Tax Evasion, Information Reporting, and the Regressive Bias Prediction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Boserup, Simon Halphen; Pinje, Jori Veng

2013-01-01

evasion and audit probabilities once we account for information reporting in the tax compliance game. When conditioning on information reporting, we find that both reduced-form evidence and simulations exhibit the predicted regressive bias. However, in the overall economy, this bias is negated by the tax......Models of rational tax evasion and optimal enforcement invariably predict a regressive bias in the effective tax system, which reduces redistribution in the economy. Using Danish administrative data, we show that a calibrated structural model of this type replicates moments and correlations of tax...

Information Needs/Relevance

OpenAIRE

Wildemuth, Barbara M.

2009-01-01

A user's interaction with a DL is often initiated as the result of the user experiencing an information need of some kind. Aspects of that experience and how it might affect the user's interactions with the DL are discussed in this module. In addition, users continuously make decisions about and evaluations of the materials retrieved from a DL, relative to their information needs. Relevance judgments, and their relationship to the user's information needs, are discussed in this module. Draft

Aligning Spinoza with Descartes: An informed Cartesian account of the truth bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Street, Chris N H; Kingstone, Alan

2017-08-01

There is a bias towards believing information is true rather than false. The Spinozan account claims there is an early, automatic bias towards believing. Only afterwards can people engage in an effortful re-evaluation and disbelieve the information. Supporting this account, there is a greater bias towards believing information is true when under cognitive load. However, developing on the Adaptive Lie Detector (ALIED) theory, the informed Cartesian can equally explain this data. The account claims the bias under load is not evidence of automatic belief; rather, people are undecided, but if forced to guess they can rely on context information to make an informed judgement. The account predicts, and we found, that if people can explicitly indicate their uncertainty, there should be no bias towards believing because they are no longer required to guess. Thus, we conclude that belief formation can be better explained by an informed Cartesian account - an attempt to make an informed judgment under uncertainty. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Is Information Still Relevant?

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Lia

2013-01-01

Introduction: The term "information" in information science does not share the characteristics of those of a nomenclature: it does not bear a generally accepted definition and it does not serve as the bases and assumptions for research studies. As the data deluge has arrived, is the concept of information still relevant for information…

Attentional bias toward suicide-relevant information in suicide attempters: A cross-sectional study and a meta-analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Richard-Devantoy, Stéphane; Ding, Yang; Turecki, Gustavo; Jollant, Fabrice

2016-05-15

Previous studies using a modified Stroop test suggested that suicide attempters, in contrast to depressed patients with no suicidal history, display a particular attentional bias toward suicide-related cues. However, negative results have also been reported. In the present study, we collected new data and pooled them as part of a meta-analysis intended to shed further light on this question. We conducted 1) a cross-sectional study comparing performance on the modified Stroop task for suicide-related, positively-valenced and negatively-valenced words in 33 suicide attempters and 46 patient controls with a history of mood disorders; 2) a systematic review and a meta-analysis of studies comparing performance on the modified Stroop task among patients with vs. without a history of suicidal acts in mood disorders. The cross-sectional study showed no significant difference in interference scores for any type of words between suicide attempters and patient controls. A meta-analysis of four studies, including 233 suicide attempters and 768 patient controls, showed a significant but small attentional bias toward suicide-related words (Hedges'g=0.22, 95%CI [0.06-0.38], Z=2.73, p=0.006), but not negatively-valenced words (Hedges'g=0.06, 95%CI [-0.09-0.22], Z=0.77, p=0.4) in suicide attempters compared to patient controls. Positively-valenced words and healthy controls could not be assessed in the meta-analysis. Our data support a selective information-processing bias among suicide attempters. Indirect evidence suggests that this effect would be state-related and may be a cognitive component of the suicidal crisis. However, we could not conclude about the clinical utility of this Stroop version at this stage. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Relevance: An Interdisciplinary and Information Science Perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Howard Greisdorf

2000-01-01

Full Text Available Although relevance has represented a key concept in the field of information science for evaluating information retrieval effectiveness, the broader context established by interdisciplinary frameworks could provide greater depth and breadth to on-going research in the field. This work provides an overview of the nature of relevance in the field of information science with a cursory view of how cross-disciplinary approaches to relevance could represent avenues for further investigation into the evaluative characteristics of relevance as a means for enhanced understanding of human information behavior.

Information-Pooling Bias in Collaborative Security Incident Correlation Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Rajivan, Prashanth; Cooke, Nancy J

2018-03-01

Incident correlation is a vital step in the cybersecurity threat detection process. This article presents research on the effect of group-level information-pooling bias on collaborative incident correlation analysis in a synthetic task environment. Past research has shown that uneven information distribution biases people to share information that is known to most team members and prevents them from sharing any unique information available with them. The effect of such biases on security team collaborations are largely unknown. Thirty 3-person teams performed two threat detection missions involving information sharing and correlating security incidents. Incidents were predistributed to each person in the team based on the hidden profile paradigm. Participant teams, randomly assigned to three experimental groups, used different collaboration aids during Mission 2. Communication analysis revealed that participant teams were 3 times more likely to discuss security incidents commonly known to the majority. Unaided team collaboration was inefficient in finding associations between security incidents uniquely available to each member of the team. Visualizations that augment perceptual processing and recognition memory were found to mitigate the bias. The data suggest that (a) security analyst teams, when conducting collaborative correlation analysis, could be inefficient in pooling unique information from their peers; (b) employing off-the-shelf collaboration tools in cybersecurity defense environments is inadequate; and (c) collaborative security visualization tools developed considering the human cognitive limitations of security analysts is necessary. Potential applications of this research include development of team training procedures and collaboration tool development for security analysts.

A Compositional Relevance Model for Adaptive Information Retrieval

Science.gov (United States)

Mathe, Nathalie; Chen, James; Lu, Henry, Jr. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

There is a growing need for rapid and effective access to information in large electronic documentation systems. Access can be facilitated if information relevant in the current problem solving context can be automatically supplied to the user. This includes information relevant to particular user profiles, tasks being performed, and problems being solved. However most of this knowledge on contextual relevance is not found within the contents of documents, and current hypermedia tools do not provide any easy mechanism to let users add this knowledge to their documents. We propose a compositional relevance network to automatically acquire the context in which previous information was found relevant. The model records information on the relevance of references based on user feedback for specific queries and contexts. It also generalizes such information to derive relevant references for similar queries and contexts. This model lets users filter information by context of relevance, build personalized views of documents over time, and share their views with other users. It also applies to any type of multimedia information. Compared to other approaches, it is less costly and doesn't require any a priori statistical computation, nor an extended training period. It is currently being implemented into the Computer Integrated Documentation system which enables integration of various technical documents in a hypertext framework.

Attention bias to emotional information in children as a function of maternal emotional disorders and maternal attention biases.

Science.gov (United States)

Waters, Allison M; Forrest, Kylee; Peters, Rosie-Mae; Bradley, Brendan P; Mogg, Karin

2015-03-01

Children of parents with emotional disorders have an increased risk for developing anxiety and depressive disorders. Yet the mechanisms that contribute to this increased risk are poorly understood. The present study aimed to examine attention biases in children as a function of maternal lifetime emotional disorders and maternal attention biases. There were 134 participants, including 38 high-risk children, and their mothers who had lifetime emotional disorders; and 29 low-risk children, and their mothers without lifetime emotional disorders. Mothers and children completed a visual probe task with emotional face pairs presented for 500 ms. Attention bias in children did not significantly differ solely as a function of whether or not their mothers had lifetime emotional disorders. However, attention bias in high-risk children was significantly related to their mothers' attention bias. Specifically, children of mothers with lifetime emotional disorders showed a greater negative attention bias if their mothers had a greater tendency to direct attention away from positive information. This study was cross-sectional in nature, and therefore unable to assess long-term predictive effects. Also, just one exposure duration of 500 ms was utilised. Attention bias for negative information is greater in offspring of mothers who have lifetime emotional disorders and a reduced positive bias, which could be a risk marker for the development of emotional disorders in children.

46 CFR 560.5 - Receipt of relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 46 Shipping 9 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Receipt of relevant information. 560.5 Section 560.5... FOREIGN PORTS § 560.5 Receipt of relevant information. (a) In making its decision on matters arising under... submissions should be supported by affidavits of fact and memorandum of law. Relevant information may include...

Has Financial Statement Information become Less Relevant?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thinggaard, Frank; Damkier, Jesper

This paper presents insights into the question of whether accounting information based on the EU’s Accounting Directives has become less value-relevant to investors over time. The study is based on a research design first used by Francis and Schipper (1999), where value-relevance is measured......? The sample is based on non-financial companies listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange in the period 1984-2002. Our analyses show that all the applied accounting measures are value-relevant as investment strategies based on the information earn positive market-adjusted returns in our sample period....... The results provide some indication of a decline in the value-relevance of earnings information in the 1984-2001 period, and mixed, but not statistically reliable, evidence for accounting measures where book value information and asset values are also extracted from financial statements. The results seem...

Rational Learning and Information Sampling: On the "Naivety" Assumption in Sampling Explanations of Judgment Biases

Science.gov (United States)

Le Mens, Gael; Denrell, Jerker

2011-01-01

Recent research has argued that several well-known judgment biases may be due to biases in the available information sample rather than to biased information processing. Most of these sample-based explanations assume that decision makers are "naive": They are not aware of the biases in the available information sample and do not correct for them.…

Signal Enhancement as Minimization of Relevant Information Loss

OpenAIRE

Geiger, Bernhard C.; Kubin, Gernot

2012-01-01

We introduce the notion of relevant information loss for the purpose of casting the signal enhancement problem in information-theoretic terms. We show that many algorithms from machine learning can be reformulated using relevant information loss, which allows their application to the aforementioned problem. As a particular example we analyze principle component analysis for dimensionality reduction, discuss its optimality, and show that the relevant information loss can indeed vanish if the r...

Rational learning and information sampling: on the "naivety" assumption in sampling explanations of judgment biases.

Science.gov (United States)

Le Mens, Gaël; Denrell, Jerker

2011-04-01

Recent research has argued that several well-known judgment biases may be due to biases in the available information sample rather than to biased information processing. Most of these sample-based explanations assume that decision makers are "naive": They are not aware of the biases in the available information sample and do not correct for them. Here, we show that this "naivety" assumption is not necessary. Systematically biased judgments can emerge even when decision makers process available information perfectly and are also aware of how the information sample has been generated. Specifically, we develop a rational analysis of Denrell's (2005) experience sampling model, and we prove that when information search is interested rather than disinterested, even rational information sampling and processing can give rise to systematic patterns of errors in judgments. Our results illustrate that a tendency to favor alternatives for which outcome information is more accessible can be consistent with rational behavior. The model offers a rational explanation for behaviors that had previously been attributed to cognitive and motivational biases, such as the in-group bias or the tendency to prefer popular alternatives. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

Estimation of time-delayed mutual information and bias for irregularly and sparsely sampled time-series

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Albers, D.J.; Hripcsak, George

2012-01-01

Highlights: ► Time-delayed mutual information for irregularly sampled time-series. ► Estimation bias for the time-delayed mutual information calculation. ► Fast, simple, PDF estimator independent, time-delayed mutual information bias estimate. ► Quantification of data-set-size limits of the time-delayed mutual calculation. - Abstract: A method to estimate the time-dependent correlation via an empirical bias estimate of the time-delayed mutual information for a time-series is proposed. In particular, the bias of the time-delayed mutual information is shown to often be equivalent to the mutual information between two distributions of points from the same system separated by infinite time. Thus intuitively, estimation of the bias is reduced to estimation of the mutual information between distributions of data points separated by large time intervals. The proposed bias estimation techniques are shown to work for Lorenz equations data and glucose time series data of three patients from the Columbia University Medical Center database.

Natural brain-information interfaces: Recommending information by relevance inferred from human brain signals

Science.gov (United States)

Eugster, Manuel J. A.; Ruotsalo, Tuukka; Spapé, Michiel M.; Barral, Oswald; Ravaja, Niklas; Jacucci, Giulio; Kaski, Samuel

2016-01-01

Finding relevant information from large document collections such as the World Wide Web is a common task in our daily lives. Estimation of a user’s interest or search intention is necessary to recommend and retrieve relevant information from these collections. We introduce a brain-information interface used for recommending information by relevance inferred directly from brain signals. In experiments, participants were asked to read Wikipedia documents about a selection of topics while their EEG was recorded. Based on the prediction of word relevance, the individual’s search intent was modeled and successfully used for retrieving new relevant documents from the whole English Wikipedia corpus. The results show that the users’ interests toward digital content can be modeled from the brain signals evoked by reading. The introduced brain-relevance paradigm enables the recommendation of information without any explicit user interaction and may be applied across diverse information-intensive applications. PMID:27929077

Noise, Information and the Favorite-Longshot Bias in Parimutuel Predictions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ottaviani, Marco; Sørensen, Peter Norman

2010-01-01

According to the favorite-longshot bias, the expected return on an outcome tends to increase in the fraction of bets laid on that outcome. We derive testable implications for the direction and extent of the bias depending on the ratio of private information to noise present in the market. We link...

49 CFR 556.9 - Public inspection of relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 6 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Public inspection of relevant information. 556.9... NONCOMPLIANCE § 556.9 Public inspection of relevant information. Information relevant to a petition under this... Administration, 400 Seventh Street, SW., Washington, DC 20590. Copies of available information may be obtained in...

Software Helps Retrieve Information Relevant to the User

Science.gov (United States)

Mathe, Natalie; Chen, James

2003-01-01

The Adaptive Indexing and Retrieval Agent (ARNIE) is a code library, designed to be used by an application program, that assists human users in retrieving desired information in a hypertext setting. Using ARNIE, the program implements a computational model for interactively learning what information each human user considers relevant in context. The model, called a "relevance network," incrementally adapts retrieved information to users individual profiles on the basis of feedback from the users regarding specific queries. The model also generalizes such knowledge for subsequent derivation of relevant references for similar queries and profiles, thereby, assisting users in filtering information by relevance. ARNIE thus enables users to categorize and share information of interest in various contexts. ARNIE encodes the relevance and structure of information in a neural network dynamically configured with a genetic algorithm. ARNIE maintains an internal database, wherein it saves associations, and from which it returns associated items in response to a query. A C++ compiler for a platform on which ARNIE will be utilized is necessary for creating the ARNIE library but is not necessary for the execution of the software.

Two sides of the same coin: Information processing style and reverse biases

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shahar Ayal

2011-06-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the effect of information processing styles (indexed by the Rational-Experiential Inventory of Pacini and Epstein, 1999 on adherence to bias judgments, and particularly to reverse biases; i.e., when two choice questions that comprise identical normative components are set in different situations and yield seemingly opposite behavioral biases. We found consistent evidence for a negative correlation between rational score and adherence to reverse biases, as well as overall biases, for all three pairs of reverse biases tested. Further, this effect of rational thinking was more pronounced for high experiential individuals, in that high-rational and high-experiential participants committed fewer biases than all other participants. These results lend weight to our claim that low-rational individuals, who are more sensitive to the context, are more prone to utilize some attribute of the provided information when it is uncalled for, but at the same time tend to ignore it or give it too little weight when it is a crucial factor in a normative decision process.

Unclaimed Prize Information Biases Perceptions of Winning in Scratch Card Gambling.

Science.gov (United States)

Walker, Alexander C; Stange, Madison; Fugelsang, Jonathan A; Koehler, Derek J; Dixon, Mike J

2018-03-29

Unclaimed prize information (i.e., the number of prizes still available to be won) is information commonly provided to scratch card gamblers. However, unless the number of tickets remaining to be purchased is also provided, this information is uninformative. Despite its lack of utility in assisting gamblers in choosing the most favourable type of scratch card to play, we hypothesized that unclaimed prize information would bias participants' judgments within a scratch card gambling context. In Experiment 1 (N = 201), we showed that participants are influenced by this information such that they felt more likely to win, were more excited to play, and preferred to hypothetically purchase more of the scratch card with the greatest number of unclaimed prizes. In Experiment 2 (N = 201), we attempted to ameliorate this bias by providing participants with the number of tickets remaining to be purchased and equating the payback percentages of all three games. The bias, although attenuated, still persisted in these conditions. Finally, in Experiment 3 (N = 200), we manipulated the hypothetical scratch cards such that games with the highest number of unclaimed prizes were the least favourable, and vice versa. As in Experiment 2, participants still favoured cards with greater numbers of unclaimed prizes. Possible mechanisms underlying this bias are discussed. In conclusion, across three experiments, we demonstrate that salient unclaimed prize information is capable of exerting a strong effect over judgments related to scratch card games.

The Development of Relevance in Information Retrieval

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mu-hsuan Huang

1997-12-01

Full Text Available This article attempts to investigate the notion of relevance in information retrieval. It discusses various definitions for relevance from historical viewpoints and the characteristics of relevance judgments. Also, it introduces empirical results of important related researches.[Article content in Chinese

Two sides of the same coin: Information processing style and reverse biases

OpenAIRE

Shahar Ayal; Guy Hochman; Dan Zakay

2011-01-01

This paper examines the effect of information processing styles (indexed by the Rational-Experiential Inventory of Pacini and Epstein, 1999) on adherence to bias judgments, and particularly to reverse biases; i.e., when two choice questions that comprise identical normative components are set in different situations and yield seemingly opposite behavioral biases. We found consistent evidence for a negative correlation between rational score and adherence to reverse biases, as well as overall ...

Evaluating automatic attentional capture by self-relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

Ocampo, Brenda; Kahan, Todd A

2016-01-01

Our everyday decisions and memories are inadvertently influenced by self-relevant information. For example, we are faster and more accurate at making perceptual judgments about stimuli associated with ourselves, such as our own face or name, as compared with familiar non-self-relevant stimuli. Humphreys and Sui propose a "self-attention network" to account for these effects, wherein self-relevant stimuli automatically capture our attention and subsequently enhance the perceptual processing of self-relevant information. We propose that the masked priming paradigm and continuous flash suppression represent two ways to experimentally examine these controversial claims.

Cognitive Dissonance, Confirmatory Bias and Inadequate Information Processing: Evidence from Experimental Auctions

OpenAIRE

Cao, Ying; Just, David R.; Wansink, Brian

2014-01-01

Using psychological terms such as cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias, this study reveals how individual consumers inadequately process (food safety) information, pay limited attention to signals, and make purchase decisions that are bias towards their initial choices. While it is expected that reading extra information about potential risk associated with the food decreases consumers' willingness to pay (WTP), the magnitude of the impact varies across individuals. In general, consumer...

Evolutionary relevance facilitates visual information processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Jackson, Russell E; Calvillo, Dusti P

2013-11-03

Visual search of the environment is a fundamental human behavior that perceptual load affects powerfully. Previously investigated means for overcoming the inhibitions of high perceptual load, however, generalize poorly to real-world human behavior. We hypothesized that humans would process evolutionarily relevant stimuli more efficiently than evolutionarily novel stimuli, and evolutionary relevance would mitigate the repercussions of high perceptual load during visual search. Animacy is a significant component to evolutionary relevance of visual stimuli because perceiving animate entities is time-sensitive in ways that pose significant evolutionary consequences. Participants completing a visual search task located evolutionarily relevant and animate objects fastest and with the least impact of high perceptual load. Evolutionarily novel and inanimate objects were located slowest and with the highest impact of perceptual load. Evolutionary relevance may importantly affect everyday visual information processing.

Self-serving episodic memory biases: Findings in the repressive coping style

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lauren L Alston

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Individuals with a repressive coping style self-report low anxiety, but show high defensiveness and high physiological arousal. Repressors have impoverished negative autobiographical memories and are better able to suppress memory for negatively valenced and self-related laboratory materials when asked to do so. Research on spontaneous forgetting of negative information in repressors suggests that they show significant forgetting of negative items, but only after a delay. Unknown is whether increased forgetting after a delay is potentiated by self-relevance. Here we asked in three experiments whether repressors would show reduced episodic memories for negative self-relevant information when tested immediately versus after a 2-day delay. We predicted that repressors would show an exaggerated reduction in recall of negative self-relevant memories after a delay, at least without anew priming of this information. We tested a total of 300 participants (experiment 1: N= 95, experiment 2: N=106; experiment 3: N=99 of four types: repressors, high anxious, low anxious, and defensive high anxious individuals. Participants judged positive and negative adjectives with regard to self-descriptiveness, serving as incidental encoding. Surprise free recall was conducted immediately after encoding (experiment 1, after a 2-day delay (experiment 2 or after a 2-day delay following priming via a lexical decision task (experiment 3. In experiment 1, repressors showed a bias against negative self-relevant words in immediate recall. Such a bias was neither observed in delayed recall without priming nor in delayed recall with priming. Thus, counter to our hypothesis, negative information that was initially judged as self-relevant was not forgotten at a higher rate after a delay in repressors. We suggest that repressors may reinterpret initially negative information in a more positive light after a delay, and therefore no longer experience the need to bias their recall

A G Protein-biased Designer G Protein-coupled Receptor Useful for Studying the Physiological Relevance of Gq/11-dependent Signaling Pathways.

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Jianxin; Stern, Matthew; Gimenez, Luis E; Wanka, Lizzy; Zhu, Lu; Rossi, Mario; Meister, Jaroslawna; Inoue, Asuka; Beck-Sickinger, Annette G; Gurevich, Vsevolod V; Wess, Jürgen

2016-04-08

Designerreceptorsexclusivelyactivated by adesignerdrug (DREADDs) are clozapine-N-oxide-sensitive designer G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that have emerged as powerful novel chemogenetic tools to study the physiological relevance of GPCR signaling pathways in specific cell types or tissues. Like endogenous GPCRs, clozapine-N-oxide-activated DREADDs do not only activate heterotrimeric G proteins but can also trigger β-arrestin-dependent (G protein-independent) signaling. To dissect the relative physiological relevance of G protein-mediatedversusβ-arrestin-mediated signaling in different cell types or physiological processes, the availability of G protein- and β-arrestin-biased DREADDs would be highly desirable. In this study, we report the development of a mutationally modified version of a non-biased DREADD derived from the M3muscarinic receptor that can activate Gq/11with high efficacy but lacks the ability to interact with β-arrestins. We also demonstrate that this novel DREADD is activein vivoand that cell type-selective expression of this new designer receptor can provide novel insights into the physiological roles of G protein (Gq/11)-dependentversusβ-arrestin-dependent signaling in hepatocytes. Thus, this novel Gq/11-biased DREADD represents a powerful new tool to study the physiological relevance of Gq/11-dependent signaling in distinct tissues and cell types, in the absence of β-arrestin-mediated cellular effects. Such studies should guide the development of novel classes of functionally biased ligands that show high efficacy in various pathophysiological conditions but display a reduced incidence of side effects. © 2016 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

Attentional bias for emotional information in older adults: the role of emotion and future time perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Demeyer, Ineke; De Raedt, Rudi

2013-01-01

Research suggests that older adults display a positivity bias at the level of information processing. However, because studies investigating attentional bias for emotional information in older adults have produced mixed findings, research identifying inter-individual differences that may explain these inconsistent results is necessary. Therefore, we investigated whether mood, symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety and future time perspective are related to attentional bias in older adults. Thirty-seven healthy older adults and 25 healthy middle-aged adults completed questionnaires to assess mood, symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety and future time perspective. Attentional bias towards happy, sad and neutral information was measured using a modified exogenous cueing paradigm with long cue presentations, to measure maintained attention versus avoidance of emotional stimuli. Older adults showed attentional avoidance for all emotional faces, whereas no attentional biases were found in the middle-aged group. Moreover, in the older adult group, avoidance for negative information was related to anxiety. Future time perspective was unrelated to attentional bias. These findings suggest that anxiety may lead to inter-individual differences in attentional bias in older adults, and that avoidance from negative information may be an emotion regulation strategy.

Attentional bias towards health-threat information in chronic fatigue syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Hou, Ruihua; Moss-Morris, Rona; Bradley, Brendan P; Peveler, Robert; Mogg, Karin

2008-07-01

To investigate whether individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) show an attentional bias towards health-threat information. Attentional bias (AB) was assessed in individuals with CFS and healthy controls using a visual probe task which presented health-threat and neutral words and pictures for 500 ms. Self-report questionnaires were used to assess CFS symptoms, depression, anxiety, and social desirability. Compared to a healthy control group, the CFS group showed an enhanced AB towards heath-threat stimuli relative to neutral stimuli. The AB was not influenced by the type of stimulus (pictures vs. words). The finding of an AB towards health-threat information in individuals with CFS is supportive of models of CFS which underlie cognitive behavior therapy.

Dissociation in decision bias mechanism between probabilistic information and previous decision

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yoshiyuki eKaneko

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Target detection performance is known to be influenced by events in the previous trials. It has not been clear, however, whether this bias effect is due to the previous sensory stimulus, motor response, or decision. Also it remains open whether or not the previous trial effect emerges via the same mechanism as the effect of knowledge about the target probability. In the present study, we asked normal human subjects to make a decision about the presence or absence of a visual target. We presented a pre-cue indicating the target probability before the stimulus, and also a decision-response mapping cue after the stimulus so as to tease apart the effect of decision from that of motor response. We found that the target detection performance was significantly affected by the probability cue in the current trial and also by the decision in the previous trial. While the information about the target probability modulated the decision criteria, the previous decision modulated the sensitivity to target-relevant sensory signals (d-prime. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we also found that activation in the left intraparietal sulcus was decreased when the probability cue indicated a high probability of the target. By contrast, activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus was increased when the subjects made a target-present decision in the previous trial, but this change was observed specifically when the target was present in the current trial. Activation in these regions was associated with individual-difference in the decision computation parameters. We argue that the previous decision biases the target detection performance by modulating the processing of target-selective information, and this mechanism is distinct from modulation of decision criteria due to expectation of a target.

Dissociation in decision bias mechanism between probabilistic information and previous decision

Science.gov (United States)

Kaneko, Yoshiyuki; Sakai, Katsuyuki

2015-01-01

Target detection performance is known to be influenced by events in the previous trials. It has not been clear, however, whether this bias effect is due to the previous sensory stimulus, motor response, or decision. Also it remains open whether or not the previous trial effect emerges via the same mechanism as the effect of knowledge about the target probability. In the present study, we asked normal human subjects to make a decision about the presence or absence of a visual target. We presented a pre-cue indicating the target probability before the stimulus, and also a decision-response mapping cue after the stimulus so as to tease apart the effect of decision from that of motor response. We found that the target detection performance was significantly affected by the probability cue in the current trial and also by the decision in the previous trial. While the information about the target probability modulated the decision criteria, the previous decision modulated the sensitivity to target-relevant sensory signals (d-prime). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we also found that activation in the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) was decreased when the probability cue indicated a high probability of the target. By contrast, activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was increased when the subjects made a target-present decision in the previous trial, but this change was observed specifically when the target was present in the current trial. Activation in these regions was associated with individual-difference in the decision computation parameters. We argue that the previous decision biases the target detection performance by modulating the processing of target-selective information, and this mechanism is distinct from modulation of decision criteria due to expectation of a target. PMID:25999844

Evolutionary Relevance Facilitates Visual Information Processing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Russell E. Jackson

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Visual search of the environment is a fundamental human behavior that perceptual load affects powerfully. Previously investigated means for overcoming the inhibitions of high perceptual load, however, generalize poorly to real-world human behavior. We hypothesized that humans would process evolutionarily relevant stimuli more efficiently than evolutionarily novel stimuli, and evolutionary relevance would mitigate the repercussions of high perceptual load during visual search. Animacy is a significant component to evolutionary relevance of visual stimuli because perceiving animate entities is time-sensitive in ways that pose significant evolutionary consequences. Participants completing a visual search task located evolutionarily relevant and animate objects fastest and with the least impact of high perceptual load. Evolutionarily novel and inanimate objects were located slowest and with the highest impact of perceptual load. Evolutionary relevance may importantly affect everyday visual information processing.

Enhancing Group Decision Making: An Exercise to Reduce Shared Information Bias

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Diane F.

2010-01-01

Research on shared information bias has shown that group members involved in a decision-making task tend to undervalue information that a single member shares with the group, especially when that information conflicts with their prior conclusions. The group activity in this article is intended to heighten awareness of this shared information bias…

Confirmation bias in web-based search: a randomized online study on the effects of expert information and social tags on information search and evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Schweiger, Stefan; Oeberst, Aileen; Cress, Ulrike

2014-03-26

The public typically believes psychotherapy to be more effective than pharmacotherapy for depression treatments. This is not consistent with current scientific evidence, which shows that both types of treatment are about equally effective. The study investigates whether this bias towards psychotherapy guides online information search and whether the bias can be reduced by explicitly providing expert information (in a blog entry) and by providing tag clouds that implicitly reveal experts' evaluations. A total of 174 participants completed a fully automated Web-based study after we invited them via mailing lists. First, participants read two blog posts by experts that either challenged or supported the bias towards psychotherapy. Subsequently, participants searched for information about depression treatment in an online environment that provided more experts' blog posts about the effectiveness of treatments based on alleged research findings. These blogs were organized in a tag cloud; both psychotherapy tags and pharmacotherapy tags were popular. We measured tag and blog post selection, efficacy ratings of the presented treatments, and participants' treatment recommendation after information search. Participants demonstrated a clear bias towards psychotherapy (mean 4.53, SD 1.99) compared to pharmacotherapy (mean 2.73, SD 2.41; t173=7.67, Pinformation search and evaluation. This bias was significantly reduced, however, when participants were exposed to tag clouds with challenging popular tags. Participants facing popular tags challenging their bias (n=61) showed significantly less biased tag selection (F2,168=10.61, Pinformation as presented in blog posts, compared to supporting expert information (n=81), decreased the bias in information search with regard to blog post selection (F1,168=4.32, P=.04, partial eta squared=0.025). No significant effects were found for treatment recommendation (Ps>.33). We conclude that the psychotherapy bias is most effectively

Electrocortical measures of information processing biases in social anxiety disorder: A review.

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Harrewijn, Anita; Schmidt, Louis A; Westenberg, P Michiel; Tang, Alva; van der Molen, Melle J W

2017-10-01

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by information processing biases, however, their underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. The goal of this review was to give a comprehensive overview of the most frequently studied EEG spectral and event-related potential (ERP) measures in social anxiety during rest, anticipation, stimulus processing, and recovery. A Web of Science search yielded 35 studies reporting on electrocortical measures in individuals with social anxiety or related constructs. Social anxiety was related to increased delta-beta cross-frequency correlation during anticipation and recovery, and information processing biases during early processing of faces (P1) and errors (error-related negativity). These electrocortical measures are discussed in relation to the persistent cycle of information processing biases maintaining SAD. Future research should further investigate the mechanisms of this persistent cycle and study the utility of electrocortical measures in early detection, prevention, treatment and endophenotype research. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Types of Lexicographical Information Needs and their Relevance for Information Science

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Bergenholtz, Henning

2017-09-01

Full Text Available In some situations, you need information in order to solve a problem that has occurred. In information science, user needs are often described through very specific examples rather than through a classification of situation types in which information needs occur. Furthermore, information science often describes general human needs, typically with a reference to Maslow's classification of needs (1954, instead of actual information needs. Lexicography has also focused on information needs, but has developed a more abstract classification of types of information needs, though (until more recent research into lexicographical functions with a particular interest in linguistic uncertainties and the lack of knowledge and skills in relation to one or several languages. In this article, we suggest a classification of information needs in which a tripartition has been made according to the different types of situations: communicative needs, cognitive needs, and operative needs. This is a classification that is relevant and useful in general in our modern information society and therefore also relevant for information science, including lexicography.

Self-esteem modulates the time course of self-positivity bias in explicit self-evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Hua; Guan, Lili; Qi, Mingming; Yang, Juan

2013-01-01

Researchers have suggested that certain individuals may show a self-positivity bias, rating themselves as possessing more positive personality traits than others. Previous evidence has shown that people evaluate self-related information in such a way as to maintain or enhance self-esteem. However, whether self-esteem would modulate the time course of self-positivity bias in explicit self-evaluation has never been explored. In the present study, 21 participants completed the Rosenberg self-esteem scale and then completed a task where they were instructed to indicate to what extent positive/negative traits described themselves. Behavioral data showed that participants endorsed positive traits as higher in self-relevance compared to the negative traits. Further, participants' self-esteem levels were positively correlated with their self-positivity bias. Electrophysiological data revealed smaller N1 amplitude and larger late positive component (LPC) amplitude to stimuli consistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-high self-relevant stimuli) when compared to stimuli that were inconsistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-low self-relevant stimuli). Moreover, only in individuals with low self-esteem, the latency of P2 was more pronounced in processing stimuli that were consistent with the self-positivity bias (negative-low self-relevant stimuli) than to stimuli that were inconsistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-low self-relevant stimuli). Overall, the present study provides additional support for the view that low self-esteem as a personality variable would affect the early attentional processing.

Testing the idea of privileged awareness of self-relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

Stein, Timo; Siebold, Alisha; van Zoest, Wieske

2016-03-01

Self-relevant information is prioritized in processing. Some have suggested the mechanism driving this advantage is akin to the automatic prioritization of physically salient stimuli in information processing (Humphreys & Sui, 2015). Here we investigate whether self-relevant information is prioritized for awareness under continuous flash suppression (CFS), as has been found for physical salience. Gabor patches with different orientations were first associated with the labels You or Other. Participants were more accurate in matching the self-relevant association, replicating previous findings of self-prioritization. However, breakthrough into awareness from CFS did not differ between self- and other-associated Gabors. These findings demonstrate that self-relevant information has no privileged access to awareness. Rather than modulating the initial visual processes that precede and lead to awareness, the advantage of self-relevant information may better be characterized as prioritization at later processing stages. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Negative evaluation bias for positive self-referential information in borderline personality disorder.

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Dorina Winter

Full Text Available Previous research has suggested that patients meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD display altered self-related information processing. However, experimental studies on dysfunctional self-referential information processing in BPD are rare. In this study, BPD patients (N = 30 and healthy control participants (N = 30 judged positive, neutral, and negative words in terms of emotional valence. Referential processing was manipulated by a preceding self-referential pronoun, an other-referential pronoun, or no referential context. Subsequently, patients and participants completed a free recall and recognition task. BPD patients judged positive and neutral words as more negative than healthy control participants when the words had self-reference or no reference. In BPD patients, these biases were significantly correlated with self-reported attributional style, particularly for negative events, but unrelated to measures of depressive mood. However, BPD patients did not differ from healthy control participants in a subsequent free recall task and a recognition task. Our findings point to a negative evaluation bias for positive, self-referential information in BPD. This bias did not affect the storage of information in memory, but may be related to self-attributions of negative events in everyday life in BPD.

The modification of attentional bias to emotional information: A review of the techniques, mechanisms, and relevance to emotional disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Browning, Michael; Holmes, Emily A; Harmer, Catherine J

2010-03-01

A negative bias in the deployment of attention to emotional stimuli is commonly found in both anxiety and depression. Recent work has highlighted that such biases are causally related to emotional vulnerability, suggesting that interventions that ameliorate them may be therapeutic. Here, we review the evidence that attentional bias can be modified using both pharmacological and psychological interventions. We highlight the behavioral and neuroimaging studies that suggest that these interventions impact upon attention via alteration of distinct neural mechanisms. Specifically, pharmacological interventions appear to influence the initial deployment of attention via an effect on the amygdala-based stimulus appraisal system, whereas psychological interventions influence attention at later time points and may alter activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Finally, we suggest a conceptual framework that embraces both pharmacological and psychological approaches and consider the possible implications of this work for future research and treatment development.

Value Relevance of Accounting Information in the United Arab Emirates

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jamal Barzegari Khanagha

2011-01-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the value relevance of accounting information in per and post-periods of International Financial Reporting Standards implementation using the regression and portfolio approaches for sample of the UAE companies. The results obtained from a combination of regression and portfolio approaches, show accounting information is value relevant in UAE stock market. A comparison of the results for the periods before and after adoption, based on both regression and portfolio approaches, shows a decline in value relevance of accounting information after the reform in accounting standards. It could be interpreted to mean that following to IFRS in UAE didn’t improve value relevancy of accounting information. However, results based on and portfolio approach shows that cash flows’ incremental information content increased for the post-IFRS period.

Attrition in the Austrian Generations and Gender Survey: Is there a bias by fertility-relevant aspects?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Isabella Buber-Ennser

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Background: In longitudinal research the loss of sample members between waves is a possible source of bias. It is therefore crucial to analyse attrition. Objective: This paper analyses attrition in a longitudinal study on family and fertility, by distinguishing between attrition due to non-contact and attrition due to non-cooperation. Methods: Based on the first two waves of the Austrian Generations and Gender Survey, the two components of attrition are studied separately by using bivariate as well as multivariate methods. Moreover, overall dropout - the combination of both components - isanalysed. Apart from various socio-economic characteristics and data collection information, the study focuses on fertility-relevant variables such as fecundity, fertility intentions, sexual orientation, and traditional attitudes. Results: Fecundity, fertility intentions, and homosexual relationships are associated with higher attrition due to non-cooperation in bivariate analyses, but have no explanatory power inthe multivariate model. Pregnancy and traditional attitudes towards marriage are associated with significantly lower attrition due to non-cooperation in the multivariate context. Overall dropout is significantly lower only among persons with traditionalattitudes towards marriage, although small in size and statistical significance. Moreover, various individual and regional characteristics are significantly associated with dropout, with differences between attrition due to non-contact and attrition due to non-cooperation. Conclusions: Detailed insights into attrition are not only important when using longitudinal data and interpreting results, but also for the design of future data collections. The Austrian GGS panel has a relatively low dropout (22Š and is affected by a small bias towards familyoriented persons as well as less-educated respondents and persons with migrationbackgrounds, but the data can be used without concern about selectivity.

Is there room for 'development' in developmental models of information processing biases to threat in children and adolescents?

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Field, Andy P; Lester, Kathryn J

2010-12-01

Clinical and experimental theories assume that processing biases in attention and interpretation are a causal mechanism through which anxiety develops. Despite growing evidence that these processing biases are present in children and, therefore, develop long before adulthood, these theories ignore the potential role of child development. This review attempts to place information processing biases within a theoretical developmental framework. We consider whether child development has no impact on information processing biases to threat (integral bias model), or whether child development influences information processing biases and if so whether it does so by moderating the expression of an existing bias (moderation model) or by affecting the acquisition of a bias (acquisition model). We examine the extent to which these models fit with existing theory and research evidence and outline some methodological issues that need to be considered when drawing conclusions about the potential role of child development in the information processing of threat stimuli. Finally, we speculate about the developmental processes that might be important to consider in future research.

50 CFR 424.13 - Sources of information and relevant data.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 50 Wildlife and Fisheries 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Sources of information and relevant data... Sources of information and relevant data. When considering any revision of the lists, the Secretary shall..., administrative reports, maps or other graphic materials, information received from experts on the subject, and...

Information order and outcome framing: an assesment of judgment bias in a naturalistic decision-making context.

Science.gov (United States)

Perrin, B M; Barnett, B J; Walrath, L; Grossman, J D

2001-01-01

Findings that decision makers can come to different conclusions depending on the order in which they receive information have been termed the "information order bias." When trained, experienced individuals exhibit similar behaviors; however, it has been argued that this result is not a bias, but rather, a pattern-matching process. This study provides a critical examination of this claim. It also assesses both experts' susceptibility to an outcome framing bias and the effects of varying task loads on judgment. Using a simulation of state-of-the-art ship defensive systems operated by experienced, active-duty U.S. Navy officers, we found no evidence of a framing bias, while task load had a minor, but systematic effect. The order in which information was received had a significant impact, with the effect being consistent with a judgment bias. Nonetheless, we note that pattern-matching processes, similar to those that produce inferential and reconstructive effects on memory, could also explain our results. Actual or potential applications of this research include decision support system interfaces or training programs that might be developed to reduce judgment bias.

Age differences in default and reward networks during processing of personally relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

Grady, Cheryl L; Grigg, Omer; Ng, Charisa

2012-06-01

We recently found activity in default mode and reward-related regions during self-relevant tasks in young adults. Here we examine the effect of aging on engagement of the default network (DN) and reward network (RN) during these tasks. Previous studies have shown reduced engagement of the DN and reward areas in older adults, but the influence of age on these circuits during self-relevant tasks has not been examined. The tasks involved judging personality traits about one's self or a well known other person. There were no age differences in reaction time on the tasks but older adults had more positive Self and Other judgments, whereas younger adults had more negative judgments. Both groups had increased DN and RN activity during the self-relevant tasks, relative to non-self tasks, but this increase was reduced in older compared to young adults. Functional connectivity of both networks during the tasks was weaker in the older relative to younger adults. Intrinsic functional connectivity, measured at rest, also was weaker in the older adults in the DN, but not in the RN. These results suggest that, in younger adults, the processing of personally relevant information involves robust activation of and functional connectivity within these two networks, in line with current models that emphasize strong links between the self and reward. The finding that older adults had more positive judgments, but weaker engagement and less consistent functional connectivity in these networks, suggests potential brain mechanisms for the "positivity bias" with aging. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Alpha power gates relevant information during working memory updating.

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Manza, Peter; Hau, Chui Luen Vera; Leung, Hoi-Chung

2014-04-23

Human working memory (WM) is inherently limited, so we must filter out irrelevant information in our environment or our mind while retaining limited important relevant contents. Previous work suggests that neural oscillations in the alpha band (8-14 Hz) play an important role in inhibiting incoming distracting information during attention and selective encoding tasks. However, whether alpha power is involved in inhibiting no-longer-relevant content or in representing relevant WM content is still debated. To clarify this issue, we manipulated the amount of relevant/irrelevant information using a task requiring spatial WM updating while measuring neural oscillatory activity via EEG and localized current sources across the scalp using a surface Laplacian transform. An initial memory set of two, four, or six spatial locations was to be memorized over a delay until an updating cue was presented indicating that only one or three locations remained relevant for a subsequent recognition test. Alpha amplitude varied with memory maintenance and updating demands among a cluster of left frontocentral electrodes. Greater postcue alpha power was associated with the high relevant load conditions (six and four dots cued to reduce to three relevant) relative to the lower load conditions (four and two dots reduced to one). Across subjects, this difference in alpha power was correlated with condition differences in performance accuracy. In contrast, no significant effects of irrelevant load were observed. These findings demonstrate that, during WM updating, alpha power reflects maintenance of relevant memory contents rather than suppression of no-longer-relevant memory traces.

76 FR 34075 - Request for Information (RFI) To Identify and Obtain Relevant Information From Public or Private...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-06-10

... Relevant Information From Public or Private Entities With an Interest in Biovigilance; Extension AGENCY... and obtain relevant information regarding the possible development of a public-private partnership... Identify and Obtain Relevant Information from Public or Private Entities with an Interest in Biovigilance...

ERP investigation of attentional disengagement from suicide-relevant information in patients with major depressive disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Baik, Seung Yeon; Jeong, Minkyung; Kim, Hyang Sook; Lee, Seung-Hwan

2018-01-01

Previous studies suggest the presence of attentional bias towards suicide-relevant information in suicidal individuals. However, the findings are limited by their reliance on behavioral measures. This study investigates the role of difficulty in disengaging attention from suicide-relevant stimuli using the P300 component of event-related potentials (ERPs). Forty-four adults with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) were administered the spatial cueing task using suicide-relevant and negatively-valenced words as cue stimuli. Disengagement difficulty was measured using reaction time and P300 during invalid trials. P300 amplitudes at Pz were higher in suicide-relevant compared to negatively-valenced word condition on invalid trials for participants with low rates of suicidal behavior. However, no such difference was found among participants with high rates of suicidal behavior. P300 amplitudes for suicide-relevant word condition were negatively correlated with "lifetime suicide ideation and attempt" at Pz. No significant results were found for the reaction time data, indicating that the ERP may be more sensitive in capturing the attentional disengagement effect. The groups were divided according to Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R) total score. Neutral stimulus was not included as cue stimuli. Most participants were under medication during the experiment. Our results indicate that patients with MDD and low rates of suicidal behavior show difficulty in disengaging attention from suicide-relevant stimuli. We suggest that suicide-specific disengagement difficulties may be related to recentness of suicide attempt and that acquired capability for suicide may contribute to reduced disengagement difficulties. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

When being narrow minded is a good thing: locally biased people show stronger contextual cueing.

Science.gov (United States)

Bellaera, Lauren; von Mühlenen, Adrian; Watson, Derrick G

2014-01-01

Repeated contexts allow us to find relevant information more easily. Learning such contexts has been proposed to depend upon either global processing of the repeated contexts, or alternatively processing of the local region surrounding the target information. In this study, we measured the extent to which observers were by default biased to process towards a more global or local level. The findings showed that the ability to use context to help guide their search was strongly related to an observer's local/global processing bias. Locally biased people could use context to help improve their search better than globally biased people. The results suggest that the extent to which context can be used depends crucially on the observer's attentional bias and thus also to factors and influences that can change this bias.

Emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder: effects of emotional information on negative bias.

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Fenske, Sabrina; Lis, Stefanie; Liebke, Lisa; Niedtfeld, Inga; Kirsch, Peter; Mier, Daniela

2015-01-01

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe deficits in social interactions, which might be linked to deficits in emotion recognition. Research on emotion recognition abilities in BPD revealed heterogeneous results, ranging from deficits to heightened sensitivity. The most stable findings point to an impairment in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions as neutral, as well as to a negative bias in emotion recognition; that is the tendency to attribute negative emotions to neutral expressions, or in a broader sense to report a more negative emotion category than depicted. However, it remains unclear which contextual factors influence the occurrence of this negative bias. Previous studies suggest that priming by preceding emotional information and also constrained processing time might augment the emotion recognition deficit in BPD. To test these assumptions, 32 female BPD patients and 31 healthy females, matched for age and education, participated in an emotion recognition study, in which every facial expression was preceded by either a positive, neutral or negative scene. Furthermore, time constraints for processing were varied by presenting the facial expressions with short (100 ms) or long duration (up to 3000 ms) in two separate blocks. BPD patients showed a significant deficit in emotion recognition for neutral and positive facial expression, associated with a significant negative bias. In BPD patients, this emotion recognition deficit was differentially affected by preceding emotional information and time constraints, with a greater influence of emotional information during long face presentations and a greater influence of neutral information during short face presentations. Our results are in line with previous findings supporting the existence of a negative bias in emotion recognition in BPD patients, and provide further insights into biased social perceptions in BPD patients.

