some of the groups helped to explain the gender unfairness previously reported for the FCI.

1. Earlier studies have shown that changes in the difficulty of sensory discrimination in a choice reaction time task result in a prolongation of the peak latency for several components of the long-latency event-related potential (ERP). With the use of the technique of response-locked averaging, we have previously shown that manipulation of the difficulty of sensory discrimination also affects response execution as assessed by the interval between the ERP and onset of the response. In the present paper we examine the hypothesis that changing the compatibility of the responses may also affect the difficulty of the discrimination, as well as the execution of the response, as assessed by the interval between stimulus onset and the ERP. Such an effect of response compatibility would provide further evidence for the close integration of motor and sensory processes in the performance of choice reaction time tasks. 2. We continuously recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) from the scalp and the electromyogram (EMG) from the responding muscles in both compatible and noncompatible visual choice reaction time tasks. In the compatible task subjects responded to a lateralized visual stimulus with the hand ipsilateral to the stimulus, whereas in the noncompatible task they responded with the contralateral hand. EEG and EMG responses were analyzed and averaged off-line, aligning the waveforms by either stimulus onset (stimulus-synchronized averages) or response onset (response-synchronized averages), and averaged separately for both correct and incorrect response outcomes. 3. Response times were significantly faster for frequent stimuli than rare stimuli and were significantly faster to rare stimuli in the compatible than the noncompatible condition. In responses to the frequent stimuli (where both hands were required to respond), the right hand was slightly but consistently faster than the left hand. The right hand also accounted for 83% of the errors made. 4. Stimulus-synchronized and response-synchronized ERPs to either frequent or rare stimuli had a similar appearance for correct responses in both the compatible and noncompatible conditions. The coupling of the response to the ERP for the rare stimuli, however, was different for the two conditions: the response occurred later relative to the ERP components in the response-synchronized average in the noncompatible condition compared with the compatible condition. By contrast, the coupling of the ERPs to the onset of the stimulus was the same in the two conditions. 5. Stimulus-synchronized averages for error responses in which the rare tone was mistaken for a frequent tone showed early sensory processing (as judged by the ERPs) that was similar to that of correct responses to the rare stimuli. After the apparent positive (P2) component of the cerebral response, however, the processing differed, with a superimposed broad negativity possibly reflecting awareness by the subject that a mistake had been made. By contrast, the response-synchronized averages for these error trials appeared like those to frequent stimuli, with the response being coupled to the P2 component of the cerebral response. 6. These results suggest that response compatibility affects response selection processes but does not alter sensory discrimination. However, despite the similarly tight coupling of the response to the ERP in both the compatible and noncompatible conditions, the response occurred later relative to the ERPs in the noncompatible condition. This suggests that different components of the ERP are responsible for triggering the response in different circumstances. Our observations on the error trials suggests that the decision to respond (on these trials) is based on the occurrence of cerebral events that are evoked by either rare or frequent stimuli, whereas this decision (on correct response trials) is based on cerebral events elicited only by the rare stimuli.

In healthy subjects, the Error Negativity (Ne) was initially reported on errors and on partial errors, only. Later on, application of the Laplacian transformation to EEG data unmasked a Ne-like wave (Nc) that shares a main generator with the Ne, suggesting that the Nc is just a small Ne. However, the reason why a small Ne would persist on correct responses remains unclear. Now, sometimes, subthreshold EMG activations in the muscles corresponding to correct responses (not strong enough to reach the response threshold) can precede full-blown correct responses. These “partially correct” activities seem to correspond to (force) execution errors, as they evoke a sizeable Ne. Within the frames of the Reward Value and Prediction Model or of the Predicted Response-Outcome model we propose that the action monitoring system evokes a Ne/Nc on correct responses because, even when a correct choice has been made, the accuracy of response (force) execution cannot be fully predicted. If this interpretation is correct, it can be assumed that, once these execution errors have been corrected, the correctness of the (full-blown) correcting response is highly predictable. Consequently, they should evoke a smaller Nc/Ne than “pure” correct responses. We show, that for the response thresholds set in the present experiment, the correcting response of the trials containing a partially correct activation evoke no identifiable Nc at all. Therefore it seems that there usually is an Error Negativity on correct trials because the correctness of response (force) execution cannot be fully predicted.

A common challenge people encounter in unfamiliar cities is finding their way using static maps. In the present study, we analyzed the relationship of a person’s mental rotation ability, college educational specialization (e.g., Architecture, Fine Arts, Psychology, and Business Studies), and sex with personal orientation when using “you-are-here” maps. We recruited a sample of 547 individuals, undergraduates who were tasked with orientation maps placed in different positions (e.g., 0º, 90º, and 180º). All three variables were related to the number of correct responses in orientation using these “you-are-here” maps. Participants with high mental rotation ability obtained significant higher correct orientations than those with low ability. Men obtained more correct orientations responses than women, and Architecture, Fine Arts, and Psychology undergraduates had more correct responses than Business Studies undergraduates.