Achieving DoD's Net Centric Vision of Information Sharing While Overcoming Cultural Biases to Control Information

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Shaw, Paul M

2008-01-01

.... A culture change from a "need to know' to a "need to share" is the desired end state. This culture change is in contrast to known organizational and individual cultural biases to control information...

Neurocognitive deficits are relevant for the jumping-to-conclusions bias, but not for delusions: A longitudinal study

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Christina Andreou

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Patients with delusions exhibit an increased tendency to arrive at decisions based on very limited evidence (jumping-to-conclusions; JTC, making this reasoning bias relevant for the treatment of delusions. Neurocognitive deficits contribute to JTC, but it is not known whether this has any bearing on the clinical syndrome of delusions. We addressed this question by reanalyzing data from an efficacy study of non-pharmacological interventions as adjunctive treatments in schizophrenia. We investigated the longitudinal associations of cognitive functioning, JTC and delusions in patients with psychotic disorders receiving either a metacognitive intervention addressing reasoning biases (n = 59, or cognitive remediation (n = 58. Both interventions improved JTC; in the cognitive remediation group, tentative evidence suggested that better neurocognitive performance contributed to this improvement. However, JTC gains were associated with delusion improvement only in the metacognitive intervention group, suggesting a content-specific mechanism of action.

Can threat information bias fear learning? : Some tentative results and methodological considerations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mertens, G.; De Houwer, J.

2017-01-01

Whereas it is widely recognized that both verbal threat information and stimulus pairings can install strong and persistent fear, few studies have addressed the interaction between these two pathways of fear. According to the expectancy bias theory of Davey (1992, 1997), verbal information can

Do the affective properties of smoking-related cues influence attentional and approach biases in cigarette smokers?

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Bradley, B P; Field, M; Healy, H; Mogg, K

2008-09-01

Research indicates that drug-related cues elicit attention and approach biases in drug users. However, attentional biases are not unique to addiction (e.g., they are also found for emotional information). This study examined whether attentional and approach biases in cigarette smokers are mediated by the motivational salience of cues (relevance to drug-taking), rather than by their affective properties (subjective liking of the cues). Cues included pleasant and unpleasant smoking-related pictures. Attentional biases, approach tendencies and subjective evaluation of the cues were assessed on visual probe, stimulus-response compatibility and rating tasks, respectively. Compared with non-smokers, smokers showed a greater attentional bias for both pleasant and unpleasant smoking-related cues presented for 2000 ms, but not for 200 ms. Smokers showed a greater approach bias for unpleasant cues, although the groups did not differ significantly in approach bias for pleasant smoking-related cues. Smokers rated both pleasant and unpleasant smoking pictures more positively than did non-smokers. Results suggest that a bias to maintain attention on smoking-related cues in young adult smokers is primarily a function of drug-relevance, rather than affective properties, of the cues. In contrast, approach tendencies and pleasantness judgements were influenced by drug use, drug-relevance and the affective properties of the cues.

Systematic biases in human heading estimation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luigi F Cuturi

Full Text Available Heading estimation is vital to everyday navigation and locomotion. Despite extensive behavioral and physiological research on both visual and vestibular heading estimation over more than two decades, the accuracy of heading estimation has not yet been systematically evaluated. Therefore human visual and vestibular heading estimation was assessed in the horizontal plane using a motion platform and stereo visual display. Heading angle was overestimated during forward movements and underestimated during backward movements in response to both visual and vestibular stimuli, indicating an overall multimodal bias toward lateral directions. Lateral biases are consistent with the overrepresentation of lateral preferred directions observed in neural populations that carry visual and vestibular heading information, including MSTd and otolith afferent populations. Due to this overrepresentation, population vector decoding yields patterns of bias remarkably similar to those observed behaviorally. Lateral biases are inconsistent with standard bayesian accounts which predict that estimates should be biased toward the most common straight forward heading direction. Nevertheless, lateral biases may be functionally relevant. They effectively constitute a perceptual scale expansion around straight ahead which could allow for more precise estimation and provide a high gain feedback signal to facilitate maintenance of straight-forward heading during everyday navigation and locomotion.

Is This Information Source Commercially Biased? How Contradictions between Web Pages Stimulate the Consideration of Source Information

Science.gov (United States)

Kammerer, Yvonne; Kalbfell, Eva; Gerjets, Peter

2016-01-01

In two experiments we systematically examined whether contradictions between two web pages--of which one was commercially biased as stated in an "about us" section--stimulated university students' consideration of source information both during and after reading. In Experiment 1 "about us" information of the web pages was…

Self-esteem modulates automatic attentional responses to self-relevant stimuli: evidence from event-related brain potentials

OpenAIRE

Chen, Jie; Shui, Qing; Zhong, Yiping

2015-01-01

Previous studies have widely shown that self-esteem modulates the attention bias towards social rejection or emotion-related information. However, little is known about the influences of self-esteem on attention bias towards self-relevant stimuli. We aimed to investigate neural correlates that underlie the modulation effect of self-esteem on self-relevant processing. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded for subjects’ own names and close others’ names (the names of their friends) while...

Informational value and bias of videos related to orthodontics screened on a video-sharing Web site.

Science.gov (United States)

Knösel, Michael; Jung, Klaus

2011-05-01

To assess the informational value, intention, source, and bias of videos related to orthodontics screened by the video-sharing Internet platform YouTube. YouTube (www.youtube.com) was scanned in July 2010 for orthodontics-related videos using an adequately defined search term. Each of the first 30 search results of the scan was categorized with the system-generated sorts "by relevance" and "most viewed" (total: 60). These were rated independently by three assessors, who completed a questionnaire for each video. The data were analyzed statistically using Friedman's test for dependent samples, Kendall's tau, and Fleiss's kappa. The YouTube scan produced 5140 results. There was a wide variety of information about orthodontics available on YouTube, and the highest proportion of videos was found to originate from orthodontic patients. These videos were also the most viewed ones. The informational content of most of the videos was generally judged to be low, with a rather poor to inadequate representation of the orthodontic profession, although a moderately pro-orthodontics stance prevailed. It was noticeable that the majority of contributions of orthodontists to YouTube constituted advertising. This tendency was not viewed positively by the majority of YouTube users, as was evident in the divergence in the proportions when sorting by "relevance" and "most viewed." In the light of the very large number of people using the Internet as their primary source of information, orthodontists should recognize the importance of YouTube and similar social media Web sites in the opinion-forming process, especially in the case of adolescents.

Support Vector Machines: Relevance Feedback and Information Retrieval.

Science.gov (United States)

Drucker, Harris; Shahrary, Behzad; Gibbon, David C.

2002-01-01

Compares support vector machines (SVMs) to Rocchio, Ide regular and Ide dec-hi algorithms in information retrieval (IR) of text documents using relevancy feedback. If the preliminary search is so poor that one has to search through many documents to find at least one relevant document, then SVM is preferred. Includes nine tables. (Contains 24…

Influence of prior information on pain involves biased perceptual decision-making.

Science.gov (United States)

Wiech, Katja; Vandekerckhove, Joachim; Zaman, Jonas; Tuerlinckx, Francis; Vlaeyen, Johan W S; Tracey, Irene

2014-08-04

Prior information about features of a stimulus is a strong modulator of perception. For instance, the prospect of more intense pain leads to an increased perception of pain, whereas the expectation of analgesia reduces pain, as shown in placebo analgesia and expectancy modulations during drug administration. This influence is commonly assumed to be rooted in altered sensory processing and expectancy-related modulations in the spinal cord, are often taken as evidence for this notion. Contemporary models of perception, however, suggest that prior information can also modulate perception by biasing perceptual decision-making - the inferential process underlying perception in which prior information is used to interpret sensory information. In this type of bias, the information is already present in the system before the stimulus is observed. Computational models can distinguish between changes in sensory processing and altered decision-making as they result in different response times for incorrect choices in a perceptual decision-making task (Figure S1A,B). Using a drift-diffusion model, we investigated the influence of both processes in two independent experiments. The results of both experiments strongly suggest that these changes in pain perception are predominantly based on altered perceptual decision-making. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Loss Aversion Reflects Information Accumulation, Not Bias: A Drift-Diffusion Model Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Clay, Summer N; Clithero, John A; Harris, Alison M; Reed, Catherine L

2017-01-01

Defined as increased sensitivity to losses, loss aversion is often conceptualized as a cognitive bias. However, findings that loss aversion has an attentional or emotional regulation component suggest that it may instead reflect differences in information processing. To distinguish these alternatives, we applied the drift-diffusion model (DDM) to choice and response time (RT) data in a card gambling task with unknown risk distributions. Loss aversion was measured separately for each participant. Dividing the participants into terciles based on loss aversion estimates, we found that the most loss-averse group showed a significantly lower drift rate than the other two groups, indicating overall slower uptake of information. In contrast, neither the starting bias nor the threshold separation (barrier) varied by group, suggesting that decision thresholds are not affected by loss aversion. These results shed new light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying loss aversion, consistent with an account based on information accumulation.

System for selecting relevant information for decision support.

Science.gov (United States)

Kalina, Jan; Seidl, Libor; Zvára, Karel; Grünfeldová, Hana; Slovák, Dalibor; Zvárová, Jana

2013-01-01

We implemented a prototype of a decision support system called SIR which has a form of a web-based classification service for diagnostic decision support. The system has the ability to select the most relevant variables and to learn a classification rule, which is guaranteed to be suitable also for high-dimensional measurements. The classification system can be useful for clinicians in primary care to support their decision-making tasks with relevant information extracted from any available clinical study. The implemented prototype was tested on a sample of patients in a cardiological study and performs an information extraction from a high-dimensional set containing both clinical and gene expression data.

A User-Centered Approach to Adaptive Hypertext Based on an Information Relevance Model

Science.gov (United States)

Mathe, Nathalie; Chen, James

1994-01-01

Rapid and effective to information in large electronic documentation systems can be facilitated if information relevant in an individual user's content can be automatically supplied to this user. However most of this knowledge on contextual relevance is not found within the contents of documents, it is rather established incrementally by users during information access. We propose a new model for interactively learning contextual relevance during information retrieval, and incrementally adapting retrieved information to individual user profiles. The model, called a relevance network, records the relevance of references based on user feedback for specific queries and user profiles. It also generalizes such knowledge to later derive relevant references for similar queries and profiles. The relevance network lets users filter information by context of relevance. Compared to other approaches, it does not require any prior knowledge nor training. More importantly, our approach to adaptivity is user-centered. It facilitates acceptance and understanding by users by giving them shared control over the adaptation without disturbing their primary task. Users easily control when to adapt and when to use the adapted system. Lastly, the model is independent of the particular application used to access information, and supports sharing of adaptations among users.

Watch Out for the Beast: Fear Information and Attentional Bias in Children

Science.gov (United States)

Field, Andy P.

2006-01-01

Although valenced information about novel animals changes the implicit and explicit fear beliefs of children (Field & Lawson, 2003), how it might lead to anxiety is unknown. One possibility, based on cognitive models of anxiety, is that fear information creates attentional biases similar to those seen in anxiety disorders. Children between 7 and 9…

The price of information: Increased inspection costs reduce the confirmation bias in visual search.

Science.gov (United States)

Rajsic, Jason; Wilson, Daryl E; Pratt, Jay

2018-04-01

In visual search, there is a confirmation bias such that attention is biased towards stimuli that match a target template, which has been attributed to covert costs of updating the templates that guide search [Rajsic, Wilson, & Pratt, 2015. Confirmation bias in visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/xhp0000090]. In order to provide direct evidence for this speculation, the present study increased the cost of inspections in search by using gaze- and mouse-contingent searches, which restrict the manner in which information in search displays can be accrued, and incur additional motor costs (in the case of mouse-contingent searches). In a fourth experiment, we rhythmically mask elements in the search display to induce temporal inspection costs. Our results indicated that confirmation bias is indeed attenuated when inspection costs are increased. We conclude that confirmation bias results from the low-cost strategy of matching information to a single, concrete visual template, and that more sophisticated guidance strategies will be used when sufficiently beneficial. This demonstrates that search guidance itself comes at a cost, and that the form of guidance adopted in a given search depends on a comparison between guidance costs and the expected benefits of their implementation.

Judging Managerial Actions as Ethical or Unethical: Decision Bias and Domain Relevant Experience

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jeffrey J. Bailey, Ph.D.

2013-07-01

Full Text Available This is an empirical study comparing the susceptibility of managers and students to a decision-making bias when making judgments about ethical business practices. The managers and students read through vignettes and made judgments about how ethical they perceived the described business actions to be. Half of the participants (half of the managers and half of the students were exposed to three situations in which the actions being judged were clearly unethical. The other half of each group was exposed to situations in which the actions being judged were clearly ethical. All were exposed to the same fourth situation of a business decision. In this ambiguous situation it was not clear if the business decision being evaluated was ethical or unethical. The decision bias examined here addressed the question of ‘to what extent does exposure to prior unethical (or ethical actions influence one’s evaluation of how ethical a particular business decision is when it is not a clearly right or wrong action. The results demonstrated that students’ ethical judgments about the action in the fourth scenario (the same scenario for everyone differed depending on what they were previously exposed to. Significant assimilation effects were found in the student sample suggesting support for the perceptual readiness models. The managerial sample yielded differences in the opposite direction, one of a contrast effect, but these did not reach statistical significance. Assimilation effects occurred in the sample without domain relevant experience and contrast effects occurred with the experienced sample. Implications are discussed.

Loss Aversion Reflects Information Accumulation, Not Bias: A Drift-Diffusion Model Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Summer N. Clay

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Defined as increased sensitivity to losses, loss aversion is often conceptualized as a cognitive bias. However, findings that loss aversion has an attentional or emotional regulation component suggest that it may instead reflect differences in information processing. To distinguish these alternatives, we applied the drift-diffusion model (DDM to choice and response time (RT data in a card gambling task with unknown risk distributions. Loss aversion was measured separately for each participant. Dividing the participants into terciles based on loss aversion estimates, we found that the most loss-averse group showed a significantly lower drift rate than the other two groups, indicating overall slower uptake of information. In contrast, neither the starting bias nor the threshold separation (barrier varied by group, suggesting that decision thresholds are not affected by loss aversion. These results shed new light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying loss aversion, consistent with an account based on information accumulation.

Information processing biases concurrently and prospectively predict depressive symptoms in adolescents: Evidence from a self-referent encoding task.

Science.gov (United States)

Connolly, Samantha L; Abramson, Lyn Y; Alloy, Lauren B

2016-01-01

Negative information processing biases have been hypothesised to serve as precursors for the development of depression. The current study examined negative self-referent information processing and depressive symptoms in a community sample of adolescents (N = 291, Mage at baseline = 12.34 ± 0.61, 53% female, 47.4% African-American, 49.5% Caucasian and 3.1% Biracial). Participants completed a computerised self-referent encoding task (SRET) and a measure of depressive symptoms at baseline and completed an additional measure of depressive symptoms nine months later. Several negative information processing biases on the SRET were associated with concurrent depressive symptoms and predicted increases in depressive symptoms at follow-up. Findings partially support the hypothesis that negative information processing biases are associated with depressive symptoms in a nonclinical sample of adolescents, and provide preliminary evidence that these biases prospectively predict increases in depressive symptoms.

Information filtering via biased heat conduction

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Jian-Guo; Zhou, Tao; Guo, Qiang

2011-09-01

The process of heat conduction has recently found application in personalized recommendation [Zhou , Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA PNASA60027-842410.1073/pnas.1000488107107, 4511 (2010)], which is of high diversity but low accuracy. By decreasing the temperatures of small-degree objects, we present an improved algorithm, called biased heat conduction, which could simultaneously enhance the accuracy and diversity. Extensive experimental analyses demonstrate that the accuracy on MovieLens, Netflix, and Delicious datasets could be improved by 43.5%, 55.4% and 19.2%, respectively, compared with the standard heat conduction algorithm and also the diversity is increased or approximately unchanged. Further statistical analyses suggest that the present algorithm could simultaneously identify users' mainstream and special tastes, resulting in better performance than the standard heat conduction algorithm. This work provides a creditable way for highly efficient information filtering.

A content relevance model for social media health information.

Science.gov (United States)

Prybutok, Gayle Linda; Koh, Chang; Prybutok, Victor R

2014-04-01

Consumer health informatics includes the development and implementation of Internet-based systems to deliver health risk management information and health intervention applications to the public. The application of consumer health informatics to educational and interventional efforts such as smoking reduction and cessation has garnered attention from both consumers and health researchers in recent years. Scientists believe that smoking avoidance or cessation before the age of 30 years can prevent more than 90% of smoking-related cancers and that individuals who stop smoking fare as well in preventing cancer as those who never start. The goal of this study was to determine factors that were most highly correlated with content relevance for health information provided on the Internet for a study group of 18- to 30-year-old college students. Data analysis showed that the opportunity for convenient entertainment, social interaction, health information-seeking behavior, time spent surfing on the Internet, the importance of available activities on the Internet (particularly e-mail), and perceived site relevance for Internet-based sources of health information were significantly correlated with content relevance for 18- to 30-year-old college students, an educated subset of this population segment.

The evolution of social learning rules: payoff-biased and frequency-dependent biased transmission.

Science.gov (United States)

Kendal, Jeremy; Giraldeau, Luc-Alain; Laland, Kevin

2009-09-21

Humans and other animals do not use social learning indiscriminately, rather, natural selection has favoured the evolution of social learning rules that make selective use of social learning to acquire relevant information in a changing environment. We present a gene-culture coevolutionary analysis of a small selection of such rules (unbiased social learning, payoff-biased social learning and frequency-dependent biased social learning, including conformism and anti-conformism) in a population of asocial learners where the environment is subject to a constant probability of change to a novel state. We define conditions under which each rule evolves to a genetically polymorphic equilibrium. We find that payoff-biased social learning may evolve under high levels of environmental variation if the fitness benefit associated with the acquired behaviour is either high or low but not of intermediate value. In contrast, both conformist and anti-conformist biases can become fixed when environment variation is low, whereupon the mean fitness in the population is higher than for a population of asocial learners. Our examination of the population dynamics reveals stable limit cycles under conformist and anti-conformist biases and some highly complex dynamics including chaos. Anti-conformists can out-compete conformists when conditions favour a low equilibrium frequency of the learned behaviour. We conclude that evolution, punctuated by the repeated successful invasion of different social learning rules, should continuously favour a reduction in the equilibrium frequency of asocial learning, and propose that, among competing social learning rules, the dominant rule will be the one that can persist with the lowest frequency of asocial learning.

Serial killers, spiders and cybersex: Social and survival information bias in the transmission of urban legends.

Science.gov (United States)

Stubbersfield, Joseph M; Tehrani, Jamshid J; Flynn, Emma G

2015-05-01

This study uses urban legends to examine the effects of the social information bias and survival information bias on cultural transmission across three phases of transmission: the choose-to-receive phase, the encode-and-retrieve phase, and the choose-to-transmit phase. In line with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design with 60 participants aged 18-52 was used to examine the encode-and-retrieve phase, while participants were asked to rank their interest in reading the story behind a headline and passing a story on for the other two phases. Legends which contained social information (Social Type), legends which contained survival information (Survival Type), and legends which contained both forms of information (Combined Type) were all recalled with significantly greater accuracy than control material, while Social and Combined Type legends were recalled with significantly greater accuracy than Survival Type legends. In another study with 30 participants aged 18-22, no significant differences were found between legend types in either the choose-to-receive phase or the choose-to-transmit phase. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Cross-Cultural Study of Information Processing Biases in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Comparison of Dutch and UK Chronic Fatigue Patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Hughes, Alicia M; Hirsch, Colette R; Nikolaus, Stephanie; Chalder, Trudie; Knoop, Hans; Moss-Morris, Rona

2018-02-01

This study aims to replicate a UK study, with a Dutch sample to explore whether attention and interpretation biases and general attentional control deficits in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) are similar across populations and cultures. Thirty eight Dutch CFS participants were compared to 52 CFS and 51 healthy participants recruited from the UK. Participants completed self-report measures of symptoms, functioning, and mood, as well as three experimental tasks (i) visual-probe task measuring attentional bias to illness (somatic symptoms and disability) versus neutral words, (ii) interpretive bias task measuring positive versus somatic interpretations of ambiguous information, and (iii) the Attention Network Test measuring general attentional control. Compared to controls, Dutch and UK participants with CFS showed a significant attentional bias for illness-related words and were significantly more likely to interpret ambiguous information in a somatic way. These effects were not moderated by attentional control. There were no significant differences between the Dutch and UK CFS groups on attentional bias, interpretation bias, or attentional control scores. This study replicated the main findings of the UK study, with a Dutch CFS population, indicating that across these two cultures, people with CFS demonstrate biases in how somatic information is attended to and interpreted. These illness-specific biases appear to be unrelated to general attentional control deficits.

Cogito ergo video: Task-relevant information is involuntarily boosted into awareness.

Science.gov (United States)

Gayet, Surya; Brascamp, Jan W; Van der Stigchel, Stefan; Paffen, Chris L E

2015-01-01

Only part of the visual information that impinges on our retinae reaches visual awareness. In a series of three experiments, we investigated how the task relevance of incoming visual information affects its access to visual awareness. On each trial, participants were instructed to memorize one of two presented hues, drawn from different color categories (e.g., red and green), for later recall. During the retention interval, participants were presented with a differently colored grating in each eye such as to elicit binocular rivalry. A grating matched either the task-relevant (memorized) color category or the task-irrelevant (nonmemorized) color category. We found that the rivalrous stimulus that matched the task-relevant color category tended to dominate awareness over the rivalrous stimulus that matched the task-irrelevant color category. This effect of task relevance persisted when participants reported the orientation of the rivalrous stimuli, even though in this case color information was completely irrelevant for the task of reporting perceptual dominance during rivalry. When participants memorized the shape of a colored stimulus, however, its color category did not affect predominance of rivalrous stimuli during retention. Taken together, these results indicate that the selection of task-relevant information is under volitional control but that visual input that matches this information is boosted into awareness irrespective of whether this is useful for the observer.

Measurement of food-related approach-avoidance biases: Larger biases when food stimuli are task relevant

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lender, A.; Meule, A.; Rinck, M.; Brockmeyer, T.; Blechert, J.

2018-01-01

Strong implicit responses to food have evolved to avoid energy depletion but contribute to overeating in today's affluent environments. The Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) supposedly assesses implicit biases in response to food stimuli: Participants push pictures on a monitor "away" or pull them

Bootstrapping agency: How control-relevant information affects motivation.

Science.gov (United States)

Karsh, Noam; Eitam, Baruch; Mark, Ilya; Higgins, E Tory

2016-10-01

How does information about one's control over the environment (e.g., having an own-action effect) influence motivation? The control-based response selection framework was proposed to predict and explain such findings. Its key tenant is that control relevant information modulates both the frequency and speed of responses by determining whether a perceptual event is an outcome of one's actions or not. To test this framework empirically, the current study examines whether and how temporal and spatial contiguity/predictability-previously established as being important for one's sense of agency-modulate motivation from control. In 5 experiments, participants responded to a cue, potentially triggering a perceptual effect. Temporal (Experiments 1a-c) and spatial (Experiments 2a and b) contiguity/predictability between actions and their potential effects were experimentally manipulated. The influence of these control-relevant factors was measured, both indirectly (through their effect on explicit judgments of agency) and directly on response time and response frequency. The pattern of results was highly consistent with the control-based response selection framework in suggesting that control relevant information reliably modulates the impact of "having an effect" on different levels of action selection. We discuss the implications of this study for the notion of motivation from control and for the empirical work on the sense of agency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Fuzzy Mutual Information Based min-Redundancy and Max-Relevance Heterogeneous Feature Selection

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Daren Yu

2011-08-01

Full Text Available Feature selection is an important preprocessing step in pattern classification and machine learning, and mutual information is widely used to measure relevance between features and decision. However, it is difficult to directly calculate relevance between continuous or fuzzy features using mutual information. In this paper we introduce the fuzzy information entropy and fuzzy mutual information for computing relevance between numerical or fuzzy features and decision. The relationship between fuzzy information entropy and differential entropy is also discussed. Moreover, we combine fuzzy mutual information with qmin-Redundancy-Max-Relevanceq, qMax-Dependencyq and min-Redundancy-Max-Dependencyq algorithms. The performance and stability of the proposed algorithms are tested on benchmark data sets. Experimental results show the proposed algorithms are effective and stable.

Deadly Attraction - Attentional Bias toward Preferred Cigarette Brand in Smokers.

Science.gov (United States)

Domaradzka, Ewa; Bielecki, Maksymilian

2017-01-01

Numerous studies have shown that biases in visual attention might be evoked by affective and personally relevant stimuli, for example addiction-related objects. Despite the fact that addiction is often linked to specific products and systematic purchase behaviors, no studies focused directly on the existence of bias evoked by brands. Smokers are characterized by high levels of brand loyalty and everyday contact with cigarette packaging. Using the incentive-salience mechanism as a theoretical framework, we hypothesized that this group might exhibit a bias toward the preferred cigarette brand. In our study, a group of smokers ( N = 40) performed a dot probe task while their eye movements were recorded. In every trial a pair of pictures was presented - each of them showed a single cigarette pack. The visual properties of stimuli were carefully controlled, so branding information was the key factor affecting subjects' reactions. For each participant, we compared gaze behavior related to the preferred vs. other brands. The analyses revealed no attentional bias in the early, orienting phase of the stimulus processing and strong differences in maintenance and disengagement. Participants spent more time looking at the preferred cigarettes and saccades starting at the preferred brand location had longer latencies. In sum, our data shows that attentional bias toward brands might be found in situations not involving choice or decision making. These results provide important insights into the mechanisms of formation and maintenance of attentional biases to stimuli of personal relevance and might serve as a first step toward developing new attitude measurement techniques.

Involuntary top-down control by search-irrelevant features: Visual working memory biases attention in an object-based manner.

Science.gov (United States)

Foerster, Rebecca M; Schneider, Werner X

2018-03-01

Many everyday tasks involve successive visual-search episodes with changing targets. Converging evidence suggests that these targets are retained in visual working memory (VWM) and bias attention from there. It is unknown whether all or only search-relevant features of a VWM template bias attention during search. Bias signals might be configured exclusively to task-relevant features so that only search-relevant features bias attention. Alternatively, VWM might maintain objects in the form of bound features. Then, all template features will bias attention in an object-based manner, so that biasing effects are ranked by feature relevance. Here, we investigated whether search-irrelevant VWM template features bias attention. Participants had to saccade to a target opposite a distractor. A colored cue depicted the target prior to each search trial. The target was predefined only by its identity, while its color was irrelevant. When target and cue matched not only in identity (search-relevant) but also in color (search-irrelevant), saccades went more often and faster directly to the target than without any color match (Experiment 1). When introducing a cue-distractor color match (Experiment 2), direct target saccades were most likely when target and cue matched in the search-irrelevant color and least likely in case of a cue-distractor color match. When cue and target were never colored the same (Experiment 3), cue-colored distractors still captured the eyes more often than different-colored distractors despite color being search-irrelevant. As participants were informed about the misleading color, the result argues against a strategical and voluntary usage of color. Instead, search-irrelevant features biased attention obligatorily arguing for involuntary top-down control by object-based VWM templates. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Fuzzy Information Retrieval Using Genetic Algorithms and Relevance Feedback.

Science.gov (United States)

Petry, Frederick E.; And Others

1993-01-01

Describes an approach that combines concepts from information retrieval, fuzzy set theory, and genetic programing to improve weighted Boolean query formulation via relevance feedback. Highlights include background on information retrieval systems; genetic algorithms; subproblem formulation; and preliminary results based on a testbed. (Contains 12…

Disclosure of Non-Financial Information: Relevant to Financial Analysts?

OpenAIRE

ORENS, Raf; LYBAERT, Nadine

2013-01-01

The decline in the relevance of financial statement information to value firms leads to calls from organizational stakeholders to convey non-financial information in order to be able to judge firms' financial performance and value. This literature review aims to report extant literature findings on the use of corporate non-financial information by sell-side financial analysts, the information intermediaries between corporate management and investors. Prior studies highlight that financial ana...

An inclusive taxonomy of behavioral biases

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David Peón

2017-07-01

Full Text Available This paper overviews the theoretical and empirical research on behavioral biases and their influence in the literature. To provide a systematic exposition, we present a unified framework that takes the reader through an original taxonomy, based on the reviews of relevant authors in the field. In particular, we establish three broad categories that may be distinguished: heuristics and biases; choices, values and frames; and social factors. We then describe the main biases within each category, and revise the main theoretical and empirical developments, linking each bias with other biases and anomalies that are related to them, according to the literature.

Information sharing during diagnostic assessments: what is relevant for parents?

Science.gov (United States)

Klein, Sheryl; Wynn, Kerry; Ray, Lynne; Demeriez, Lori; LaBerge, Patricia; Pei, Jacqueline; St Pierre, Cherie

2011-05-01

ABSTRACT This descriptive qualitative study facilitates the application of family-centered care within a tertiary care interdisciplinary neurodevelopmental diagnostic assessment clinic by furthering an understanding of parent perceptions of the relevance of diagnostic information provision. An interdisciplinary assessment team completed an open-ended questionnaire to describe parent information provision. Parents from 9 families completed in-depth parent interviews following clinic attendance to discuss perceptions of information received. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded by related themes. Parents did not perceive the information in the way professionals expected. Parents acknowledged receipt of comprehensive information relevant to the diagnosis but indicated that not all their needs were met. During the interviews, parents described the assessment process, preassessment information, and "steps in their journey." They noted that a strength-based approach and a focus on parental competency would support their coping efforts. Results underscore the need for professionals to be attentive to parents' individualized needs.

Impact of Non Accounting Information on The Value Relevance of Accounting Information: The Case of Jordan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

DHIAA SHAMKI

2013-07-01

Full Text Available The paper presents empirical evidence about the impact of firm’s shareholders number as non accounting information on the value relevance of its earnings and book value of equity as accounting information for Jordanian industrial firms for the period from 1993 to 2002. Employing the return regression analysis and using shareholders number in two proxies namely local and foreign shareholders number, the findings of the study are fourfold. First, Individual earnings are value relevant while book value is irrelevant. Second, combining earnings with book value leads both of them to be irrelevant. Third, extending local shareholders number has significant impact on the value relevance of individual and combined earnings. Forth, extending foreign shareholders number has significant impact on the value relevance of individual book value and combined earnings. Since studies on the value relevance of these variables have neglected Jordan (and the Middle Eastern region, the study is the first especially in Jordan that tries to fill this gap by examiningthe impact of shareholders numbers on the value relevance of earnings and book valueto indicate firm value.

Deadly Attraction – Attentional Bias toward Preferred Cigarette Brand in Smokers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ewa Domaradzka

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Numerous studies have shown that biases in visual attention might be evoked by affective and personally relevant stimuli, for example addiction-related objects. Despite the fact that addiction is often linked to specific products and systematic purchase behaviors, no studies focused directly on the existence of bias evoked by brands. Smokers are characterized by high levels of brand loyalty and everyday contact with cigarette packaging. Using the incentive-salience mechanism as a theoretical framework, we hypothesized that this group might exhibit a bias toward the preferred cigarette brand. In our study, a group of smokers (N = 40 performed a dot probe task while their eye movements were recorded. In every trial a pair of pictures was presented – each of them showed a single cigarette pack. The visual properties of stimuli were carefully controlled, so branding information was the key factor affecting subjects’ reactions. For each participant, we compared gaze behavior related to the preferred vs. other brands. The analyses revealed no attentional bias in the early, orienting phase of the stimulus processing and strong differences in maintenance and disengagement. Participants spent more time looking at the preferred cigarettes and saccades starting at the preferred brand location had longer latencies. In sum, our data shows that attentional bias toward brands might be found in situations not involving choice or decision making. These results provide important insights into the mechanisms of formation and maintenance of attentional biases to stimuli of personal relevance and might serve as a first step toward developing new attitude measurement techniques.

Deadly Attraction – Attentional Bias toward Preferred Cigarette Brand in Smokers

Science.gov (United States)

Domaradzka, Ewa; Bielecki, Maksymilian

2017-01-01

Numerous studies have shown that biases in visual attention might be evoked by affective and personally relevant stimuli, for example addiction-related objects. Despite the fact that addiction is often linked to specific products and systematic purchase behaviors, no studies focused directly on the existence of bias evoked by brands. Smokers are characterized by high levels of brand loyalty and everyday contact with cigarette packaging. Using the incentive-salience mechanism as a theoretical framework, we hypothesized that this group might exhibit a bias toward the preferred cigarette brand. In our study, a group of smokers (N = 40) performed a dot probe task while their eye movements were recorded. In every trial a pair of pictures was presented – each of them showed a single cigarette pack. The visual properties of stimuli were carefully controlled, so branding information was the key factor affecting subjects’ reactions. For each participant, we compared gaze behavior related to the preferred vs. other brands. The analyses revealed no attentional bias in the early, orienting phase of the stimulus processing and strong differences in maintenance and disengagement. Participants spent more time looking at the preferred cigarettes and saccades starting at the preferred brand location had longer latencies. In sum, our data shows that attentional bias toward brands might be found in situations not involving choice or decision making. These results provide important insights into the mechanisms of formation and maintenance of attentional biases to stimuli of personal relevance and might serve as a first step toward developing new attitude measurement techniques. PMID:28848479

Codon usage bias in phylum Actinobacteria: relevance to environmental adaptation and host pathogenicity.

Science.gov (United States)

Lal, Devi; Verma, Mansi; Behura, Susanta K; Lal, Rup

2016-10-01

Actinobacteria are Gram-positive bacteria commonly found in soil, freshwater and marine ecosystems. In this investigation, bias in codon usages of ninety actinobacterial genomes was analyzed by estimating different indices of codon bias such as Nc (effective number of codons), SCUO (synonymous codon usage order), RSCU (relative synonymous codon usage), as well as sequence patterns of codon contexts. The results revealed several characteristic features of codon usage in Actinobacteria, as follows: 1) C- or G-ending codons are used frequently in comparison with A- and U ending codons; 2) there is a direct relationship of GC content with use of specific amino acids such as alanine, proline and glycine; 3) there is an inverse relationship between GC content and Nc estimates, 4) there is low SCUO value (Actinobacteria, extreme GC content and codon bias are driven by mutation rather than natural selection; (2) traits like aerobicity are associated with effective natural selection and therefore low GC content and low codon bias, demonstrating the role of both mutational bias and translational selection in shaping the habitat and phenotype of actinobacterial species. Copyright © 2016 Institut Pasteur. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Copula-based assimilation of radar and gauge information to derive bias-corrected precipitation fields

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Vogl

2012-07-01

Full Text Available This study addresses the problem of combining radar information and gauge measurements. Gauge measurements are the best available source of absolute rainfall intensity albeit their spatial availability is limited. Precipitation information obtained by radar mimics well the spatial patterns but is biased for their absolute values.

In this study copula models are used to describe the dependence structure between gauge observations and rainfall derived from radar reflectivity at the corresponding grid cells. After appropriate time series transformation to generate "iid" variates, only the positive pairs (radar >0, gauge >0 of the residuals are considered. As not each grid cell can be assigned to one gauge, the integration of point information, i.e. gauge rainfall intensities, is achieved by considering the structure and the strength of dependence between the radar pixels and all the gauges within the radar image. Two different approaches, namely Maximum Theta and Multiple Theta, are presented. They finally allow for generating precipitation fields that mimic the spatial patterns of the radar fields and correct them for biases in their absolute rainfall intensities. The performance of the approach, which can be seen as a bias-correction for radar fields, is demonstrated for the Bavarian Alps. The bias-corrected rainfall fields are compared to a field of interpolated gauge values (ordinary kriging and are validated with available gauge measurements. The simulated precipitation fields are compared to an operationally corrected radar precipitation field (RADOLAN. The copula-based approach performs similarly well as indicated by different validation measures and successfully corrects for errors in the radar precipitation.

An inclusive taxonomy of behavioral biases

OpenAIRE

David Peón; Manel Antelo; Anxo Calvo-Silvosa

2017-01-01

This paper overviews the theoretical and empirical research on behavioral biases and their influence in the literature. To provide a systematic exposition, we present a unified framework that takes the reader through an original taxonomy, based on the reviews of relevant authors in the field. In particular, we establish three broad categories that may be distinguished: heuristics and biases; choices, values and frames; and social factors. We then describe the main biases within each category,...

The Relevance of Information and Communication Technologies in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The Relevance of Information and Communication Technologies in Libraries Services ... Technologies in Libraries Services and Librarianship Profession in the 21th Century ... This paper therefore, examines the importance of ICT in librarianship as a ... for Authors · for Policy Makers · about Open Access · Journal Quality.

The Interplay of Spatial Attentional Biases and Mental Codes in VSTM: Developmentally Informed Hypotheses

Science.gov (United States)

Shimi, Andria; Scerif, Gaia

2015-01-01

What cognitive processes influence how well we maintain information in visual short-term memory (VSTM)? We used a developmentally informed design to delve into the interplay of top-down spatial biases with the nature of the internal memory codes, motivated by documented changes for both factors over childhood. Seven-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and…

Information bias condemning radical food innovators? The case of insect-based products in the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pascucci, S.; Magistris, de T.

2013-01-01

In this paper we analyze whether information bias is affecting consumers' WTP for radical food innovations. We collect data in the Netherlands on consumers' WTP for insect-based products. We used product attributes directly affected by information and EU legislation such as the visualization of

Attentional bias modification based on visual probe task: methodological issues, results and clinical relevance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fernanda Machado Lopes

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Attentional bias, the tendency that a person has to drive or maintain attention to a specific class of stimuli, may play an important role in the etiology and persistence of mental disorders. Attentional bias modification has been studied as a form of additional treatment related to automatic processing. Objectives: This systematic literature review compared and discussed methods, evidence of success and potential clinical applications of studies about attentional bias modification (ABM using a visual probe task. Methods: The Web of Knowledge, PubMed and PsycInfo were searched using the keywords attentional bias modification, attentional bias manipulation and attentional bias training. We selected empirical studies about ABM training using a visual probe task written in English and published between 2002 and 2014. Results: Fifty-seven studies met inclusion criteria. Most (78% succeeded in training attention in the predicted direction, and in 71% results were generalized to other measures correlated with the symptoms. Conclusions: ABM has potential clinical utility, but to standardize methods and maximize applicability, future studies should include clinical samples and be based on findings of studies about its effectiveness.

Beyond attentional bias: a perceptual bias in a dot-probe task.

Science.gov (United States)

Bocanegra, Bruno R; Huijding, Jorg; Zeelenberg, René

2012-12-01

Previous dot-probe studies indicate that threat-related face cues induce a bias in spatial attention. Independently of spatial attention, a recent psychophysical study suggests that a bilateral fearful face cue improves low spatial-frequency perception (LSF) and impairs high spatial-frequency perception (HSF). Here, we combine these separate lines of research within a single dot-probe paradigm. We found that a bilateral fearful face cue, compared with a bilateral neutral face cue, speeded up responses to LSF targets and slowed down responses to HSF targets. This finding is important, as it shows that emotional cues in dot-probe tasks not only bias where information is preferentially processed (i.e., an attentional bias in spatial location), but also bias what type of information is preferentially processed (i.e., a perceptual bias in spatial frequency). PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

The relevance of accounting information enclosed in performance indicators

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Mihaela-Cristina Onica

2012-12-01

Full Text Available This research study is analyzing the relevance of accounting information reflected through the elaboration of firm performance variables and administration because of the necessity of performance to be administrated. The subject of the theme is enclosed in current development of accounting norms at national , european, (Directives and international levels (IAS/IFRS. The analyised topic is based upon the capabilty of accounting to generate information , throug synthesis calculus being settled the nature , the characteristics and the informational valences of financial performance of an organization. The accounting infromation is base for performing the decison process. The rol of accounting in insurring the relevance and comparability of information increased significantly, being already indispensable. A real solution for communication misunderstanig elimination emerged, as result of diputes in perception and interpretation of economic information, as results for the national speciffic norms.The economic communication is demanding for firm not only in its expression but in thinking and in the process of method conceptualization of organization and administration. A detailed financial situation analysis, which are employing annual financial analysis procedures, underling the performance and risks influencing factors, are considering one starting point for addressing the issue. The introduced variables are insuring a whole vision of firm activity and an appropriate strategy for results significance.

Chemosensory Communication of Gender Information: Masculinity Bias in Body Odor Perception and Femininity Bias Introduced by Chemosignals During Social Perception.

Science.gov (United States)

Mutic, Smiljana; Moellers, Eileen M; Wiesmann, Martin; Freiherr, Jessica

2015-01-01

Human body odor is a source of important social information. In this study, we explore whether the sex of an individual can be established based on smelling axillary odor and whether exposure to male and female odors biases chemosensory and social perception. In a double-blind, pseudo-randomized application, 31 healthy normosmic heterosexual male and female raters were exposed to male and female chemosignals (odor samples of 27 heterosexual donors collected during a cardio workout) and a no odor sample. Recipients rated chemosensory samples on a masculinity-femininity scale and provided intensity, familiarity and pleasantness ratings. Additionally, the modulation of social perception (gender-neutral faces and personality attributes) and affective introspection (mood) by male and female chemosignals was assessed. Male and female axillary odors were rated as rather masculine, regardless of the sex of the donor. As opposed to the masculinity bias in the odor perception, a femininity bias modulating social perception appeared. A facilitated femininity detection in gender-neutral faces and personality attributes in male and female chemosignals appeared. No chemosensory effect on mood of the rater was observed. The results are discussed with regards to the use of male and female chemosignals in affective and social communication.

Investigation of bias of hedonic scores when co-eliciting product attribute information using CATA questions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jaeger, Sara R.; Giacalone, Davide; Roigard, Cristina M.

2013-01-01

(appearance, aroma, flavour, taste, aftertaste, mouthfeel). The present research suggests that co-elicitation of hedonic scores and product attribute information using CATA questions may bias the hedonic scores, but not that it certainly will do so. This needs to be recognised, leading to more widespread......Sensory and consumer scientists disagree on the practice of concurrently obtaining sensory information in hedonic tests. This is in part due to different mindsets about what consumers are able to do and evidence that such co-elicitation may bias hedonic scores. Check-all-that-apply (CATA) questions...... have been claimed to have a smaller effect on hedonic scores than other attribute such as just-about-right or intensity scales. In this research, nine studies using consumers as participants examined effects on hedonic product scores when sensory attribute information was co-elicited using CATA...

Optimistic bias, advertising skepticism, and consumer intentions for seeking information about the health risks of prescription medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Jin Seong; Ahn, Ho-Young Anthony; Haley, Eric John

2017-01-01

Based on a survey of prescription drug users (N = 408), this study revealed that: (a) the frequency of consumers' personal experience of prescription medicine adverse reactions negatively related to the extent of their optimistic bias about the chances of such events, (b) consumers' perceived personal control over adverse reactions positively related to optimistic bias, and (c) optimistic bias related more negatively to intentions to seek risk information when consumer skepticism toward direct-to-consumer advertising was high. When skepticism was low to average, optimistic bias did not inhibit such intentions. Implications and recommendations for the practice of direct-to-consumer advertising are provided.

Skip or Stay: Users' Behavior in Dealing with Onsite Information Interaction Crowd-Bias

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hashemi, S.H.; Kamps, J.

2017-01-01

Mobile devices and the internet of things blend our virtual online behavior with our actions in the real-world. The physical context creates numerous external factors that play a role in the user's online interactions, thus creating new external biases in the collected information interaction logs.

Instructed fear stimuli bias visual attention

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Deltomme, Berre; Mertens, G.; Tibboel, Helen; Braem, Senne

We investigated whether stimuli merely instructed to be fear-relevant can bias visual attention, even when the fear relation was never experienced before. Participants performed a dot-probe task with pictures of naturally fear-relevant (snake or spider) or -irrelevant (bird or butterfly) stimuli.

Electronic patient records in action: Transforming information into professionally relevant knowledge.

Science.gov (United States)

Winman, Thomas; Rystedt, Hans

2011-03-01

The implementation of generic models for organizing information in complex institutions like those in healthcare creates a gap between standardization and the need for locally relevant knowledge. The present study addresses how this gap can be bridged by focusing on the practical work of healthcare staff in transforming information in EPRs into knowledge that is useful for everyday work. Video recording of shift handovers on a rehabilitation ward serves as the empirical case. The results show how extensive selections and reorganizations of information in EPRs are carried out in order to transform information into professionally relevant accounts. We argue that knowledge about the institutional obligations and professional ways of construing information are fundamental for these transitions. The findings point to the need to consider the role of professional knowledge inherent in unpacking information in efforts to develop information systems intended to bridge between institutional and professional boundaries in healthcare. © The Author(s) 2011.

Ideology and Critical Self-Reflection in Information Literacy Instruction

Science.gov (United States)

Critten, Jessica

2015-01-01

Information literacy instruction traditionally focuses on evaluating a source for bias, relevance, and timeliness, and rightfully so; this critical perspective is vital to a well-formed research process. However, this process is incomplete without a similar focus on the potential biases that the student brings to his or her interactions with…

Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and Develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory.

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Blanco, Fernando; Barberia, Itxaso; Matute, Helena

2015-01-01

In the reasoning literature, paranormal beliefs have been proposed to be linked to two related phenomena: a biased perception of causality and a biased information-sampling strategy (believers tend to test fewer hypotheses and prefer confirmatory information). In parallel, recent contingency learning studies showed that, when two unrelated events coincide frequently, individuals interpret this ambiguous pattern as evidence of a causal relationship. Moreover, the latter studies indicate that sampling more cause-present cases than cause-absent cases strengthens the illusion. If paranormal believers actually exhibit a biased exposure to the available information, they should also show this bias in the contingency learning task: they would in fact expose themselves to more cause-present cases than cause-absent trials. Thus, by combining the two traditions, we predicted that believers in the paranormal would be more vulnerable to developing causal illusions in the laboratory than nonbelievers because there is a bias in the information they experience. In this study, we found that paranormal beliefs (measured using a questionnaire) correlated with causal illusions (assessed by using contingency judgments). As expected, this correlation was mediated entirely by the believers' tendency to expose themselves to more cause-present cases. The association between paranormal beliefs, biased exposure to information, and causal illusions was only observed for ambiguous materials (i.e., the noncontingent condition). In contrast, the participants' ability to detect causal relationships which did exist (i.e., the contingent condition) was unaffected by their susceptibility to believe in paranormal phenomena.

Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and Develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fernando Blanco

Full Text Available In the reasoning literature, paranormal beliefs have been proposed to be linked to two related phenomena: a biased perception of causality and a biased information-sampling strategy (believers tend to test fewer hypotheses and prefer confirmatory information. In parallel, recent contingency learning studies showed that, when two unrelated events coincide frequently, individuals interpret this ambiguous pattern as evidence of a causal relationship. Moreover, the latter studies indicate that sampling more cause-present cases than cause-absent cases strengthens the illusion. If paranormal believers actually exhibit a biased exposure to the available information, they should also show this bias in the contingency learning task: they would in fact expose themselves to more cause-present cases than cause-absent trials. Thus, by combining the two traditions, we predicted that believers in the paranormal would be more vulnerable to developing causal illusions in the laboratory than nonbelievers because there is a bias in the information they experience. In this study, we found that paranormal beliefs (measured using a questionnaire correlated with causal illusions (assessed by using contingency judgments. As expected, this correlation was mediated entirely by the believers' tendency to expose themselves to more cause-present cases. The association between paranormal beliefs, biased exposure to information, and causal illusions was only observed for ambiguous materials (i.e., the noncontingent condition. In contrast, the participants' ability to detect causal relationships which did exist (i.e., the contingent condition was unaffected by their susceptibility to believe in paranormal phenomena.

Task-relevant information is prioritized in spatiotemporal contextual cueing.

Science.gov (United States)

Higuchi, Yoko; Ueda, Yoshiyuki; Ogawa, Hirokazu; Saiki, Jun

2016-11-01

Implicit learning of visual contexts facilitates search performance-a phenomenon known as contextual cueing; however, little is known about contextual cueing under situations in which multidimensional regularities exist simultaneously. In everyday vision, different information, such as object identity and location, appears simultaneously and interacts with each other. We tested the hypothesis that, in contextual cueing, when multiple regularities are present, the regularities that are most relevant to our behavioral goals would be prioritized. Previous studies of contextual cueing have commonly used the visual search paradigm. However, this paradigm is not suitable for directing participants' attention to a particular regularity. Therefore, we developed a new paradigm, the "spatiotemporal contextual cueing paradigm," and manipulated task-relevant and task-irrelevant regularities. In four experiments, we demonstrated that task-relevant regularities were more responsible for search facilitation than task-irrelevant regularities. This finding suggests our visual behavior is focused on regularities that are relevant to our current goal.

Iterative Filtering of Retrieved Information to Increase Relevance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robert Zeidman

2007-12-01

Full Text Available Efforts have been underway for years to find more effective ways to retrieve information from large knowledge domains. This effort is now being driven particularly by the Internet and the vast amount of information that is available to unsophisticated users. In the early days of the Internet, some effort involved allowing users to enter Boolean equations of search terms into search engines, for example, rather than just a list of keywords. More recently, effort has focused on understanding a user's desires from past search histories in order to narrow searches. Also there has been much effort to improve the ranking of results based on some measure of relevancy. This paper discusses using iterative filtering of retrieved information to focus in on useful information. This work was done for finding source code correlation and the author extends his findings to Internet searching and e-commerce. The paper presents specific information about a particular filtering application and then generalizes it to other forms of information retrieval.

Online drug databases: a new method to assess and compare inclusion of clinically relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

Silva, Cristina; Fresco, Paula; Monteiro, Joaquim; Rama, Ana Cristina Ribeiro

2013-08-01

Evidence-Based Practice requires health care decisions to be based on the best available evidence. The model "Information Mastery" proposes that clinicians should use sources of information that have previously evaluated relevance and validity, provided at the point of care. Drug databases (DB) allow easy and fast access to information and have the benefit of more frequent content updates. Relevant information, in the context of drug therapy, is that which supports safe and effective use of medicines. Accordingly, the European Guideline on the Summary of Product Characteristics (EG-SmPC) was used as a standard to evaluate the inclusion of relevant information contents in DB. To develop and test a method to evaluate relevancy of DB contents, by assessing the inclusion of information items deemed relevant for effective and safe drug use. Hierarchical organisation and selection of the principles defined in the EGSmPC; definition of criteria to assess inclusion of selected information items; creation of a categorisation and quantification system that allows score calculation; calculation of relative differences (RD) of scores for comparison with an "ideal" database, defined as the one that achieves the best quantification possible for each of the information items; pilot test on a sample of 9 drug databases, using 10 drugs frequently associated in literature with morbidity-mortality and also being widely consumed in Portugal. Main outcome measure Calculate individual and global scores for clinically relevant information items of drug monographs in databases, using the categorisation and quantification system created. A--Method development: selection of sections, subsections, relevant information items and corresponding requisites; system to categorise and quantify their inclusion; score and RD calculation procedure. B--Pilot test: calculated scores for the 9 databases; globally, all databases evaluated significantly differed from the "ideal" database; some DB performed

Chemosensory communication of gender information: Masculinity bias in body odor perception and femininity bias introduced by chemosignals during social perception

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Smiljana eMutic

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Human body odor is a source of important social information. In this study, we explore whether the sex of an individual can be established based on smelling axillary odor and whether exposure to male and female odors biases chemosensory and social perception. In a double-blind, pseudo-randomized application, 31 healthy normosmic heterosexual male and female raters were exposed to male and female chemosignals (odor samples of 27 heterosexual donors collected during a cardio workout and a no odor sample. Recipients rated chemosensory samples on a masculinity-femininity scale and provided intensity, familiarity and pleasantness ratings. Additionally, the modulation of social perception (gender-neutral faces and personality attributes and affective introspection (mood by male and female chemosignals was assessed. Male and female axillary odors were rated as rather masculine, regardless of the sex of the donor. As opposed to the masculinity bias in the odor perception, a femininity bias modulating social perception appeared. A facilitated femininity detection in gender-neutral faces and personality attributes in association with both male and female chemosignals appeared. No chemosensory effect on mood of the rater was observed. The results are discussed with regards to the use of male and female chemosignals in affective and social communication.

Why relevance theory is relevant for lexicography

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bothma, Theo; Tarp, Sven

2014-01-01

This article starts by providing a brief summary of relevance theory in information science in relation to the function theory of lexicography, explaining the different types of relevance, viz. objective system relevance and the subjective types of relevance, i.e. topical, cognitive, situational...... that is very important for lexicography as well as for information science, viz. functional relevance. Since all lexicographic work is ultimately aimed at satisfying users’ information needs, the article then discusses why the lexicographer should take note of all these types of relevance when planning a new...... dictionary project, identifying new tasks and responsibilities of the modern lexicographer. The article furthermore discusses how relevance theory impacts on teaching dictionary culture and reference skills. By integrating insights from lexicography and information science, the article contributes to new...

Spatial But Not Oculomotor Information Biases Perceptual Memory: Evidence From Face Perception and Cognitive Modeling.

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Wantz, Andrea L; Lobmaier, Janek S; Mast, Fred W; Senn, Walter

2017-08-01

Recent research put forward the hypothesis that eye movements are integrated in memory representations and are reactivated when later recalled. However, "looking back to nothing" during recall might be a consequence of spatial memory retrieval. Here, we aimed at distinguishing between the effect of spatial and oculomotor information on perceptual memory. Participants' task was to judge whether a morph looked rather like the first or second previously presented face. Crucially, faces and morphs were presented in a way that the morph reactivated oculomotor and/or spatial information associated with one of the previously encoded faces. Perceptual face memory was largely influenced by these manipulations. We considered a simple computational model with an excellent match (4.3% error) that expresses these biases as a linear combination of recency, saccade, and location. Surprisingly, saccades did not play a role. The results suggest that spatial and temporal rather than oculomotor information biases perceptual face memory. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Training interpretation biases among individuals with body dysmorphic disorder symptoms.

Science.gov (United States)

Premo, Julie E; Sarfan, Laurel D; Clerkin, Elise M

2016-03-01

The current study provided an initial test of a Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretations (CBM-I) training paradigm among a sample with elevated BDD symptoms (N=86). As expected, BDD-relevant interpretations were reduced among participants who completed a positive (vs. comparison) training program. Results also pointed to the intriguing possibility that modifying biased appearance-relevant interpretations is causally related to changes in biased, socially relevant interpretations. Further, providing support for cognitive behavioral models, residual change in interpretations was associated with some aspects of in vivo stressor responding. However, contrary to expectations there were no significant effects of condition on emotional vulnerability to a BDD stressor, potentially because participants in both training conditions experienced reductions in biased socially-threatening interpretations following training (suggesting that the "comparison" condition was not inert). These findings have meaningful theoretical and clinical implications, and fit with transdiagnostic conceptualizations of psychopathology. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Implementing context information management in forensic casework: Minimizing contextual bias in firearms examination

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mattijssen, E.J.A.T.; Kerkhoff, W.; Berger, C.E.H.; Dror, I.E.; Stoel, R.D.

2016-01-01

Managing context information in forensic casework aims to minimize task-irrelevant information while maximizing the task-relevant information that reaches the examiner. A design and implementation of context information management (CIM) is described for forensic firearms examination. Guided by a

Age differences in attention toward decision-relevant information: education matters.

Science.gov (United States)

Xing, Cai; Isaacowitz, Derek

2011-01-01

Previous studies suggested that older adults are more likely to engage in heuristic decision-making than young adults. This study used eye tracking technique to examine young adults' and highly educated older adults' attention toward two types of decision-relevant information: heuristic cue vs. factual cues. Surprisingly, highly educated older adults showed the reversed age pattern-they looked more toward factual cues than did young adults. This age difference disappeared after controlling for educational level. Additionally, education correlated with attentional pattern to decision-relevant information. We interpret this finding as an indication of the power of education: education may modify what are thought to be "typical" age differences in decision-making, and education may influence young and older people's decision-making via different paths.

Evidential Equilibria: Heuristics and Biases in Static Games of Complete Information

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Ali al-Nowaihi

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Standard equilibrium concepts in game theory find it difficult to explain the empirical evidence from a large number of static games, including the prisoners’ dilemma game, the hawk-dove game, voting games, public goods games and oligopoly games. Under uncertainty about what others will do in one-shot games, evidence suggests that people often use evidential reasoning (ER, i.e., they assign diagnostic significance to their own actions in forming beliefs about the actions of other like-minded players. This is best viewed as a heuristic or bias relative to the standard approach. We provide a formal theoretical framework that incorporates ER into static games by proposing evidential games and the relevant solution concept: evidential equilibrium (EE. We derive the relation between a Nash equilibrium and an EE. We illustrate these concepts in the context of the prisoners’ dilemma game.

Observability considerations for multi-sensor and product fusion: Bias, information content, and validation (Invited)

Science.gov (United States)

Reid, J. S.; Zhang, J.; Hyer, E. J.; Campbell, J. R.; Christopher, S. A.; Ferrare, R. A.; Leptoukh, G. G.; Stackhouse, P. W.

2009-12-01

With the successful development of many aerosol products from the NASA A-train as well as new operational geostationary and polar orbiting sensors, the scientific community now has a host of new parameters to use in their analyses. The variety and quality of products has reached a point where the community has moved from basic observation-based science to sophisticated multi-component research that addresses the complex atmospheric environment. In order for these satellite data contribute to the science their uncertainty levels must move from semi-quantitative to quantitative. Initial attempts to quantify uncertainties have led to some recent debate in the community as to the efficacy of aerosol products from current and future NASA satellite sensors. In an effort to understand the state of satellite product fidelity, the Naval Research Laboratory and a newly reformed Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) aerosol panel have both initiated assessments of the nature of aerosol remote sensing uncertainty and bias. In this talk we go over areas of specific concern based on the authors’ experiences with the data, emphasizing the multi-sensor problem. We first enumerate potential biases, including retrieval, sampling/contextual, and cognitive bias. We show examples of how these biases can subsequently lead to the pitfalls of correlated/compensating errors, tautology, and confounding. The nature of bias is closely related to the information content of the sensor signal and its subsequent application to the derived aerosol quantity of interest (e.g., optical depth, flux, index of refraction, etc.). Consequently, purpose-specific validation methods must be employed, especially when generating multi-sensor products. Indeed, cloud and lower boundary condition biases in particular complicate the more typical methods of regressional bias elimination and histogram matching. We close with a discussion of sequestration of uncertainty in multi-sensor applications of

Incidental biasing of attention from visual long-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Fan, Judith E; Turk-Browne, Nicholas B

2016-06-01

Holding recently experienced information in mind can help us achieve our current goals. However, such immediate and direct forms of guidance from working memory are less helpful over extended delays or when other related information in long-term memory is useful for reaching these goals. Here we show that information that was encoded in the past but is no longer present or relevant to the task also guides attention. We examined this by associating multiple unique features with novel shapes in visual long-term memory (VLTM), and subsequently testing how memories for these objects biased the deployment of attention. In Experiment 1, VLTM for associated features guided visual search for the shapes, even when these features had never been task-relevant. In Experiment 2, associated features captured attention when presented in isolation during a secondary task that was completely unrelated to the shapes. These findings suggest that long-term memory enables a durable and automatic type of memory-based attentional control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Traumatogenic Processes and Pathways to Mental Health Outcomes for Sexual Minorities Exposed to Bias Crime Information.

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Lannert, Brittany K

2015-07-01

Vicarious traumatization of nonvictim members of communities targeted by bias crimes has been suggested by previous qualitative studies and often dominates public discussion following bias events, but proximal and distal responses of community members have yet to be comprehensively modeled, and quantitative research on vicarious responses is scarce. This comprehensive review integrates theoretical and empirical literatures in social, clinical, and physiological psychology in the development of a model of affective, cognitive, and physiological responses of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals upon exposure to information about bias crimes. Extant qualitative research in vicarious response to bias crimes is reviewed in light of theoretical implications and methodological limitations. Potential pathways to mental health outcomes are outlined, including accumulative effects of anticipatory defensive responding, multiplicative effects of minority stress, and putative traumatogenic physiological and cognitive processes of threat. Methodological considerations, future research directions, and clinical implications are also discussed. © The Author(s) 2014.

The strength of attentional biases reduces as visual short-term memory load increases.

Science.gov (United States)

Shimi, A; Astle, D E

2013-07-01

Despite our visual system receiving irrelevant input that competes with task-relevant signals, we are able to pursue our perceptual goals. Attention enhances our visual processing by biasing the processing of the input that is relevant to the task at hand. The top-down signals enabling these biases are therefore important for regulating lower level sensory mechanisms. In three experiments, we examined whether we apply similar biases to successfully maintain information in visual short-term memory (VSTM). We presented participants with targets alongside distracters and we graded their perceptual similarity to vary the extent to which they competed. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the more items held in VSTM before the onset of the distracters, the more perceptually distinct the distracters needed to be for participants to retain the target accurately. Experiment 3 extended these behavioral findings by demonstrating that the perceptual similarity between target and distracters exerted a significantly greater effect on occipital alpha amplitudes, depending on the number of items already held in VSTM. The trade-off between VSTM load and target-distracter competition suggests that VSTM and perceptual competition share a partially overlapping mechanism, namely top-down inputs into sensory areas.

Phase synchronization of delta and theta oscillations increase during the detection of relevant lexical information

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Enzo eBrunetti

2013-06-01

Full Text Available During monitoring of the discourse, the detection of the relevance of incoming lexical information could be critical for its incorporation to update mental representations in memory. Because, in these situations, the relevance for lexical information is defined by abstract rules that are maintained in memory, results critical to understand how an abstract level of knowledge maintained in mind mediates the detection of the lower-level semantic information. In the present study, we propose that neuronal oscillations participate in the detection of relevant lexical information, based on ‘kept in mind’ rules deriving from more abstract semantic information. We tested our hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that restricted the detection of relevance to inferences based on explicit information, thus controlling for ambiguities derived from implicit aspects. We used a categorization task, in which the semantic relevance was previously defined based on the congruency between a kept in mind category (abstract knowledge, and the lexical-semantic information presented. Our results show that during the detection of the relevant lexical information, phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations selectively increases in delta and theta frequency bands during the interval of semantic analysis. These increments were independent of the semantic category maintained in memory, had a temporal profile specific for each subject, and were mainly induced, as they had no effect on the evoked mean global field power. Also, recruitment of an increased number of pairs of electrodes was a robust observation during the detection of semantic contingent words. These results are consistent with the notion that the detection of relevant lexical information based on a particular semantic rule, could be mediated by increasing the global phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations, which may contribute to the recruitment of an extended number of cortical regions.

Phase synchronization of delta and theta oscillations increase during the detection of relevant lexical information.

Science.gov (United States)

Brunetti, Enzo; Maldonado, Pedro E; Aboitiz, Francisco

2013-01-01

During monitoring of the discourse, the detection of the relevance of incoming lexical information could be critical for its incorporation to update mental representations in memory. Because, in these situations, the relevance for lexical information is defined by abstract rules that are maintained in memory, a central aspect to elucidate is how an abstract level of knowledge maintained in mind mediates the detection of the lower-level semantic information. In the present study, we propose that neuronal oscillations participate in the detection of relevant lexical information, based on "kept in mind" rules deriving from more abstract semantic information. We tested our hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that restricted the detection of relevance to inferences based on explicit information, thus controlling for ambiguities derived from implicit aspects. We used a categorization task, in which the semantic relevance was previously defined based on the congruency between a kept in mind category (abstract knowledge), and the lexical semantic information presented. Our results show that during the detection of the relevant lexical information, phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations selectively increases in delta and theta frequency bands during the interval of semantic analysis. These increments occurred irrespective of the semantic category maintained in memory, had a temporal profile specific for each subject, and were mainly induced, as they had no effect on the evoked mean global field power. Also, recruitment of an increased number of pairs of electrodes was a robust observation during the detection of semantic contingent words. These results are consistent with the notion that the detection of relevant lexical information based on a particular semantic rule, could be mediated by increasing the global phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations, which may contribute to the recruitment of an extended number of cortical regions.

Detecting clinically relevant new information in clinical notes across specialties and settings.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Rui; Pakhomov, Serguei V S; Arsoniadis, Elliot G; Lee, Janet T; Wang, Yan; Melton, Genevieve B

2017-07-05

Automated methods for identifying clinically relevant new versus redundant information in electronic health record (EHR) clinical notes is useful for clinicians and researchers involved in patient care and clinical research, respectively. We evaluated methods to automatically identify clinically relevant new information in clinical notes, and compared the quantity of redundant information across specialties and clinical settings. Statistical language models augmented with semantic similarity measures were evaluated as a means to detect and quantify clinically relevant new and redundant information over longitudinal clinical notes for a given patient. A corpus of 591 progress notes over 40 inpatient admissions was annotated for new information longitudinally by physicians to generate a reference standard. Note redundancy between various specialties was evaluated on 71,021 outpatient notes and 64,695 inpatient notes from 500 solid organ transplant patients (April 2015 through August 2015). Our best method achieved at best performance of 0.87 recall, 0.62 precision, and 0.72 F-measure. Addition of semantic similarity metrics compared to baseline improved recall but otherwise resulted in similar performance. While outpatient and inpatient notes had relatively similar levels of high redundancy (61% and 68%, respectively), redundancy differed by author specialty with mean redundancy of 75%, 66%, 57%, and 55% observed in pediatric, internal medicine, psychiatry and surgical notes, respectively. Automated techniques with statistical language models for detecting redundant versus clinically relevant new information in clinical notes do not improve with the addition of semantic similarity measures. While levels of redundancy seem relatively similar in the inpatient and ambulatory settings in the Fairview Health Services, clinical note redundancy appears to vary significantly with different medical specialties.

Tax Evasion, Information Reporting, and the Regressive Bias Hypothesis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Boserup, Simon Halphen; Pinje, Jori Veng

A robust prediction from the tax evasion literature is that optimal auditing induces a regressive bias in effective tax rates compared to statutory rates. If correct, this will have important distributional consequences. Nevertheless, the regressive bias hypothesis has never been tested empirically...

It is all in their mind: A review on information processing bias in lonely individuals.

Science.gov (United States)

Spithoven, Annette W M; Bijttebier, Patricia; Goossens, Luc

2017-12-01

Loneliness is a distressing emotional state that motivates individuals to renew and maintain social contact. It has been suggested that lonely individuals suffer from a cognitive bias towards social threatening stimuli. However, current models of loneliness remain vague on how this cognitive bias is expressed in lonely individuals. The current review provides an up-to-date overview of studies examining loneliness in relation to various aspects of cognitive functioning. These studies are interpreted in light of the Social Information Processing (SIP) model. A wide range of studies indicate that lonely individuals have a negative cognitive bias in all stages of SIP. More specifically, lonely individuals have an increased attention for social threatening stimuli, hold negative and hostile intent attributions, expect rejection, evaluate themselves and others negatively, endorse less promotion- and more prevention-oriented goals, and have a low self-efficacy. This negative cognitive bias seems specific to the social context. Avenues for future research and implications for clinical practice are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Attentional bias for positive emotional stimuli: A meta-analytic investigation.

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Pool, Eva; Brosch, Tobias; Delplanque, Sylvain; Sander, David

2016-01-01

Despite an initial focus on negative threatening stimuli, researchers have more recently expanded the investigation of attentional biases toward positive rewarding stimuli. The present meta-analysis systematically compared attentional bias for positive compared with neutral visual stimuli across 243 studies (N = 9,120 healthy participants) that used different types of attentional paradigms and positive stimuli. Factors were tested that, as postulated by several attentional models derived from theories of emotion, might modulate this bias. Overall, results showed a significant, albeit modest (Hedges' g = .258), attentional bias for positive as compared with neutral stimuli. Moderator analyses revealed that the magnitude of this attentional bias varied as a function of arousal and that this bias was significantly larger when the emotional stimulus was relevant to specific concerns (e.g., hunger) of the participants compared with other positive stimuli that were less relevant to the participants' concerns. Moreover, the moderator analyses showed that attentional bias for positive stimuli was larger in paradigms that measure early, rather than late, attentional processing, suggesting that attentional bias for positive stimuli occurs rapidly and involuntarily. Implications for theories of emotion and attention are discussed. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Source Credibility and the Biasing Effect of Narrative Information on the Perception of Vaccination Risks.

Science.gov (United States)

Haase, Niels; Betsch, Cornelia; Renkewitz, Frank

2015-08-01

Immunization rates are below the Global Immunization Vision and Strategy established by the World Health Organization. One reason for this are anti-vaccination activists, who use the Internet to disseminate their agenda, frequently by publishing narrative reports about alleged vaccine adverse events. In health communication, the use of narrative information has been shown to be effectively persuasive. Furthermore, persuasion research indicates that the credibility of an information source may serve as a cue to discount or augment the communicated message. Thus, the present study investigated the effect of source credibility on the biasing effect of narrative information regarding the perception of vaccination risks. 265 participants were provided with statistical information (20%) regarding the occurrence of vaccine adverse events after vaccination against a fictitious disease. This was followed by 20 personalized narratives from an online forum on vaccination experiences. The authors varied the relative frequency of narratives reporting vaccine adverse events (35% vs. 85%), narrative source credibility (anti-vaccination website vs. neutral health forum), and the credibility of the statistical information (reliable data vs. unreliable data vs. control) in a between-subjects design. Results showed a stable narrative bias on risk perception that was not affected by credibility cues. However, narratives from an anti-vaccination website generally led to lower perceptions of vaccination risks.

The relevance of music information representation metadata from the perspective of expert users

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Camila Monteiro de Barros

Full Text Available The general goal of this research was to verify which metadata elements of music information representation are relevant for its retrieval from the perspective of expert music users. Based on a bibliographical research, a comprehensive metadata set of music information representation was developed and transformed into a questionnaire for data collection, which was applied to students and professors of the Graduate Program in Music at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. The results show that the most relevant information for expert music users is related to identification and authorship responsibilities. The respondents from Composition and Interpretative Practice areas agree with these results, while the respondents from Musicology/Ethnomusicology and Music Education areas also consider the metadata related to the historical context of composition relevant.

the effect of current and relevant information sources on the use

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reported similar findings at Yaba College of. Technology, Lagos. However, in a ... values. In other words, current information sources resulted in the use of the library. Jam (1992) identified lack of relevant information sources to be one of the problems facing library users and has ... Bachelor's degree holders. That those with.

How we categorize objects is related to how we remember them: The shape bias as a memory bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Vlach, Haley A

2016-12-01

The "shape bias" describes the phenomenon that, after a certain point in development, children and adults generalize object categories based on shape to a greater degree than other perceptual features. The focus of research on the shape bias has been to examine the types of information that learners attend to in one moment in time. The current work takes a different approach by examining whether learners' categorical biases are related to their retention of information across time. In three experiments, children's (N=72) and adults' (N=240) memory performance for features of objects was examined in relation to their categorical biases. The results of these experiments demonstrated that the number of shape matches chosen during the shape bias task significantly predicted shape memory. Moreover, children and adults with a shape bias were more likely to remember the shape of objects than the color and size of objects. Taken together, this work suggests that the development of a shape bias may engender better memory for shape information. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Negativity Bias in Dangerous Drivers.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jing Chai

Full Text Available The behavioral and cognitive characteristics of dangerous drivers differ significantly from those of safe drivers. However, differences in emotional information processing have seldom been investigated. Previous studies have revealed that drivers with higher anger/anxiety trait scores are more likely to be involved in crashes and that individuals with higher anger traits exhibit stronger negativity biases when processing emotions compared with control groups. However, researchers have not explored the relationship between emotional information processing and driving behavior. In this study, we examined the emotional information processing differences between dangerous drivers and safe drivers. Thirty-eight non-professional drivers were divided into two groups according to the penalty points that they had accrued for traffic violations: 15 drivers with 6 or more points were included in the dangerous driver group, and 23 drivers with 3 or fewer points were included in the safe driver group. The emotional Stroop task was used to measure negativity biases, and both behavioral and electroencephalograph data were recorded. The behavioral results revealed stronger negativity biases in the dangerous drivers than in the safe drivers. The bias score was correlated with self-reported dangerous driving behavior. Drivers with strong negativity biases reported having been involved in mores crashes compared with the less-biased drivers. The event-related potentials (ERPs revealed that the dangerous drivers exhibited reduced P3 components when responding to negative stimuli, suggesting decreased inhibitory control of information that is task-irrelevant but emotionally salient. The influence of negativity bias provides one possible explanation of the effects of individual differences on dangerous driving behavior and traffic crashes.

Social exclusion leads to attentional bias to emotional social information: Evidence from eye movement.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Zhuohao; Du, Jinchen; Xiang, Min; Zhang, Yan; Zhang, Shuyue

2017-01-01

Social exclusion has many effects on individuals, including the increased need to belong and elevated sensitivity to social information. Using a self-reporting method, and an eye-tracking technique, this study explored people's need to belong and attentional bias towards the socio-emotional information (pictures of positive and negative facial expressions compared to those of emotionally-neutral expressions) after experiencing a brief episode of social exclusion. We found that: (1) socially-excluded individuals reported higher negative emotions, lower positive emotions, and stronger need to belong than those who were not socially excluded; (2) compared to a control condition, social exclusion caused a longer response time to probe dots after viewing positive or negative face images; (3) social exclusion resulted in a higher frequency ratio of first attentional fixation on both positive and negative emotional facial pictures (but not on the neutral pictures) than the control condition; (4) in the social exclusion condition, participants showed shorter first fixation latency and longer first fixation duration to positive pictures than neutral ones but this effect was not observed for negative pictures; (5) participants who experienced social exclusion also showed longer gazing duration on the positive pictures than those who did not; although group differences also existed for the negative pictures, the gaze duration bias from both groups showed no difference from chance. This study demonstrated the emotional response to social exclusion as well as characterising multiple eye-movement indicators of attentional bias after experiencing social exclusion.

Relevant Information and Informed Consent in Research: In Defense of the Subjective Standard of Disclosure.

Science.gov (United States)

Dranseika, Vilius; Piasecki, Jan; Waligora, Marcin

2017-02-01

In this article, we seek to contribute to the debate on the requirement of disclosure in the context of informed consent for research. We defend the subjective standard of disclosure and describe ways to implement this standard in research practice. We claim that the researcher should make an effort to find out what kinds of information are likely to be relevant for those consenting to research. This invites researchers to take empirical survey information seriously, attempt to understand the cultural context, talk to patients to be better able to understand what can be potentially different concerns and interests prevalent in the target population. The subjective standard of disclosure should be seen as a moral ideal that perhaps can never be perfectly implemented but still can and should be used as a normative ideal guiding research practice. In the light of these discussions, we call for more empirical research on what considerations are likely to be perceived as relevant by potential research participants recruited from different socio-economic and cultural groups.

77 FR 42339 - Improving Contracting Officers' Access to Relevant Integrity Information

Science.gov (United States)

2012-07-18

... contracting officers' access to relevant information about contractor business ethics in the Federal Awardee... ability to evaluate the business ethics of prospective contractors and protect the Government from...

Cognitive bias in action: evidence for a reciprocal relation between confirmation bias and fear in children.

Science.gov (United States)

Remmerswaal, Danielle; Huijding, Jorg; Bouwmeester, Samantha; Brouwer, Marlies; Muris, Peter

2014-03-01

Some cognitive models propose that information processing biases and fear are reciprocally related. This idea has never been formally tested. Therefore, this study investigated the existence of a vicious circle by which confirmation bias and fear exacerbate each other. One-hundred-and-seventy-one school children (8-13 years) were first provided with threatening, ambiguous, or positive information about an unknown animal. Then they completed a computerized information search task during which they could collect additional (negative, positive, or neutral) information about the novel animal. Because fear levels were repeatedly assessed during the task, it was possible to examine the reciprocal relationship between confirmation bias and fear. A reciprocal relation of mutual reinforcement was found between confirmation bias and fear over the course of the experiment: increases in fear predicted subsequent increases in the search for negative information, and increases in the search for negative information further enhanced fear on a later point-in-time. In addition, the initial information given about the animals successfully induced diverging fear levels in the children, and determined their first inclination to search for additional information. As this study employed a community sample of primary school children, future research should test whether these results can be generalized to clinically anxious youth. These findings provide first support for the notion that fearful individuals may become trapped in a vicious circle in which fear and a fear-related confirmation bias mutually strengthen each other, thereby maintaining the anxiety pathology. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Common Body of Knowledge: A Framework to Promote Relevant Information Security Research

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kenneth J. Knapp

2007-03-01

Full Text Available This study proposes using an established common body of knowledge (CBK as one means of organizing information security literature.  Consistent with calls for more relevant information systems (IS research, this industry-developed framework can motivate future research towards topics that are important to the security practitioner.  In this review, forty-eight articles from ten IS journals from 1995 to 2004 are selected and cross-referenced to the ten domains of the information security CBK.  Further, we distinguish articles as empirical research, frameworks, or tutorials.  Generally, this study identified a need for additional empirical research in every CBK domain including topics related to legal aspects of information security.  Specifically, this study identified a need for additional IS security research relating to applications development, physical security, operations security, and business continuity.  The CBK framework is inherently practitioner oriented and using it will promote relevancy by steering IS research towards topics important to practitioners.  This is important considering the frequent calls by prominent information systems scholars for more relevant research.  Few research frameworks have emerged from the literature that specifically classify the diversity of security threats and range of problems that businesses today face.  With the recent surge of interest in security, the need for a comprehensive framework that also promotes relevant research can be of great value.

Hindsight bias and outcome bias in the social construction of medical negligence: a review.

Science.gov (United States)

Hugh, Thomas B; Dekker, Sidney W A

2009-05-01

Medical negligence has been the subject of much public debate in recent decades. Although the steep increase in the frequency and size of claims against doctors at the end of the last century appears to have plateaued, in Australia at least, medical indemnity costs and consequences are still a matter of concern for doctors, medical defence organisations and governments in most developed countries. Imprecision in the legal definition of negligence opens the possibility that judgments of this issue at several levels may be subject to hindsight and outcome bias. Hindsight bias relates to the probability of an adverse event perceived by a retrospective observer ("I would have known it was going to happen"), while outcome bias is a largely subconscious cognitive distortion produced by the observer's knowledge of the adverse outcome. This review examines the relevant legal, medical, psychological and sociological literature on the operation of these pervasive and universal biases in the retrospective evaluation of adverse events. A finding of medical negligence is essentially an after-the-event social construction and is invariably affected by hindsight bias and knowledge of the adverse outcome. Such biases obviously pose a threat to the fairness of judgments. A number of debiasing strategies have been suggested but are relatively ineffective because of the universality and strength of these biases and the inherent difficulty of concealing from expert witnesses knowledge of the outcome. Education about the effect of the biases is therefore important for lawyers, medical expert witnesses and the judiciary.

Attentional bias in snus users: an experimental study.

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Rune Aune Mentzoni

Full Text Available The use of nicotine in the form of "snus" is substantial and increasing in some geographic areas, in particular among young people. It has previously been suggested that addictions may operate through a mechanism of attentional bias, in which stimuli representative of the dependent substance increase in salience, thus increasing the addictive behavior. However, this hypothesis has not been tested for the case of snus. The current experiment used a modified Stroop task and a dot-probe task to investigate whether 40 snus users show an attentional bias towards snus-relevant stimuli, compared to 40 non-snus users. There were no significant differences between the two groups on reaction times or accuracy on either Stroop or dot-probe task, thus failing to show an attentional bias towards snus-relevant stimuli for snus users. This could imply that other mechanisms may contribute to maintenance of snus use than for other addictions. However, this is the first experimental study investigating attentional bias in snus users, and more research is warranted.

Information Content Moderates Positivity and Negativity Biases in Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Hess, Thomas M.; Popham, Lauren E.; Dennis, Paul A.; Emery, Lisa

2014-01-01

Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets. PMID:23421322

Information content moderates positivity and negativity biases in memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Hess, Thomas M; Popham, Lauren E; Dennis, Paul A; Emery, Lisa

2013-09-01

Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets.

Disorder-specific neuroanatomical correlates of attentional bias in obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and hypochondriasis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van den Heuvel, O.A.; Veltman, D.J.; Groenewegen, H.J.; Witter, M.P.; Merkelbach, J.; Cath, D.C.; van Balkom, A.J.; van Oppen, P.; van Dyck, R.

2005-01-01

Context: Attentional bias to disease-relevant emotional cues is considered to be pathogenetically relevant in anxiety disorders. Objective: To investigate functional neural correlates and disease specificity of attentional bias across different anxiety disorders. Design: A cognitive and emotional

Disorder-specific neuroanatomical correlates of attentional bias in obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and hypochondriasis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van den Heuvel, Odile A.; Veltman, Dick J.; Groenewegen, Henk J.; Witter, Menno P.; Merkelbach, Jille; Cath, Danielle C.; van Balkom, Anton J. L. M.; van Oppen, Patricia; van Dyck, Richard

2005-01-01

CONTEXT: Attentional bias to disease-relevant emotional cues is considered to be pathogenetically relevant in anxiety disorders. OBJECTIVE: To investigate functional neural correlates and disease specificity of attentional bias across different anxiety disorders. DESIGN: A cognitive and emotional

THE RELEVANCE OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION IN ANALYZING THE ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

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PATRUTA MIRCEA IOAN

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The performance analysis is based on an informational system, which provides financial information in various formatsand with various applicabilities.We intend to formulate a set of important caracteristics of financial information along with identifying a set of relevant financial rates and indicatorsused to appreciate the performance level of a company. Economic performance can be interpreted in different ways at each level of analysis. Generally, it refers to economic growth, increased productivity and profitability. The growth of labor productivity or increased production per worker is a measure of efficient use of resources in value creation.

A Neural Marker for Social Bias Toward In-group Accents.

Science.gov (United States)

Bestelmeyer, Patricia E G; Belin, Pascal; Ladd, D Robert

2015-10-01

Accents provide information about the speaker's geographical, socio-economic, and ethnic background. Research in applied psychology and sociolinguistics suggests that we generally prefer our own accent to other varieties of our native language and attribute more positive traits to it. Despite the widespread influence of accents on social interactions, educational and work settings the neural underpinnings of this social bias toward our own accent and, what may drive this bias, are unexplored. We measured brain activity while participants from two different geographical backgrounds listened passively to 3 English accent types embedded in an adaptation design. Cerebral activity in several regions, including bilateral amygdalae, revealed a significant interaction between the participants' own accent and the accent they listened to: while repetition of own accents elicited an enhanced neural response, repetition of the other group's accent resulted in reduced responses classically associated with adaptation. Our findings suggest that increased social relevance of, or greater emotional sensitivity to in-group accents, may underlie the own-accent bias. Our results provide a neural marker for the bias associated with accents, and show, for the first time, that the neural response to speech is partly shaped by the geographical background of the listener. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

Age-differences in cognitive flexibility when overcoming a preexisting bias through feedback.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, Cristina G; Nusbaum, Amy T; Whitney, Paul; Hinson, John M

2018-08-01

Older adults are often worse than younger adults at adapting to changing situational demands, and this difference is commonly attributed to an age-related decline in acquiring and updating information. Previous research on aging and cognitive flexibility has used measures that require adapting to novel associations learned during a laboratory task (e.g., choice X led to positive outcomes but now leads to negative outcomes). However, in everyday life people must frequently overcome associations based on preexisting beliefs and biases (e.g., you like to eat cake, but your doctor said to limit your sugar intake). The goal of the present study was to examine possible age-differences in overcoming a preexisting bias and determine whether age-related changes in the acquisition and updating of information influence this form of flexibility. Older (n = 20) and younger (n = 20) adults completed a novel task in which repeated choices were made between a sure option (gain or loss) and one of two risky options that were initially ambiguous. Optimal performance required overcoming a framing bias toward being risk seeking to avoid a sure loss and risk averse when offered a sure gain. Probe questions assessed knowledge of choice outcomes, while skin conductance assessed physiological reactions to choices and choice outcomes. Both older and younger adults demonstrated flexibility by reducing the impact of bias over trials, but younger adults had better performance overall. Age-differences were associated with distinct aspects of processing. Young adults had more precise knowledge of choice outcomes and developed skin conductance responses in anticipation of bad choices that were not apparent in older adults. Older adults showed significant improvement over trials in their ability to decrease bias-driven choices, but younger showed greater flexibility. Age-differences in task performance were based on differences in learning and corresponding representations of task-relevant

How we categorize objects is related to how we remember them: The shape bias as a memory bias

Science.gov (United States)

Vlach, Haley A.

2016-01-01

The “shape bias” describes the phenomenon that, after a certain point in development, children and adults generalize object categories based upon shape to a greater degree than other perceptual features. The focus of research on the shape bias has been to examine the types of information that learners attend to in one moment in time. The current work takes a different approach by examining whether learners' categorical biases are related to their retention of information across time. In three experiments, children's (N = 72) and adults' (N = 240) memory performance for features of objects was examined in relation to their categorical biases. The results of these experiments demonstrated that the number of shape matches chosen during the shape bias task significantly predicted shape memory. Moreover, children and adults with a shape bias were more likely to remember the shape of objects than they were the color and size of objects. Taken together, this work suggests the development of a shape bias may engender better memory for shape information. PMID:27454236

Pengaruh Participation Budgeting, Information Asimetry dan Job Relevant Information terhadap Budget Slack pada Institusi Pendidikan (Studi pada Institusi Pendidikan Universitas Kristen Maranatha)

OpenAIRE

K. S., Christine Dwi; Agustina, Lidya

2010-01-01

The purpose of this research is to analyze and examine the hyphothesis effect of participation budgeting on job relevant information and  information asimetry as a moderating variable , and effect of participation budgeting and information asimetry on budget slack and job relevant information as mediating varible. The respondent of this research are 30 structural staf of program and ministry in Maranatha Christian University who have participated to make  budgeting. This method that...

Self-face Captures, Holds, and Biases Attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Wójcik, Michał J; Nowicka, Maria M; Kotlewska, Ilona; Nowicka, Anna

2017-01-01

The implicit self-recognition process may take place already in the pre-attentive stages of perception. After a silent stimulus has captured attention, it is passed on to the attentive stage where it can affect decision making and responding. Numerous studies show that the presence of self-referential information affects almost every cognitive level. These effects may share a common and fundamental basis in an attentional mechanism, conceptualized as attentional bias: the exaggerated deployment of attentional resources to a salient stimulus. A gold standard in attentional bias research is the dot-probe paradigm. In this task, a prominent stimulus (cue) and a neutral stimulus are presented in different spatial locations, followed by the presentation of a target. In the current study we aimed at investigating whether the self-face captures, holds and biases attention when presented as a task-irrelevant stimulus. In two dot-probe experiments coupled with the event-related potential (ERP) technique we analyzed the following relevant ERPs components: N2pc and SPCN which reflect attentional shifts and the maintenance of attention, respectively. An inter-stimulus interval separating face-cues and probes (800 ms) was introduced only in the first experiment. In line with our predictions, in Experiment 1 the self-face elicited the N2pc and the SPCN component. In Experiment 2 in addition to N2pc, an attentional bias was observed. Our results indicate that unintentional self-face processing disables the top-down control setting to filter out distractors, thus leading to the engagement of attentional resources and visual short-term memory.

Self-face Captures, Holds, and Biases Attention

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michał J. Wójcik

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The implicit self-recognition process may take place already in the pre-attentive stages of perception. After a silent stimulus has captured attention, it is passed on to the attentive stage where it can affect decision making and responding. Numerous studies show that the presence of self-referential information affects almost every cognitive level. These effects may share a common and fundamental basis in an attentional mechanism, conceptualized as attentional bias: the exaggerated deployment of attentional resources to a salient stimulus. A gold standard in attentional bias research is the dot-probe paradigm. In this task, a prominent stimulus (cue and a neutral stimulus are presented in different spatial locations, followed by the presentation of a target. In the current study we aimed at investigating whether the self-face captures, holds and biases attention when presented as a task-irrelevant stimulus. In two dot-probe experiments coupled with the event-related potential (ERP technique we analyzed the following relevant ERPs components: N2pc and SPCN which reflect attentional shifts and the maintenance of attention, respectively. An inter-stimulus interval separating face-cues and probes (800 ms was introduced only in the first experiment. In line with our predictions, in Experiment 1 the self-face elicited the N2pc and the SPCN component. In Experiment 2 in addition to N2pc, an attentional bias was observed. Our results indicate that unintentional self-face processing disables the top-down control setting to filter out distractors, thus leading to the engagement of attentional resources and visual short-term memory.

Attention bias towards negative emotional information and its relationship with daily worry in the context of acute stress: An eye-tracking study.

Science.gov (United States)

Macatee, Richard J; Albanese, Brian J; Schmidt, Norman B; Cougle, Jesse R

2017-03-01

Cognitive theories of anxiety psychopathology cite biased attention towards threat as a central vulnerability and maintaining factor. However, many studies have found threat bias indices to have poor reliability and have failed to observe the theorized relationship between threat bias and anxiety symptoms; this may be due to the non-unitary nature of threat bias and the influence of state-level variables on its expression. Accumulating data suggests that state anxious mood is important for the robust expression of threat bias and for relations to emerge between threat bias and symptoms, though this possibility has not been experimentally tested. Eye-tracking was used to assess multiple forms of threat bias (i.e., early vigilance, sustained attention, facilitated engagement, delayed disengagement) thought to be related to anxiety. A non-clinical sample (N = 165) was recruited to test the hypothesis that biased attention towards threat, but not dysphoric or positive emotional stimuli, during an anxious mood induction, but not at a pre-stress baseline, would prospectively predict greater worry symptoms on days in which more naturalistic stressors occurred. Results revealed the hypothesized moderation effect for sustained attention towards threat after the mood induction but not at baseline, though sustained attention towards dysphoric stimuli also moderated the effect of stressors on worry. Worry-relevant sustained attention towards negative emotional stimuli may be a partially mood-context dependent phenomenon. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Information Characteristics and Errors in Expectations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Antoniou, Constantinos; Harrison, Glenn W.; Lau, Morten Igel

Behavioural finance theories draw on evidence from psychology that suggest that some people respond to information in a biased manner, and construct theories of inefficient markets. However, these biases are not always robust when tested in economic conditions, which casts doubt on their relevance...... to market efficiency. We design an economic experiment to test a psychological hypothesis of errors in expectations widely cited in finance, which states that, in violations of Bayes Rule, some people respond more forcefully to the strength of an information signal. The strength of a signal is how saliently...... it supports a specific hypothesis, as opposed to its weight, which is its predictive validity. We find that the strength-weight bias affects expectations, but that its magnitude is three times lower than originally reported in the psychology literature. This suggests that its impact on financial markets...