Stimulus control was evaluated in 3 individuals with moderate to severe mental retardation by delayed identity matching-to-sample procedures that presented either one or two discrete forms as sample stimuli on each trial. On pretests, accuracy scores on one-sample trials were uniformly high. On two-sample trials, the correct stimulus (i.e., the one that subsequently appeared in the comparison array) varied unpredictably, and accuracy scores were substantially lower, suggesting that both sample stimuli did not exert stimulus control on every trial. Subjects were then given training sessions with the one-sample task and with a new set of four stimuli. For two of the stimuli, correct matching responses were followed by reinforcers on a variable-ratio schedule that led to a high reinforcer rate. For the other two stimuli, correct responses were followed by reinforcers on a variable-ratio schedule that led to a substantially lower reinforcer rate. Results on two-sample tests that followed showed that (a) on trials in which comparison arrays consisted of one high reinforcer-rate and one low reinforcer-rate stimulus, subjects most often selected the high-rate stimulus; and (b) on trials in which the comparison arrays were either two high reinforcer-rate stimuli or two low reinforcer-rate stimuli and the samples were one high reinforcer- and one low reinforcer-rate stimulus, accuracy was higher on trials with the high-rate comparisons. These results indicate that the frequency of stimulus control by high reinforcer-rate samples was greater than that by low reinforcer-rate samples. Following more training with the one-sample task and reversed reinforcement schedules for all stimuli, the differences in stimulus control frequencies on two-sample tests also reversed. These results demonstrate experimental control by reinforcement contingencies of which of two sample stimuli controlled selections in the two-sample task. The procedures and results may prove to be relevant for understanding restricted stimulus control and stimulus overselectivity.

Goal-directed action control comes into play when selecting between competing action alternatives. Response capture reflects the susceptibility of the motor system to incitement by task-irrelevant action impulses; the subsequent selective suppression of incorrect action impulses aims to counteract response capture and facilitate the desired response. The goal of this experiment was to clarify physiological mechanisms of response capture and suppression of action impulses during conflict at the level of the motor system. We administered single-pulse TMS at various intervals preceding speeded choice responses. The correct response side was designated by stimulus color, whereas stimulus location (which could match or conflict with response side) was to be ignored. TMS pulses triggered motor evoked potential and silent period, providing sensitive indices of cortico-spinal excitation and inhibition. Motor evoked potential data showed the typical progressive increase in cortico-spinal motor excitability leading up to the imminent (correct) response, which started earlier on nonconflict than on conflict trials. On conflict trials, the irrelevant stimulus location captured the incorrect response, as expressed by an early and transient rise in excitability. Silent period data showed that, already early during the response process, inhibition of the incorrect response was stronger for conflict than for nonconflict trials. Furthermore, inhibition decreased over time for nonconflict trials facilitating the imminent correct response while maintaining higher levels of inhibition on conflict trials. In conclusion, dynamic patterns of cortico-spinal excitability provide unique physiological evidence for the expression and selective suppression of action impulses captured by competing action alternatives.

The experiment reported here was aimed at determining whether the level of brain activity can be related to performance in trained subjects. Two tasks were compared: a temporal and a linguistic task. An array of four letters appeared on a screen. In the temporal task, subjects had to decide whether the letters remained on the screen for a short or a long duration as learned in a practice phase. In the linguistic task, they had to determine whether the four letters could form a word or not (anagram task). These tasks allowed us to compare the level of brain activity obtained in correct and incorrect responses. The current density measures recorded over prefrontal areas showed a relationship between the performance and the level of activity in the temporal task only. The level of activity obtained with correct responses was lower than that obtained with incorrect responses. This suggests that a good temporal performance could be the result of an efficacious, but economic, information-processing mechanism in the brain. In addition, the absence of this relation in the anagram task results in the question of whether this relation is specific to the processing of sensory information only.

It had previously been shown that influences from two cortical areas, the anterior ectosylvian sulcus (AES) and the rostral lateral suprasylvian sulcus (rLS), play critical roles in rendering superior colliculus (SC) neurons capable of synthesizing their cross-modal inputs. The present studies examined the consequences of selectively eliminating these cortical influences on SC-mediated orientation responses to cross-modal stimuli. Cats were trained to orient to a low-intensity modality-specific cue (visual) in the presence or absence of a neutral cue from another modality (auditory). The visual target could appear at various locations within 45 degrees of the midline, and the stimulus effectiveness was varied to yield an average of correct orientation responses of approximately 45%. Response enhancement and depression were observed when the auditory cue was coupled with the target stimulus: A substantially enhanced probability in correct responses was evident when the cross-modal stimuli were spatially coincident, and a substantially decreased response probability was obtained when the stimuli were spatially disparate. Cryogenic blockade of either AES or rLS disrupted these behavioral effects, thereby eliminating the enhanced performance in response to spatially coincident cross-modal cues and degrading the depressed performance in response to spatially disparate cross-modal cues. These disruptive effects on targets contralateral to the deactivated cortex were restricted to multisensory interactive processes. Orientation to modality-specific targets was unchanged. Furthermore, the pattern of orientation errors was unaffected by cortical deactivation. These data bear striking similarities to the effects of AES and rLS deactivation on multisensory integration at the level of individual SC neurons. Presumably, eliminating the critical influences from AES or rLS cortex disrupts SC multisensory synthesis that, in turn, disables SC-mediated multisensory orientation behaviors.

The groupings of correct and of incorrect responses in psychophysical experiments have been attributed to changes in sensitivity. This paper suggests another way of accounting for such data. It is hypothesized that a given trial can offer cues to the nature of the stimulus. The adequacy of the cue is presumably determined by the effective stimulus intensity. Stronger stimuli should provide on the average better cues than weaker stimuli. Also trials on which correct responses are made should offer better cues than do incorrect trials. Thus correct responses should follow correct responses. Data were collected in a two-alternative forced-choice detection experiment in which a strong and a weak signal were presented at random. The proportion of correct responses was higher following correct responses to the strong signal than following correct responses to the weak signal. This is consistent with the notion that the adequancy of the cues on preceding trials influences the probability of a correct response. The opposite results would be expected if only fluctuations in sensitivity are involved since a correct response to a weak signal implies a greater average sensitivity than a correct response to a strong signal. [Supported by U. S. Air Force Contract No. AF19(604)-1728, monitored by Operational Applications Laboratory, Cambridge Research Center, and by U. S. Army, (SC) U. S. Air Force (OSR, ARDC), and U. S. Navy (Office of Naval Research)].