Age Differences in Attention toward Decision-Relevant Information: Education Matters

Science.gov (United States)

Xing, Cai; Isaacowitz, Derek

2011-01-01

Previous studies suggested that older adults are more likely to engage in heuristic decision-making than young adults. This study used eye tracking technique to examine young adults' and highly educated older adults' attention toward two types of decision-relevant information: heuristic cue vs. factual cues. Surprisingly, highly educated older…

The pricing relevance of insider information; Die Preiserheblichkeit von Insiderinformationen

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kruse, Dominik

2011-07-01

The publication attempts to describe the so far discussion concerning the feature of pricing relevance and to develop it further with the aid of new research approaches. First, a theoretical outline is presented of the elementary regulation problem of insider trading, its historical development, and the regulation goals of the WpHG. This is followed by an analysis of the concrete specifications of the law. In view of the exemplarity of US law, a country with long experience in regulation of the capital market, the materiality doctrine of US insider law is gone into in some detail. The goals and development of the doctrine are reviewed in the light of court rulings. The third part outlines the requirements of German law in order to forecast the pricing relevance of insider information, while the final part presents a critical review of the current regulations on pricing relevance. (orig./RHM)

Spatially Compact Neural Clusters in the Dorsal Striatum Encode Locomotion Relevant Information.

Science.gov (United States)

Barbera, Giovanni; Liang, Bo; Zhang, Lifeng; Gerfen, Charles R; Culurciello, Eugenio; Chen, Rong; Li, Yun; Lin, Da-Ting

2016-10-05

An influential striatal model postulates that neural activities in the striatal direct and indirect pathways promote and inhibit movement, respectively. Normal behavior requires coordinated activity in the direct pathway to facilitate intended locomotion and indirect pathway to inhibit unwanted locomotion. In this striatal model, neuronal population activity is assumed to encode locomotion relevant information. Here, we propose a novel encoding mechanism for the dorsal striatum. We identified spatially compact neural clusters in both the direct and indirect pathways. Detailed characterization revealed similar cluster organization between the direct and indirect pathways, and cluster activities from both pathways were correlated with mouse locomotion velocities. Using machine-learning algorithms, cluster activities could be used to decode locomotion relevant behavioral states and locomotion velocity. We propose that neural clusters in the dorsal striatum encode locomotion relevant information and that coordinated activities of direct and indirect pathway neural clusters are required for normal striatal controlled behavior. VIDEO ABSTRACT. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Changing Zaire to Congo: the fate of no-longer relevant mnemonic information.

Science.gov (United States)

Eriksson, Johan; Stiernstedt, Mikael; Öhlund, Maria; Nyberg, Lars

2014-11-01

In an ever-changing world there is constant pressure on revising long-term memory, such when people or countries change name. What happens to the old, pre-existing information? One possibility is that old associations gradually are weakened and eventually lost. Alternatively, old and no longer relevant information may still be an integral part of memory traces. To test the hypothesis that old mnemonic information still becomes activated when people correctly retrieve new, currently relevant information, brain activity was measured with fMRI while participants performed a cued-retrieval task. Paired associates (symbol-sound and symbol-face pairs) were first learned during two days. Half of the associations were then updated during the next two days, followed by fMRI scanning on day 5 and also 18 months later. As expected, retrieval reactivated sensory cortex related to the most recently learned association (visual cortex for symbol-face pairs, auditory cortex for symbol-sound pairs). Critically, retrieval also reactivated sensory cortex related to the no-longer relevant associate. Eighteen months later, only non-updated symbol-face associations were intact. Intriguingly, a subset of the updated associations was now treated as though the original association had taken over, in that memory performance was significantly worse than chance and that activity in sensory cortex for the original but not the updated associate correlated (negatively) with performance. Moreover, the degree of "residual" reactivation during day 5 inversely predicted memory performance 18 months later. Thus, updating of long-term memory involves adding new information to already existing networks, in which old information can stay resilient for a long time. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Gender bias in the evaluation of new age music.

Science.gov (United States)

Colley, Ann; North, Adrian; Hargreaves, David J

2003-04-01

Eminent composers in Western European art music continue to be predominantly male and eminence in contemporary pop music is similarly male dominated. One contributing factor may be the continuing under-valuation of women's music. Possible anti-female bias in a contemporary genre was investigated using the Goldberg paradigm to elicit judgments of New Age compositions. Since stronger stereotyping effects occur when information provided about individuals is sparse, fictitious male and female composers were presented either by name only or by name with a brief biography. Evidence for anti-female bias was found in the name-only condition and was stronger when liking for the music was controlled. Other findings were the tendency for females to give higher ratings, and the association of gender differences in liking of the music with ratings of quality in the name-only condition. These results are relevant to the design of formal assessment procedures for musical composition.

How Long Should Routine EEG Be Recorded to Get Relevant Information?

Science.gov (United States)

Doudoux, Hannah; Skaare, Kristina; Geay, Thomas; Kahane, Philippe; Bosson, Jean L; Sabourdy, Cécile; Vercueil, Laurent

2017-03-01

The optimal duration of routine EEG (rEEG) has not been determined on a clinical basis. This study aims to determine the time required to obtain relevant information during rEEG with respect to the clinical request. All rEEGs performed over 3 months in unselected patients older than 14 years in an academic hospital were analyzed retrospectively. The latency required to obtain relevant information was determined for each rEEG by 2 independent readers blinded to the clinical data. EEG final diagnoses and latencies were analyzed with respect to the main clinical requests: subacute cognitive impairment, spells, transient focal neurologic manifestation or patients referred by epileptologists. From 430 rEEGs performed in the targeted period, 364 were analyzed: 92% of the pathological rEEGs were provided within the first 10 minutes of recording. Slowing background activity was diagnosed from the beginning, whereas interictal epileptiform discharges were recorded over time. Moreover, the time elapsed to demonstrate a pattern differed significantly in the clinical groups: in patients with subacute cognitive impairment, EEG abnormalities appeared within the first 10 minutes, whereas in the other groups, data could be provided over time. Patients with subacute cognitive impairment differed from those in the other groups significantly in the elapsed time required to obtain relevant information during rEEG, suggesting that 10-minute EEG recordings could be sufficient, arguing in favor of individualized rEEG. However, this conclusion does not apply to intensive care unit patients.

Reporting bias in medical research - a narrative review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kölsch Heike

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Reporting bias represents a major problem in the assessment of health care interventions. Several prominent cases have been described in the literature, for example, in the reporting of trials of antidepressants, Class I anti-arrhythmic drugs, and selective COX-2 inhibitors. The aim of this narrative review is to gain an overview of reporting bias in the medical literature, focussing on publication bias and selective outcome reporting. We explore whether these types of bias have been shown in areas beyond the well-known cases noted above, in order to gain an impression of how widespread the problem is. For this purpose, we screened relevant articles on reporting bias that had previously been obtained by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care in the context of its health technology assessment reports and other research work, together with the reference lists of these articles. We identified reporting bias in 40 indications comprising around 50 different pharmacological, surgical (e.g. vacuum-assisted closure therapy, diagnostic (e.g. ultrasound, and preventive (e.g. cancer vaccines interventions. Regarding pharmacological interventions, cases of reporting bias were, for example, identified in the treatment of the following conditions: depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Alzheimer's disease, pain, migraine, cardiovascular disease, gastric ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, urinary incontinence, atopic dermatitis, diabetes mellitus type 2, hypercholesterolaemia, thyroid disorders, menopausal symptoms, various types of cancer (e.g. ovarian cancer and melanoma, various types of infections (e.g. HIV, influenza and Hepatitis B, and acute trauma. Many cases involved the withholding of study data by manufacturers and regulatory agencies or the active attempt by manufacturers to suppress publication. The ascertained effects of reporting bias included the

Sequence exploration reveals information bias among molecular markers used in phylogenetic reconstruction for Colletotrichum species.

Science.gov (United States)

Rampersad, Sephra N; Hosein, Fazeeda N; Carrington, Christine Vf

2014-01-01

The Colletotrichum gloeosporioides species complex is among the most destructive fungal plant pathogens in the world, however, identification of isolates of quarantine importance to the intra-specific level is confounded by a number of factors that affect phylogenetic reconstruction. Information bias and quality parameters were investigated to determine whether nucleotide sequence alignments and phylogenetic trees accurately reflect the genetic diversity and phylogenetic relatedness of individuals. Sequence exploration of GAPDH, ACT, TUB2 and ITS markers indicated that the query sequences had different patterns of nucleotide substitution but were without evidence of base substitution saturation. Regions of high entropy were much more dispersed in the ACT and GAPDH marker alignments than for the ITS and TUB2 markers. A discernible bimodal gap in the genetic distance frequency histograms was produced for the ACT and GAPDH markers which indicated successful separation of intra- and inter-specific sequences in the data set. Overall, analyses indicated clear differences in the ability of these markers to phylogenetically separate individuals to the intra-specific level which coincided with information bias.

Forced to remember: when memory is biased by salient information.

Science.gov (United States)

Santangelo, Valerio

2015-04-15

The last decades have seen a rapid growing in the attempt to understand the key factors involved in the internal memory representation of the external world. Visual salience have been found to provide a major contribution in predicting the probability for an item/object embedded in a complex setting (i.e., a natural scene) to be encoded and then remembered later on. Here I review the existing literature highlighting the impact of perceptual- (based on low-level sensory features) and semantics-related salience (based on high-level knowledge) on short-term memory representation, along with the neural mechanisms underpinning the interplay between these factors. The available evidence reveal that both perceptual- and semantics-related factors affect attention selection mechanisms during the encoding of natural scenes. Biasing internal memory representation, both perceptual and semantics factors increase the probability to remember high- to the detriment of low-saliency items. The available evidence also highlight an interplay between these factors, with a reduced impact of perceptual-related salience in biasing memory representation as a function of the increasing availability of semantics-related salient information. The neural mechanisms underpinning this interplay involve the activation of different portions of the frontoparietal attention control network. Ventral regions support the assignment of selection/encoding priorities based on high-level semantics, while the involvement of dorsal regions reflects priorities assignment based on low-level sensory features. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Earlier saccades to task-relevant targets irrespective of relative gain between peripheral and foveal information.

Science.gov (United States)

Wolf, Christian; Schütz, Alexander C

2017-06-01

Saccades bring objects of interest onto the fovea for high-acuity processing. Saccades to rewarded targets show shorter latencies that correlate negatively with expected motivational value. Shorter latencies are also observed when the saccade target is relevant for a perceptual discrimination task. Here we tested whether saccade preparation is equally influenced by informational value as it is by motivational value. We defined informational value as the probability that information is task-relevant times the ratio between postsaccadic foveal and presaccadic peripheral discriminability. Using a gaze-contingent display, we independently manipulated peripheral and foveal discriminability of the saccade target. Latencies of saccades with perceptual task were reduced by 36 ms in general, but they were not modulated by the information saccades provide (Experiments 1 and 2). However, latencies showed a clear negative linear correlation with the probability that the target is task-relevant (Experiment 3). We replicated that the facilitation by a perceptual task is spatially specific and not due to generally heightened arousal (Experiment 4). Finally, the facilitation only emerged when the perceptual task is in the visual but not in the auditory modality (Experiment 5). Taken together, these results suggest that saccade latencies are not equally modulated by informational value as by motivational value. The facilitation by a perceptual task only arises when task-relevant visual information is foveated, irrespective of whether the foveation is useful or not.

Detection of lacunar infarction in brain CT-scans: No evidence of bias from accompanying patient information

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bonke, B.; Knippenberg, F.C.E. van; Duivenvoorden, H.J.; Kappelle, L.J.

1989-01-01

Interobserver agreement in assessing brain CT-scans is, in general, high. The extent, however, to which such agreement is caused by bias through knowledge of other clinical details remains uncertain. The hypothesis that observers are somehow prejudiced before assessing ambiguous, CT-scans in this particular situation was tested. Sixteen neurologists and 16 radiologists volunteered to interpret two ambiguous brain CT-scans, with regard to the presence or absence of a lacunar infarct in the region of the internal capsule. The scans were accompanied by 'patient' information that was or was not suggestive of a stroke. These scans were camouflaged by a variety of other scans, to be assessed in the same way, to mask the purpose of the study. I was assumed that the observers, in their assessments of the scans, would somehow let their ratings of the likelihood of a lacunar infarction in or near the internal capsule be subject to the accompanying information. Results showed lower ratings produced by neurologists (i.e., less likelihood of an infarction) than by radiologists in the majority of all assessments, but no bias by the accompanying information. (orig.)

A study on investors’ personality characteristics and behavioral biases: Conservatism bias and availability bias in the Tehran Stock Exchange

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mahmoud Moradi

2013-04-01

Full Text Available Most economic and finance theories are based on the assumption that during economic decision making, people would act totally rational and consider all available information. Nevertheless, behavioral finance focuses on studying of the role of psychological factors on economic participants’ behavior. The study shows that in real-world environment, people are influenced by emotional and cognitive errors and may make irrational financial decisions. In many cases, the participants of financial markets are not aware of their talents for error in decision making, so they are dissatisfied with their investments by considering some behavioral biases decisions. These decisions may often yield undesirable outcomes, which could influence economy, significantly. This paper presents a survey on the relationship between personality dimensions with behavioral biases and availability bias among investment managers in the Tehran Stock Exchange using SPSS software, descriptive and inferential statistics. The necessary data are collected through questionnaire and they are analyzed using some statistical tests. The preliminary results indicate that there is a relationship between personality dimensions and behavioral biases like conservatism bias and availability bias among the investors in the Tehran Stock Exchange.

Proactive Support of Internet Browsing when Searching for Relevant Health Information.

Science.gov (United States)

Rurik, Clas; Zowalla, Richard; Wiesner, Martin; Pfeifer, Daniel

2015-01-01

Many people use the Internet as one of the primary sources of health information. This is due to the high volume and easy access of freely available information regarding diseases, diagnoses and treatments. However, users may find it difficult to retrieve information which is easily understandable and does not require a deep medical background. In this paper, we present a new kind of Web browser add-on, in order to proactively support users when searching for relevant health information. Our add-on not only visualizes the understandability of displayed medical text but also provides further recommendations of Web pages which hold similar content but are potentially easier to comprehend.

The specificity of attentional biases by type of gambling: An eye-tracking study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel S McGrath

Full Text Available A growing body of research indicates that gamblers develop an attentional bias for gambling-related stimuli. Compared to research on substance use, however, few studies have examined attentional biases in gamblers using eye-gaze tracking, which has many advantages over other measures of attention. In addition, previous studies of attentional biases in gamblers have not directly matched type of gambler with personally-relevant gambling cues. The present study investigated the specificity of attentional biases for individual types of gambling using an eye-gaze tracking paradigm. Three groups of participants (poker players, video lottery terminal/slot machine players, and non-gambling controls took part in one test session in which they viewed 25 sets of four images (poker, VLTs/slot machines, bingo, and board games. Participants' eye fixations were recorded throughout each 8-second presentation of the four images. The results indicated that, as predicted, the two gambling groups preferentially attended to their primary form of gambling, whereas control participants attended to board games more than gambling images. The findings have clinical implications for the treatment of individuals with gambling disorder. Understanding the importance of personally-salient gambling cues will inform the development of effective attentional bias modification treatments for problem gamblers.

The specificity of attentional biases by type of gambling: An eye-tracking study.

Science.gov (United States)

McGrath, Daniel S; Meitner, Amadeus; Sears, Christopher R

2018-01-01

A growing body of research indicates that gamblers develop an attentional bias for gambling-related stimuli. Compared to research on substance use, however, few studies have examined attentional biases in gamblers using eye-gaze tracking, which has many advantages over other measures of attention. In addition, previous studies of attentional biases in gamblers have not directly matched type of gambler with personally-relevant gambling cues. The present study investigated the specificity of attentional biases for individual types of gambling using an eye-gaze tracking paradigm. Three groups of participants (poker players, video lottery terminal/slot machine players, and non-gambling controls) took part in one test session in which they viewed 25 sets of four images (poker, VLTs/slot machines, bingo, and board games). Participants' eye fixations were recorded throughout each 8-second presentation of the four images. The results indicated that, as predicted, the two gambling groups preferentially attended to their primary form of gambling, whereas control participants attended to board games more than gambling images. The findings have clinical implications for the treatment of individuals with gambling disorder. Understanding the importance of personally-salient gambling cues will inform the development of effective attentional bias modification treatments for problem gamblers.

Cognitive Biases and Nonverbal Cue Availability in Detecting Deception

Science.gov (United States)

Burgoon, Judee K.; Blair, J. Pete; Strom, Renee E.

2008-01-01

In potentially deceptive situations, people rely on mental shortcuts to help process information. These heuristic judgments are often biased and result in inaccurate assessments of sender veracity. Four such biases--truth bias, visual bias, demeanor bias, and expectancy violation bias--were examined in a judgment experiment that varied nonverbal…

Prioritising the relevant information for learning and decision making within orbital and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Walton, Mark E; Chau, Bolton K H; Kennerley, Steven W

2015-02-01

Our environment and internal states are frequently complex, ambiguous and dynamic, meaning we need to have selection mechanisms to ensure we are basing our decisions on currently relevant information. Here, we review evidence that orbitofrontal (OFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) play conserved, critical but distinct roles in this process. While OFC may use specific sensory associations to enhance task-relevant information, particularly in the context of learning, VMPFC plays a role in ensuring irrelevant information does not impinge on the decision in hand.

Sources of bias in clinical ethics case deliberation.

Science.gov (United States)

Magelssen, Morten; Pedersen, Reidar; Førde, Reidun

2014-10-01

A central task for clinical ethics consultants and committees (CEC) is providing analysis of, and advice on, prospective or retrospective clinical cases. However, several kinds of biases may threaten the integrity, relevance or quality of the CEC's deliberation. Bias should be identified and, if possible, reduced or counteracted. This paper provides a systematic classification of kinds of bias that may be present in a CEC's case deliberation. Six kinds of bias are discussed, with examples, as to their significance and risk factors. Possible remedies are suggested. The potential for bias is greater when the case deliberation is performed by an individual ethics consultant than when an entire clinical ethics committee is involved. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

A Parallel Relational Database Management System Approach to Relevance Feedback in Information Retrieval.

Science.gov (United States)

Lundquist, Carol; Frieder, Ophir; Holmes, David O.; Grossman, David

1999-01-01

Describes a scalable, parallel, relational database-drive information retrieval engine. To support portability across a wide range of execution environments, all algorithms adhere to the SQL-92 standard. By incorporating relevance feedback algorithms, accuracy is enhanced over prior database-driven information retrieval efforts. Presents…

Video coding and decoding devices and methods preserving ppg relevant information

NARCIS (Netherlands)

2013-01-01

The present invention relates to a video encoding device (10) for encoding video data and a corresponding video decoding device, wherein during decoding PPG relevant information shall be preserved. For this purpose the video coding device (10) comprises a first encoder (20) for encoding input video

Evidence-informed person-centered healthcare part I: do 'cognitive biases plus' at organizational levels influence quality of evidence?

Science.gov (United States)

Seshia, Shashi S; Makhinson, Michael; Phillips, Dawn F; Young, G Bryan

2014-12-01

There is increasing concern about the unreliability of much of health care evidence, especially in its application to individuals. Cognitive biases, financial and non-financial conflicts of interest, and ethical violations (which, together with fallacies, we collectively refer to as 'cognitive biases plus') at the levels of individuals and organizations involved in health care undermine the evidence that informs person-centred care. This study used qualitative review of the pertinent literature from basic, medical and social sciences, ethics, philosophy, law etc. Financial conflicts of interest (primarily industry related) have become systemic in several organizations that influence health care evidence. There is also plausible evidence for non-financial conflicts of interest, especially in academic organizations. Financial and non-financial conflicts of interest frequently result in self-serving bias. Self-serving bias can lead to self-deception and rationalization of actions that entrench self-serving behaviour, both potentially resulting in unethical acts. Individuals and organizations are also susceptible to other cognitive biases. Qualitative evidence suggests that 'cognitive biases plus' can erode the quality of evidence. 'Cognitive biases plus' are hard wired, primarily at the unconscious level, and the resulting behaviours are not easily corrected. Social behavioural researchers advocate multi-pronged measures in similar situations: (i) abolish incentives that spawn self-serving bias; (ii) enforce severe deterrents for breaches of conduct; (iii) value integrity; (iv) strengthen self-awareness; and (v) design curricula especially at the trainee level to promote awareness of consequences to society. Virtuous professionals and organizations are essential to fulfil the vision for high-quality individualized health care globally. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Acoustic fine structure may encode biologically relevant information for zebra finches.

Science.gov (United States)

Prior, Nora H; Smith, Edward; Lawson, Shelby; Ball, Gregory F; Dooling, Robert J

2018-04-18

The ability to discriminate changes in the fine structure of complex sounds is well developed in birds. However, the precise limit of this discrimination ability and how it is used in the context of natural communication remains unclear. Here we describe natural variability in acoustic fine structure of male and female zebra finch calls. Results from psychoacoustic experiments demonstrate that zebra finches are able to discriminate extremely small differences in fine structure, which are on the order of the variation in acoustic fine structure that is present in their vocal signals. Results from signal analysis methods also suggest that acoustic fine structure may carry information that distinguishes between biologically relevant categories including sex, call type and individual identity. Combined, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that zebra finches can encode biologically relevant information within the fine structure of their calls. This study provides a foundation for our understanding of how acoustic fine structure may be involved in animal communication.

Joint optimization of MIMO radar waveform and biased estimator with prior information in the presence of clutter

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liu Hongwei

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract In this article, we consider the problem of joint optimization of multi-input multi-output (MIMO radar waveform and biased estimator with prior information on targets of interest in the presence of signal-dependent noise. A novel constrained biased Cramer-Rao bound (CRB based method is proposed to optimize the waveform covariance matrix (WCM and biased estimator such that the performance of parameter estimation can be improved. Under a simplifying assumption, the resultant nonlinear optimization problem is solved resorting to a convex relaxation that belongs to the semidefinite programming (SDP class. An optimal solution of the initial problem is then constructed through a suitable approximation to an optimal solution of the relaxed one (in a least squares (LS sense. Numerical results show that the performance of parameter estimation can be improved considerably by the proposed method compared to uncorrelated waveforms.

A Planetary Defense Gateway for Smart Discovery of relevant Information for Decision Support

Science.gov (United States)

Bambacus, Myra; Yang, Chaowei Phil; Leung, Ronald Y.; Barbee, Brent; Nuth, Joseph A.; Seery, Bernard; Jiang, Yongyao; Qin, Han; Li, Yun; Yu, Manzhu;

Cognitive Bias in Systems Verification

Science.gov (United States)

Larson, Steve

2012-01-01

Working definition of cognitive bias: Patterns by which information is sought and interpreted that can lead to systematic errors in decisions. Cognitive bias is used in diverse fields: Economics, Politics, Intelligence, Marketing, to name a few. Attempts to ground cognitive science in physical characteristics of the cognitive apparatus exceed our knowledge. Studies based on correlations; strict cause and effect is difficult to pinpoint. Effects cited in the paper and discussed here have been replicated many times over, and appear sound. Many biases have been described, but it is still unclear whether they are all distinct. There may only be a handful of fundamental biases, which manifest in various ways. Bias can effect system verification in many ways . Overconfidence -> Questionable decisions to deploy. Availability -> Inability to conceive critical tests. Representativeness -> Overinterpretation of results. Positive Test Strategies -> Confirmation bias. Debiasing at individual level very difficult. The potential effect of bias on the verification process can be managed, but not eliminated. Worth considering at key points in the process.

Disseminating relevant health information to underserved audiences: implications of the Digital Divide Pilot Projects.

Science.gov (United States)

Kreps, Gary L

2005-10-01

This paper examines the influence of the digital divide on disparities in health outcomes for vulnerable populations, identifying implications for medical and public libraries. The paper describes the results of the Digital Divide Pilot Projects demonstration research programs funded by the National Cancer Institute to test new strategies for disseminating relevant health information to underserved and at-risk audiences. The Digital Divide Pilot Projects field-tested innovative systemic strategies for helping underserved populations access and utilize relevant health information to make informed health-related decisions about seeking appropriate health care and support, resisting avoidable and significant health risks, and promoting their own health. The paper builds on the Digital Divide Pilot Projects by identifying implications for developing health communication strategies that libraries can adopt to provide digital health information to vulnerable populations.

Biases in cost measurement for economic evaluation studies in health care.

Science.gov (United States)

Jacobs, P; Baladi, J F

1996-01-01

This paper addresses the issue of biases in cost measures which used in economic evaluation studies. The basic measure of hospital costs which is used by most investigators is unit cost. Focusing on this measure, a set of criteria which the basic measures must fulfil in order to approximate the marginal cost (MC) of a service for the relevant product, in the representative site, was identified. Then four distinct biases--a scale bias, a case mix bias, a methods bias and a site selection bias--each of which reflects the divergence of the unit cost measure from the desired MC measure, were identified. Measures are proposed for several of these biases and it is suggested how they can be corrected.

Video coding and decoding devices and methods preserving PPG relevant information

NARCIS (Netherlands)

2015-01-01

The present invention relates to a video encoding device (10, 10', 10") and method for encoding video data and to a corresponding video decoding device (60, 60') and method. To preserve PPG relevant information after encoding without requiring a large amount of additional data for the video encoder

Video coding and decoding devices and methods preserving ppg relevant information

NARCIS (Netherlands)

2013-01-01

The present invention relates to a video encoding device (10, 10', 10'') and method for encoding video data and to a corresponding video decoding device (60, 60') and method. To preserve PPG relevant information after encoding without requiring a large amount of additional data for the video encoder

Does neurocognitive function affect cognitive bias toward an emotional stimulus? Association between general attentional ability and attentional bias toward threat

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuko eHakamata

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Background: Although poorer cognitive performance has been found to be associated with anxiety, it remains unclear whether neurocognitive function affects biased cognitive processing toward emotional information. We investigated whether general cognitive function evaluated with a standard neuropsychological test predicts biased cognition, focusing on attentional bias toward threat.Methods: One hundred and five healthy young adults completed a dot-probe task measuring attentional bias and the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS measuring general cognitive function, which consists of five domains: immediate memory, visuospatial/constructional, language, attention, and delayed memory. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the relationships between attentional bias and cognitive function. Results: The attentional domain was the best predictor of attentional bias toward threat (β = -0.26, p = 0.006. Within the attentional domain, digit symbol coding was negatively correlated with attentional bias (r = -0.28, p = 0.005.Conclusions: The present study provides the first evidence that general attentional ability, which was assessed with a standard neuropsychological test, affects attentional bias toward threatening information. Individual cognitive profiles might be important for the measurement and modification of cognitive biases.

Perceived relevance and information needs regarding food topics and preferred information sources among Dutch adults: results of a quantitative consumer study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dillen, van S.M.E.; Hiddink, G.J.; Koelen, M.A.; Graaf, de C.; Woerkum, van C.M.J.

2004-01-01

Objective: For more effective nutrition communication, it is crucial to identify sources from which consumers seek information. Our purpose was to assess perceived relevance and information needs regarding food topics, and preferred information sources by means of quantitative consumer research.

The Local Bias of Individual Investors

OpenAIRE

Ning Zhu

2002-01-01

This study investigates individual investors' bias towards nearby companies. Using data from a large U.S. discount brokerage, we find that individual investors tend to invest in companies closer to them relative to the market portfolio. Unlike Coval and Moskowitz's (1999) findings on institutional investors, however, we find that advantageous information cannot explain individual investors' local bias. Accounting numbers and information asymmetry matter less to individual investors' local bia...

Recognition bias and the physical attractiveness stereotype.

Science.gov (United States)

Rohner, Jean-Christophe; Rasmussen, Anders

2012-06-01

Previous studies have found a recognition bias for information consistent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (PAS), in which participants believe that they remember that attractive individuals have positive qualities and that unattractive individuals have negative qualities, regardless of what information actually occurred. The purpose of this research was to examine whether recognition bias for PAS congruent information is replicable and invariant across a variety of conditions (i.e. generalizable). The effects of nine different moderator variables were examined in two experiments. With a few exceptions, the effect of PAS congruence on recognition bias was independent of the moderator variables. The results suggest that the tendency to believe that one remembers information consistent with the physical attractiveness stereotype is a robust phenomenon. © 2012 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Disseminating relevant health information to underserved audiences: implications of the Digital Divide Pilot Projects*

Science.gov (United States)

Kreps, Gary L.

2005-01-01

Objective: This paper examines the influence of the digital divide on disparities in health outcomes for vulnerable populations, identifying implications for medical and public libraries. Method: The paper describes the results of the Digital Divide Pilot Projects demonstration research programs funded by the National Cancer Institute to test new strategies for disseminating relevant health information to underserved and at-risk audiences. Results: The Digital Divide Pilot Projects field-tested innovative systemic strategies for helping underserved populations access and utilize relevant health information to make informed health-related decisions about seeking appropriate health care and support, resisting avoidable and significant health risks, and promoting their own health. Implications: The paper builds on the Digital Divide Pilot Projects by identifying implications for developing health communication strategies that libraries can adopt to provide digital health information to vulnerable populations. PMID:16239960

Biases in emotional processing are associated with vulnerability to eating disorders over time.

Science.gov (United States)

Pringle, A; Harmer, C J; Cooper, M J

2011-01-01

Biases in emotional processing are thought to play a role in the maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). In a previous study (Pringle et al., 2010), we were able to demonstrate that biases in the processing of negative self beliefs (a self-schema processing task), facial expressions of emotion (a facial expression recognition task) and information relating to eating, shape and weight (an emotional Stroop) were all predictive of the level of subclinical ED symptoms (used here as a measure of risk) cross-sectionally in a vulnerable sample of dieters. The present study was a 12-month follow up of the participants from Pringle et al. (2010). Longitudinally, greater endorsement of ED relevant and depression relevant negative self beliefs in the self-schema processing task at time 1 was related to subclinical ED systems (level of risk) 12 months later at time 2. Compared to the cross-sectional study, there was no clear relationship between performance on the facial expression recognition task, emotional Stroop task and level of risk 12 months later. Although these findings are preliminary, one tentative interpretation may be that whilst biases in the processing of ED specific stimuli are predictive of level of risk at a given moment, over time less specific stimuli relating to beliefs about the self, including mood related variables, are more closely related to level of risk. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effect of the Adoption of IFRS on the Information Relevance of Accounting Profits in Brazil

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mateus Alexandre Costa dos Santos

2014-12-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to assess the effect of adopting the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS in Brazil on the information relevance of accounting profits of publicly traded companies. International studies have shown that the adoption of IFRS improves the quality of accounting information compared with domestic accounting standards. Concurrent evidence is sparse in Brazil. Information relevance is understood herein as a multidimensional attribute that is closely related to the quality and usefulness of the information conveyed by accounting profits. The associative capacity and information timeliness of accounting profits in relation to share prices were examined. Furthermore, the level of conditional conservatism present in accounting profits was also analyzed because according to Basu (1997, this aspect is related to timeliness. The study used pooled regressions and panel data models to analyze the quarterly accounting profits of 246 companies between the first quarter of 1999 and the first quarter of 2013, resulting in 9,558 quarter-company observations. The results indicated that the adoption of IFRS in Brazil (1 increased the associative capacity of accounting profits; (2 reduced information timeliness to non-significant levels; and (3 had no effect on conditional conservatism. The joint analysis of the empirical evidence from the present study conclusively precludes stating that the adoption of IFRS in Brazil contributed to an increase the information relevance of accounting profits of publicly traded companies.

Transmission of Cognitive Bias and Fear From Parents to Children: An Experimental Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Remmerswaal, Danielle; Muris, Peter; Huijding, Jorg

2016-01-01

This study explored the role of parents in the development of a cognitive bias and subsequent fear levels in children. In Experiment 1, nonclinical children ages 8-13 (N = 122) underwent a training during which they worked together with their mothers on an information search task. Mothers received instructions to induce either a positive or negative information search bias in their children. Experiment 2 investigated to what extent mothers own cognitive bias predicted children's information search bias. Mothers of 49 nonclinical children ages 9-12 received no explicit training instructions before working together with their child on an information search task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that mothers had a significant impact on children's cognitive bias and fear. More precisely, children who had received a negative parental training displayed an increase in negative information search bias and fear, whereas children who had received a positive parental training showed an increase in positive information search bias and a decrease in fear. In Experiment 2, it was found that children's information search biases after working together with their mothers were predicted by their mothers' initial cognitive bias scores. These findings can be taken as support for the intergenerational transmission of cognitive biases from mothers to children.

Perceived Relevance of an Introductory Information Systems Course to Prospective Business Students

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Irene Govender

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The study is designed to examine students’ perceptions of the introductory Information Systems (IS course. It was an exploratory study in which 67 students participated. A quantitative approach was followed making use of questionnaires for the collection of data. Using the theory of reasoned action as a framework, the study explores the factors that influence non-IS major students’ perceived relevance of the IS introductory course. The analysis of collected data included descriptive and inferential statistics. Using multiple regression analysis, the results suggest that overall, the independent variables, relevance of the content, previous IT knowledge, relevance for professional practice, IT preference in courses and peers’ influence may account for 72% of the explanatory power for the dependent variable, perceived relevance of the IS course. In addition, the results have shown some strong predictors (IT preference and peers’ influence that influence students’ perceived relevance of the IS course. Practical work was found to be a strong mediating variable toward positive perceptions of IS. The results of this study suggest that students do indeed perceive the introductory IS course to be relevant and match their professional needs, but more practical work would enhance their learning. Implications for theory and practice are discussed as a result of the behavioural intention to perceive the IS course to be relevant and eventually to recruit more IS students.

Bias against research on gender bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Cislak, Aleksandra; Formanowicz, Magdalena; Saguy, Tamar

2018-01-01

The bias against women in academia is a documented phenomenon that has had detrimental consequences, not only for women, but also for the quality of science. First, gender bias in academia affects female scientists, resulting in their underrepresentation in academic institutions, particularly in higher ranks. The second type of gender bias in science relates to some findings applying only to male participants, which produces biased knowledge. Here, we identify a third potentially powerful source of gender bias in academia: the bias against research on gender bias. In a bibliometric investigation covering a broad range of social sciences, we analyzed published articles on gender bias and race bias and established that articles on gender bias are funded less often and published in journals with a lower Impact Factor than articles on comparable instances of social discrimination. This result suggests the possibility of an underappreciation of the phenomenon of gender bias and related research within the academic community. Addressing this meta-bias is crucial for the further examination of gender inequality, which severely affects many women across the world.

Incorporating circulation statistics in bias correction of GCM ensembles: Hydrological application for the Rhine basin

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Photiadou, C.; van den Hurk, B.J.J.M.; Delden, A. van; Weerts, A.

2016-01-01

An adapted statistical bias correction method is introduced to incorporate circulation-dependence of the model precipitation bias, and its influence on estimated discharges for the Rhine basin is analyzed for a historical period. The bias correction method is tailored to time scales relevant to

Incorporating circulation statistics in bias correction of GCM ensembles: hydrological application for the Rhine basin

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Photiadou, C.; Hurk, van den B.; Delden, van A.; Weerts, A.H.

2016-01-01

An adapted statistical bias correction method is introduced to incorporate circulation-dependence of the model precipitation bias, and its influence on estimated discharges for the Rhine basin is analyzed for a historical period. The bias correction method is tailored to time scales relevant to

Incorporating circulation statistics in bias correction of GCM ensembles: hydrological application for the Rhine basin

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Photiadou, Christiana; van den Hurk, Bart; van Delden, Aarnout; Weerts, Albrecht

2015-01-01

An adapted statistical bias correction method is introduced to incorporate circulation-dependence of the model precipitation bias, and its influence on estimated discharges for the Rhine basin is analyzed for a histori- cal period. The bias correction method is tailored to time scales relevant to

Epistasis between 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B polymorphisms influences attentional bias for emotional information in healthy volunteers.

Science.gov (United States)

Naudts, Kris H; Azevedo, Ruben T; David, Anthony S; van Heeringen, Kees; Gibbs, Ayana A

2012-09-01

Individual differences in emotional processing are likely to contribute to vulnerability and resilience to emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. Genetic variation is known to contribute to these differences but they remain incompletely understood. The serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and α2B-adrenergic autoreceptor (ADRA2B) insertion/deletion polymorphisms impact on two separate but interacting monaminergic signalling mechanisms that have been implicated in both emotional processing and emotional disorders. Recent studies suggest that the 5-HTTLPR s allele is associated with a negative attentional bias and an increased risk of emotional disorders. However, such complex behavioural traits are likely to exhibit polygenicity, including epistasis. This study examined the contribution of the 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B insertion/deletion polymorphisms to attentional biases for aversive information in 94 healthy male volunteers and found evidence of a significant epistatic effect (pbias for aversive information was attenuated by possession of the ADRA2B deletion variant whereas in the absence of the s allele, the bias was enhanced. These data identify a cognitive mechanism linking genotype-dependent serotonergic and noradrenergic signalling that is likely to have implications for the development of cognitive markers for depression/anxiety as well as therapeutic drug effects and personalized approaches to treatment.

Behavioral and Event-Related-Potential Correlates of Processing Congruent and Incongruent Self-Relevant Information

Science.gov (United States)

Clark, Sheri L.

2013-01-01

People want to be viewed by others as they view themselves. Being confronted with self-relevant information that is either congruent or incongruent with one's self-view has been shown to differentially affect subsequent behavior, memory for the information, and evaluation of the source of the information. However, no research has examined…

Does neurocognitive function affect cognitive bias toward an emotional stimulus? Association between general attentional ability and attentional bias toward threat

OpenAIRE

Hakamata, Yuko; Matsui, Mie; Tagaya, Hirokuni

2014-01-01

Background: Although poorer cognitive performance has been found to be associated with anxiety, it remains unclear whether neurocognitive function affects biased cognitive processing toward emotional information. We investigated whether general cognitive function evaluated with a standard neuropsychological test predicts biased cognition, focusing on attentional bias toward threat. Methods: One hundred and five healthy young adults completed a dot-probe task measuring attentional bias and ...

Suppression of no-longer relevant information in Working Memory: An alpha-power related mechanism?

Science.gov (United States)

Poch, Claudia; Valdivia, María; Capilla, Almudena; Hinojosa, José Antonio; Campo, Pablo

2018-03-27

Selective attention can enhance Working Memory (WM) performance by selecting relevant information, while preventing distracting items from encoding or from further maintenance. Alpha oscillatory modulations are a correlate of visuospatial attention. Specifically, an enhancement of alpha power is observed in the ipsilateral posterior cortex to the locus of attention, along with a suppression in the contralateral hemisphere. An influential model proposes that the alpha enhancement is functionally related to the suppression of information. However, whether ipsilateral alpha power represents a mechanism through which no longer relevant WM representations are inhibited has yet not been explored. Here we examined whether the amount of distractors to be suppressed during WM maintenance is functionally related to alpha power lateralized activity. We measure EEG activity while participants (N = 36) performed a retro-cue task in which the WM load was varied across the relevant/irrelevant post-cue hemifield. We found that alpha activity was lateralized respect to the locus of attention, but did not track post-cue irrelevant load. Additionally, non-lateralized alpha activity increased with post-cue relevant load. We propose that alpha lateralization associated to retro-cuing might be related to a general orienting mechanism toward relevant representation. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Single-Receiver GPS Phase Bias Resolution

Science.gov (United States)

Bertiger, William I.; Haines, Bruce J.; Weiss, Jan P.; Harvey, Nathaniel E.

2010-01-01

Existing software has been modified to yield the benefits of integer fixed double-differenced GPS-phased ambiguities when processing data from a single GPS receiver with no access to any other GPS receiver data. When the double-differenced combination of phase biases can be fixed reliably, a significant improvement in solution accuracy is obtained. This innovation uses a large global set of GPS receivers (40 to 80 receivers) to solve for the GPS satellite orbits and clocks (along with any other parameters). In this process, integer ambiguities are fixed and information on the ambiguity constraints is saved. For each GPS transmitter/receiver pair, the process saves the arc start and stop times, the wide-lane average value for the arc, the standard deviation of the wide lane, and the dual-frequency phase bias after bias fixing for the arc. The second step of the process uses the orbit and clock information, the bias information from the global solution, and only data from the single receiver to resolve double-differenced phase combinations. It is called "resolved" instead of "fixed" because constraints are introduced into the problem with a finite data weight to better account for possible errors. A receiver in orbit has much shorter continuous passes of data than a receiver fixed to the Earth. The method has parameters to account for this. In particular, differences in drifting wide-lane values must be handled differently. The first step of the process is automated, using two JPL software sets, Longarc and Gipsy-Oasis. The resulting orbit/clock and bias information files are posted on anonymous ftp for use by any licensed Gipsy-Oasis user. The second step is implemented in the Gipsy-Oasis executable, gd2p.pl, which automates the entire process, including fetching the information from anonymous ftp

Collecting Safeguards Relevant Trade Information: The IAEA Procurement Outreach Programme

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schot, P.; El Gebaly, A.; Tarvainen, M.

2010-01-01

The increasing awareness of activities of transnational procurement networks to covertly acquire sensitive nuclear related dual use equipment prompted an evolution of safeguards methodologies. One of the responses to this challenge by the Department of Safeguards in the IAEA was to establish the Trade and Technology Unit (TTA) in November 2004 to analyse and report on these covert nuclear related trade activities. To obtain information relevant to this analysis, TTA is engaging States that might be willing to provide this information to the Secretariat on a voluntary basis. This paper will give an overview of current activities, sum up the results achieved and discuss suggestions to further improve this programme made by Member States. (author)

A Problem of Bias: Soviet and U.S. Distortion of History

Science.gov (United States)

Frost, Jess V.

1974-01-01

Bias has traditionally pervaded the study of history on the secondary level in both the United States and Russia. The article points out the distorted version of history which is presented to American and Russian students. The following three sources to which the bias is attributed are discussed: ethnocentrism, omission of relevant material, and…

Information visualisation for science and policy: engaging users and avoiding bias.

Science.gov (United States)

McInerny, Greg J; Chen, Min; Freeman, Robin; Gavaghan, David; Meyer, Miriah; Rowland, Francis; Spiegelhalter, David J; Stefaner, Moritz; Tessarolo, Geizi; Hortal, Joaquin

2014-03-01

Visualisations and graphics are fundamental to studying complex subject matter. However, beyond acknowledging this value, scientists and science-policy programmes rarely consider how visualisations can enable discovery, create engaging and robust reporting, or support online resources. Producing accessible and unbiased visualisations from complicated, uncertain data requires expertise and knowledge from science, policy, computing, and design. However, visualisation is rarely found in our scientific training, organisations, or collaborations. As new policy programmes develop [e.g., the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)], we need information visualisation to permeate increasingly both the work of scientists and science policy. The alternative is increased potential for missed discoveries, miscommunications, and, at worst, creating a bias towards the research that is easiest to display. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Racial Bias and Predictive Validity in Testing for Selection.

Science.gov (United States)

1983-07-01

the inequa - lity rR (P.C) *0 (2) must define test bias. This definition of test bias conforms to the requirements of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as...of Educational Measurement, 1976, 13, 43-52. Einhorn, H. J., & Bass, A. R. Methodological considerations relevant to discrimination in employment ...34unbiased" selec- tion model: A question of utilities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1975, 60, 345-351. Guion, R. M. Employment tests and discriminatory

The impact of intangibles on the value relevance of accounting information: Evidence from French companies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bilal Kimouche

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Purpose: The paper aims to explore whether intangible items that recognised in financial statements are value-relevant to investors in the French context, and whether these items affect the value relevance of accounting information. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical data were collected from a sample of French listed companies, over the nine-year period of 2005 to 2013. Starting of Ohlson’s (1995 model, the correlation analysis and the linear multiple regressions have been applied. Findings: We find that intangibles and traditional accounting measures as a whole are value relevant. However, the amortization and impairment charges of intangibles and cash flows do not affect the market values of French companies, unlike other variables, which affect positively and substantially the market values. Also goodwill and book values are more associated with market values than intangible assets and earnings respectively. Finally, we find that intangibles have improved the value relevance of accounting information. Practical implications: French legislators must give more interest for intangibles, in order to enrich the financial statements content and increasing the pertinence of accounting information. Auditors must give more attention for intangibles’ examination process, in order to certify the amounts related to intangibles in financial statements, and hence enrich their reliability, what provides adequacy guarantees for investors to use them in decision making. Originality/value: The paper used recently available financial data, and proposed an improvement concerning the measure of incremental value relevance of intangibles items.

Scale dependence of halo and galaxy bias: Effects in real space

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Smith, Robert E.; Scoccimarro, Roman; Sheth, Ravi K.

2007-01-01

We examine the scale dependence of dark matter halo and galaxy clustering on very large scales (0.01 -1 ] -1 ] -1 ], and only show amplification on smaller scales, whereas low mass haloes show strong, ∼5%-10%, suppression over the range 0.05 -1 ]<0.15. These results were primarily established through the use of the cross-power spectrum of dark matter and haloes, which circumvents the thorny issue of shot-noise correction. The halo-halo power spectrum, however, is highly sensitive to the shot-noise correction; we show that halo exclusion effects make this sub-Poissonian and a new correction is presented. Our results have special relevance for studies of the baryon acoustic oscillation features in the halo power spectra. Nonlinear mode-mode coupling: (i) damps these features on progressively larger scales as halo mass increases; (ii) produces small shifts in the positions of the peaks and troughs which depend on halo mass. We show that these effects on halo clustering are important over the redshift range relevant to such studies (0< z<2), and so will need to be accounted for when extracting information from precision measurements of galaxy clustering. Our analytic model is described in the language of the ''halo model.'' The halo-halo clustering term is propagated into the nonlinear regime using ''1-loop'' perturbation theory and a nonlinear halo bias model. Galaxies are then inserted into haloes through the halo occupation distribution. We show that, with nonlinear bias parameters derived from simulations, this model produces predictions that are qualitatively in agreement with our numerical results. We then use it to show that the power spectra of red and blue galaxies depend differently on scale, thus underscoring the fact that proper modeling of nonlinear bias parameters will be crucial to derive reliable cosmological constraints. In addition to showing that the bias on very large scales is not simply linear, the model also shows that the halo-halo and halo

Global-local visual biases correspond with visual-spatial orientation.

Science.gov (United States)

Basso, Michael R; Lowery, Natasha

2004-02-01

Within the past decade, numerous investigations have demonstrated reliable associations of global-local visual processing biases with right and left hemisphere function, respectively (cf. Van Kleeck, 1989). Yet the relevance of these biases to other cognitive functions is not well understood. Towards this end, the present research examined the relationship between global-local visual biases and perception of visual-spatial orientation. Twenty-six women and 23 men completed a global-local judgment task (Kimchi and Palmer, 1982) and the Judgment of Line Orientation Test (JLO; Benton, Sivan, Hamsher, Varney, and Spreen, 1994), a measure of visual-spatial orientation. As expected, men had better performance on JLO. Extending previous findings, global biases were related to better visual-spatial acuity on JLO. The findings suggest that global-local biases and visual-spatial orientation may share underlying cerebral mechanisms. Implications of these findings for other visually mediated cognitive outcomes are discussed.

In the Dark: Young Men's Stories of Sexual Initiation in the Absence of Relevant Sexual Health Information

Science.gov (United States)

Kubicek, Katrina; Beyer, William J.; Weiss, George; Iverson, Ellen; Kipke, Michele D.

2010-01-01

A growing body of research has investigated the effectiveness of abstinence-only sexual education. There remains a dearth of research on the relevant sexual health information available to young men who have sex with men (YMSM). Drawing on a mixed-methods study with 526 YMSM, this study explores how and where YMSM receive relevant information on…

Feature-selective Attention in Frontoparietal Cortex: Multivoxel Codes Adjust to Prioritize Task-relevant Information.

Science.gov (United States)

Jackson, Jade; Rich, Anina N; Williams, Mark A; Woolgar, Alexandra

2017-02-01

Human cognition is characterized by astounding flexibility, enabling us to select appropriate information according to the objectives of our current task. A circuit of frontal and parietal brain regions, often referred to as the frontoparietal attention network or multiple-demand (MD) regions, are believed to play a fundamental role in this flexibility. There is evidence that these regions dynamically adjust their responses to selectively process information that is currently relevant for behavior, as proposed by the "adaptive coding hypothesis" [Duncan, J. An adaptive coding model of neural function in prefrontal cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 820-829, 2001]. Could this provide a neural mechanism for feature-selective attention, the process by which we preferentially process one feature of a stimulus over another? We used multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data during a perceptually challenging categorization task to investigate whether the representation of visual object features in the MD regions flexibly adjusts according to task relevance. Participants were trained to categorize visually similar novel objects along two orthogonal stimulus dimensions (length/orientation) and performed short alternating blocks in which only one of these dimensions was relevant. We found that multivoxel patterns of activation in the MD regions encoded the task-relevant distinctions more strongly than the task-irrelevant distinctions: The MD regions discriminated between stimuli of different lengths when length was relevant and between the same objects according to orientation when orientation was relevant. The data suggest a flexible neural system that adjusts its representation of visual objects to preferentially encode stimulus features that are currently relevant for behavior, providing a neural mechanism for feature-selective attention.

Attentional bias in math anxiety.

Science.gov (United States)

Rubinsten, Orly; Eidlin, Hili; Wohl, Hadas; Akibli, Orly

2015-01-01

Cognitive theory from the field of general anxiety suggests that the tendency to display attentional bias toward negative information results in anxiety. Accordingly, the current study aims to investigate whether attentional bias is involved in math anxiety (MA) as well (i.e., a persistent negative reaction to math). Twenty seven participants (14 with high levels of MA and 13 with low levels of MA) were presented with a novel computerized numerical version of the well established dot probe task. One of six types of prime stimuli, either math related or typically neutral, was presented on one side of a computer screen. The prime was preceded by a probe (either one or two asterisks) that appeared in either the prime or the opposite location. Participants had to discriminate probe identity (one or two asterisks). Math anxious individuals reacted faster when the probe was at the location of the numerical related stimuli. This suggests the existence of attentional bias in MA. That is, for math anxious individuals, the cognitive system selectively favored the processing of emotionally negative information (i.e., math related words). These findings suggest that attentional bias is linked to unduly intense MA symptoms.

Analysis of the Relevance of Information Content of the Value Added Statement in the Brazilian Capital Markets

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Márcio André Veras Machado

2015-04-01

Full Text Available The usefulness of financial statements depends, fundamentally, on the degree of relevance of the information they disclose to users. Thus, studies that measure the relevance of accounting information to the users of financial statements are of some importance. One line of research within this subject is in ascertaining the relevance and importance of accounting information for the capital markets: if a particular item of accounting information is minimally reflected in the price of a share, it is because this information has relevance, at least at a certain level of significance, for investors and analysts of the capital markets. This present study aims to analyze the relevance, in the Brazilian capital markets, of the information content of the Value Added Statement (or VAS - referred to in Brazil as the Demonstração do Valor Adicionado, or DVA. It analyzed the ratio between stock price and Wealth created per share (WCPS, using linear regressions, for the period 2005-2011, for non-financial listed companies included in Melhores & Maiores ('Biggest & Best', an annual listing published by Exame Magazine in Brazil. As a secondary objective, this article seeks to establish whether WCPS represents a better indication of a company's result than Net profit per share (in this study, referred to as NPPS. The empirical evidence that was found supports the concept that the VAS has relevant information content, because it shows a capacity to explain a variation in the share price of the companies studied. Additionally, the relationship between WCPS and the stock price was shown to be significant, even after the inclusion of the control variables Stockholders' equity per share (which we abbreviate in this study to SEPS and NPPS. Finally, the evidence found indicates that the market reacts more to WCPS (Wealth created per share than to NPPS. Thus, the results obtained give some indication that, for the Brazilian capital markets, WCPS may be a better proxy

40 CFR 86.1862-04 - Maintenance of records and submittal of information relevant to compliance with fleet average NOX...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... of information relevant to compliance with fleet average NOX standards. 86.1862-04 Section 86.1862-04...-Cycle Heavy-Duty Vehicles § 86.1862-04 Maintenance of records and submittal of information relevant to..., maintain, and retain the following information in adequately organized and indexed records for each model...

Reconciling a "pleasant exchange" with evidence of information bias: A three-country study on pharmaceutical sales visits in primary care.

Science.gov (United States)

Reynolds, Ellen; Guénette, Line; Lexchin, Joel; Cassels, Alan; Wilkes, Michael S; Durrieu, Geneviève; Beaulieu, Marie-Dominique; Mintzes, Barbara

2018-03-01

To examine and compare the experiences and attitudes of primary care physicians in three different regulatory environments (United States, Canada, and France) towards interactions with pharmaceutical sales representatives, particularly their perspectives on safety information provision and self-reported influences on prescribing. We recruited primary care physicians for 12 focus groups in Montreal, Sacramento, Toulouse and Vancouver. A thematic analysis of the interview data followed a five-stage framework analysis approach. Fifty-seven family physicians (19 women, 38 men) participated. Physicians expected a commercial bias and generally considered themselves to be immune from influence. They also appreciated the exchange and the information on new drugs. Across all sites, physicians expressed concern about missing harm information; however, attitudes to increased regulation of sales visits in France and the US were generally negative. A common solution to inadequate harm information was to seek further commercially sourced information. Physicians at all sites also expressed sensitivity to critiques from medical students and residents about promotional interactions. Physicians have contradictory views on the inadequate harm information received from sales representatives, linked to their lack of awareness of the drugs' safety profiles. Commonly used strategies to mitigate information bias are unlikely to be effective. Alternate information sources to inform prescribing decisions, and changes in the way that physicians and sales representatives interact are needed. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Estimating Production Potentials: Expert Bias in Applied Decision Making

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Matthews, L.J.; Burggraf, L.K.; Reece, W.J.

1998-01-01

A study was conducted to evaluate how workers predict manufacturing production potentials given positively and negatively framed information. Findings indicate the existence of a bias toward positive information and suggest that this bias may be reduced with experience but is never the less maintained. Experts err in the same way non experts do in differentially processing negative and positive information. Additionally, both experts and non experts tend to overestimate production potentials in a positive direction. The authors propose that these biases should be addressed with further research including cross domain analyses and consideration in training, workplace design, and human performance modeling

Implementation of linear bias corrections for calorimeters at Mound

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Barnett, T.M.

1993-01-01

In the past, Mound has generally made relative bias corrections as part of the calibration of individual calorimeters. The correction made was the same over the entire operating range of the calorimeter, regardless of the magnitude of the range. Recently, an investigation was performed to check the relevancy of using linear bias corrections to calibrate the calorimeters. The bias is obtained by measuring calibrated plutonium and/or electrical heat standards over the operating range of the calorimeter. The bias correction is then calculated using a simple least squares fit (y = mx + b) of the bias in milliwatts over the operating range of the calorimeter in watts. The equation used is B i = B 0 + (B w * W m ), where B i is the bias at any given power in milliwatts, B 0 is the intercept (absolute bias in milliwatts), B w is the slope (relative bias in milliwatts per watt), and W m is the measured power in watts. The results of the study showed a decrease in the random error of bias corrected data for most of the calorimeters which are operated over a large wattage range (greater than an order of magnitude). The linear technique for bias correction has been fully implemented at Mound and has been included in the Technical Manual, ''A Measurement Control Program for Radiometric Calorimeters at Mound'' (MD-21900)

Self-esteem modulates automatic attentional responses to self-relevant stimuli: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jie eChen

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Previous studies have widely shown that self-esteem modulates the attention bias towards social rejection or emotion-related information. However, little is known about the influences of self-esteem on attention bias towards self-relevant stimuli. We aimed to investigate neural correlates that underlie the modulation effect of self-esteem on self-relevant processing. Event-related potentials were recorded for subjects’ own names and close others’ names (the names of their friends while subjects performed a three-stimulus oddball task. The results showed larger P2 amplitudes for one’s own name than for close-other’s name in the low self-esteem group, whereas this P2 effect were not observed in the high self-esteem group. In addition, one’s own name elicited equivalent N250 amplitudes and larger P3 amplitudes compared with close-other’s name in both high and low self-esteem groups. However, no interaction effects were observed between self-esteem and self-relevant processing in the N250 and P3 components. Thus, we found that the modulation effects of self-esteem on self-relevant processing occurred at the early P2 stage, but not at the later N250 and P3 stages. These findings reflect that individuals with low self-esteem demonstrate automatic attention towards their own names.

The Extended HANDS Characterization and Analysis of Metric Biases

Science.gov (United States)

Kelecy, T.; Knox, R.; Cognion, R.

The Extended High Accuracy Network Determination System (Extended HANDS) consists of a network of low cost, high accuracy optical telescopes designed to support space surveillance and development of space object characterization technologies. Comprising off-the-shelf components, the telescopes are designed to provide sub arc-second astrometric accuracy. The design and analysis team are in the process of characterizing the system through development of an error allocation tree whose assessment is supported by simulation, data analysis, and calibration tests. The metric calibration process has revealed 1-2 arc-second biases in the right ascension and declination measurements of reference satellite position, and these have been observed to have fairly distinct characteristics that appear to have some dependence on orbit geometry and tracking rates. The work presented here outlines error models developed to aid in development of the system error budget, and examines characteristic errors (biases, time dependence, etc.) that might be present in each of the relevant system elements used in the data collection and processing, including the metric calibration processing. The relevant reference frames are identified, and include the sensor (CCD camera) reference frame, Earth-fixed topocentric frame, topocentric inertial reference frame, and the geocentric inertial reference frame. The errors modeled in each of these reference frames, when mapped into the topocentric inertial measurement frame, reveal how errors might manifest themselves through the calibration process. The error analysis results that are presented use satellite-sensor geometries taken from periods where actual measurements were collected, and reveal how modeled errors manifest themselves over those specific time periods. These results are compared to the real calibration metric data (right ascension and declination residuals), and sources of the bias are hypothesized. In turn, the actual right ascension and

Toward a clarification of the taxonomy of "bias" in epidemiology textbooks.

Science.gov (United States)

Schwartz, Sharon; Campbell, Ulka B; Gatto, Nicolle M; Gordon, Kirsha

2015-03-01

Epidemiology textbooks typically divide biases into 3 general categories-confounding, selection bias, and information bias. Despite the ubiquity of this categorization, authors often use these terms to mean different things. This hinders communication among epidemiologists and confuses students who are just learning about the field. To understand the sources of this problem, we reviewed current general epidemiology textbooks to examine how the authors defined and categorized biases. We found that much of the confusion arises from different definitions of "validity" and from a mixing of 3 overlapping organizational features in defining and differentiating among confounding, selection bias, and information bias: consequence, the result of the problem; cause, the processes that give rise to the problem; and cure, how these biases can be addressed once they occur. By contrast, a consistent taxonomy would provide (1) a clear and consistent definition of what unites confounding, selection bias, and information bias and (2) a clear articulation and consistent application of the feature that distinguishes these categories. Based on a distillation of these textbook discussions, we provide an example of a taxonomy that we think meets these criteria.

Links among available integral benchmarks and differential date evaluations, computational biases and uncertainties, and nuclear criticality safety biases on potential MOX production throughput

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Goluoglu, S.; Hopper, C.M.

2004-01-01

Through the use of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's recently developed and applied sensitivity and uncertainty computational analysis techniques, this paper presents the relevance and importance of available and needed integral benchmarks and differential data evaluations impacting potential MOX production throughput determinations relative to low-moderated MOX fuel blending operations. The relevance and importance in the availability of or need for critical experiment benchmarks and data evaluations are presented in terms of computational biases as influenced by computational and experimental sensitivities and uncertainties relative to selected MOX production powder blending processes. Recent developments for estimating the safe margins of subcriticality for assuring nuclear criticality safety for process approval are presented. In addition, the impact of the safe margins (due to computational biases and uncertainties) on potential MOX production throughput will also be presented. (author)

Strategic relevance and accountability expectations: new perspectives for health care information technology design.

Science.gov (United States)

Tan, J K; Modrow, R E

1999-05-01

In this article, we discuss the traditional systems analysis perspective on end-user information requirements analysis and extend it to merge with the new accountability expectations perspective to guide the future planning and design of health organization information systems. Underlying the strategic relevance of health care information technology (HCIT) are three critical questions: (1) What is the ideal HCIT model for the health organization in terms of achieving strategic expertise and competitive advantage? Specifically, how does this model link industry performance standards with organizational performance and accountability expectations? (2) How should the limitations of past HCIT models be reconciled to the benefits presented by the superior arrangement of the ideal model in the context of changing accountability expectations? (3) How should alternative HCIT solutions be evaluated in light of evidence-based accountability and organizational performance benchmarking? Insights into these questions will ensure that health care managers, HCIT practitioners and researchers can continue to focus on the most critical issues in harnessing today's fast-paced changing technologies for evolving strategically relevant, performance-based health organization systems.

Relevant cost information for order acceptance decisions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wouters, M.J.F.

1997-01-01

Some economic considerations for order acceptance decisions are discussed. The relevant economic considerations for order acceptance are widely discussed in the literature: only those costs are relevant which would be avoidable by not accepting the order incremental costs plus opportunity costs .

Divided attention selectively impairs memory for self-relevant information.

Science.gov (United States)

Turk, David J; Brady-van den Bos, Mirjam; Collard, Philip; Gillespie-Smith, Karri; Conway, Martin A; Cunningham, Sheila J

2013-05-01

Information that is relevant to oneself tends to be remembered more than information that relates to other people, but the role of attention in eliciting this "self-reference effect" is unclear. In the present study, we assessed the importance of attention in self-referential encoding using an ownership paradigm, which required participants to encode items under conditions of imagined ownership by themselves or by another person. Previous work has established that this paradigm elicits a robust self-reference effect, with more "self-owned" items being remembered than "other-owned" items. Access to attentional resources was manipulated using divided-attention tasks at encoding. A significant self-reference effect emerged under full-attention conditions and was related to an increase in episodic recollection for self-owned items, but dividing attention eliminated this memory advantage. These findings are discussed in relation to the nature of self-referential cognition and the importance of attentional resources at encoding in the manifestation of the self-reference effect in memory.

An analysis of contextual information relevant to medical care unexpectedly volunteered to researchers by asthma patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Black, Heather L; Priolo, Chantel; Gonzalez, Rodalyn; Geer, Sabrina; Adam, Bariituu; Apter, Andrea J

2012-09-01

To describe and categorize contextual information relevant to patients' medical care unexpectedly volunteered to research personnel as part of a patient advocate (PA) intervention to facilitate access health care, communication with medical personnel, and self-management of a chronic disease such as asthma. We adapted a patient navigator intervention, to overcome barriers to access and communication for adults with moderate or severe asthma. Informed by focus groups of patients and providers, our PAs facilitated preparation for a visit with an asthma provider, attended the visit, confirmed understanding, and assisted with post-visit activities. During meetings with researchers, either for PA activities or for data collection, participants frequently volunteered personal and medical information relevant for achieving successful self-management that was not routinely shared with medical personnel. For this project, researchers journaled information not captured by the structured questionnaires and protocol. Using a qualitative analysis, we describe (1) researchers' journals of these unique communications; (2) their relevance for accomplishing self-management; (3) PAs' formal activities including teach-back, advocacy, and facilitating appointment making; and (4) observations of patients' interactions with the clinical practices. In 83 journals, patients' social support (83%), health (68%), and deportment (69%) were described. PA assistance with navigating the medical system (59%), teach-back (46%), and observed interactions with patient and medical staff (76%) were also journaled. Implicit were ways patients and practices could overcome barriers to access and communication. These journals describe the importance of seeking contextual and medically relevant information from all patients and, especially, those with significant morbidities, prompting patients for barriers to access to health care, and confirming understanding of medical information.

Ambiguity in guideline definitions introduces assessor bias and influences consistency in IUCN Red List status assessments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Matt W Hayward

2015-07-01

Full Text Available The IUCN Red List is the most widely used tool to measure extinction risk and report biodiversity trends. Accurate and standardised conservation status assessments for the IUCN Red List are limited by a lack of adequate information; and need consistent and unbiased interpretation of that information. Variable interpretation stems from a lack of quantified thresholds in certain areas of the Red List guidelines. Thus, even in situations with sufficient information to make a Red List assessment, inconsistency can occur when experts, especially from different regions, interpret the guidelines differently, thereby undermining the goals and credibility of the process. In such an information vacuum, assessors make assumptions depending on their level of Red List experience (subconscious bias and their personal values or agendas (conscious bias. We highlight two major issues where such bias influences assessments: relating to fenced subpopulations that require intensive management; and defining benchmark geographic distributions and thus the inclusion/exclusion of introduced subpopulations. We suggest assessor bias can be reduced by refining the Red List guidelines to include quantified thresholds for when to include fenced/intensively managed subpopulations or subpopulations outside the benchmark distribution; publishing case studies of difficult assessments to enhance cohesion between Specialist Groups; developing an online accreditation course on applying Red List criteria as a prerequisite for assessors; and ensuring that assessments of species subject to trade and utilisation are represented by all dissenting views (for example, both utilitarian and preservationist and reviewed by relevant Specialist Groups. We believe these interventions would ensure consistent, reliable assessments of threatened species between regions and across assessors with divergent views, and will thus improve comparisons between taxa and counteract the use of Red List

Exchange bias mediated by interfacial nanoparticles (invited)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Berkowitz, A. E., E-mail: aberk@ucsd.edu [Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093 (United States); Center for Magnetic Recording Research, University of California, California 92093 (United States); Sinha, S. K. [Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093 (United States); Fullerton, E. E. [Center for Magnetic Recording Research, University of California, California 92093 (United States); Smith, D. J. [Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287 (United States)

2015-05-07

The objective of this study on the iconic exchange-bias bilayer Permalloy/CoO has been to identify those elements of the interfacial microstructure and accompanying magnetic properties that are responsible for the exchange-bias and hysteretic properties of this bilayer. Both epitaxial and polycrystalline samples were examined. X-ray and neutron reflectometry established that there existed an interfacial region, of width ∼1 nm, whose magnetic properties differed from those of Py or CoO. A model was developed for the interfacial microstructure that predicts all the relevant properties of this system; namely; the temperature and Permalloy thickness dependence of the exchange-bias, H{sub EX}, and coercivity, H{sub C}; the much smaller measured values of H{sub EX} from what was nominally expected; the different behavior of H{sub EX} and H{sub C} in epitaxial and polycrystalline bilayers. A surprising result is that the exchange-bias does not involve direct exchange-coupling between Permalloy and CoO, but rather is mediated by CoFe{sub 2}O{sub 4} nanoparticles in the interfacial region.

A Framework for Integrating Implicit Bias Recognition Into Health Professions Education.

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Sukhera, Javeed; Watling, Chris

2018-01-01

Existing literature on implicit bias is fragmented and comes from a variety of fields like cognitive psychology, business ethics, and higher education, but implicit-bias-informed educational approaches have been underexplored in health professions education and are difficult to evaluate using existing tools. Despite increasing attention to implicit bias recognition and management in health professions education, many programs struggle to meaningfully integrate these topics into curricula. The authors propose a six-point actionable framework for integrating implicit bias recognition and management into health professions education that draws on the work of previous researchers and includes practical tools to guide curriculum developers. The six key features of this framework are creating a safe and nonthreatening learning context, increasing knowledge about the science of implicit bias, emphasizing how implicit bias influences behaviors and patient outcomes, increasing self-awareness of existing implicit biases, improving conscious efforts to overcome implicit bias, and enhancing awareness of how implicit bias influences others. Important considerations for designing implicit-bias-informed curricula-such as individual and contextual variables, as well as formal and informal cultural influences-are discussed. The authors also outline assessment and evaluation approaches that consider outcomes at individual, organizational, community, and societal levels. The proposed framework may facilitate future research and exploration regarding the use of implicit bias in health professions education.

Cognitive bias in forensic anthropology: visual assessment of skeletal remains is susceptible to confirmation bias.

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Nakhaeizadeh, Sherry; Dror, Itiel E; Morgan, Ruth M

2014-05-01

An experimental study was designed to examine cognitive biases within forensic anthropological non-metric methods in assessing sex, ancestry and age at death. To investigate examiner interpretation, forty-one non-novice participants were semi randomly divided into three groups. Prior to conducting the assessment of the skeletal remains, two of the groups were given different extraneous contextual information regarding the sex, ancestry and age at death of the individual. The third group acted as a control group with no extraneous contextual information. The experiment was designed to investigate if the interpretation and conclusions of the skeletal remains would differ amongst participants within the three groups, and to assess whether the examiners would confirm or disagree with the given extraneous context when establishing a biological profile. The results revealed a significant biasing effect within the three groups, demonstrating a strong confirmation bias in the assessment of sex, ancestry and age at death. In assessment of sex, 31% of the participants in the control group concluded that the skeleton remains were male. In contrast, in the group that received contextual information that the remains were male, 72% concluded that the remains were male, and in the participant group where the context was that the remains were of a female, 0% of the participants concluded that the remains were male. Comparable results showing bias were found in assessing ancestry and age at death. These data demonstrate that cognitive bias can impact forensic anthropological non-metric methods on skeletal remains and affects the interpretation and conclusions of the forensic scientists. This empirical study is a step in establishing an evidence base approach for dealing with cognitive issues in forensic anthropological assessments, so as to enhance this valuable forensic science discipline. Copyright © 2013 Forensic Science Society. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights

An own-age bias in recognizing faces with horizontal information

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Andreas Schaich

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Horizontal information, as a result of a selective filtering process, are essential in younger adults’ (YA ability to recognize human faces. Obermeyer, Kolling, Schaich, and Knopf (2012 recently reported impaired recognition of faces with horizontal information in older adults (OA suggesting age-variant processing. Two yet unconsidered factors (stimulus age and exposure duration that may have influenced previous results, were investigated in this study. Forty-seven YA (18-35yrs and 49 OA (62-83yrs were tested in a 2x2x2x2 mixed design with the between-subjects factors age group (YA vs OA and stimulus age (young faces vs older faces and the within-subjects factors filter (filtered (HF faces vs unfiltered faces (UF and exposure duration (0.8s vs 8s. Subjects were presented morph videos between pairs of faces: A starting face gradually merged into either the previously encoded target face or a control face. As expected, results showed an increase in recognition sensitivity (d’ with longer exposure duration in YA with both younger and older HF faces. OA however were unable to recognize filtered young faces not even with increased exposure duration. Furthermore, only elderly participants showed more accurate recognition with faces of their own age relative to other-age faces (own-age bias, OAB. For YA no OAB was observed. Filtered face recognition was significantly correlated with unfiltered recognition in YA but not in OA. It is concluded, that processing of horizontal information changes at a higher age. Presenting filtered or unfiltered faces both targets convergent face-specific processing only in YA but not in OA.

A review of bias flow liners for acoustic damping in gas turbine combustors

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Lahiri, C.; Bake, F.

2017-07-01

The optimized design of bias flow liner is a key element for the development of low emission combustion systems in modern gas turbines and aero-engines. The research of bias flow liners has a fairly long history concerning both the parameter dependencies as well as the methods to model the acoustic behaviour of bias flow liners under the variety of different bias and grazing flow conditions. In order to establish an overview over the state of the art, this paper provides a comprehensive review about the published research on bias flow liners and modelling approaches with an extensive study of the most relevant parameters determining the acoustic behaviour of these liners. The paper starts with a historical description of available investigations aiming on the characterization of the bias flow absorption principle. This chronological compendium is extended by the recent and ongoing developments in this field. In a next step the fundamental acoustic property of bias flow liner in terms of the wall impedance is introduced and the different derivations and formulations of this impedance yielding the different published model descriptions are explained and compared. Finally, a parametric study reveals the most relevant parameters for the acoustic damping behaviour of bias flow liners and how this is reflected by the various model representations. Although the general trend of the investigated acoustic behaviour is captured by the different models fairly well for a certain range of parameters, in the transition region between the resonance dominated and the purely bias flow related regime all models lack the correct damping prediction. This seems to be connected to the proper implementation of the reactance as a function of bias flow Mach number.

Attentional Bias in Math Anxiety

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Orly eRubinsten

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Cognitive theory from the field of general anxiety suggests that the tendency to display attentional bias toward negative information results in anxiety. Accordingly, the current study aims to investigate whether attentional bias is involved in math anxiety as well (i.e., a persistent negative reaction to math. Twenty seven participants (14 with high levels of math anxiety and 13 with low levels of math anxiety were presented with a novel computerized numerical version of the well established dot probe task. One of 6 types of prime stimuli, either math related or typically neutral, were presented on one side of a computer screen. The prime was preceded by a probe (either one or two asterisks that appeared in either the prime or the opposite location. Participants had to discriminate probe identity (one or two asterisks. Math anxious individuals reacted faster when the probe was at the location of the numerical related stimuli. This suggests the existence of attentional bias in math anxiety. That is, for math anxious individuals, the cognitive system selectively favored the processing of emotionally negative information (i.e., math related words. These findings suggest that attentional bias is linked to unduly intense math anxiety symptoms.

Payoff Information Biases a Fast Guess Process in Perceptual Decision Making under Deadline Pressure: Evidence from Behavior, Evoked Potentials, and Quantitative Model Comparison.

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Noorbaloochi, Sharareh; Sharon, Dahlia; McClelland, James L

2015-08-05

We used electroencephalography (EEG) and behavior to examine the role of payoff bias in a difficult two-alternative perceptual decision under deadline pressure in humans. The findings suggest that a fast guess process, biased by payoff and triggered by stimulus onset, occurred on a subset of trials and raced with an evidence accumulation process informed by stimulus information. On each trial, the participant judged whether a rectangle was shifted to the right or left and responded by squeezing a right- or left-hand dynamometer. The payoff for each alternative (which could be biased or unbiased) was signaled 1.5 s before stimulus onset. The choice response was assigned to the first hand reaching a squeeze force criterion and reaction time was defined as time to criterion. Consistent with a fast guess account, fast responses were strongly biased toward the higher-paying alternative and the EEG exhibited an abrupt rise in the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) on a subset of biased payoff trials contralateral to the higher-paying alternative ∼ 150 ms after stimulus onset and 50 ms before stimulus information influenced the LRP. This rise was associated with poststimulus dynamometer activity favoring the higher-paying alternative and predicted choice and response time. Quantitative modeling supported the fast guess account over accounts of payoff effects supported in other studies. Our findings, taken with previous studies, support the idea that payoff and prior probability manipulations produce flexible adaptations to task structure and do not reflect a fixed policy for the integration of payoff and stimulus information. Humans and other animals often face situations in which they must make choices based on uncertain sensory information together with information about expected outcomes (gains or losses) about each choice. We investigated how differences in payoffs between available alternatives affect neural activity, overt choice, and the timing of choice

The specificity of attentional biases by type of gambling: An eye-tracking study

OpenAIRE

McGrath, Daniel S.; Meitner, Amadeus; Sears, Christopher R.

2018-01-01

A growing body of research indicates that gamblers develop an attentional bias for gambling-related stimuli. Compared to research on substance use, however, few studies have examined attentional biases in gamblers using eye-gaze tracking, which has many advantages over other measures of attention. In addition, previous studies of attentional biases in gamblers have not directly matched type of gambler with personally-relevant gambling cues. The present study investigated the specificity of at...

Perceptual and cognitive biases in individuals with body dysmorphic disorder symptoms.

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Clerkin, Elise M; Teachman, Bethany A

2008-01-01

Given the extreme focus on perceived physical defects in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), we expected that perceptual and cognitive biases related to physical appearance would be associated with BDD symptomology. To examine these hypotheses, participants ( N = 70) high and low in BDD symptoms completed tasks assessing visual perception and cognition. As expected, there were significant group differences in self-, but not other-, relevant cognitive biases. Perceptual bias results were mixed, with some evidence indicating that individuals high (versus low) in BDD symptoms literally see themselves in a less positive light. Further, individuals high in BDD symptoms failed to demonstrate a normative self-enhancement bias. Overall, this research points to the importance of assessing both cognitive and perceptual biases associated with BDD symptoms, and suggests that visual perception may be influenced by non-visual factors.

Towards brain-activity-controlled information retrieval: Decoding image relevance from MEG signals.

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Kauppi, Jukka-Pekka; Kandemir, Melih; Saarinen, Veli-Matti; Hirvenkari, Lotta; Parkkonen, Lauri; Klami, Arto; Hari, Riitta; Kaski, Samuel

2015-05-15

We hypothesize that brain activity can be used to control future information retrieval systems. To this end, we conducted a feasibility study on predicting the relevance of visual objects from brain activity. We analyze both magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and gaze signals from nine subjects who were viewing image collages, a subset of which was relevant to a predetermined task. We report three findings: i) the relevance of an image a subject looks at can be decoded from MEG signals with performance significantly better than chance, ii) fusion of gaze-based and MEG-based classifiers significantly improves the prediction performance compared to using either signal alone, and iii) non-linear classification of the MEG signals using Gaussian process classifiers outperforms linear classification. These findings break new ground for building brain-activity-based interactive image retrieval systems, as well as for systems utilizing feedback both from brain activity and eye movements. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cognitive constraints increase estimation biases: Cognitive load and delay in judgments

OpenAIRE

Allred, Sarah; Crawford, L. Elizabeth; Duffy, Sean; Smith, John

2014-01-01

Previous work has demonstrated that memory for simple stimuli can be biased by information about the category of which the stimulus is a member. These biases have been interpreted as optimally integrating noisy sensory information with category information. A separate literature has demonstrated that cognitive load can lead to biases in social cognition. Here we link the two, asking whether delay (Experiment 1) and cognitive load (Experiment 2) affect the extent to which observers' memories f...

[Immortal time bias in pharmacoepidemiological studies: definition, solutions and examples].

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Faillie, Jean-Luc; Suissa, Samy

2015-01-01

Among the observational studies of drug effects in chronic diseases, many of them have found effects that were exaggerated or wrong. Among bias responsible for these errors, the immortal time bias, concerning the definition of exposure and exposure periods, is relevantly important as it usually tends to wrongly attribute a significant benefit to the study drug (or exaggerate a real benefit). In this article, we define the mechanism of immortal time bias, we present possible solutions and illustrate its consequences through examples of pharmacoepidemiological studies of drug effects. © 2014 Société Française de Pharmacologie et de Thérapeutique.

The role of experience on techno-entrepreneurs’ decision making biases

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Pouria Nouri

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind the prospect and growth of the societies. Sound and wise decisions pave the way for them to carry out these highly important functions. Entrepreneurs are to discover and exploit opportunities. Therefore, they must gather sufficient and pertinent information. Entrepreneurs, like most human beings face complex and ambiguous decision-making situations, not to mention their lack of time and source to gather and process the data. Under these circumstances, entrepreneurs are prone making biases decisions. There are many reasons identified for this entrepreneurial decision making biases, such as the high cost of rational decision making, limitations in information processing, differences in their styles and procedures, or information overload, environmental complexity, environmental uncertainty. These biases are neither totally harmful nor completely useful and have to be seen as natural human characteristics. What makes entrepreneurial decision-making biases important is their effects on the decisions and thus the outcome of the enterprises. Entrepreneurial decision-making biases, deliberate or unintentional can seal the fate of the enterprises, therefore studying them meticulously is crucial. Literature has shown that experience could be an effective factor in decision-making biases. In this paper, we try to find out the impact of experience in Iranian high tech entrepreneurs’ major decision-making biases by a qualitative approach. Finally, it was concluded that experience is influential in shaping overconfidence bias.

Using language models to identify relevant new information in inpatient clinical notes.

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Zhang, Rui; Pakhomov, Serguei V; Lee, Janet T; Melton, Genevieve B

2014-01-01

Redundant information in clinical notes within electronic health record (EHR) systems is ubiquitous and may negatively impact the use of these notes by clinicians, and, potentially, the efficiency of patient care delivery. Automated methods to identify redundant versus relevant new information may provide a valuable tool for clinicians to better synthesize patient information and navigate to clinically important details. In this study, we investigated the use of language models for identification of new information in inpatient notes, and evaluated our methods using expert-derived reference standards. The best method achieved precision of 0.743, recall of 0.832 and F1-measure of 0.784. The average proportion of redundant information was similar between inpatient and outpatient progress notes (76.6% (SD=17.3%) and 76.7% (SD=14.0%), respectively). Advanced practice providers tended to have higher rates of redundancy in their notes compared to physicians. Future investigation includes the addition of semantic components and visualization of new information.

Estimating Gravity Biases with Wavelets in Support of a 1-cm Accurate Geoid Model

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Ahlgren, K.; Li, X.

2017-12-01

Systematic errors that reside in surface gravity datasets are one of the major hurdles in constructing a high-accuracy geoid model at high resolutions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Geodetic Survey (NGS) has an extensive historical surface gravity dataset consisting of approximately 10 million gravity points that are known to have systematic biases at the mGal level (Saleh et al. 2013). As most relevant metadata is absent, estimating and removing these errors to be consistent with a global geopotential model and airborne data in the corresponding wavelength is quite a difficult endeavor. However, this is crucial to support a 1-cm accurate geoid model for the United States. With recently available independent gravity information from GRACE/GOCE and airborne gravity from the NGS Gravity for the Redefinition of the American Vertical Datum (GRAV-D) project, several different methods of bias estimation are investigated which utilize radial basis functions and wavelet decomposition. We estimate a surface gravity value by incorporating a satellite gravity model, airborne gravity data, and forward-modeled topography at wavelet levels according to each dataset's spatial wavelength. Considering the estimated gravity values over an entire gravity survey, an estimate of the bias and/or correction for the entire survey can be found and applied. In order to assess the accuracy of each bias estimation method, two techniques are used. First, each bias estimation method is used to predict the bias for two high-quality (unbiased and high accuracy) geoid slope validation surveys (GSVS) (Smith et al. 2013 & Wang et al. 2017). Since these surveys are unbiased, the various bias estimation methods should reflect that and provide an absolute accuracy metric for each of the bias estimation methods. Secondly, the corrected gravity datasets from each of the bias estimation methods are used to build a geoid model. The accuracy of each geoid model

Ethnic bias and clinical decision-making among New Zealand medical students: an observational study.

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Harris, Ricci; Cormack, Donna; Stanley, James; Curtis, Elana; Jones, Rhys; Lacey, Cameron

2018-01-23

overall this was not associated with clinical decision-making. This study both adds to the small body of literature internationally on racial/ethnic bias among medical students and provides relevant and important information for medical education on indigenous health and ethnic health inequities in New Zealand.

Individuals With OCD Lack Unrealistic Optimism Bias in Threat Estimation.

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Zetsche, Ulrike; Rief, Winfried; Exner, Cornelia

2015-07-01

Overestimating the occurrence of threatening events has been highlighted as a central cognitive factor in the maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study examined the different facets of this cognitive bias, its underlying mechanisms, and its specificity to OCD. For this purpose, threat estimation, probabilistic classification learning (PCL) and psychopathological measures were assessed in 23 participants with OCD, 30 participants with social phobia, and 31 healthy controls. Whereas healthy participants showed an optimistic expectation bias regarding positive and negative future events, OCD participants lacked such a bias. This lack of an optimistic expectation bias was not specific to OCD. Compared to healthy controls, OCD participants overestimated their personal risk for experiencing negative events, but did not differ from controls in their risk estimation regarding other people. Finally, OCD participants' biases in the prediction of checking-related events were associated with their impairments in learning probabilistic cue-outcome associations in a disorder-relevant context. In sum, the present results add to a growing body of research demonstrating that cognitive biases in OCD are context-dependent. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Body image related negative interpretation bias in anorexia nervosa.

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Brockmeyer, Timo; Anderle, Alisa; Schmidt, Hagen; Febry, Stephanie; Wünsch-Leiteritz, Wally; Leiteritz, Andreas; Friederich, Hans-Christoph

2018-05-01

A distorted body image and pronounced body dissatisfaction are hallmarks of anorexia nervosa (AN) that typically result in dietary restraint and compensatory behaviours. Cognitive biases such as negative interpretation bias are considered key maintaining factors of these maladaptive cognitions and behaviours. However, little attention has been paid to empirical tests whether negative interpretation bias exists in AN and to what degree it is associated with symptom severity. Participants in the present study were 40 women with AN and 40 healthy women with no history of an eating disorder. Body-related negative interpretation bias (i.e., a tendency to interpret ambiguous information about the own body in a negative way) was measured by a Scrambled Sentences Task. Patients with AN showed a stronger body-related negative interpretation bias than healthy controls. Within both groups, negative interpretation bias correlated strongly and positively with AN symptom severity and these effects were not moderated by levels of depressive symptoms. The findings support the idea that biased interpretation of body-related information is associated with the specific psychopathology of AN. Targeted, computerised interventions (e.g. interpretation bias modification) may help to alter these dysfunctional cognitive schemas that lie at the heart of AN. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Context effects and observer bias--implications for forensic odontology.

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Page, Mark; Taylor, Jane; Blenkin, Matt

2012-01-01

Psychologists have long recognized the effects of contextual and extraneous information on decision making. Such information renders the subject susceptible to both motivational and cognitive bias; yet, it is difficult to assess the extent to which these influence forensic odontologists opinions as there have been no studies to date on this subject. This article explores the various types of contextual effects and biasing influences that potentially impact on the analysis of bitemarks in forensic odontology. It appears that the current practice of bitemark analysis is rich in sources of potentially biasing influences. In addition to the fundamental recognition that some form of bias is likely to exist, ways in which these should be minimized include: separation of the collection and analysis phases; limiting the amount of contextual information available to the odontologist responsible for the analysis; and ensuring that evidence that is ambiguous or of poor quality is identified as such prior to analysis. © 2011 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Linking attentional processes and conceptual problem solving: visual cues facilitate the automaticity of extracting relevant information from diagrams.

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Rouinfar, Amy; Agra, Elise; Larson, Adam M; Rebello, N Sanjay; Loschky, Lester C

2014-01-01

This study investigated links between visual attention processes and conceptual problem solving. This was done by overlaying visual cues on conceptual physics problem diagrams to direct participants' attention to relevant areas to facilitate problem solving. Participants (N = 80) individually worked through four problem sets, each containing a diagram, while their eye movements were recorded. Each diagram contained regions that were relevant to solving the problem correctly and separate regions related to common incorrect responses. Problem sets contained an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued condition saw visual cues overlaid on the training problems. Participants' verbal responses were used to determine their accuracy. This study produced two major findings. First, short duration visual cues which draw attention to solution-relevant information and aid in the organizing and integrating of it, facilitate both immediate problem solving and generalization of that ability to new problems. Thus, visual cues can facilitate re-representing a problem and overcoming impasse, enabling a correct solution. Importantly, these cueing effects on problem solving did not involve the solvers' attention necessarily embodying the solution to the problem, but were instead caused by solvers attending to and integrating relevant information in the problems into a solution path. Second, this study demonstrates that when such cues are used across multiple problems, solvers can automatize the extraction of problem-relevant information extraction. These results suggest that low-level attentional selection processes provide a necessary gateway for relevant information to be used in problem solving, but are generally not sufficient for correct problem solving. Instead, factors that lead a solver to an impasse and to organize and integrate problem information also greatly facilitate arriving at correct solutions.

A method of bias correction for maximal reliability with dichotomous measures.

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Penev, Spiridon; Raykov, Tenko

2010-02-01

This paper is concerned with the reliability of weighted combinations of a given set of dichotomous measures. Maximal reliability for such measures has been discussed in the past, but the pertinent estimator exhibits a considerable bias and mean squared error for moderate sample sizes. We examine this bias, propose a procedure for bias correction, and develop a more accurate asymptotic confidence interval for the resulting estimator. In most empirically relevant cases, the bias correction and mean squared error correction can be performed simultaneously. We propose an approximate (asymptotic) confidence interval for the maximal reliability coefficient, discuss the implementation of this estimator, and investigate the mean squared error of the associated asymptotic approximation. We illustrate the proposed methods using a numerical example.

76 FR 44337 - Comments and Information Relevant to Mid Decade Review of NORA

Science.gov (United States)

2011-07-25

... NIOSH-244] Comments and Information Relevant to Mid Decade Review of NORA AGENCY: Department of Health...) is conducting a review of the processes of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA). In 2006, NORA entered its second decade with an industry sector-based structure. In 2011, as NORA reaches the...

Process-conditioned bias correction for seasonal forecasting: a case-study with ENSO in Peru

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Manzanas, R.; Gutiérrez, J. M.

2018-05-01

This work assesses the suitability of a first simple attempt for process-conditioned bias correction in the context of seasonal forecasting. To do this, we focus on the northwestern part of Peru and bias correct 1- and 4-month lead seasonal predictions of boreal winter (DJF) precipitation from the ECMWF System4 forecasting system for the period 1981-2010. In order to include information about the underlying large-scale circulation which may help to discriminate between precipitation affected by different processes, we introduce here an empirical quantile-quantile mapping method which runs conditioned on the state of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), which is accurately predicted by System4 and is known to affect the local climate. Beyond the reduction of model biases, our results show that the SOI-conditioned method yields better ROC skill scores and reliability than the raw model output over the entire region of study, whereas the standard unconditioned implementation provides no added value for any of these metrics. This suggests that conditioning the bias correction on simple but well-simulated large-scale processes relevant to the local climate may be a suitable approach for seasonal forecasting. Yet, further research on the suitability of the application of similar approaches to the one considered here for other regions, seasons and/or variables is needed.

Stimulus-Driven Attention, Threat Bias, and Sad Bias in Youth with a History of an Anxiety Disorder or Depression.

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Sylvester, Chad M; Hudziak, James J; Gaffrey, Michael S; Barch, Deanna M; Luby, Joan L

2016-02-01

Attention biases towards threatening and sad stimuli are associated with pediatric anxiety and depression, respectively. The basic cognitive mechanisms associated with attention biases in youth, however, remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that threat bias (selective attention for threatening versus neutral stimuli) but not sad bias relies on stimulus-driven attention. We collected measures of stimulus-driven attention, threat bias, sad bias, and current clinical symptoms in youth with a history of an anxiety disorder and/or depression (ANX/DEP; n = 40) as well as healthy controls (HC; n = 33). Stimulus-driven attention was measured with a non-emotional spatial orienting task, while threat bias and sad bias were measured at a short time interval (150 ms) with a spatial orienting task using emotional faces and at a longer time interval (500 ms) using a dot-probe task. In ANX/DEP but not HC, early attention bias towards threat was negatively correlated with later attention bias to threat, suggesting that early threat vigilance was associated with later threat avoidance. Across all subjects, stimulus-driven orienting was not correlated with early threat bias but was negatively correlated with later threat bias, indicating that rapid stimulus-driven orienting is linked to later threat avoidance. No parallel relationships were detected for sad bias. Current symptoms of depression but not anxiety were related to decreased stimulus-driven attention. Together, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that threat bias but not sad bias relies on stimulus-driven attention. These results inform the design of attention bias modification programs that aim to reverse threat biases and reduce symptoms associated with pediatric anxiety and depression.

Stimulus-driven attention, threat bias, and sad bias in youth with a history of an anxiety disorder or depression

Science.gov (United States)

Sylvester, Chad M.; Hudziak, James J.; Gaffrey, Michael S.; Barch, Deanna M.; Luby, Joan L.

2015-01-01

Attention biases towards threatening and sad stimuli are associated with pediatric anxiety and depression, respectively. The basic cognitive mechanisms associated with attention biases in youth, however, remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that threat bias (selective attention for threatening versus neutral stimuli) but not sad bias relies on stimulus-driven attention. We collected measures of stimulus-driven attention, threat bias, sad bias, and current clinical symptoms in youth with a history of an anxiety disorder and/or depression (ANX/DEP; n=40) as well as healthy controls (HC; n=33). Stimulus-driven attention was measured with a non-emotional spatial orienting task, while threat bias and sad bias were measured at a short time interval (150 ms) with a spatial orienting task using emotional faces and at a longer time interval (500 ms) using a dot-probe task. In ANX/DEP but not HC, early attention bias towards threat was negatively correlated with later attention bias to threat, suggesting that early threat vigilance was associated with later threat avoidance. Across all subjects, stimulus-driven orienting was not correlated with early threat bias but was negatively correlated with later threat bias, indicating that rapid stimulus-driven orienting is linked to later threat avoidance. No parallel relationships were detected for sad bias. Current symptoms of depression but not anxiety were related to decreased stimulus-driven attention. Together, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that threat bias but not sad bias relies on stimulus-driven attention. These results inform the design of attention bias modification programs that aim to reverse threat biases and reduce symptoms associated with pediatric anxiety and depression. PMID:25702927

Relevance between the degree of industrial competition and fair value information: Study on the listed companies in China

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Xuemin Zhuang

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Purpose: The purpose of this article is to study whether there exists natural relationship between fair value and corporate external market. A series of special phenomenon in the application of fair value arouses our research interests, which present evidences on how competition affects the correlation of fair value information. Design/methodology/approach: this thesis chooses fair value changes gains and losses and calculate the ratio of DFVPSit as the alternative variable of the fair value. In order to effectively inspect the mutual influence between the degree of industry competition and the value relevance of fair value, and reduce the impact of multi-collinearity, we built a regression model on the hypothesis, which supposes that if other conditions are the same, the fair value information has greater value relevance if the degree of the industry competition is greater. To test the hypothesis, we use the comparison of the DFVPSit coefficient absolute value to judge the value relevance of fair value information, and the greater the absolute value is, the higher relevance between the changes in fair value per share profits and losses with the stock prices. Findings: The higher the degree of competition in the industry is, the more fair value information relevance is. Also, there are evidences representing that fair value information often presents negative correlation with the stock price. Originality/value: The main contribution of the article is to show that not only need we make the formulation and implementation of the high quality of fair value accounting standards to suit for both the national conditions and international practice, but also need we further to improve the company's external governance mechanism to promote fair value’s information correlation.

Working memory and spatial judgments: Cognitive load increases the central tendency bias.

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Allred, Sarah R; Crawford, L Elizabeth; Duffy, Sean; Smith, John

2016-12-01

Previous work demonstrates that memory for simple stimuli can be biased by information about the distribution of which the stimulus is a member. Specifically, people underestimate values greater than the distribution's average and overestimate values smaller than the average. This is referred to as the central tendency bias. This bias has been explained as an optimal use of both noisy sensory information and category information. In largely separate literature, cognitive load (CL) experiments attempt to manipulate the available working memory of participants in order to observe the effect on choice or judgments. In two experiments, we demonstrate that participants under high cognitive load exhibit a stronger central tendency bias than when under a low cognitive load. Although not anticipated at the outset, we also find that judgments exhibit an anchoring bias not described previously.

IMPACT OF THE CONVERGENCE PROCESS TO INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS ON THE VALUE RELEVANCE OF FINANCIAL INFORMATION

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Marcelo Alvaro da Silva Macedo

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Law 11.638/07 marked the start of a series of changes in the laws that regulate Brazilian accounting practices. The main reason for these changes is the convergence process of local with international accounting standards. As a result of Law 11.638/07, the legal precedent was established to achieve convergence. In that context, the aim of this study is to analyze the impact of the convergence process with international accounting standards on the relevance of financial information, based on data for 2007, without and with the alterations Law 11.638/07 introduced and according to the CPC Pronouncements, applicable as from 2008 onwards. Therefore, a value relevance study is used, applying regression analysis to annual stock price information (dependent variable and net profit per share (NPPS and net equity per share (NEPS as independent variables. The main results show that financial information on NPPS and NEPS for 2007, with and without the legal alterations, are relevant for the capital market. A comparison between both regressions used in the analysis, however, shows an information gain for financial information that includes the changes introduced in the first phase of the accounting convergence process with the international standards.

A fast, open source implementation of adaptive biasing potentials uncovers a ligand design strategy for the chromatin regulator BRD4

OpenAIRE

Dickson, Bradley M.; de Waal, Parker W; Ramjan, Zachary H; Xu, H Eric; Rothbart, Scott B.

2016-01-01

In this communication we introduce an efficient implementation of adaptive biasing that greatly improves the speed of free energy computation in molecular dynamics simulations. We investigated the use of accelerated simulations to inform on compound design using a recently reported and clinically relevant inhibitor of the chromatin regulator BRD4 (bromodomain-containing protein 4). Benchmarking on our local compute cluster, our implementation achieves up to 2.5 times more force calls per day ...

Using artistic-narrative to stimulate reflection on physician bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Ross, Paula T; Lypson, Monica L

2014-01-01

Physician bias toward patients directly impacts patient care and health outcomes. However, too little research has been done investigating avenues to bring about self-awareness in this area to eliminate commonly held stereotypes that fuel physician bias. The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which 2nd-year medical students' reflected on an artistic-narrative presentation given by a woman with sickle cell disease. A total of 320 2nd-year medical student essays were reviewed for content relevant to the artistic-narrative presentation. A total of 75 essays were identified and served as the data for this study. These 75 essays were analyzed using qualitative interpretive thematic content analysis to identify students' perceptions and reflections on culture in the healthcare environment and the patient-provider relationship. The analysis of the reflective essays revealed that this exercise helped students acknowledge physician bias in pain treatment, foster empathetic views toward patients as individuals, and recognize various ways in which biased beliefs can provide incite in healthcare disparities. These findings suggest that the combination of methods--art, narrative, and written reflection--helped students acknowledge their own bias as well as the ways in which taken-for-granted assumptions and biases can influence patient care.

Creation of reliable relevance judgments in information retrieval systems evaluation experimentation through crowdsourcing: a review.

Science.gov (United States)

Samimi, Parnia; Ravana, Sri Devi

2014-01-01

Test collection is used to evaluate the information retrieval systems in laboratory-based evaluation experimentation. In a classic setting, generating relevance judgments involves human assessors and is a costly and time consuming task. Researchers and practitioners are still being challenged in performing reliable and low-cost evaluation of retrieval systems. Crowdsourcing as a novel method of data acquisition is broadly used in many research fields. It has been proven that crowdsourcing is an inexpensive and quick solution as well as a reliable alternative for creating relevance judgments. One of the crowdsourcing applications in IR is to judge relevancy of query document pair. In order to have a successful crowdsourcing experiment, the relevance judgment tasks should be designed precisely to emphasize quality control. This paper is intended to explore different factors that have an influence on the accuracy of relevance judgments accomplished by workers and how to intensify the reliability of judgments in crowdsourcing experiment.

Weight bias internalization across weight categories among school-aged children. Validation of the Weight Bias Internalization Scale for Children.

Science.gov (United States)

Zuba, Anna; Warschburger, Petra

2018-06-01

Anti-fat bias is widespread and is linked to the internalization of weight bias and psychosocial problems. The purpose of this study was to examine the internalization of weight bias among children across weight categories and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Weight Bias Internalization Scale for Children (WBIS-C). Data were collected from 1484 primary school children and their parents. WBIS-C demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .86) after exclusion of Item 1. The unitary factor structure was supported using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (factorial validity). Girls and overweight children reported higher WBIS-C scores in comparison to boys and non-overweight peers (known-groups validity). Convergent validity was shown by significant correlations with psychosocial problems. Internalization of weight bias explained additional variance in different indicators of psychosocial well-being. The results suggest that the WBIS-C is a psychometrically sound and informative tool to assess weight bias internalization among children. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Does the Superior Colliculus Control Perceptual Sensitivity or Choice Bias during Attention? Evidence from a Multialternative Decision Framework

Science.gov (United States)

Steinmetz, Nicholas A.; Moore, Tirin; Knudsen, Eric I.

2017-01-01

Distinct networks in the forebrain and the midbrain coordinate to control spatial attention. The critical involvement of the superior colliculus (SC)—the central structure in the midbrain network—in visuospatial attention has been shown by four seminal, published studies in monkeys (Macaca mulatta) performing multialternative tasks. However, due to the lack of a mechanistic framework for interpreting behavioral data in such tasks, the nature of the SC's contribution to attention remains unclear. Here we present and validate a novel decision framework for analyzing behavioral data in multialternative attention tasks. We apply this framework to re-examine the behavioral evidence from these published studies. Our model is a multidimensional extension to signal detection theory that distinguishes between two major classes of attentional mechanisms: those that alter the quality of sensory information or “sensitivity,” and those that alter the selective gating of sensory information or “choice bias.” Model-based simulations and model-based analyses of data from these published studies revealed a converging pattern of results that indicated that choice-bias changes, rather than sensitivity changes, were the primary outcome of SC manipulation. Our results suggest that the SC contributes to attentional performance predominantly by generating a spatial choice bias for stimuli at a selected location, and that this bias operates downstream of forebrain mechanisms that enhance sensitivity. The findings lead to a testable mechanistic framework of how the midbrain and forebrain networks interact to control spatial attention. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Attention involves the selection of the most relevant information for differential sensory processing and decision making. While the mechanisms by which attention alters sensory encoding (sensitivity control) are well studied, the mechanisms by which attention alters decisional weighting of sensory evidence (choice-bias

A framework for automatic information quality ranking of diabetes websites.

Science.gov (United States)

Belen Sağlam, Rahime; Taskaya Temizel, Tugba

2015-01-01

Objective: When searching for particular medical information on the internet the challenge lies in distinguishing the websites that are relevant to the topic, and contain accurate information. In this article, we propose a framework that automatically identifies and ranks diabetes websites according to their relevance and information quality based on the website content. Design: The proposed framework ranks diabetes websites according to their content quality, relevance and evidence based medicine. The framework combines information retrieval techniques with a lexical resource based on Sentiwordnet making it possible to work with biased and untrusted websites while, at the same time, ensuring the content relevance. Measurement: The evaluation measurements used were Pearson-correlation, true positives, false positives and accuracy. We tested the framework with a benchmark data set consisting of 55 websites with varying degrees of information quality problems. Results: The proposed framework gives good results that are comparable with the non-automated information quality measuring approaches in the literature. The correlation between the results of the proposed automated framework and ground-truth is 0.68 on an average with p < 0.001 which is greater than the other proposed automated methods in the literature (r score in average is 0.33).

Relevance of randomised controlled trials in oncology.

Science.gov (United States)

Tannock, Ian F; Amir, Eitan; Booth, Christopher M; Niraula, Saroj; Ocana, Alberto; Seruga, Bostjan; Templeton, Arnoud J; Vera-Badillo, Francisco

2016-12-01

Well-designed randomised controlled trials (RCTs) can prevent bias in the comparison of treatments and provide a sound basis for changes in clinical practice. However, the design and reporting of many RCTs can render their results of little relevance to clinical practice. In this Personal View, we discuss the limitations of RCT data and suggest some ways to improve the clinical relevance of RCTs in the everyday management of patients with cancer. RCTs should ask questions of clinical rather than commercial interest, avoid non-validated surrogate endpoints in registration trials, and have entry criteria that allow inclusion of all patients who are fit to receive treatment. Furthermore, RCTs should be reported with complete accounting of frequency and management of toxicities, and with strict guidelines to ensure freedom from bias. Premature reporting of results should be avoided. The bar for clinical benefit should be raised for drug registration, which should require publication and review of mature data from RCTs, post-marketing health outcome studies, and value-based pricing. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deep learning relevance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lioma, Christina; Larsen, Birger; Petersen, Casper

2016-01-01

train a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) on existing relevant information to that query. We then use the RNN to "deep learn" a single, synthetic, and we assume, relevant document for that query. We design a crowdsourcing experiment to assess how relevant the "deep learned" document is, compared...... to existing relevant documents. Users are shown a query and four wordclouds (of three existing relevant documents and our deep learned synthetic document). The synthetic document is ranked on average most relevant of all....

Media Bias: Context, Redundancy, and Critical Threshold as Cultural Factor.

Science.gov (United States)

Becker, Samuel L.

Bias in mass communication can be defined as interpretation based on factors that are independent of the original information, or as shaping the meaning of information according to the context in which it is placed. Although research has explored the concept of bias from a number of perspectives, its subtle manifestations can be understood best by…

Biased language use in stereotype maintenance : The role of encoding and goals

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wenneker, CPJ; Wigboldus, DHJ; Spears, R

2005-01-01

In 4 studies, the authors investigated the relative impact of biased encoding of information and communication goals on biased language use. A category label (linguistic expectancy bias, Study 1) or a group label (linguistic intergroup bias, Study 2) was presented either before or after a story that

Expert vs. novice differences in the detection of relevant information during a chess game: evidence from eye movements.

Science.gov (United States)

Sheridan, Heather; Reingold, Eyal M

2014-01-01

The present study explored the ability of expert and novice chess players to rapidly distinguish between regions of a chessboard that were relevant to the best move on the board, and regions of the board that were irrelevant. Accordingly, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players, while they selected white's best move for a variety of chess problems. To manipulate relevancy, we constructed two different versions of each chess problem in the experiment, and we counterbalanced these versions across participants. These two versions of each problem were identical except that a single piece was changed from a bishop to a knight. This subtle change reversed the relevancy map of the board, such that regions that were relevant in one version of the board were now irrelevant (and vice versa). Using this paradigm, we demonstrated that both the experts and novices spent more time fixating the relevant relative to the irrelevant regions of the board. However, the experts were faster at detecting relevant information than the novices, as shown by the finding that experts (but not novices) were able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information during the early part of the trial. These findings further demonstrate the domain-related perceptual processing advantage of chess experts, using an experimental paradigm that allowed us to manipulate relevancy under tightly controlled conditions.

Expert versus novice differences in the detection of relevant information during a chess game: Evidence from eye movements

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Heather eSheridan

2014-08-01

Full Text Available The present study explored the ability of expert and novice chess players to rapidly distinguish between regions of a chessboard that were relevant to the best move on the board, and regions of the board that were irrelevant. Accordingly, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players, while they selected white’s best move for a variety of chess problems. To manipulate relevancy, we constructed two different versions of each chess problem in the experiment, and we counterbalanced these versions across participants. These two versions of each problem were identical except that a single piece was changed from a bishop to a knight. This subtle change reversed the relevancy map of the board, such that regions that were relevant in one version of the board were now irrelevant (and vice versa. Using this paradigm, we demonstrated that both the experts and novices spent more time fixating the relevant relative to the irrelevant regions of the board. However, the experts were faster at detecting relevant information than the novices, as shown by the finding that experts (but not novices were able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information during the early part of the trial. These findings further demonstrate the domain-related perceptual processing advantage of chess experts, using an experimental paradigm that allowed us to manipulate relevancy under tightly controlled conditions.

Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments.

Science.gov (United States)

Pulcu, Erdem; Browning, Michael

2017-10-04

Affective bias, the tendency to differentially prioritise the processing of negative relative to positive events, is commonly observed in clinical and non-clinical populations. However, why such biases develop is not known. Using a computational framework, we investigated whether affective biases may reflect individuals' estimates of the information content of negative relative to positive events. During a reinforcement learning task, the information content of positive and negative outcomes was manipulated independently by varying the volatility of their occurrence. Human participants altered the learning rates used for the outcomes selectively, preferentially learning from the most informative. This behaviour was associated with activity of the central norepinephrine system, estimated using pupilometry, for loss outcomes. Humans maintain independent estimates of the information content of distinct positive and negative outcomes which may bias their processing of affective events. Normalising affective biases using computationally inspired interventions may represent a novel approach to treatment development.

Back to the basics: Identifying and addressing underlying challenges in achieving high quality and relevant health statistics for indigenous populations in Canada.

Science.gov (United States)

Smylie, Janet; Firestone, Michelle

Canada is known internationally for excellence in both the quality and public policy relevance of its health and social statistics. There is a double standard however with respect to the relevance and quality of statistics for Indigenous populations in Canada. Indigenous specific health and social statistics gathering is informed by unique ethical, rights-based, policy and practice imperatives regarding the need for Indigenous participation and leadership in Indigenous data processes throughout the spectrum of indicator development, data collection, management, analysis and use. We demonstrate how current Indigenous data quality challenges including misclassification errors and non-response bias systematically contribute to a significant underestimate of inequities in health determinants, health status, and health care access between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. The major quality challenge underlying these errors and biases is the lack of Indigenous specific identifiers that are consistent and relevant in major health and social data sources. The recent removal of an Indigenous identity question from the Canadian census has resulted in further deterioration of an already suboptimal system. A revision of core health data sources to include relevant, consistent, and inclusive Indigenous self-identification is urgently required. These changes need to be carried out in partnership with Indigenous peoples and their representative and governing organizations.

Genesis and Maintenance of Attentional Biases: The Role of the Locus Coeruleus-Noradrenaline System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mana R. Ehlers

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Emotionally arousing events are typically better remembered than mundane ones, in part because emotionally relevant aspects of our environment are prioritized in attention. Such biased attentional tuning is itself the result of associative processes through which we learn affective and motivational relevance of cues. We propose that the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NA system plays an important role in the genesis of attentional biases through associative learning processes as well as their maintenance. We further propose that individual differences in and disruptions of the LC-NA system underlie the development of maladaptive biases linked to psychopathology. We provide support for the proposed role of the LC-NA system by first reviewing work on attentional biases in development and its link to psychopathology in relation to alterations and individual differences in NA availability. We focus on pharmacological manipulations to demonstrate the effect of a disrupted system as well as the ADRA2b polymorphism as a tool to investigate naturally occurring differences in NA availability. We next review associative learning processes that—modulated by the LC-NA system—result in such implicit attentional biases. Further, we demonstrate how NA may influence aversive and appetitive conditioning linked to anxiety disorders as well as addiction and depression.

Content specificity of attention bias to threat in anxiety disorders: a meta-analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Pergamin-Hight, Lee; Naim, Reut; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J; van IJzendoorn, Marinus H; Bar-Haim, Yair

2015-02-01

Despite the established evidence for threat-related attention bias in anxiety, the mechanisms underlying this bias remain unclear. One important unresolved question is whether disorder-congruent threats capture attention to a greater extent than do more general or disorder-incongruent threat stimuli. Evidence for attention bias specificity in anxiety would implicate involvement of previous learning and memory processes in threat-related attention bias, whereas lack of content specificity would point to perturbations in more generic attention processes. Enhanced clarity of mechanism could have clinical implications for the stimuli types used in Attention Bias Modification Treatments (ABMT). Content specificity of threat-related attention bias in anxiety and potential moderators of this effect were investigated. A systematic search identified 37 samples from 29 articles (N=866). Relevant data were extracted based on specific coding rules, and Cohen's d effect size was used to estimate bias specificity effects. The results indicate greater attention bias toward disorder-congruent relative to disorder-incongruent threat stimuli (d=0.28, pattention tasks, or type of disorder-incongruent stimuli. No evidence of publication bias was observed. Implications for threat bias in anxiety and ABMT are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

One-stage individual participant data meta-analysis models: estimation of treatment-covariate interactions must avoid ecological bias by separating out within-trial and across-trial information.

Science.gov (United States)

Hua, Hairui; Burke, Danielle L; Crowther, Michael J; Ensor, Joie; Tudur Smith, Catrin; Riley, Richard D

2017-02-28

Stratified medicine utilizes individual-level covariates that are associated with a differential treatment effect, also known as treatment-covariate interactions. When multiple trials are available, meta-analysis is used to help detect true treatment-covariate interactions by combining their data. Meta-regression of trial-level information is prone to low power and ecological bias, and therefore, individual participant data (IPD) meta-analyses are preferable to examine interactions utilizing individual-level information. However, one-stage IPD models are often wrongly specified, such that interactions are based on amalgamating within- and across-trial information. We compare, through simulations and an applied example, fixed-effect and random-effects models for a one-stage IPD meta-analysis of time-to-event data where the goal is to estimate a treatment-covariate interaction. We show that it is crucial to centre patient-level covariates by their mean value in each trial, in order to separate out within-trial and across-trial information. Otherwise, bias and coverage of interaction estimates may be adversely affected, leading to potentially erroneous conclusions driven by ecological bias. We revisit an IPD meta-analysis of five epilepsy trials and examine age as a treatment effect modifier. The interaction is -0.011 (95% CI: -0.019 to -0.003; p = 0.004), and thus highly significant, when amalgamating within-trial and across-trial information. However, when separating within-trial from across-trial information, the interaction is -0.007 (95% CI: -0.019 to 0.005; p = 0.22), and thus its magnitude and statistical significance are greatly reduced. We recommend that meta-analysts should only use within-trial information to examine individual predictors of treatment effect and that one-stage IPD models should separate within-trial from across-trial information to avoid ecological bias. © 2016 The Authors. Statistics in Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE SHAPES PROCESSING OF PITCH RELEVANT INFORMATION IN THE HUMAN BRAINSTEM AND AUDITORY CORTEX: ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE.

Science.gov (United States)

Krishnan, Ananthanarayan; Gandour, Jackson T

2014-12-01

Pitch is a robust perceptual attribute that plays an important role in speech, language, and music. As such, it provides an analytic window to evaluate how neural activity relevant to pitch undergo transformation from early sensory to later cognitive stages of processing in a well coordinated hierarchical network that is subject to experience-dependent plasticity. We review recent evidence of language experience-dependent effects in pitch processing based on comparisons of native vs. nonnative speakers of a tonal language from electrophysiological recordings in the auditory brainstem and auditory cortex. We present evidence that shows enhanced representation of linguistically-relevant pitch dimensions or features at both the brainstem and cortical levels with a stimulus-dependent preferential activation of the right hemisphere in native speakers of a tone language. We argue that neural representation of pitch-relevant information in the brainstem and early sensory level processing in the auditory cortex is shaped by the perceptual salience of domain-specific features. While both stages of processing are shaped by language experience, neural representations are transformed and fundamentally different at each biological level of abstraction. The representation of pitch relevant information in the brainstem is more fine-grained spectrotemporally as it reflects sustained neural phase-locking to pitch relevant periodicities contained in the stimulus. In contrast, the cortical pitch relevant neural activity reflects primarily a series of transient temporal neural events synchronized to certain temporal attributes of the pitch contour. We argue that experience-dependent enhancement of pitch representation for Chinese listeners most likely reflects an interaction between higher-level cognitive processes and early sensory-level processing to improve representations of behaviorally-relevant features that contribute optimally to perception. It is our view that long

Social emotional information processing in adults: Development and psychometrics of a computerized video assessment in healthy controls and aggressive individuals.

Science.gov (United States)

Coccaro, Emil F; Fanning, Jennifer R; Fisher, Eliana; Couture, Laurel; Lee, Royce J

2017-02-01

A computerized version of an assessment of Social-Emotional Information Processing (SEIP) using audio-video film stimuli instead of written narrative vignettes was developed for use in adult participants. This task allows for an assessment of encoding or relevant/irrelevant social-emotional information, attribution bias, and endorsement of appropriate, physically aggressive, and relationally aggressive responses to aversive social-emotional stimuli. The psychometric properties of this Video-SEIP (V-SEIP) assessment were examined in 75 healthy controls (HC) and in 75 individuals with DSM-5 Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) and were also compared with the original questionnaire (SEIP-Q) version of the task (HC=26; IED=26). Internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and test-retest properties of the V-SEIP were good to excellent. In addition, IED participants displayed reduced encoding of relevant information from the film clips, elevated hostile attribution bias, elevated negative emotional response, and elevated endorsement of physically aggressive and relationally aggressive responses to the ambiguous social-emotional stimuli presented in the V-SEIP. These data indicate that the V-SEIP represents a valid and comprehensive alternative to the paper-and-pencil assessment of social-emotional information processing biases in adults. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Essays in energy policy and planning modeling under uncertainty: Value of information, optimistic biases, and simulation of capacity markets

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Ming-Che

Optimization and simulation are popular operations research and systems analysis tools for energy policy modeling. This dissertation addresses three important questions concerning the use of these tools for energy market (and electricity market) modeling and planning under uncertainty. (1) What is the value of information and cost of disregarding different sources of uncertainty for the U.S. energy economy? (2) Could model-based calculations of the performance (social welfare) of competitive and oligopolistic market equilibria be optimistically biased due to uncertainties in objective function coefficients? (3) How do alternative sloped demand curves perform in the PJM capacity market under economic and weather uncertainty? How does curve adjustment and cost dynamics affect the capacity market outcomes? To address the first question, two-stage stochastic optimization is utilized in the U.S. national MARKAL energy model; then the value of information and cost of ignoring uncertainty are estimated for three uncertainties: carbon cap policy, load growth and natural gas prices. When an uncertainty is important, then explicitly considering those risks when making investments will result in better performance in expectation (positive expected cost of ignoring uncertainty). Furthermore, eliminating the uncertainty would improve strategies even further, meaning that improved forecasts of future conditions are valuable ( i.e., a positive expected value of information). Also, the value of policy coordination shows the difference between a strategy developed under the incorrect assumption of no carbon cap and a strategy correctly anticipating imposition of such a cap. For the second question, game theory models are formulated and the existence of optimistic (positive) biases in market equilibria (both competitive and oligopoly markets) are proved, in that calculated social welfare and producer profits will, in expectation, exceed the values that will actually be received

Identifying relevant group of miRNAs in cancer using fuzzy mutual information.

Science.gov (United States)

Pal, Jayanta Kumar; Ray, Shubhra Sankar; Pal, Sankar K

2016-04-01

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) act as a major biomarker of cancer. All miRNAs in human body are not equally important for cancer identification. We propose a methodology, called FMIMS, which automatically selects the most relevant miRNAs for a particular type of cancer. In FMIMS, miRNAs are initially grouped by using a SVM-based algorithm; then the group with highest relevance is determined and the miRNAs in that group are finally ranked for selection according to their redundancy. Fuzzy mutual information is used in computing the relevance of a group and the redundancy of miRNAs within it. Superiority of the most relevant group to all others, in deciding normal or cancer, is demonstrated on breast, renal, colorectal, lung, melanoma and prostate data. The merit of FMIMS as compared to several existing methods is established. While 12 out of 15 selected miRNAs by FMIMS corroborate with those of biological investigations, three of them viz., "hsa-miR-519," "hsa-miR-431" and "hsa-miR-320c" are possible novel predictions for renal cancer, lung cancer and melanoma, respectively. The selected miRNAs are found to be involved in disease-specific pathways by targeting various genes. The method is also able to detect the responsible miRNAs even at the primary stage of cancer. The related code is available at http://www.jayanta.droppages.com/FMIMS.html .

Autism Spectrum Disorder Updates - Relevant Information for Early Interventionists to Consider.

Science.gov (United States)

Allen-Meares, Paula; MacDonald, Megan; McGee, Kristin

2016-01-01

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication skills as well as repetitive, restricted or stereotyped behaviors (1). Early interventionists are often found at the forefront of assessment, evaluation, and early intervention services for children with ASD. The role of an early intervention specialist may include assessing developmental history, providing group and individual counseling, working in partnership with families on home, school, and community environments, mobilizing school and community resources, and assisting in the development of positive early intervention strategies (2, 3). The commonality among these roles resides in the importance of providing up-to-date, relevant information to families and children. The purpose of this review is to provide pertinent up-to-date knowledge for early interventionists to help inform practice in working with individuals with ASD, including common behavioral models of intervention.

The power of the truth bias: False information affects memory and judgment even in the absence of distraction

OpenAIRE

Pantazi, Myrto; Kissine, Mikhail; Klein, Olivier

2017-01-01

Truth-bias is the tendency to believe information whether or not it is true. According to a prominent account, this tendency results from limited cognitive resources. We presented participants true and false statements organized in coherent narratives, and distracted half of the participants while processing the statements. Our findings suggest that explicitly false statements are misremembered as true and affect participants’ judgments regardless of cognitive load (Experiments 1 & 2). Experi...

Mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Russo, Riccardo; Whittuck, Dora; Roberson, Debi; Dutton, Kevin; Georgiou, George; Fox, Elaine

2006-05-01

The status of mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals was evaluated following incidental encoding of target words. Individuals with high and low levels of trait anxiety completed a modified Stroop task, which revealed an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli in anxious individuals. This group was significantly slower in naming the colour in which threat-related words were displayed compared to neutral words. In a subsequent free recall test for the words used in the modified Stroop task, anxious individuals recalled more threat-related words compared to low-anxious people. This difference was significant even when controlling for the false recall of items that had not been presented during study. These results support the view put forward by Russo, Fox, Bellinger, and Nguyen-Van-Tam (2001) that mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals can be observed if the target material is encoded at a relatively shallow level. Moreover, contrary to Dowens and Calvo (2003), the current results show that the memory advantage for threat-related information in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias.

Physicians and implicit bias: how doctors may unwittingly perpetuate health care disparities.

Science.gov (United States)

Chapman, Elizabeth N; Kaatz, Anna; Carnes, Molly

2013-11-01

Although the medical profession strives for equal treatment of all patients, disparities in health care are prevalent. Cultural stereotypes may not be consciously endorsed, but their mere existence influences how information about an individual is processed and leads to unintended biases in decision-making, so called "implicit bias". All of society is susceptible to these biases, including physicians. Research suggests that implicit bias may contribute to health care disparities by shaping physician behavior and producing differences in medical treatment along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender or other characteristics. We review the origins of implicit bias, cite research documenting the existence of implicit bias among physicians, and describe studies that demonstrate implicit bias in clinical decision-making. We then present the bias-reducing strategies of consciously taking patients' perspectives and intentionally focusing on individual patients' information apart from their social group. We conclude that the contribution of implicit bias to health care disparities could decrease if all physicians acknowledged their susceptibility to it, and deliberately practiced perspective-taking and individuation when providing patient care. We further conclude that increasing the number of African American/Black physicians could reduce the impact of implicit bias on health care disparities because they exhibit significantly less implicit race bias.

Effects of three types of potentially biasing information on symptom severity judgments for major depressive episode.

Science.gov (United States)

Mumma, Gregory H

2002-10-01

Two experiments examined the effects of potentially biasing information on judgments of symptom severity pertaining to the diagnosis of major depressive episode (MDE). In both experiments, clinicians viewed videotapes of two actor-simulated patients responding to questions from a standardized diagnostic interview. In Study 1, an expectancy effect was found for both patients such that prior information about a clear-cut history of depression resulted in lower rated severity of current symptoms. In addition, a halo effect was observed for one patient in Study 1 and both patients in Study 2: Clear-cut depressive nonverbal behavior (DNVB) resulted in greater rated severity for symptoms that should not have been affected (e.g., appetite/weight change, suicidal ideation). Clear-cut versus near-threshold information for the two essential criteria for MDE did not affect subsequent judgments in either study. Implications for diagnostic interviewing are discussed. Copyright 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 58: 1327-1345, 2002.

Facial affect processing and depression susceptibility: cognitive biases and cognitive neuroscience.

Science.gov (United States)

Bistricky, Steven L; Ingram, Rick E; Atchley, Ruth Ann

2011-11-01

Facial affect processing is essential to social development and functioning and is particularly relevant to models of depression. Although cognitive and interpersonal theories have long described different pathways to depression, cognitive-interpersonal and evolutionary social risk models of depression focus on the interrelation of interpersonal experience, cognition, and social behavior. We therefore review the burgeoning depressive facial affect processing literature and examine its potential for integrating disciplines, theories, and research. In particular, we evaluate studies in which information processing or cognitive neuroscience paradigms were used to assess facial affect processing in depressed and depression-susceptible populations. Most studies have assessed and supported cognitive models. This research suggests that depressed and depression-vulnerable groups show abnormal facial affect interpretation, attention, and memory, although findings vary based on depression severity, comorbid anxiety, or length of time faces are viewed. Facial affect processing biases appear to correspond with distinct neural activity patterns and increased depressive emotion and thought. Biases typically emerge in depressed moods but are occasionally found in the absence of such moods. Indirect evidence suggests that childhood neglect might cultivate abnormal facial affect processing, which can impede social functioning in ways consistent with cognitive-interpersonal and interpersonal models. However, reviewed studies provide mixed support for the social risk model prediction that depressive states prompt cognitive hypervigilance to social threat information. We recommend prospective interdisciplinary research examining whether facial affect processing abnormalities promote-or are promoted by-depressogenic attachment experiences, negative thinking, and social dysfunction.

Human capital information in management reports: An analysis of compliance with the characteristic of the relevance of disclosure

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ainhoa Saitua

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Purpose: The aim of this paper is to assess the compliance with the characteristic of the relevance of disclosure in Management Reports, particularly dealing with Human Capital (HC information.Design/methodology/approach: We codify all instances where narratives of IBEX-35 stock index companies over a five year period in Spain comply with the recommendations for a “high quality” Management Commentary (MC in terms of the relevance characteristic of the information disclosed (IASB, 2005.Findings: The analysis results show that a greater quantity of information about HC in terms of the number of pages devoted is not always indicative of higher quality in terms of relevance if we look for the application of IASB recommendations.Research limitations/implications: Further research could assess compliance with other qualitative characteristics required by other standards or guidances that were internationaly generaly accepted.Practical implications: Among the areas that require improvement in HC disclosures we highlight forward-looking information.Social implications: We propose that an internationally accepted agreement must be struck to unite all the efforts that are being made to improve narrative information in the MC section, and specifically with reference to HC.Originality/value: This work compiles the HC disclosures identified as best practices that may serve as a reference to other companies.

Assessment of efficiency of functioning the infocommunication systems a special purpose in the conditions of violation quality of relevance information

Science.gov (United States)

Parinov, A. V.; Korotkikh, L. P.; Desyatov, D. B.; Stepanov, L. V.

2018-03-01

The uniqueness of information processing mechanisms in special-purpose infocommunication systems and the increased interest of intruders lead to an increase in the relevance of the problems associated with their protection. The paper considers the issues of building risk-models for the violation of the relevance and value of information in infocommunication systems for special purposes. Also, special attention is paid to the connection between the qualities of relevance and the value of information obtained as a result of the operation of infocommunication systems for special purposes. Analytical expressions for the risk and damage function in the time range in special-purpose infocommunication systems are obtained, which can serve as a mathematical basis for risk assessment. Further, an analytical expression is obtained to assess the chance of obtaining up-to-date information in the operation of infocommunication systems up to the time the information quality is violated. An analytical expression for estimating the chance can be used to calculate the effectiveness of a special-purpose infocommunication system.

How trait anxiety, interpretation bias and memory affect acquired fear in children learning about new animals.

Science.gov (United States)

Field, Zoë C; Field, Andy P

2013-06-01

Cognitive models of vulnerability to anxiety propose that information processing biases such as interpretation bias play a part in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. However, at present little is known about the role of memory in information processing accounts of child anxiety. The current study investigates the relationships between interpretation biases, memory and fear responses when learning about new stimuli. Children (aged 8-11 years) were presented with ambiguous information regarding a novel animal, and their fear, interpretation bias, and memory for the information was measured. The main findings were: (1) trait anxiety and interpretation bias significantly predicted acquired fear; (2) interpretation bias did not significantly mediate the relationship between trait anxiety and acquired fear; (3) interpretation bias appeared to be a more important predictor of acquired fear than trait anxiety per se; and (4) the relationship between interpretation bias and acquired fear was not mediated by the number of negative memories but was mediated by the number of positive and false-positive memories. The findings suggest that information processing models of child anxiety need to explain the role of positive memory in the formation of fear responses.

Negatively-biased credulity and the cultural evolution of beliefs.

Science.gov (United States)

Fessler, Daniel M T; Pisor, Anne C; Navarrete, Carlos David

2014-01-01

The functions of cultural beliefs are often opaque to those who hold them. Accordingly, to benefit from cultural evolution's ability to solve complex adaptive problems, learners must be credulous. However, credulity entails costs, including susceptibility to exploitation, and effort wasted due to false beliefs. One determinant of the optimal level of credulity is the ratio between the costs of two types of errors: erroneous incredulity (failing to believe information that is true) and erroneous credulity (believing information that is false). This ratio can be expected to be asymmetric when information concerns hazards, as the costs of erroneous incredulity will, on average, exceed the costs of erroneous credulity; no equivalent asymmetry characterizes information concerning benefits. Natural selection can therefore be expected to have crafted learners' minds so as to be more credulous toward information concerning hazards. This negatively-biased credulity extends general negativity bias, the adaptive tendency for negative events to be more salient than positive events. Together, these biases constitute attractors that should shape cultural evolution via the aggregated effects of learners' differential retention and transmission of information. In two studies in the U.S., we demonstrate the existence of negatively-biased credulity, and show that it is most pronounced in those who believe the world to be dangerous, individuals who may constitute important nodes in cultural transmission networks. We then document the predicted imbalance in cultural content using a sample of urban legends collected from the Internet and a sample of supernatural beliefs obtained from ethnographies of a representative collection of the world's cultures, showing that beliefs about hazards predominate in both.

Skill-Biased Technological Change in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Malchow-Møller, Nikolaj; Rose Skaksen, Jan

2003-01-01

Skill-Biased Technological Change in Denmark:A Disaggregate Perspective@*In this paper, we provide an industry-level analysis of skill-biased technological change(SBTC) in Denmark over the last two decades. The analysis shows that SBTC has variedconsiderably across industries, and traditionally...... large Danish industries have experiencedrelatively less SBTC. This may partly explain why wage inequality between skilled and lessskilled has risen less in Denmark than in other countries. We also find that SBTC has beenconcentrated in already skill-intensive industries. This contains important...... information aboutfuture labour requirements, as the relative importance of these industries must be expectedto grow, thereby reinforcing the shift in demand for skilled labour.JEL Classification: J24, J31, L6Keywords: skill-biased technological change, Danish industries...

How Communication Goals Determine when Audience Tuning Biases Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Echterhoff, Gerald; Higgins, E. Tory; Kopietz, Rene; Groll, Stephan

2008-01-01

After tuning their message to suit their audience's attitude, communicators' own memories for the original information (e.g., a target person's behaviors) often reflect the biased view expressed in their message--producing an audience-congruent memory bias. Exploring the motivational circumstances of message production, the authors investigated…

A re-examination of the effects of biased lineup instructions in eyewitness identification.

Science.gov (United States)

Clark, Steven E

2005-10-01

A meta-analytic review of research comparing biased and unbiased instructions in eyewitness identification experiments showed an asymmetry; specifically, that biased instructions led to a large and consistent decrease in accuracy in target-absent lineups, but produced inconsistent results for target-present lineups, with an average effect size near zero (Steblay, 1997). The results for target-present lineups are surprising, and are inconsistent with statistical decision theories (i.e., Green & Swets, 1966). A re-examination of the relevant studies and the meta-analysis of those studies shows clear evidence that correct identification rates do increase with biased lineup instructions, and that biased witnesses make correct identifications at a rate considerably above chance. Implications for theory, as well as police procedure and policy, are discussed.

Stimulus-response correspondence effect as a function of temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant information processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Dong-Yuan Debbie; Richard, F Dan; Ray, Brittany

2016-01-01

The stimulus-response correspondence (SRC) effect refers to advantages in performance when stimulus and response correspond in dimensions or features, even if the common features are irrelevant to the task. Previous research indicated that the SRC effect depends on the temporal course of stimulus information processing. The current study investigated how the temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant stimulus processing influences the SRC effect. In this experiment, the irrelevant stimulus (a previously associated tone) preceded the relevant stimulus (a coloured rectangle). The irrelevant and relevant stimuli onset asynchrony was varied to manipulate the temporal overlap between the irrelevant and relevant stimuli processing. Results indicated that the SRC effect size varied as a quadratic function of the temporal overlap between the relevant stimulus and irrelevant stimulus. This finding extends previous experimental observations that the SRC effect size varies in an increasing or decreasing function with reaction time. The current study demonstrated a quadratic function between effect size and the temporal overlap.

The Myth of Objectivity: Implicit Racial Bias and the Law (Part 1

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Willem Hendrik Gravett

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The centrality of race to our history and the substantial racial inequalities that continue to pervade society ensure that "race" remains an extraordinarily salient and meaningful social category. Explicit racial prejudice, however, is only part of the problem. Equally important - and likely more pervasive - is the phenomenon of implicit racial prejudice: the cognitive processes whereby, despite even our best intentions, the human mind automatically classifies information in racial categories and against disfavoured social groups. Empirical research shows convincingly that these biases against socially disfavoured groups are (i pervasive; (ii often diverge from consciously reported attitudes and beliefs; and (iii influence consequential behaviour towards the subjects of these biases. The existence of implicit racial prejudices poses a challenge to legal theory and practice. From the standpoint of a legal system that seeks to forbid differential treatment based upon race or other protected traits, if people are in fact treated differently, and worse, because of their race or other protected trait, then the fundamental principle of anti-discrimination has been violated. It hardly matters that the source of the differential treatment is implicit rather than conscious bias. This article investigates the relevance of this research to the law by means of an empirical account of how implicit racial bias could affect the criminal trial trajectory in the areas of policing, prosecutorial discretion and judicial decision-making. It is the author's hypothesis that this mostly American research also applies to South Africa. The empirical evidence of implicit biases in every country tested shows that people are systematically implicitly biased in favour of socially privileged groups. Even after 1994 South Africa – similar to the US – continues to be characterised by a pronounced social hierarchy in which Whites overwhelmingly have the highest social

The Myth of Objectivity: Implicit Racial Bias and the Law (Part 2

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Willem Hendrik Gravett

2017-04-01

Full Text Available The centrality of race to our history and the substantial racial inequalities that continue to pervade society ensure that "race" remains an extraordinarily salient and meaningful social category. Explicit racial prejudice, however, is only part of the problem. Equally important - and likely more pervasive - is the phenomenon of implicit racial prejudice: the cognitive processes whereby, despite even our best intentions, the human mind automatically classifies information in racial categories and against disfavoured social groups. Empirical research shows convincingly that these biases against socially disfavoured groups are (i pervasive; (ii often diverge from consciously reported attitudes and beliefs; and (iii influence consequential behaviour towards the subjects of these biases. The existence of implicit racial prejudices poses a challenge to legal theory and practice. From the standpoint of a legal system that seeks to forbid differential treatment based upon race or other protected traits, if people are in fact treated differently, and worse, because of their race or other protected trait, then the fundamental principle of anti-discrimination has been violated. It hardly matters that the source of the differential treatment is implicit rather than conscious bias. This article investigates the relevance of this research to the law by means of an empirical account of how implicit racial bias could affect the criminal trial trajectory in the areas of policing, prosecutorial discretion and judicial decision-making. It is the author's hypothesis that this mostly American research also applies to South Africa. The empirical evidence of implicit biases in every country tested shows that people are systematically implicitly biased in favour of socially privileged groups. Even after 1994 South Africa – similar to the US – continues to be characterised by a pronounced social hierarchy in which Whites overwhelmingly have the highest social

The Prototype of Indicators of a Responsive Partner Shapes Information Processing: A False Recognition Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Turan, Bulent

2016-01-01

When judging whether a relationship partner can be counted on to "be there" when needed, people may draw upon knowledge structures to process relevant information. We examined one such knowledge structure using the prototype methodology: indicators of a partner who is likely to be there when needed. In the first study (N = 91), the structure, content, and reliability of the prototype of indicators were examined. Then, using a false recognition study (N = 77), we demonstrated that once activated, the prototype of indicators of a partner who is likely to be there when needed affects information processing. Thus, the prototype of indicators may shape how people process support-relevant information in everyday life, affecting relationship outcomes. Using this knowledge structure may help a person process relevant information quickly and with cognitive economy. However, it may also lead to biases in judgments in certain situations.

Explicit Bias Toward High-Income-Country Research: A Randomized, Blinded, Crossover Experiment Of English Clinicians.

Science.gov (United States)

Harris, Matthew; Marti, Joachim; Watt, Hillary; Bhatti, Yasser; Macinko, James; Darzi, Ara W

2017-11-01

Unconscious bias may interfere with the interpretation of research from some settings, particularly from lower-income countries. Most studies of this phenomenon have relied on indirect outcomes such as article citation counts and publication rates; few have addressed or proven the effect of unconscious bias in evidence interpretation. In this randomized, blinded crossover experiment in a sample of 347 English clinicians, we demonstrate that changing the source of a research abstract from a low- to a high-income country significantly improves how it is viewed, all else being equal. Using fixed-effects models, we measured differences in ratings for strength of evidence, relevance, and likelihood of referral to a peer. Having a high-income-country source had a significant overall impact on respondents' ratings of relevance and recommendation to a peer. Unconscious bias can have far-reaching implications for the diffusion of knowledge and innovations from low-income countries.

Cognitive bias in symptomatic and recovered agoraphobics.

Science.gov (United States)

Stoler, L S; McNally, R J

1991-01-01

Symptomatic agoraphobics, recovered agoraphobics, and normal control subjects completed a series of sentence stems that had either ambiguous or unambiguous meanings, and had either a potentially threatening or a nonthreatening connotation. The written completions made by subjects to these stems were classified as indicating either a biased (i.e. threat-related) or unbiased interpretation of the meaning of the stem, and if a biased interpretation was made, whether the subject indicated efforts at adaptive coping with the perceived threat. Results indicated that symptomatic agoraphobics exhibited strong biases for interpreting information as threatening, relative to normal control subjects. Moreover, recovered agoraphobics resembled symptomatic agoraphobics more than normal control subjects, thus indicating that cognitive biases may persist following cessation of panic attacks and reductions in avoidance behavior. However, recovered agoraphobics also exhibited tendencies to cope adaptively with perceived threats whereas symptomatic agoraphobics did not.

Quantification of tension to explain bias dependence of driven polymer translocation dynamics

Science.gov (United States)

Suhonen, P. M.; Piili, J.; Linna, R. P.

2017-12-01

Motivated by identifying the origin of the bias dependence of tension propagation, we investigate methods for measuring tension propagation quantitatively in computer simulations of driven polymer translocation. Here, the motion of flexible polymer chains through a narrow pore is simulated using Langevin dynamics. We measure tension forces, bead velocities, bead distances, and bond angles along the polymer at all stages of translocation with unprecedented precision. Measurements are done at a standard temperature used in simulations and at zero temperature to pin down the effect of fluctuations. The measured quantities were found to give qualitatively similar characteristics, but the bias dependence could be determined only using tension force. We find that in the scaling relation τ ˜Nβfdα for translocation time τ , the polymer length N , and the bias force fd, the increase of the exponent β with bias is caused by center-of-mass diffusion of the polymer toward the pore on the cis side. We find that this diffusion also causes the exponent α to deviate from the ideal value -1 . The bias dependence of β was found to result from combination of diffusion and pore friction and so be relevant for polymers that are too short to be considered asymptotically long. The effect is relevant in experiments all of which are made using polymers whose lengths are far below the asymptotic limit. Thereby, our results also corroborate the theoretical prediction by Sakaue's theory [Polymers 8, 424 (2016), 10.3390/polym8120424] that there should not be bias dependence of β for asymptotically long polymers. By excluding fluctuations we also show that monomer crowding at the pore exit cannot have a measurable effect on translocation dynamics under realistic conditions.

Lost in translation: Review of identification bias, translation bias and research waste in dentistry.

Science.gov (United States)

Layton, Danielle M; Clarke, Michael

2016-01-01

To review how articles are retrieved from bibliographic databases, what article identification and translation problems have affected research, and how these problems can contribute to research waste and affect clinical practice. This literature review sought and appraised articles regarding identification- and translation-bias in the medical and dental literature, which limit the ability of users to find research articles and to use these in practice. Articles can be retrieved from bibliographic databases by performing a word or index-term (for example, MeSH for MEDLINE) search. Identification of articles is challenging when it is not clear which words are most relevant, and which terms have been allocated to indexing fields. Poor reporting quality of abstracts and articles has been reported across the medical literature at large. Specifically in dentistry, research regarding time-to-event survival analyses found the allocation of MeSH terms to be inconsistent and inaccurate, important words were omitted from abstracts by authors, and the quality of reporting in the body of articles was generally poor. These shortcomings mean that articles will be difficult to identify, and difficult to understand if found. Use of specialized electronic search strategies can decrease identification bias, and use of tailored reporting guidelines can decrease translation bias. Research that cannot be found, or cannot be used results in research waste, and undermines clinical practice. Identification- and translation-bias have been shown to affect time-to-event dental articles, are likely affect other fields of research, and are largely unrecognized by authors and evidence seekers alike. By understanding that the problems exist, solutions can be sought to improve identification and translation of our research. Copyright © 2015 Academy of Dental Materials. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The effect of metacognitive self on confirmation bias revealed in relation to community and competence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Brycz Hanna

2014-09-01

Full Text Available The main goal of our study was to investigate the role of insight into one’s own biases (metacognitive self in the process of hypothesis validation in accordance to the two fundamental social perception domains (community and competence on the example of confirmation bias. The study was conducted on a group of 593 participants with the use of a confirmation bias procedure, a free recall procedure and the Metacognitive Self scale. We manipulated with the domain and the value of information given to the respondents. We suspected that individuals with a high metacognitive self, in opposition to low metacognitive self ones, would not process the given information according to the two fundamental social perception domains. The results verified the existence of an interaction effect of the metacognitive self (MCS and the domain of the information given about a perceived person on the susceptibility to follow the confirmation bias. Contrary to the low metacognitive self individuals, who show a higher tendency for the confirmation bias within the competence than the community domain, persons with a high insight into their own biases express the same level of confirmation bias in no respect to the domain of the information. The value of the information has no significant influence.

Diagnostic Reasoning and Cognitive Biases of Nurse Practitioners.

Science.gov (United States)

Lawson, Thomas N

2018-04-01

Diagnostic reasoning is often used colloquially to describe the process by which nurse practitioners and physicians come to the correct diagnosis, but a rich definition and description of this process has been lacking in the nursing literature. A literature review was conducted with theoretical sampling seeking conceptual insight into diagnostic reasoning. Four common themes emerged: Cognitive Biases and Debiasing Strategies, the Dual Process Theory, Diagnostic Error, and Patient Harm. Relevant cognitive biases are discussed, followed by debiasing strategies and application of the dual process theory to reduce diagnostic error and harm. The accuracy of diagnostic reasoning of nurse practitioners may be improved by incorporating these items into nurse practitioner education and practice. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(4):203-208.]. Copyright 2018, SLACK Incorporated.

An Examination of Publication Bias in an International Journal of Information Technology in Education

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Leping; Aberasturi, Suzanne M.; Axtell, Kulwadee; Richmond, Aaron

2007-01-01

Publication bias refers to a tendency to publish articles with significant results over publications with nonsignificant results. In this article we first review the literature of publication bias focusing on the three major determinants (file drawer significance, file drawer effect size, and file drawer sample size) and two interrelated sources…

Negatively-Biased Credulity and the Cultural Evolution of Beliefs

Science.gov (United States)

Fessler, Daniel M. T.; Pisor, Anne C.; Navarrete, Carlos David

2014-01-01

The functions of cultural beliefs are often opaque to those who hold them. Accordingly, to benefit from cultural evolution’s ability to solve complex adaptive problems, learners must be credulous. However, credulity entails costs, including susceptibility to exploitation, and effort wasted due to false beliefs. One determinant of the optimal level of credulity is the ratio between the costs of two types of errors: erroneous incredulity (failing to believe information that is true) and erroneous credulity (believing information that is false). This ratio can be expected to be asymmetric when information concerns hazards, as the costs of erroneous incredulity will, on average, exceed the costs of erroneous credulity; no equivalent asymmetry characterizes information concerning benefits. Natural selection can therefore be expected to have crafted learners’ minds so as to be more credulous toward information concerning hazards. This negatively-biased credulity extends general negativity bias, the adaptive tendency for negative events to be more salient than positive events. Together, these biases constitute attractors that should shape cultural evolution via the aggregated effects of learners’ differential retention and transmission of information. In two studies in the U.S., we demonstrate the existence of negatively-biased credulity, and show that it is most pronounced in those who believe the world to be dangerous, individuals who may constitute important nodes in cultural transmission networks. We then document the predicted imbalance in cultural content using a sample of urban legends collected from the Internet and a sample of supernatural beliefs obtained from ethnographies of a representative collection of the world’s cultures, showing that beliefs about hazards predominate in both. PMID:24736596

Negatively-biased credulity and the cultural evolution of beliefs.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel M T Fessler

Full Text Available The functions of cultural beliefs are often opaque to those who hold them. Accordingly, to benefit from cultural evolution's ability to solve complex adaptive problems, learners must be credulous. However, credulity entails costs, including susceptibility to exploitation, and effort wasted due to false beliefs. One determinant of the optimal level of credulity is the ratio between the costs of two types of errors: erroneous incredulity (failing to believe information that is true and erroneous credulity (believing information that is false. This ratio can be expected to be asymmetric when information concerns hazards, as the costs of erroneous incredulity will, on average, exceed the costs of erroneous credulity; no equivalent asymmetry characterizes information concerning benefits. Natural selection can therefore be expected to have crafted learners' minds so as to be more credulous toward information concerning hazards. This negatively-biased credulity extends general negativity bias, the adaptive tendency for negative events to be more salient than positive events. Together, these biases constitute attractors that should shape cultural evolution via the aggregated effects of learners' differential retention and transmission of information. In two studies in the U.S., we demonstrate the existence of negatively-biased credulity, and show that it is most pronounced in those who believe the world to be dangerous, individuals who may constitute important nodes in cultural transmission networks. We then document the predicted imbalance in cultural content using a sample of urban legends collected from the Internet and a sample of supernatural beliefs obtained from ethnographies of a representative collection of the world's cultures, showing that beliefs about hazards predominate in both.

Associations between presence of relevant information in referrals to radiology and prevalence rates in patients with suspected pulmonary embolism.

Science.gov (United States)

Hedner, Charlotta; Sundgren, Pia C; Kelly, Aine Marie

2013-09-01

The purpose of this study was to assess if the presence of information including the pretest probability (Wells score), other known risk factors, and symptoms given on referrals for computed tomography (CT) pulmonary angiography correlated with prevalence rates for pulmonary embolism (PE). Also, to evaluate for differences between a university and a regional hospital setting regarding patient characteristics, amount of relevant information provided on referrals, and prevalence rates for pulmonary embolism. Retrospective review of all consecutive referrals (emergency room, inpatient, and outpatient) for CT performed on children and adults for suspected PE from two sites: a tertiary (university) hospital (site 1) and a secondary (regional) hospital (site 2) over a 5-year period. The overall prevalence rate was 510/3641 or 14% of all referrals. Significantly higher number of males had a positive CT compared to women (18% versus 12%, P relevant information on the referral and the probability for positive finding existed, a slight trend was noted (P = .09). In two categories, "hypoxia" and "signs of deep vein thrombosis," the presence of this information conferred a higher probability for pulmonary embolism, P information conferred a higher probability for pulmonary embolism. The amount of relevant clinical information on the request did not correlate with prevalence rates, which may reflect a lack of documentation on the part of emergency physicians who may use a "gestalt" approach. Request forms likely did not capture all relevant patient risks and many factors may interact with each other, both positively and negatively. Pretest probability estimations were rarely performed, despite their inclusion in major society guidelines. Copyright © 2013 AUR. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Age and self-relevance effects on information search during decision making.

Science.gov (United States)

Hess, Thomas M; Queen, Tara L; Ennis, Gilda E

2013-09-01

We investigated how information search strategies used to support decision making were influenced by self-related implications of the task to the individual. Consistent with the notion of selective engagement, we hypothesized that increased self-relevance would result in more adaptive search behaviors and that this effect would be stronger in older adults than in younger adults. We examined search behaviors in 79 younger and 81 older adults using a process-tracing procedure with 2 different decision tasks. The impact of motivation (i.e., self-related task implications) was examined by manipulating social accountability and the age-related relevance of the task. Although age differences in search strategies were not great, older adults were more likely than younger adults to use simpler strategies in contexts with minimal self-implications. Contrary to expectations, young and old alike were more likely to use noncompensatory than compensatory strategies, even when engaged in systematic search, with education being the most important determinant of search behavior. The results support the notion that older adults are adaptive decision makers and that factors other than age may be more important determinants of performance in situations where knowledge can be used to support performance.

How value-glamour investors use financial information: UK evidence of investor's confirmation bias

OpenAIRE

Doung, C.; Pescetto, G.; Santamaria, D.

2014-01-01

The paper investigates investor’s behaviour in the context of value–glamour investing and fundamental analysis, and provides a direct test of the confirmation bias by bringing together the evidence from several strands of literature into a well-defined framework of investor behaviour. The empirical evidence presented is in line with a model of\\ud investor’s asymmetric reaction to good and bad news due to confirmation bias. Pessimistic value investors typically under-react to good financial in...

Visual search attentional bias modification reduced social phobia in adolescents

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Voogd, E.L.; Wiers, R.W.; Prins, P.J.M.; Salemink, E.

2014-01-01

Background and objectives: An attentional bias for negative information plays an important role in the development and maintenance of (social) anxiety and depression, which are highly prevalent in adolescence. Attention Bias Modification (ABM) might be an interesting tool in the prevention of

The role of cognitive biases in short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Science.gov (United States)

Kramer, Ueli; Ortega, Diana; Ambresin, Gilles; Despland, Jean-Nicolas; de Roten, Yves

2018-06-01

The concept of biased thinking - or cognitive biases - is relevant to psychotherapy research and clinical conceptualization, beyond cognitive theories. The present naturalistic study aimed to examine the changes in biased thinking over the course of a short-term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP) and to discover potential links between these changes and symptomatic improvement. This study focuses on 32 self-referred patients consulting for Adjustment Disorder according to DSM-IV-TR. The therapists were experienced psychodynamically oriented psychiatrists and psychotherapists. Coding of cognitive biases (using the Cognitive Errors Rating Scale; CERS) was made by external raters based on transcripts of interviews of psychotherapy; the reliability of these ratings on a randomly chosen 24% of all sessions was established. Based on the Symptom Check List SCL-90-R given before and after, the Reliable Change Index (RCI) was used. The assessment of cognitive errors was done at three time points: early (session 4-7), mid-treatment (session 12-17), and close to the end (after session 20) of the treatment. The results showed that the total frequency of cognitive biases was stable over time (p = .20), which was true both for positive and for negative cognitive biases. In exploring the three main subscales of the CERS, we found a decrease in selective abstraction (p = .02) and an increase in personalization (p = .05). A significant link between RCI scores (outcome) and frequency of positive cognitive biases was found, suggesting that biases towards the positive might have a protective function in psychotherapy. Therapists may be attentive to changes in biased thinking across short-term dynamic psychotherapy for adjustment disorder. Therapists may foster the emergence of positive cognitive biases at mid-treatment for adjustment disorder. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Information bias and lifetime mortality risks of radiation-induced cancer: Low LET radiation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Peterson, L.E.; Schull, W.J.; Davis, B.R.; Buffler, P.A.

1994-04-01

Additive and multiplicative models of relative risk were used to measure the effect of cancer misclassification and DS86 random errors on lifetime risk projections in the Life Span Study (LSS) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors. The true number of cancer deaths in each stratum of the cancer mortality cross-classification was estimated using sufficient statistics from the EM algorithm. Average survivor doses in the strata were corrected for DS86 random error (σ=0.45) by use of reduction factors. Poisson regression was used to model the corrected and uncorrected mortality rates with risks in RERF Report 11 (Part 2) and the BEIR-V Report. Bias due to DS86 random error typically ranged from -15% to -30% for both sexes, and all sites and models. The total bias, including diagnostic misclassification, of excess risk of nonleukemia for exposure to 1 Sv from age 18 to 65 under the non-constant relative project model was -37.1% for males and -23.3% for females. Total excess risks of leukemia under the relative projection model were biased -27.1% for males and -43.4% for females. Thus, nonleukemia risks for 1 Sv from ages 18 to 65 (DRREF=2) increased from 1.91%/Sv to 2.68%/Sv among males and from 3.23%/Sv to 4.92%/Sv among females. Leukemia excess risk increased from 0.87%/Sv to 1.10/Sv among males and from 0.73%/Sv to 1.04/Sv among females. Bias was dependent on the gender, site, correction method, exposure profile and projection model considered. Future studies that use LSS data for US nuclear workers may be downwardly biased if lifetime risk projections are not adjusted for random and systematic errors

Information bias and lifetime mortality risks of radiation-induced cancer: Low LET radiation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Peterson, L.E.; Schull, W.J.; Davis, B.R. [Texas Univ., Houston, TX (United States). Health Science Center; Buffler, P.A. [California Univ., Berkeley, CA (United States). School of Public Health

1994-04-01

Additive and multiplicative models of relative risk were used to measure the effect of cancer misclassification and DS86 random errors on lifetime risk projections in the Life Span Study (LSS) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors. The true number of cancer deaths in each stratum of the cancer mortality cross-classification was estimated using sufficient statistics from the EM algorithm. Average survivor doses in the strata were corrected for DS86 random error ({sigma}=0.45) by use of reduction factors. Poisson regression was used to model the corrected and uncorrected mortality rates with risks in RERF Report 11 (Part 2) and the BEIR-V Report. Bias due to DS86 random error typically ranged from {minus}15% to {minus}30% for both sexes, and all sites and models. The total bias, including diagnostic misclassification, of excess risk of nonleukemia for exposure to 1 Sv from age 18 to 65 under the non-constant relative project model was {minus}37.1% for males and {minus}23.3% for females. Total excess risks of leukemia under the relative projection model were biased {minus}27.1% for males and {minus}43.4% for females. Thus, nonleukemia risks for 1 Sv from ages 18 to 65 (DRREF=2) increased from 1.91%/Sv to 2.68%/Sv among males and from 3.23%/Sv to 4.92%/Sv among females. Leukemia excess risk increased from 0.87%/Sv to 1.10/Sv among males and from 0.73%/Sv to 1.04/Sv among females. Bias was dependent on the gender, site, correction method, exposure profile and projection model considered. Future studies that use LSS data for US nuclear workers may be downwardly biased if lifetime risk projections are not adjusted for random and systematic errors.

A selective emotional decision-making bias elicited by facial expressions.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nicholas Furl

Full Text Available Emotional and social information can sway otherwise rational decisions. For example, when participants decide between two faces that are probabilistically rewarded, they make biased choices that favor smiling relative to angry faces. This bias may arise because facial expressions evoke positive and negative emotional responses, which in turn may motivate social approach and avoidance. We tested a wide range of pictures that evoke emotions or convey social information, including animals, words, foods, a variety of scenes, and faces differing in trustworthiness or attractiveness, but we found only facial expressions biased decisions. Our results extend brain imaging and pharmacological findings, which suggest that a brain mechanism supporting social interaction may be involved. Facial expressions appear to exert special influence over this social interaction mechanism, one capable of biasing otherwise rational choices. These results illustrate that only specific types of emotional experiences can best sway our choices.

A Selective Emotional Decision-Making Bias Elicited by Facial Expressions

Science.gov (United States)

Furl, Nicholas; Gallagher, Shannon; Averbeck, Bruno B.

2012-01-01

Emotional and social information can sway otherwise rational decisions. For example, when participants decide between two faces that are probabilistically rewarded, they make biased choices that favor smiling relative to angry faces. This bias may arise because facial expressions evoke positive and negative emotional responses, which in turn may motivate social approach and avoidance. We tested a wide range of pictures that evoke emotions or convey social information, including animals, words, foods, a variety of scenes, and faces differing in trustworthiness or attractiveness, but we found only facial expressions biased decisions. Our results extend brain imaging and pharmacological findings, which suggest that a brain mechanism supporting social interaction may be involved. Facial expressions appear to exert special influence over this social interaction mechanism, one capable of biasing otherwise rational choices. These results illustrate that only specific types of emotional experiences can best sway our choices. PMID:22438936

A selective emotional decision-making bias elicited by facial expressions.

Science.gov (United States)

Furl, Nicholas; Gallagher, Shannon; Averbeck, Bruno B

2012-01-01

Emotional and social information can sway otherwise rational decisions. For example, when participants decide between two faces that are probabilistically rewarded, they make biased choices that favor smiling relative to angry faces. This bias may arise because facial expressions evoke positive and negative emotional responses, which in turn may motivate social approach and avoidance. We tested a wide range of pictures that evoke emotions or convey social information, including animals, words, foods, a variety of scenes, and faces differing in trustworthiness or attractiveness, but we found only facial expressions biased decisions. Our results extend brain imaging and pharmacological findings, which suggest that a brain mechanism supporting social interaction may be involved. Facial expressions appear to exert special influence over this social interaction mechanism, one capable of biasing otherwise rational choices. These results illustrate that only specific types of emotional experiences can best sway our choices.

Differences of biased recall memory for emotional information among children and adolescents of mothers with MDD, children and adolescents with MDD, and normal controls.

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Fattahi Asl, Abouzar; Ghanizadeh, Ahmad; Mollazade, Javad; Aflakseir, Abdolaziz

2015-08-15

This study examines explicit memory bias for emotional information in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD). Participants were a convenient sample of 28 children and adolescents of mothers with MDD, 28 children and adolescents with MDD, and 29 healthy controls. Their age range was 11-17 years old. The groups were matched for gender ratio, mean age, and the years of educational level. They were assessed by the Recall Task. Emotional stimuli consisted of three sets of words namely sad, happy, and neutral words. Children and adolescents of mothers with MDD similar to children and adolescents with MDD recalled more sadness stimuli in comparison with the controls. In other words, they showed an explicit memory bias towards sad stimuli. Also, healthy children significantly recalled more happy words than the other two groups. There was no significant difference among the three groups for the recall of neutral stimuli. Current findings support that there is a recall memory bias for emotional information in children with MDD. These children more than healthy children recall sad words. Moreover, healthy children recall happy words more than children with MDD. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Methodological Consequences of Situation Specificity: Biases in Assessments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jean-Luc Patry

2011-02-01

Full Text Available Social research is plagued by many biases. Most of them are due to situation specificity of social behavior and can be explained using a theory of situation specificity. The historical background of situation specificity in personality social psychology research is briefly sketched, then a theory of situation specificity is presented in detail, with as centerpiece the relationship between the behavior and its outcome which can be described as either the more, the better or not too much and not too little. This theory is applied to reliability and validity of assessments in social research. The distinction between maximum performance and typical performance is shown to correspond to the two behavior-outcome relations. For maximum performance, issues of reliability and validity are much easier to be solved, whereas typical performance is sensitive to biases, as predicted by the theory. Finally, it is suggested that biases in social research are not just systematic error, but represent relevant features to be explained just as other behavior, and that the respective theories should be integrated into a theory system.

Counteracting estimation bias and social influence to improve the wisdom of crowds.

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Kao, Albert B; Berdahl, Andrew M; Hartnett, Andrew T; Lutz, Matthew J; Bak-Coleman, Joseph B; Ioannou, Christos C; Giam, Xingli; Couzin, Iain D

2018-04-01

Aggregating multiple non-expert opinions into a collective estimate can improve accuracy across many contexts. However, two sources of error can diminish collective wisdom: individual estimation biases and information sharing between individuals. Here, we measure individual biases and social influence rules in multiple experiments involving hundreds of individuals performing a classic numerosity estimation task. We first investigate how existing aggregation methods, such as calculating the arithmetic mean or the median, are influenced by these sources of error. We show that the mean tends to overestimate, and the median underestimate, the true value for a wide range of numerosities. Quantifying estimation bias, and mapping individual bias to collective bias, allows us to develop and validate three new aggregation measures that effectively counter sources of collective estimation error. In addition, we present results from a further experiment that quantifies the social influence rules that individuals employ when incorporating personal estimates with social information. We show that the corrected mean is remarkably robust to social influence, retaining high accuracy in the presence or absence of social influence, across numerosities and across different methods for averaging social information. Using knowledge of estimation biases and social influence rules may therefore be an inexpensive and general strategy to improve the wisdom of crowds. © 2018 The Author(s).

Approach bias modification training and consumption: A review of the literature.

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Kakoschke, Naomi; Kemps, Eva; Tiggemann, Marika

2017-01-01

Recent theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence have suggested that biased cognitive processing is an important contributor to unhealthy behaviour. Approach bias modification is a novel intervention in which approach biases for appetitive cues are modified. The current review of the literature aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of modifying approach bias for harmful consumption behaviours, including alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and unhealthy eating. Relevant publications were identified through a search of four electronic databases (PsycINFO, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Scopus) that were conducted between October and December 2015. Eligibility criteria included the use of a human adult sample, at least one session of avoidance training, and an outcome measure related to the behaviour of interest. The fifteen identified publications (comprising 18 individual studies) were coded on a number of characteristics, including consumption behaviour, participants, task, training and control conditions, number of training sessions and trials, outcome measure, and results. The results generally showed positive effects of approach-avoidance training, including reduced consumption behaviour in the laboratory, lower relapse rates, and improvements in self-reported measures of behaviour. Importantly, all studies (with one exception) that reported favourable consumption outcomes also demonstrated successful reduction of the approach bias for appetitive cues. Thus, the current review concluded that approach bias modification is effective for reducing both approach bias and unhealthy consumption behaviour. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Girl child and gender bias.

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Chowdhry, D P

1995-01-01

This article identifies gender bias against female children and youth in India. Gender bias is based on centuries-old religious beliefs and sayings from ancient times. Discrimination is reflected in denial or ignorance of female children's educational, health, nutrition, and recreational needs. Female infanticide and selective abortion of female fetuses are other forms of discrimination. The task of eliminating or reducing gender bias will involve legal, developmental, political, and administrative measures. Public awareness needs to be created. There is a need to reorient the education and health systems and to advocate for gender equality. The government of India set the following goals for the 1990s: to protect the survival of the girl child and practice safe motherhood; to develop the girl child in general; and to protect vulnerable girl children in different circumstances and in special groups. The Health Authorities should monitor the laws carefully to assure marriage after the minimum age, ban sex determination of the fetus, and monitor the health and nutrition of pre-school girls and nursing and pregnant mothers. Mothers need to be encouraged to breast feed, and to breast feed equally between genders. Every village and slum area needs a mini health center. Maternal mortality must decline. Primary health centers and hospitals need more women's wards. Education must be universally accessible. Enrollments should be increased by educating rural tribal and slum parents, reducing distances between home and school, making curriculum more relevant to girls, creating more female teachers, and providing facilities and incentives for meeting the needs of girl students. Supplementary income could be provided to families for sending girls to school. Recreational activities must be free of gender bias. Dowry, sati, and devdasi systems should be banned.

Attachment and the processing of social information across the life span: theory and evidence.

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Dykas, Matthew J; Cassidy, Jude

2011-01-01

Researchers have used J. Bowlby's (1969/1982, 1973, 1980, 1988) attachment theory frequently as a basis for examining whether experiences in close personal relationships relate to the processing of social information across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We present an integrative life-span-encompassing theoretical model to explain the patterns of results that have emerged from these studies. The central proposition is that individuals who possess secure experience-based internal working models of attachment will process--in a relatively open manner--a broad range of positive and negative attachment-relevant social information. Moreover, secure individuals will draw on their positive attachment-related knowledge to process this information in a positively biased schematic way. In contrast, individuals who possess insecure internal working models of attachment will process attachment-relevant social information in one of two ways, depending on whether the information could cause the individual psychological pain. If processing the information is likely to lead to psychological pain, insecure individuals will defensively exclude this information from further processing. If, however, the information is unlikely to lead to psychological pain, then insecure individuals will process this information in a negatively biased schematic fashion that is congruent with their negative attachment-related experiences. In a comprehensive literature review, we describe studies that illustrate these patterns of attachment-related information processing from childhood to adulthood. This review focuses on studies that have examined specific components (e.g., attention and memory) and broader aspects (e.g., attributions) of social information processing. We also provide general conclusions and suggestions for future research.

CellBase, a comprehensive collection of RESTful web services for retrieving relevant biological information from heterogeneous sources.

Science.gov (United States)

Bleda, Marta; Tarraga, Joaquin; de Maria, Alejandro; Salavert, Francisco; Garcia-Alonso, Luz; Celma, Matilde; Martin, Ainoha; Dopazo, Joaquin; Medina, Ignacio

2012-07-01

During the past years, the advances in high-throughput technologies have produced an unprecedented growth in the number and size of repositories and databases storing relevant biological data. Today, there is more biological information than ever but, unfortunately, the current status of many of these repositories is far from being optimal. Some of the most common problems are that the information is spread out in many small databases; frequently there are different standards among repositories and some databases are no longer supported or they contain too specific and unconnected information. In addition, data size is increasingly becoming an obstacle when accessing or storing biological data. All these issues make very difficult to extract and integrate information from different sources, to analyze experiments or to access and query this information in a programmatic way. CellBase provides a solution to the growing necessity of integration by easing the access to biological data. CellBase implements a set of RESTful web services that query a centralized database containing the most relevant biological data sources. The database is hosted in our servers and is regularly updated. CellBase documentation can be found at http://docs.bioinfo.cipf.es/projects/cellbase.

Effects of self-schema elaboration on affective and cognitive reactions to self-relevant information.

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Petersen, L E; Stahlberg, D; Dauenheimer, D

2000-02-01

The basic assumption of the integrative self-schema model (ISSM; L.-E. Petersen, 1994; L.-E. Petersen, D. Stahlberg, & D. Dauenheimer, 1996; D. Stahlberg, L.-E. Petersen, & D. Dauenheimer, 1994, 1999) is that self-schema elaboration (schematic vs. aschematic) affects reactions to self-relevant information. This assumption is based on the idea that schematic dimensions occupy a more central position in the cognitive system than aschematic dimensions. In the first study, this basic prediction could be clearly confirmed: The results showed that schematic dimensions possessed stronger cognitive associations with other self-relevant cognitions as well as a higher resistance to change than aschematic dimensions did. In the second study, the main assumptions of the ISSM concerning the affective and cognitive reactions to self-relevant feedback were tested: The ISSM proposes that, on schematic dimensions, reactions to self-relevant feedback will most likely follow principles of self-consistency theory, whereas on aschematic dimensions positive feedback should elicit the most positive reactions that self-enhancement theory would predict. The experimental results clearly confirmed the hypotheses derived from the ISSM for affective reactions. Cognitive reactions, however, were in line with self-consistency principles and were not modified by the elaboration of the self-schema dimension involved.

INFO ANAV, a channel that is consolidated in the communication of information relevant to plant safety

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lopera Broto, A. J.; Balbas Gomez, S.

2012-01-01

This weekly publication intended to make it to all the people who work at the sites of Asco and Vandellos relevant information for security since we are all responsible for the safe and reliable operation of our plants.

Visual search attentional bias modification reduced social phobia in adolescents.

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De Voogd, E L; Wiers, R W; Prins, P J M; Salemink, E

2014-06-01

An attentional bias for negative information plays an important role in the development and maintenance of (social) anxiety and depression, which are highly prevalent in adolescence. Attention Bias Modification (ABM) might be an interesting tool in the prevention of emotional disorders. The current study investigated whether visual search ABM might affect attentional bias and emotional functioning in adolescents. A visual search task was used as a training paradigm; participants (n = 16 adolescents, aged 13-16) had to repeatedly identify the only smiling face in a 4 × 4 matrix of negative emotional faces, while participants in the control condition (n = 16) were randomly allocated to one of three placebo training versions. An assessment version of the task was developed to directly test whether attentional bias changed due to the training. Self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms and self-esteem were measured pre- and post-training. After two sessions of training, the ABM group showed a significant decrease in attentional bias for negative information and self-reported social phobia, while the control group did not. There were no effects of training on depressive mood or self-esteem. No correlation between attentional bias and social phobia was found, which raises questions about the validity of the attentional bias assessment task. Also, the small sample size precludes strong conclusions. Visual search ABM might be beneficial in changing attentional bias and social phobia in adolescents, but further research with larger sample sizes and longer follow-up is needed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Children inhibit global information when the forest is dense and local information when the forest is sparse.

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Krakowski, Claire-Sara; Borst, Grégoire; Vidal, Julie; Houdé, Olivier; Poirel, Nicolas

2018-09-01

Visual environments are composed of global shapes and local details that compete for attentional resources. In adults, the global level is processed more rapidly than the local level, and global information must be inhibited in order to process local information when the local information and global information are in conflict. Compared with adults, children present less of a bias toward global visual information and appear to be more sensitive to the density of local elements that constitute the global level. The current study aimed, for the first time, to investigate the key role of inhibition during global/local processing in children. By including two different conditions of global saliency during a negative priming procedure, the results showed that when the global level was salient (dense hierarchical figures), 7-year-old children and adults needed to inhibit the global level to process the local information. However, when the global level was less salient (sparse hierarchical figures), only children needed to inhibit the local level to process the global information. These results confirm a weaker global bias and the greater impact of saliency in children than in adults. Moreover, the results indicate that, regardless of age, inhibition of the most salient hierarchical level is systematically required to select the less salient but more relevant level. These findings have important implications for future research in this area. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Specificity and overlap of attention and memory biases in depression.

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Marchetti, Igor; Everaert, Jonas; Dainer-Best, Justin; Loeys, Tom; Beevers, Christopher G; Koster, Ernst H W

2018-01-01

Attentional and memory biases are viewed as crucial cognitive processes underlying symptoms of depression. However, it is still unclear whether these two biases are uniquely related to depression or whether they show substantial overlap. We investigated the degree of specificity and overlap of attentional and memory biases for depressotypic stimuli in relation to depression and anxiety by means of meta-analytic commonality analysis. By including four published studies, we considered a pool of 463 healthy and subclinically depressed individuals, different experimental paradigms, and different psychological measures. Memory bias is reliably and strongly related to depression and, specifically, to symptoms of negative mood, worthlessness, feelings of failure, and pessimism. Memory bias for negative information was minimally related to anxiety. Moreover, neither attentional bias nor the overlap between attentional and memory biases were significantly related to depression. Limitations include cross-sectional nature of the study. Our study showed that, across different paradigms and psychological measures, memory bias (and not attentional bias) represents a primary mechanism in depression. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Autism Spectrum Disorder Updates – Relevant Information for Early Interventionists to Consider

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Allen-Meares, Paula; MacDonald, Megan; McGee, Kristin

2016-01-01

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication skills as well as repetitive, restricted or stereotyped behaviors (1). Early interventionists are often found at the forefront of assessment, evaluation, and early intervention services for children with ASD. The role of an early intervention specialist may include assessing developmental history, providing group and individual counseling, working in partnership with families on home, school, and community environments, mobilizing school and community resources, and assisting in the development of positive early intervention strategies (2, 3). The commonality among these roles resides in the importance of providing up-to-date, relevant information to families and children. The purpose of this review is to provide pertinent up-to-date knowledge for early interventionists to help inform practice in working with individuals with ASD, including common behavioral models of intervention. PMID:27840812

Developing a Side Bias for Conspecific Faces during Childhood

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Balas, Benjamin; Moulson, Margaret C.

2011-01-01

Adults preferentially use information from the left side of face images to judge gender, emotion, and identity. In this study, we examined the development of this visual-field bias over middle childhood (5-10 years). Our goal was to both characterize the developmental trajectory of the left-side bias (should one exist) and examine the selectivity…

Sympathetic bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Levy, David M; Peart, Sandra J

2008-06-01

We wish to deal with investigator bias in a statistical context. We sketch how a textbook solution to the problem of "outliers" which avoids one sort of investigator bias, creates the temptation for another sort. We write down a model of the approbation seeking statistician who is tempted by sympathy for client to violate the disciplinary standards. We give a simple account of one context in which we might expect investigator bias to flourish. Finally, we offer tentative suggestions to deal with the problem of investigator bias which follow from our account. As we have given a very sparse and stylized account of investigator bias, we ask what might be done to overcome this limitation.

Bias modification training can alter approach bias and chocolate consumption.

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Schumacher, Sophie E; Kemps, Eva; Tiggemann, Marika

2016-01-01

Recent evidence has demonstrated that bias modification training has potential to reduce cognitive biases for attractive targets and affect health behaviours. The present study investigated whether cognitive bias modification training could be applied to reduce approach bias for chocolate and affect subsequent chocolate consumption. A sample of 120 women (18-27 years) were randomly assigned to an approach-chocolate condition or avoid-chocolate condition, in which they were trained to approach or avoid pictorial chocolate stimuli, respectively. Training had the predicted effect on approach bias, such that participants trained to approach chocolate demonstrated an increased approach bias to chocolate stimuli whereas participants trained to avoid such stimuli showed a reduced bias. Further, participants trained to avoid chocolate ate significantly less of a chocolate muffin in a subsequent taste test than participants trained to approach chocolate. Theoretically, results provide support for the dual process model's conceptualisation of consumption as being driven by implicit processes such as approach bias. In practice, approach bias modification may be a useful component of interventions designed to curb the consumption of unhealthy foods. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Is perception of gender biased by a context prime?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Skewes, Lea; Mørch Zederkof, Julie; Skewes, Joshua Charles

2016-01-01

It is well-documented on both explicit and implicit measures that men are associated with agential traits, while women are associated with communal traits, and that these explicit and implicit attitudes and cognitions lead to biases in behaviour. However, little is known about whether information...... about gender is already biased when it enters the cognitive system. We explored whether the same kinds of biases, which pervade implicit attitudes and cognition also pervade peoples’ perception of gender. Using a Bayesian signal detection model, we provide strong evidence that gender stereotypical...

Historical maintenance relevant information road-map for a self-learning maintenance prediction procedural approach

Science.gov (United States)

Morales, Francisco J.; Reyes, Antonio; Cáceres, Noelia; Romero, Luis M.; Benitez, Francisco G.; Morgado, Joao; Duarte, Emanuel; Martins, Teresa

2017-09-01

A large percentage of transport infrastructures are composed of linear assets, such as roads and rail tracks. The large social and economic relevance of these constructions force the stakeholders to ensure a prolonged health/durability. Even though, inevitable malfunctioning, breaking down, and out-of-service periods arise randomly during the life cycle of the infrastructure. Predictive maintenance techniques tend to diminish the appearance of unpredicted failures and the execution of needed corrective interventions, envisaging the adequate interventions to be conducted before failures show up. This communication presents: i) A procedural approach, to be conducted, in order to collect the relevant information regarding the evolving state condition of the assets involved in all maintenance interventions; this reported and stored information constitutes a rich historical data base to train Machine Learning algorithms in order to generate reliable predictions of the interventions to be carried out in further time scenarios. ii) A schematic flow chart of the automatic learning procedure. iii) Self-learning rules from automatic learning from false positive/negatives. The description, testing, automatic learning approach and the outcomes of a pilot case are presented; finally some conclusions are outlined regarding the methodology proposed for improving the self-learning predictive capability.

Manipulating Google's Knowledge Graph Box to Counter Biased Information Processing During an Online Search on Vaccination: Application of a Technological Debiasing Strategy.

Science.gov (United States)

Ludolph, Ramona; Allam, Ahmed; Schulz, Peter J

2016-06-02

One of people's major motives for going online is the search for health-related information. Most consumers start their search with a general search engine but are unaware of the fact that its sorting and ranking criteria do not mirror information quality. This misconception can lead to distorted search outcomes, especially when the information processing is characterized by heuristic principles and resulting cognitive biases instead of a systematic elaboration. As vaccination opponents are vocal on the Web, the chance of encountering their non‒evidence-based views on immunization is high. Therefore, biased information processing in this context can cause subsequent impaired judgment and decision making. A technological debiasing strategy could counter this by changing people's search environment. This study aims at testing a technological debiasing strategy to reduce the negative effects of biased information processing when using a general search engine on people's vaccination-related knowledge and attitudes. This strategy is to manipulate the content of Google's knowledge graph box, which is integrated in the search interface and provides basic information about the search topic. A full 3x2 factorial, posttest-only design was employed with availability of basic factual information (comprehensible vs hardly comprehensible vs not present) as the first factor and a warning message as the second factor of experimental manipulation. Outcome variables were the evaluation of the knowledge graph box, vaccination-related knowledge, as well as beliefs and attitudes toward vaccination, as represented by three latent variables emerged from an exploratory factor analysis. Two-way analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect of availability of basic information in the knowledge graph box on participants' vaccination knowledge scores (F2,273=4.86, P=.01), skepticism/fear of vaccination side effects (F2,273=3.5, P=.03), and perceived information quality (F2

Affective Biases in Humans and Animals.

Science.gov (United States)

Robinson, E S J; Roiser, J P

Depression is one of the most common but poorly understood psychiatric conditions. Although drug treatments and psychological therapies are effective in some patients, many do not achieve full remission and some patients receive no apparent benefit. Developing new improved treatments requires a better understanding of the aetiology of symptoms and evaluation of novel therapeutic targets in pre-clinical studies. Recent developments in our understanding of the basic cognitive processes that may contribute to the development of depression and its treatment offer new opportunities for both clinical and pre-clinical research. This chapter discusses the clinical evidence supporting a cognitive neuropsychological model of depression and antidepressant efficacy, and how this information may be usefully translated to pre-clinical investigation. Studies using neuropsychological tests in depressed patients and at risk populations have revealed basic negative emotional biases and disrupted reward and punishment processing, which may also impact on non-affective cognition. These affective biases are sensitive to antidepressant treatments with early onset effects observed, suggesting an important role in recovery. This clinical work into affective biases has also facilitated back-translation to animals and the development of assays to study affective biases in rodents. These animal studies suggest that, similar to humans, rodents in putative negative affective states exhibit negative affective biases on decision-making and memory tasks. Antidepressant treatments also induce positive biases in these rodent tasks, supporting the translational validity of this approach. Although still in the early stages of development and validation, affective biases in depression have the potential to offer new insights into the clinical condition, as well as facilitating the development of more translational approaches for pre-clinical studies.

Age-ordered shirt numbering reduces the selection bias associated with the relative age effect.

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Mann, David L; van Ginneken, Pleun J M A

2017-04-01

When placed into age groups for junior sporting competition, the relative differences in age between children leads to a bias in who is evaluated as being talented. While the impact of this relative age effect (RAE) is clear, until now there has been no evidence to show how to reduce it. The aim of this study was to determine whether the selection bias associated with the RAE could be reduced. Talent scouts from an elite football club watched junior games and ranked players on the basis of their potential. Scouts were allocated to one of three groups provided with contrasting information about the age of the players: (1) no age information, (2) players' birthdates or (3) knowledge that the numbers on the playing shirts corresponded to the relative age of the players. Results revealed a significant selection bias for the scouts in the no-age information group, and that bias remained when scouts knew the players' dates-of-birth. Strikingly though, the selection bias was eliminated when scouts watched the games knowing the shirt numbers corresponded to the relative ages of the players. The selection bias associated with the RAE can be reduced if information about age is presented appropriately.

Combination of biased forecasts: Bias correction or bias based weights?

OpenAIRE

Wenzel, Thomas

1999-01-01

Most of the literature on combination of forecasts deals with the assumption of unbiased individual forecasts. Here, we consider the case of biased forecasts and discuss two different combination techniques resulting in an unbiased forecast. On the one hand we correct the individual forecasts, and on the other we calculate bias based weights. A simulation study gives some insight in the situations where we should use the different methods.

Estimation bias and bias correction in reduced rank autoregressions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Heino Bohn

2017-01-01

This paper characterizes the finite-sample bias of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) in a reduced rank vector autoregression and suggests two simulation-based bias corrections. One is a simple bootstrap implementation that approximates the bias at the MLE. The other is an iterative root...

Further explorations of the facing bias in biological motion perception: perspective cues, observer sex, and response times.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ben Schouten

Full Text Available The human visual system has evolved to be highly sensitive to visual information about other persons and their movements as is illustrated by the effortless perception of point-light figures or 'biological motion'. When presented orthographically, a point-light walker is interpreted in two anatomically plausible ways: As 'facing the viewer' or as 'facing away' from the viewer. However, human observers show a 'facing bias': They perceive such a point-light walker as facing towards them in about 70-80% of the cases. In studies exploring the role of social and biological relevance as a possible account for the facing bias, we found a 'figure gender effect': Male point-light figures elicit a stronger facing bias than female point-light figures. Moreover, we also found an 'observer gender effect': The 'figure gender effect' was stronger for male than for female observers. In the present study we presented to 11 males and 11 females point-light walkers of which, very subtly, the perspective information was manipulated by modifying the earlier reported 'perspective technique'. Proportions of 'facing the viewer' responses and reaction times were recorded. Results show that human observers, even in the absence of local shape or size cues, easily pick up on perspective cues, confirming recent demonstrations of high visual sensitivity to cues on whether another person is potentially approaching. We also found a consistent difference in how male and female observers respond to stimulus variations (figure gender or perspective cues that cause variations in the perceived in-depth orientation of a point-light walker. Thus, the 'figure gender effect' is possibly caused by changes in the relative locations and motions of the dots that the perceptual system tends to interpret as perspective cues. Third, reaction time measures confirmed the existence of the facing bias and recent research showing faster detection of approaching than receding biological motion.

Attentional Bias for Emotional Stimuli in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Meta-Analysis.

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Kaiser, Deborah; Jacob, Gitta A; Domes, Gregor; Arntz, Arnoud

2016-01-01

In borderline personality disorder (BPD), attentional bias (AB) to emotional stimuli may be a core component in disorder pathogenesis and maintenance. 11 emotional Stroop task (EST) studies with 244 BPD patients, 255 nonpatients (NPs) and 95 clinical controls and 4 visual dot-probe task (VDPT) studies with 151 BPD patients or subjects with BPD features and 62 NPs were included. We conducted two separate meta-analyses for AB in BPD. One meta-analysis focused on the EST for generally negative and BPD-specific/personally relevant negative words. The other meta-analysis concentrated on the VDPT for negative and positive facial stimuli. There is evidence for an AB towards generally negative emotional words compared to NPs (standardized mean difference, SMD = 0.311) and to other psychiatric disorders (SMD = 0.374) in the EST studies. Regarding BPD-specific/personally relevant negative words, BPD patients reveal an even stronger AB than NPs (SMD = 0.454). The VDPT studies indicate a tendency towards an AB to positive facial stimuli but not negative stimuli in BPD patients compared to NPs. The findings rather reflect an AB in BPD to generally negative and BPD-specific/personally relevant negative words rather than an AB in BPD towards facial stimuli, and/or a biased allocation of covert attentional resources to negative emotional stimuli in BPD and not a bias in focus of visual attention. Further research regarding the role of childhood traumatization and comorbid anxiety disorders may improve the understanding of these underlying processes. © 2016 The Author(s) Published by S. Karger AG, Basel.

A neural mechanism of dynamic gating of task-relevant information by top-down influence in primary visual cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Kamiyama, Akikazu; Fujita, Kazuhisa; Kashimori, Yoshiki

2016-12-01

Visual recognition involves bidirectional information flow, which consists of bottom-up information coding from retina and top-down information coding from higher visual areas. Recent studies have demonstrated the involvement of early visual areas such as primary visual area (V1) in recognition and memory formation. V1 neurons are not passive transformers of sensory inputs but work as adaptive processor, changing their function according to behavioral context. Top-down signals affect tuning property of V1 neurons and contribute to the gating of sensory information relevant to behavior. However, little is known about the neuronal mechanism underlying the gating of task-relevant information in V1. To address this issue, we focus on task-dependent tuning modulations of V1 neurons in two tasks of perceptual learning. We develop a model of the V1, which receives feedforward input from lateral geniculate nucleus and top-down input from a higher visual area. We show here that the change in a balance between excitation and inhibition in V1 connectivity is necessary for gating task-relevant information in V1. The balance change well accounts for the modulations of tuning characteristic and temporal properties of V1 neuronal responses. We also show that the balance change of V1 connectivity is shaped by top-down signals with temporal correlations reflecting the perceptual strategies of the two tasks. We propose a learning mechanism by which synaptic balance is modulated. To conclude, top-down signal changes the synaptic balance between excitation and inhibition in V1 connectivity, enabling early visual area such as V1 to gate context-dependent information under multiple task performances. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

What's New in the Medicine Cabinet?: A Panoramic Review of Clinically Relevant Information for the Busy Dermatologist.

Science.gov (United States)

Del Rosso, James Q; Zeichner, Joshua

2014-01-01

This article is the first in a periodic series of therapeutic topics with short reviews gleaned from major dermatology meetings, especially Scientific Poster Sessions, and is designed to provide information that may assist the readers in adapting information from the literature to their clinical practice. The topics covered in this issue are discussions of the clinical relevance of newer information about acne pathophysiology, acne in adult women, and topical corticosteroid spray formulations for chronic plaque psoriasis.

Evaluation of relevant information for optimal reflector modeling through data assimilation procedures

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Argaud, J.P.; Bouriquet, B.; Clerc, T.; Lucet-Sanchez, F.; Poncot, A.

2015-01-01

The goal of this study is to look after the amount of information that is mandatory to get a relevant parameters optimisation by data assimilation for physical models in neutronic diffusion calculations, and to determine what is the best information to reach the optimum of accuracy at the cheapest cost. To evaluate the quality of the optimisation, we study the covariance matrix that represents the accuracy of the optimised parameter. This matrix is a classical output of the data assimilation procedure, and it is the main information about accuracy and sensitivity of the parameter optimal determination. We present some results collected in the field of neutronic simulation for PWR type reactor. We seek to optimise the reflector parameters that characterise the neutronic reflector surrounding the whole reactive core. On the basis of the configuration studies, it has been shown that with data assimilation we can determine a global strategy to optimise the quality of the result with respect to the amount of information provided. The consequence of this is a cost reduction in terms of measurement and/or computing time with respect to the basic approach. Another result is that using multi-campaign data rather data from a unique campaign significantly improves the efficiency of parameters optimisation

Hemispheric biases and the control of visuospatial attention: an ERP study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Banich Marie T

2005-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background We examined whether individual differences in hemispheric utilization can interact with the intrinsic attentional biases of the cerebral hemispheres. Evidence suggests that the hemispheres have competing biases to direct attention contralaterally, with the left hemisphere (LH having a stronger bias than the right hemisphere. There is also evidence that individuals have characteristic biases to utilize one hemisphere more than the other for processing information, which can induce a bias to direct attention to contralateral space. We predicted that LH-biased individuals would display a strong rightward attentional bias, which would create difficulty in selectively attending to target stimuli in the left visual field (LVF as compared to right in the performance of a bilateral flanker task. Results Consistent with our hypothesis, flanker interference effects were found on the N2c event-related brain potential and error rate for LH-biased individuals in the Attend-LVF condition. The error rate effect was correlated with the degree of hemispheric utilization bias for the LH-Bias group. Conclusion We conclude that hemispheric utilization bias can enhance a hemisphere's contralateral attentional bias, at least for individuals with a LH utilization bias. Hemispheric utilization bias may play an important and largely unrecognized role in visuospatial attention.

Autism spectrum disorder updates – relevant information for early interventionists to consider

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paula Allen-Meares

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Autism spectrum disorder (ASD is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication skills as well as repetitive, restricted or stereotyped behaviors (1. Early interventionists are often found at the forefront of assessment, evaluation and early intervention services for children with ASD. The role of an early intervention specialist may include, assessing developmental history, providing group and individual counseling, working in partnership with families on home, school, and community environments, mobilizing school and community resources and assisting in the development of positive early intervention strategies (2, 3. The commonality amongst these roles resides in the importance of providing up-to-date, relevant information to families and children. The purpose of this review is to provide pertinent up-to-date knowledge for early interventionists to help inform practice in working with individuals with ASD, including common behavioral models of intervention.

Modeling Random Telegraph Noise Under Switched Bias Conditions Using Cyclostationary RTS Noise

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Wel, A.P.; Klumperink, Eric A.M.; Vandamme, L.K.J.; Nauta, Bram

In this paper, we present measurements and simulation of random telegraph signal (RTS) noise in n-channel MOSFETs under periodic large signal gate-source excitation (switched bias conditions). This is particularly relevant to analog CMOS circuit design where large signal swings occur and where LF

Balancing the presentation of information and options in patient decision aids: an updated review.

Science.gov (United States)

Abhyankar, Purva; Volk, Robert J; Blumenthal-Barby, Jennifer; Bravo, Paulina; Buchholz, Angela; Ozanne, Elissa; Vidal, Dale Colins; Col, Nananda; Stalmeier, Peep

2013-01-01

Standards for patient decision aids require that information and options be presented in a balanced manner; this requirement is based on the argument that balanced presentation is essential to foster informed decision making. If information is presented in an incomplete/non-neutral manner, it can stimulate cognitive biases that can unduly affect individuals' knowledge, perceptions of risks and benefits, and, ultimately, preferences. However, there is little clarity about what constitutes balance, and how it can be determined and enhanced. We conducted a literature review to examine the theoretical and empirical evidence related to balancing the presentation of information and options. A literature search related to patient decision aids and balance was conducted on Medline, using MeSH terms and PubMed; this search supplemented the 2011 Cochrane Collaboration's review of patient decision aids trials. Only English language articles relevant to patient decision making and addressing the balance of information and options were included. All members of the team independently screened clusters of articles; uncertainties were resolved by seeking review by another member. The team then worked in sub-groups to extract and synthesise data on theory, definitions, and evidence reported in these studies. A total of 40 articles met the inclusion criteria. Of these, six explained the rationale for balancing the presentation of information and options. Twelve defined "balance"; the definition of "balance" that emerged is as follows: "The complete and unbiased presentation of the relevant options and the information about those options-in content and in format-in a way that enables individuals to process this information without bias". Ten of the 40 articles reported assessing the balance of the relevant decision aid. All 10 did so exclusively from the users' or patients' perspective, using a five-point Likert-type scale. Presenting information in a side-by-side display form was

Matrilateral Bias in Human Grandmothering

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martin Daly

2017-09-01

in rural China and Bangladesh, where women’s links to their natal families are formally severed at marriage, critical matrilateral assistance persists “under the radar.” Our review is limited to grandmothers, but the relevant evolutionary theories are not, and there is empirical evidence that the matrilateral bias extends to other kin, too. We propose that it is an evolved aspect of human nature.

Japanese Quality Assurance System Regarding the Provision of Material Accounting Reports and the Safeguards Relevant Information to the IAEA

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Goto, Y.; Namekawa, M.; Kumekawa, H.; Usui, A.; Sano, K.

2015-01-01

The provision of the safeguards relevant reports and information in accordance with the comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) and the additional protocol (AP) is the basis for the IAEA safeguards. The government of Japan (Japan Safeguards Office, JSGO) has believed that the correct reports contribute to effective and efficient safeguards therefore the domestic quality assurance system for the reporting to the IAEA was already established at the time of the accession of the CSA in 1977. It consists of Code 10 interpretation (including the seminars for operators in Japan), SSAC's checks for syntax error, code and internal consistency (computer based consistency check between facilities) and the discussion with the IAEA on the facilities' measurement system for bulk-handling facilities, which contributes to the more accurate reports from operators. This spirit has been maintained for the entry into force of the AP. For example, questions and amplification from the IAEA will be taken into account the review of the AP declaration before sending to the IAEA and the open source information such as news article and scientific literature in Japanese is collected and translated into English, and the translated information is provided to the IAEA as the supplementary information, which may contribute to broadening the IAEA information source and to their comprehensive evaluation. The other safeguards relevant information, such as the mail-box information for SNRI at LEU fuel fabrication plants, is also checked by the JSGO's QC software before posting. The software was developed by JSGO and it checks data format, batch IDs, birth/death date, shipper/receiver information and material description code. This paper explains the history of the development of the Japanese quality assurance system regarding the reports and the safeguards relevant information to the IAEA. (author)

Sampling of temporal networks: Methods and biases

Science.gov (United States)

Rocha, Luis E. C.; Masuda, Naoki; Holme, Petter

2017-11-01

Temporal networks have been increasingly used to model a diversity of systems that evolve in time; for example, human contact structures over which dynamic processes such as epidemics take place. A fundamental aspect of real-life networks is that they are sampled within temporal and spatial frames. Furthermore, one might wish to subsample networks to reduce their size for better visualization or to perform computationally intensive simulations. The sampling method may affect the network structure and thus caution is necessary to generalize results based on samples. In this paper, we study four sampling strategies applied to a variety of real-life temporal networks. We quantify the biases generated by each sampling strategy on a number of relevant statistics such as link activity, temporal paths and epidemic spread. We find that some biases are common in a variety of networks and statistics, but one strategy, uniform sampling of nodes, shows improved performance in most scenarios. Given the particularities of temporal network data and the variety of network structures, we recommend that the choice of sampling methods be problem oriented to minimize the potential biases for the specific research questions on hand. Our results help researchers to better design network data collection protocols and to understand the limitations of sampled temporal network data.

Anticlockwise or Clockwise? A Dynamic Perception-Action-Laterality Model for Directionality Bias in Visuospatial Functioning

Science.gov (United States)

Karim, A.K.M. Rezaul; Proulx, Michael J.; Likova, Lora T.

2016-01-01

Reviewing the relevant literature in visual psychophysics and visual neuroscience we propose a three-stage model of directionality bias in visuospatial functioning. We call this model the ‘Perception-Action-Laterality’ (PAL) hypothesis. We analyzed the research findings for a wide range of visuospatial tasks, showing that there are two major directionality trends: clockwise versus anticlockwise. It appears these preferences are combinatorial, such that a majority of people fall in the first category demonstrating a preference for stimuli/objects arranged from left-to-right rather than from right-to-left, while people in the second category show an opposite trend. These perceptual biases can guide sensorimotor integration and action, creating two corresponding turner groups in the population. In support of PAL, we propose another model explaining the origins of the biases– how the neurogenetic factors and the cultural factors interact in a biased competition framework to determine the direction and extent of biases. This dynamic model can explain not only the two major categories of biases, but also the unbiased, unreliably biased or mildly biased cases in visuosptial functioning. PMID:27350096

Correction of technical bias in clinical microarray data improves concordance with known biological information

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Eklund, Aron Charles; Szallasi, Zoltan Imre

2008-01-01

The performance of gene expression microarrays has been well characterized using controlled reference samples, but the performance on clinical samples remains less clear. We identified sources of technical bias affecting many genes in concert, thus causing spurious correlations in clinical data...... sets and false associations between genes and clinical variables. We developed a method to correct for technical bias in clinical microarray data, which increased concordance with known biological relationships in multiple data sets....

Addressing the mischaracterization of extreme rainfall in regional climate model simulations - A synoptic pattern based bias correction approach

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Jingwan; Sharma, Ashish; Evans, Jason; Johnson, Fiona

2018-01-01

Addressing systematic biases in regional climate model simulations of extreme rainfall is a necessary first step before assessing changes in future rainfall extremes. Commonly used bias correction methods are designed to match statistics of the overall simulated rainfall with observations. This assumes that change in the mix of different types of extreme rainfall events (i.e. convective and non-convective) in a warmer climate is of little relevance in the estimation of overall change, an assumption that is not supported by empirical or physical evidence. This study proposes an alternative approach to account for the potential change of alternate rainfall types, characterized here by synoptic weather patterns (SPs) using self-organizing maps classification. The objective of this study is to evaluate the added influence of SPs on the bias correction, which is achieved by comparing the corrected distribution of future extreme rainfall with that using conventional quantile mapping. A comprehensive synthetic experiment is first defined to investigate the conditions under which the additional information of SPs makes a significant difference to the bias correction. Using over 600,000 synthetic cases, statistically significant differences are found to be present in 46% cases. This is followed by a case study over the Sydney region using a high-resolution run of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model, which indicates a small change in the proportions of the SPs and a statistically significant change in the extreme rainfall over the region, although the differences between the changes obtained from the two bias correction methods are not statistically significant.

Does information from ClinicalTrials.gov increase transparency and reduce bias? Results from a five-report case series.

Science.gov (United States)

Adam, Gaelen P; Springs, Stacey; Trikalinos, Thomas; Williams, John W; Eaton, Jennifer L; Von Isenburg, Megan; Gierisch, Jennifer M; Wilson, Lisa M; Robinson, Karen A; Viswanathan, Meera; Middleton, Jennifer Cook; Forman-Hoffman, Valerie L; Berliner, Elise; Kaplan, Robert M

2018-04-16

We investigated whether information in ClinicalTrials.gov would impact the conclusions of five ongoing systematic reviews. We considered five reviews that included 495 studies total. Each review team conducted a search of ClinicalTrials.gov up to the date of the review's last literature search, screened the records using the review's eligibility criteria, extracted information, and assessed risk of bias and applicability. Each team then evaluated the impact of the evidence found in ClinicalTrials.gov on the conclusions in the review. Across the five reviews, the number of studies that had both a registry record and a publication varied widely, from none in one review to 43% of all studies identified in another. Among the studies with both a record and publication, there was also wide variability in the match between published outcomes and those listed in ClinicalTrials.gov. Of the 173 total ClinicalTrials.gov records identified across the five projects, between 11 and 43% did not have an associated publication. In the 14% of records that contained results, the new data provided in the ClinicalTrials.gov records did not change the results or conclusions of the reviews. Finally, a large number of published studies were not registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, but many of these were published before ClinicalTrials.gov's inception date of 2000. Improved prospective registration of trials and consistent reporting of results in ClinicalTrials.gov would help make ClinicalTrials.gov records more useful in finding unpublished information and identifying potential biases. In addition, consistent indexing in databases, such as MEDLINE, would allow for better matching of records and publications, leading to increased utility of these searches for systematic review projects.

Human and organizational biases affecting the management of safety

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Reiman, Teemu, E-mail: teemu.reiman@vtt.fi [VTT, Espoo (Finland); Rollenhagen, Carl [KTH, Stockholm (Sweden)

2011-10-15

Management of safety is always based on underlying models or theories of organization, human behavior and system safety. The aim of the article is to review and describe a set of potential biases in these models and theories. We will outline human and organizational biases that have an effect on the management of safety in four thematic areas: beliefs about human behavior, beliefs about organizations, beliefs about information and safety models. At worst, biases in these areas can lead to an approach where people are treated as isolated and independent actors who make (bad) decisions in a social vacuum and who pose a threat to safety. Such an approach aims at building barriers and constraints to human behavior and neglects the measures aiming at providing prerequisites and organizational conditions for people to work effectively. This reductionist view of safety management can also lead to too drastic a strong separation of so-called human factors from technical issues, undermining the holistic view of system safety. Human behavior needs to be understood in the context of people attempting (together) to make sense of themselves and their environment, and act based on perpetually incomplete information while relying on social conventions, affordances provided by the environment and the available cognitive heuristics. In addition, a move toward a positive view of the human contribution to safety is needed. Systemic safety management requires an increased understanding of various normal organizational phenomena - in this paper discussed from the point of view of biases - coupled with a systemic safety culture that encourages and endorses a holistic view of the workings and challenges of the socio-technical system in question. - Highlights: > Biases in safety management approaches are reviewed and described. > Four thematic areas are covered: human behavior, organizations, information, safety models. > The biases influence how safety management is defined, executed

Human and organizational biases affecting the management of safety

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Reiman, Teemu; Rollenhagen, Carl

2011-01-01

Management of safety is always based on underlying models or theories of organization, human behavior and system safety. The aim of the article is to review and describe a set of potential biases in these models and theories. We will outline human and organizational biases that have an effect on the management of safety in four thematic areas: beliefs about human behavior, beliefs about organizations, beliefs about information and safety models. At worst, biases in these areas can lead to an approach where people are treated as isolated and independent actors who make (bad) decisions in a social vacuum and who pose a threat to safety. Such an approach aims at building barriers and constraints to human behavior and neglects the measures aiming at providing prerequisites and organizational conditions for people to work effectively. This reductionist view of safety management can also lead to too drastic a strong separation of so-called human factors from technical issues, undermining the holistic view of system safety. Human behavior needs to be understood in the context of people attempting (together) to make sense of themselves and their environment, and act based on perpetually incomplete information while relying on social conventions, affordances provided by the environment and the available cognitive heuristics. In addition, a move toward a positive view of the human contribution to safety is needed. Systemic safety management requires an increased understanding of various normal organizational phenomena - in this paper discussed from the point of view of biases - coupled with a systemic safety culture that encourages and endorses a holistic view of the workings and challenges of the socio-technical system in question. - Highlights: → Biases in safety management approaches are reviewed and described. → Four thematic areas are covered: human behavior, organizations, information, safety models. → The biases influence how safety management is defined

Differential impact of relevant and irrelevant dimension primes on rule-based and information-integration category learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Grimm, Lisa R; Maddox, W Todd

2013-11-01

Research has identified multiple category-learning systems with each being "tuned" for learning categories with different task demands and each governed by different neurobiological systems. Rule-based (RB) classification involves testing verbalizable rules for category membership while information-integration (II) classification requires the implicit learning of stimulus-response mappings. In the first study to directly test rule priming with RB and II category learning, we investigated the influence of the availability of information presented at the beginning of the task. Participants viewed lines that varied in length, orientation, and position on the screen, and were primed to focus on stimulus dimensions that were relevant or irrelevant to the correct classification rule. In Experiment 1, we used an RB category structure, and in Experiment 2, we used an II category structure. Accuracy and model-based analyses suggested that a focus on relevant dimensions improves RB task performance later in learning while a focus on an irrelevant dimension improves II task performance early in learning. © 2013.

Detection of bias in animal model pedigree indices of heifers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. LIDAUER

2008-12-01

Full Text Available The objective of the study was to test whether the pedigree indices (PI of heifers are biased, and if so, whether the magnitude of the bias varies in different groups of heifers. Therefore, two animal model evaluations with two different data sets were computed. Data with all the records from the national evaluation in December 1994 was used to obtain estimated breeding values (EBV for 305-days' milk yield and protein yield. In the second evaluation, the PIs were estimated for cows calving the first time in 1993 by excluding all their production records from the data. Three different statistics, a simple t-test, the linear regression of EBV on PI, and the polynomial regression of the difference in the predictions (EBV-PI on PI, were computed for three groups of first parity Ayrshire cows: daughters of proven sires, daughters of young sires, and daughters of bull dam candidates. A practically relevant bias was found only in the PIs for the daughters of young sires. On average their PIs were biased upwards by 0.20 standard deviations (78.8 kg for the milk yield and by 0.21 standard deviations (2.2 kg for the protein yield. The polynomial regression analysis showed that the magnitude of the bias in the PIs changed somewhat with the size of the PIs.;

Continual training of attentional bias in social anxiety.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Songwei; Tan, Jieqing; Qian, Mingyi; Liu, Xinghua

2008-08-01

Using the dot-probe paradigm, it has been shown that high social anxiety is associated with an attentional bias toward negative information. In the present study, individuals with high social anxiety were divided into two groups randomly. One group was the attentional bias training group (Group T), and the other was the control group (Group C). For Group T, 7 days' continuous training of attentional bias was conducted using the dot-probe paradigm to make socially anxious individuals focus more on positive face pictures. The results showed that the training was effective in changing attentional bias in Group T. Scores of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) in Group T were reduced compared to Group C, while the scores of Social Phobia Scale (SPS) and scores of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) showed no difference between the two groups, which suggested a limited reduction of social anxiety.

Geospatial Information Relevant to the Flood Protection Available on The Mainstream Web

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kliment Tomáš

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Flood protection is one of several disciplines where geospatial data is very important and is a crucial component. Its management, processing and sharing form the foundation for their efficient use; therefore, special attention is required in the development of effective, precise, standardized, and interoperable models for the discovery and publishing of data on the Web. This paper describes the design of a methodology to discover Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC services on the Web and collect descriptive information, i.e., metadata in a geocatalogue. A pilot implementation of the proposed methodology - Geocatalogue of geospatial information provided by OGC services discovered on Google (hereinafter “Geocatalogue” - was used to search for available resources relevant to the area of flood protection. The result is an analysis of the availability of resources discovered through their metadata collected from the OGC services (WMS, WFS, etc. and the resources they provide (WMS layers, WFS objects, etc. within the domain of flood protection.

Performance Feedback Processing Is Positively Biased As Predicted by Attribution Theory.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christoph W Korn

Full Text Available A considerable literature on attribution theory has shown that healthy individuals exhibit a positivity bias when inferring the causes of evaluative feedback on their performance. They tend to attribute positive feedback internally (e.g., to their own abilities but negative feedback externally (e.g., to environmental factors. However, all empirical demonstrations of this bias suffer from at least one of the three following drawbacks: First, participants directly judge explicit causes for their performance. Second, participants have to imagine events instead of experiencing them. Third, participants assess their performance only after receiving feedback and thus differences in baseline assessments cannot be excluded. It is therefore unclear whether the classically reported positivity bias generalizes to setups without these drawbacks. Here, we aimed at establishing the relevance of attributions for decision-making by showing an attribution-related positivity bias in a decision-making task. We developed a novel task, which allowed us to test how participants changed their evaluations in response to positive and negative feedback about performance. Specifically, we used videos of actors expressing different facial emotional expressions. Participants were first asked to evaluate the actors' credibility in expressing a particular emotion. After this initial rating, participants performed an emotion recognition task and did--or did not--receive feedback on their veridical performance. Finally, participants re-rated the actors' credibility, which provided a measure of how they changed their evaluations after feedback. Attribution theory predicts that participants change their evaluations of the actors' credibility toward the positive after receiving positive performance feedback and toward the negative after negative performance feedback. Our results were in line with this prediction. A control condition without feedback showed that correct or

Performance Feedback Processing Is Positively Biased As Predicted by Attribution Theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Korn, Christoph W; Rosenblau, Gabriela; Rodriguez Buritica, Julia M; Heekeren, Hauke R

2016-01-01

A considerable literature on attribution theory has shown that healthy individuals exhibit a positivity bias when inferring the causes of evaluative feedback on their performance. They tend to attribute positive feedback internally (e.g., to their own abilities) but negative feedback externally (e.g., to environmental factors). However, all empirical demonstrations of this bias suffer from at least one of the three following drawbacks: First, participants directly judge explicit causes for their performance. Second, participants have to imagine events instead of experiencing them. Third, participants assess their performance only after receiving feedback and thus differences in baseline assessments cannot be excluded. It is therefore unclear whether the classically reported positivity bias generalizes to setups without these drawbacks. Here, we aimed at establishing the relevance of attributions for decision-making by showing an attribution-related positivity bias in a decision-making task. We developed a novel task, which allowed us to test how participants changed their evaluations in response to positive and negative feedback about performance. Specifically, we used videos of actors expressing different facial emotional expressions. Participants were first asked to evaluate the actors' credibility in expressing a particular emotion. After this initial rating, participants performed an emotion recognition task and did--or did not--receive feedback on their veridical performance. Finally, participants re-rated the actors' credibility, which provided a measure of how they changed their evaluations after feedback. Attribution theory predicts that participants change their evaluations of the actors' credibility toward the positive after receiving positive performance feedback and toward the negative after negative performance feedback. Our results were in line with this prediction. A control condition without feedback showed that correct or incorrect performance

Manipulating Google’s Knowledge Graph Box to Counter Biased Information Processing During an Online Search on Vaccination: Application of a Technological Debiasing Strategy

Science.gov (United States)

Allam, Ahmed; Schulz, Peter J

2016-01-01

Background One of people’s major motives for going online is the search for health-related information. Most consumers start their search with a general search engine but are unaware of the fact that its sorting and ranking criteria do not mirror information quality. This misconception can lead to distorted search outcomes, especially when the information processing is characterized by heuristic principles and resulting cognitive biases instead of a systematic elaboration. As vaccination opponents are vocal on the Web, the chance of encountering their non‒evidence-based views on immunization is high. Therefore, biased information processing in this context can cause subsequent impaired judgment and decision making. A technological debiasing strategy could counter this by changing people’s search environment. Objective This study aims at testing a technological debiasing strategy to reduce the negative effects of biased information processing when using a general search engine on people’s vaccination-related knowledge and attitudes. This strategy is to manipulate the content of Google’s knowledge graph box, which is integrated in the search interface and provides basic information about the search topic. Methods A full 3x2 factorial, posttest-only design was employed with availability of basic factual information (comprehensible vs hardly comprehensible vs not present) as the first factor and a warning message as the second factor of experimental manipulation. Outcome variables were the evaluation of the knowledge graph box, vaccination-related knowledge, as well as beliefs and attitudes toward vaccination, as represented by three latent variables emerged from an exploratory factor analysis. Results Two-way analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect of availability of basic information in the knowledge graph box on participants’ vaccination knowledge scores (F2,273=4.86, P=.01), skepticism/fear of vaccination side effects (F2,273=3.5, P=.03

Interpretation bias towards vague faces in individuals with paranoid personality disorder traits

OpenAIRE

Mohsen Doustkam; Sepideh Pourheidari; Ahmad Mansouri

2017-01-01

Introduction: According to the social cognitive theories, information processing biases can play an important role in social perception, interpretation of interpersonal relationships, and social interactions. These theories along with cognitive theories emphasize on information processing i.e. the way in which people perceive and interpret external stimuli in different ways. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate interpretation bias towards vague faces in individuals with par...

Lax decision criteria lead to negativity bias: evidence from the emotional stroop task.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Guofang; Xin, Ziqiang; Lin, Chongde

2014-06-01

Negativity bias means that negative information is usually given more emphasis than comparable positive information. Under signal detection theory, recent research found that people more frequently and incorrectly identify negative task-related words as having been presented originally than positive words, even when they were not presented. That is, people have lax decision criteria for negative words. However, the response biases for task-unrelated negative words and for emotionally important words are still unclear. This study investigated response bias for these two kinds of words. Study 1 examined the response bias for task-unrelated negative words using an emotional Stroop task. Proportions of correct recognition to negative and positive words were assessed by non-parametric signal detection analysis. Participants have lower (i.e., more lax) decision criteria for task-unrelated negative words than for positive words. Study 2 supported and expanded this result by investigating participants' response bias for highly emotional words. Participants have lower decision criteria for highly emotional words than for less emotional words. Finally, possible evolutionary sources of the response bias were discussed.

Strengthening forensic DNA decision making through a better understanding of the influence of cognitive bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Jeanguenat, Amy M; Budowle, Bruce; Dror, Itiel E

2017-11-01

Cognitive bias may influence process flows and decision making steps in forensic DNA analyses and interpretation. Currently, seven sources of bias have been identified that may affect forensic decision making with roots in human nature; environment, culture, and experience; and case specific information. Most of the literature and research on cognitive bias in forensic science has focused on patterned evidence; however, forensic DNA testing is not immune to bias, especially when subjective interpretation is involved. DNA testing can be strengthened by recognizing the existence of bias, evaluating where it influences decision making, and, when applicable, implementing practices to reduce or control its effects. Elements that may improve forensic decision making regarding bias include cognitively informed education and training, quality assurance procedures, review processes, analysis and interpretation, and context management of irrelevant information. Although bias exists, reliable results often can be (and have been) produced. However, at times bias can (and has) impacted the interpretation of DNA results negatively. Therefore, being aware of the dangers of bias and implementing measures to control its potential impact should be considered. Measures and procedures that handicap the workings of the crime laboratory or add little value to improving the operation are not advocated, but simple yet effective measures are suggested. This article is meant to raise awareness of cognitive bias contamination in forensic DNA testing and to give laboratories possible pathways to make sound decisions to address its influences. Copyright © 2017 The Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Some Cochrane risk of bias items are not important in osteoarthritis trials

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bolvig, Julie; Juhl, Carsten B; Boutron, Isabelle

2018-01-01

of the risk of bias tool (RoB), trial size, single vs multi-site, and source of funding. Effect sizes were calculated as standardized mean differences (SMDs). Meta-regression was performed to identify "relevant study-level covariates" that decreases the between-study variance (τˆ2). RESULTS: Twenty reviews...

Post-encoding control of working memory enhances processing of relevant information in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

Science.gov (United States)

Brady, Ryan J; Hampton, Robert R

2018-06-01

Working memory is a system by which a limited amount of information can be kept available for processing after the cessation of sensory input. Because working memory resources are limited, it is adaptive to focus processing on the most relevant information. We used a retro-cue paradigm to determine the extent to which monkey working memory possesses control mechanisms that focus processing on the most relevant representations. Monkeys saw a sample array of images, and shortly after the array disappeared, they were visually cued to a location that had been occupied by one of the sample images. The cue indicated which image should be remembered for the upcoming recognition test. By determining whether the monkeys were more accurate and quicker to respond to cued images compared to un-cued images, we tested the hypothesis that monkey working memory focuses processing on relevant information. We found a memory benefit for the cued image in terms of accuracy and retrieval speed with a memory load of two images. With a memory load of three images, we found a benefit in retrieval speed but only after shortening the onset latency of the retro-cue. Our results demonstrate previously unknown flexibility in the cognitive control of memory in monkeys, suggesting that control mechanisms in working memory likely evolved in a common ancestor of humans and monkeys more than 32 million years ago. Future work should be aimed at understanding the interaction between memory load and the ability to control memory resources, and the role of working memory control in generating differences in cognitive capacity among primates. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Autocalibration method for non-stationary CT bias correction.

Science.gov (United States)

Vegas-Sánchez-Ferrero, Gonzalo; Ledesma-Carbayo, Maria J; Washko, George R; Estépar, Raúl San José

2018-02-01

Computed tomography (CT) is a widely used imaging modality for screening and diagnosis. However, the deleterious effects of radiation exposure inherent in CT imaging require the development of image reconstruction methods which can reduce exposure levels. The development of iterative reconstruction techniques is now enabling the acquisition of low-dose CT images whose quality is comparable to that of CT images acquired with much higher radiation dosages. However, the characterization and calibration of the CT signal due to changes in dosage and reconstruction approaches is crucial to provide clinically relevant data. Although CT scanners are calibrated as part of the imaging workflow, the calibration is limited to select global reference values and does not consider other inherent factors of the acquisition that depend on the subject scanned (e.g. photon starvation, partial volume effect, beam hardening) and result in a non-stationary noise response. In this work, we analyze the effect of reconstruction biases caused by non-stationary noise and propose an autocalibration methodology to compensate it. Our contributions are: 1) the derivation of a functional relationship between observed bias and non-stationary noise, 2) a robust and accurate method to estimate the local variance, 3) an autocalibration methodology that does not necessarily rely on a calibration phantom, attenuates the bias caused by noise and removes the systematic bias observed in devices from different vendors. The validation of the proposed methodology was performed with a physical phantom and clinical CT scans acquired with different configurations (kernels, doses, algorithms including iterative reconstruction). The results confirmed the suitability of the proposed methods for removing the intra-device and inter-device reconstruction biases. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Exploring the information and communication technology competence and confidence of nursing students and their perception of its relevance to clinical practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Levett-Jones, Tracy; Kenny, Raelene; Van der Riet, Pamela; Hazelton, Michael; Kable, Ashley; Bourgeois, Sharon; Luxford, Yoni

2009-08-01

This paper profiles a study that explored nursing students' information and communication technology competence and confidence. It presents selected findings that focus on students' attitudes towards information and communication technology as an educational methodology and their perceptions of its relevance to clinical practice. Information and communication technology is integral to contemporary nursing practice. Development of these skills is important to ensure that graduates are 'work ready' and adequately prepared to practice in increasingly technological healthcare environments. This was a mixed methods study. Students (n=971) from three Australian universities were surveyed using an instrument designed specifically for the study, and 24 students participated in focus groups. The focus group data revealed that a number of students were resistant to the use of information and communication technology as an educational methodology and lacked the requisite skills and confidence to engage successfully with this educational approach. Survey results indicated that 26 per cent of students were unsure about the relevance of information and communication technology to clinical practice and only 50 per cent felt 'very confident' using a computer. While the importance of information and communication technology to student's learning and to their preparedness for practice has been established, it is evident that students' motivation is influenced by their level of confidence and competence, and their understanding of the relevance of information and communication technology to their future careers.

Operator Bias in the Estimation of Arc Efficiency in Gas Tungsten Arc Welding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fredrik Sikström

2015-03-01

Full Text Available In this paper the operator bias in the measurement process of arc efficiency in stationary direct current electrode negative gas tungsten arc welding is discussed. An experimental study involving 15 operators (enough to reach statistical significance has been carried out with the purpose to estimate the arc efficiency from a specific procedure for calorimetric experiments. The measurement procedure consists of three manual operations which introduces operator bias in the measurement process. An additional relevant experiment highlights the consequences of estimating the arc voltage by measuring the potential between the terminals of the welding power source instead of measuring the potential between the electrode contact tube and the workpiece. The result of the study is a statistical evaluation of the operator bias influence on the estimate, showing that operator bias is negligible in the estimate considered here. On the contrary the consequences of neglecting welding leads voltage drop results in a significant under estimation of the arc efficiency.

The foundation of the concept of relevance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hjørland, Birger

2010-01-01

that what was regarded as the most fundamental view by Saracevic in 1975 has not since been considered (with very few exceptions). Other views, which are based on less fruitful assumptions, have dominated the discourse on relevance in information retrieval and information science. Many authors have...... reexamined the concept of relevance in information science, but have neglected the subject knowledge view, hence basic theoretical assumptions seem not to have been properly addressed. It is as urgent now as it was in 1975 seriously to consider “the subject knowledge view” of relevance (which may also...... be termed “the epistemological view”). The concept of relevance, like other basic concepts, is influenced by overall approaches to information science, such as the cognitive view and the domain-analytic view. There is today a trend toward a social paradigm for information science. This paper offers...

Attention bias modification for anxiety and phobias: current status and future directions.

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Kuckertz, Jennie M; Amir, Nader

2015-02-01

Attention bias modification (ABM) was introduced over a decade ago as a computerized method of manipulating attentional bias and has been followed by intense interest in applying ABM for clinical purposes. While meta-analyses support ABM as a method of modifying attentional biases and reducing anxiety symptoms, there have been notable discrepancies in findings published within the last several years. In this review, we comment on recent research that may help explain some of the inconsistencies across ABM studies. More relevant to the future of ABM research, we highlight areas in which continuing research is needed. We suggest that ABM appears to be a promising treatment for anxiety disorders, but relative to other interventions, ABM is in its infancy. Thus, research is needed in order to improve ABM as a clinical treatment and advance the psychological science of ABM.

Reward associations magnify memory-based biases on perception.

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Doallo, Sonia; Patai, Eva Zita; Nobre, Anna Christina

2013-02-01

Long-term spatial contextual memories are a rich source of predictions about the likely locations of relevant objects in the environment and should enable tuning of neural processing of unfolding events to optimize perception and action. Of particular importance is whether and how the reward outcome of past events can impact perception. We combined behavioral measures with recordings of brain activity with high temporal resolution to test whether the previous reward outcome associated with a memory could modulate the impact of memory-based biases on perception, and if so, the level(s) at which visual neural processing is biased by reward-associated memory-guided attention. Data showed that past rewards potentiate the effects of spatial memories upon the discrimination of target objects embedded within complex scenes starting from early perceptual stages. We show that a single reward outcome of learning impacts on how we perceive events in our complex environments.

Delayed manifestation and transmission bias of de novo chromosome mutations. Their relevance for radiation health effect

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sasaki, Masao S.

2006-01-01

The origin and transmission of de novo chromosome mutations were reviewed on the basis of our chromosome studies in retinoblastoma patients and male infertility. In a series of 264 sporadic retinoblastoma families, gross chromosome rearrangements involving the RB1 locus were identified in 23 cases (8.7%), of which 16 were non-mosaic and 7 were mosaic mutations. The newly formed chromosome mutations, whether they were non-mosaic or mosaic, had a strong bias towards paternally derived chromosome, indicating that they shared a common mechanism where a pre-mutational event or instability is carried over to zygote by sperm and manifested as gross chromosome mutation at the early stages of development. The de novo chromosome mutations are preferentially transmitted through female carriers. This transmission bias is consistent with the finding of higher frequencies of translocation carriers in infertile men (7.69% versus 0.27% in general populations) in whom meiotic progression is severely suppressed, possibly through activation of meiotic checkpoints. Such a meiotic surveillance mechanism may minimize the spreading of newly-arisen chromosome mutations in populations. A quantitative model of meiotic surveillance mechanism is proposed and successfully applied to the published data on ''humped'' dose-response curves for radiation-induced spermatogonial reciprocal translocations in several mammalian species. (author)

Relevant Factors in The Post-Merger Systems Integration and Information Technology in Brazilian Banks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcel Ginotti Pires

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This article discusses the factors present in post-merger integration of Systems and Information Technology (SIT that lead to positive and negative results in mergers and acquisitions (M & A. The research comprised three of the largest acquiring banks in Brazil. We adopted two methods of research, qualitative, to operationalize the theoretical concepts and quantitative, to test the hypotheses. We interviewed six executives of banks that held relevant experience in M & A processes. Subsequently, we applied questionnaires to IT professionals who were involved in the SIT integration processes. The results showed that the quality and expertise of the integration teams and managing the integration were the most relevant factors in the processes, with positive results for increased efficiency and the increased capacity of SIT. Negative results were due to failures in exploiting learning opportunities, the loss of employees and the inexpressive record of integration procedures.

Elaboration of a guide including relevant project and logistic information: a case study

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Costa, Tchaikowisky M. [Faculdade de Tecnologia e Ciencias (FTC), Itabuna, BA (Brazil); Bresci, Claudio T.; Franca, Carlos M.M. [PETROBRAS, Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil)

2009-07-01

For every mobilization of a new enterprise it is necessary to quickly obtain the greatest amount of relative information in regards to location and availability of infra-structure, logistics, and work site amenities. Among this information are reports elaborated for management of the enterprise, (organizational chart, work schedule, objectives, contacts, etc.) as well as geographic anomalies, social-economic and culture of the area to be developed such as territorial extension, land aspects, local population, roads and amenities (fuel stations ,restaurants and hotels), infra-structure of the cities (health, education, entertainment, housing, transport, etc.) and logistically the distance between cities the estimated travel time, ROW access maps and notable points, among other relevant information. With the idea of making this information available for everyone involved in the enterprise, it was elaborated for GASCAC Spread 2A a rapid guide containing all the information mentioned above and made it available for all the vehicles used to transport employees and visitors to the spread. With this, everyone quickly received the majority of information necessary in one place, in a practical, quick, and precise manner, since the information is always used and controlled by the same person. This study includes the model used in the gas pipeline GASCAC Spread 2A project and the methodology used to draft and update the information. Besides the above, a file in the GIS format was prepared containing all necessary planning, execution and tracking information for enterprise activities, from social communication to the execution of the works previously mentioned. Part of the GIS file information was uploaded to Google Earth so as to disclose the information to a greater group of people, bearing in mind that this program is free of charge and easy to use. (author)

Expected Utility Based Decision Making under Z-Information and Its Application.

Science.gov (United States)

Aliev, Rashad R; Mraiziq, Derar Atallah Talal; Huseynov, Oleg H

2015-01-01

Real-world decision relevant information is often partially reliable. The reasons are partial reliability of the source of information, misperceptions, psychological biases, incompetence, and so forth. Z-numbers based formalization of information (Z-information) represents a natural language (NL) based value of a variable of interest in line with the related NL based reliability. What is important is that Z-information not only is the most general representation of real-world imperfect information but also has the highest descriptive power from human perception point of view as compared to fuzzy number. In this study, we present an approach to decision making under Z-information based on direct computation over Z-numbers. This approach utilizes expected utility paradigm and is applied to a benchmark decision problem in the field of economics.

Does an attention bias to appetitive and aversive words modulate interference control in youth with ADHD?

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Ili; Mies, Gabry W; Lambregts-Rommelse, Nanda N J; Buitelaar, Jan K; Cillessen, Antonius H N; Scheres, Anouk

2018-05-01

Interference control refers to the ability to selectively attend to certain information while ignoring distracting information. This ability can vary as a function of distractor relevance. Distractors that are particularly relevant to an individual may attract more attention than less relevant distractors. This is referred to as attention bias. Weak interference control and altered reward sensitivity are both important features of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, interference control is typically studied in isolation. This study integrates both. Youths (aged 9 to 17 years) with ADHD (n = 37, 25 boys) and typically-developing controls (n = 38, 20 boys) completed a Stroop task using appetitive words and matched neutral words to assess whether appetitive distractors diminished interference control more in youths with ADHD than controls. In order to test for specificity, aversive words were also included. As expected, appetitive words disrupted interference control but this effect was not stronger for youths with ADHD than the controls. Aversive words, on the other hand, facilitated interference control. Dimensional analyses revealed that this facilitation effect increased substantially as a function of ADHD symptom severity. Possible mechanisms for this effect include up-regulation of interference control as a function of induced negative mood, or as a function of increased effort. In conclusion, appetitive words do not lead to worse interference control in youths with ADHD compared with controls. Interference control was modulated in a valence-specific manner, concurrent with mood-induced effects on cognitive control.

Naming game with biased assimilation over adaptive networks

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Guiyuan; Zhang, Weidong

2018-01-01

The dynamics of two-word naming game incorporating the influence of biased assimilation over adaptive network is investigated in this paper. Firstly an extended naming game with biased assimilation (NGBA) is proposed. The hearer in NGBA accepts the received information in a biased manner, where he may refuse to accept the conveyed word from the speaker with a predefined probability, if the conveyed word is different from his current memory. Secondly, the adaptive network is formulated by rewiring the links. Theoretical analysis is developed to show that the population in NGBA will eventually reach global consensus on either A or B. Numerical simulation results show that the larger strength of biased assimilation on both words, the slower convergence speed, while larger strength of biased assimilation on only one word can slightly accelerate the convergence; larger population size can make the rate of convergence slower to a large extent when it increases from a relatively small size, while such effect becomes minor when the population size is large; the behavior of adaptively reconnecting the existing links can greatly accelerate the rate of convergence especially on the sparse connected network.

Can Memory Bias be Modified? The Effects of an Explicit Cued-Recall Training in Two Independent Samples

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vrijsen, J.N.; Becker, E.S.; Rinck, M.; Oostrom, I.I.H. van; Speckens, A.E.M.; Whitmer, A.; Gotlib, I.H.

2014-01-01

Cognitive bias modification (CBM) has been found to be effective in modifying information-processing biases and in reducing emotional reactivity to stress. Although modification of attention and interpretation biases has frequently been studied, it is not clear whether memory bias can be manipulated

Diagnostic uncertainty and recall bias in chronic low back pain.

Science.gov (United States)

Serbic, Danijela; Pincus, Tamar

2014-08-01

Patients' beliefs about the origin of their pain and their cognitive processing of pain-related information have both been shown to be associated with poorer prognosis in low back pain (LBP), but the relationship between specific beliefs and specific cognitive processes is not known. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between diagnostic uncertainty and recall bias in 2 groups of chronic LBP patients, those who were certain about their diagnosis and those who believed that their pain was due to an undiagnosed problem. Patients (N=68) endorsed and subsequently recalled pain, illness, depression, and neutral stimuli. They also provided measures of pain, diagnostic status, mood, and disability. Both groups exhibited a recall bias for pain stimuli, but only the group with diagnostic uncertainty also displayed a recall bias for illness-related stimuli. This bias remained after controlling for depression and disability. Sensitivity analyses using grouping by diagnosis/explanation received supported these findings. Higher levels of depression and disability were found in the group with diagnostic uncertainty, but levels of pain intensity did not differ between the groups. Although the methodology does not provide information on causality, the results provide evidence for a relationship between diagnostic uncertainty and recall bias for negative health-related stimuli in chronic LBP patients. Copyright © 2014 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Managing Bias in Palliative Care: Professional Hazards in Goals of Care Discussions at the End of Life.

Science.gov (United States)

Callaghan, Katharine A; Fanning, Joseph B

2018-02-01

In the setting of end-of-life care, biases can interfere with patient articulation of goals and hinder provision of patient-centered care. No studies have addressed clinician bias or bias management specific to goals of care discussions at the end of life. To identify and determine the prevalence of palliative care clinician biases and bias management strategies in end-of-life goals of care discussions. A semistructured interview guide with relevant domains was developed to facilitate data collection. Participants were asked directly to identify biases and bias management strategies applicable to this setting. Two researchers developed a codebook to identify themes using a 25% transcript sample through an iterative process based on grounded theory. Inter-rater reliability was evaluated using Cohen κ. It was 0.83, indicating near perfect agreement between coders. The data approach saturation. A purposive sampling of 20 palliative care clinicians in Middle Tennessee participated in interviews. The 20 clinicians interviewed identified 16 biases and 11 bias management strategies. The most frequently mentioned bias was a bias against aggressive treatment (n = 9), described as a clinician's assumption that most interventions at the end of life are not beneficial. The most frequently mentioned bias management strategy was self-recognition of bias (n = 17), described as acknowledging that bias is present. This is the first study identifying palliative care clinicians' biases and bias management strategies in end-of-life goals of care discussions.

Practical estimate of gradient nonlinearity for implementation of apparent diffusion coefficient bias correction.

Science.gov (United States)

Malkyarenko, Dariya I; Chenevert, Thomas L

2014-12-01

To describe an efficient procedure to empirically characterize gradient nonlinearity and correct for the corresponding apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) bias on a clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Spatial nonlinearity scalars for individual gradient coils along superior and right directions were estimated via diffusion measurements of an isotropicic e-water phantom. Digital nonlinearity model from an independent scanner, described in the literature, was rescaled by system-specific scalars to approximate 3D bias correction maps. Correction efficacy was assessed by comparison to unbiased ADC values measured at isocenter. Empirically estimated nonlinearity scalars were confirmed by geometric distortion measurements of a regular grid phantom. The applied nonlinearity correction for arbitrarily oriented diffusion gradients reduced ADC bias from 20% down to 2% at clinically relevant offsets both for isotropic and anisotropic media. Identical performance was achieved using either corrected diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) intensities or corrected b-values for each direction in brain and ice-water. Direction-average trace image correction was adequate only for isotropic medium. Empiric scalar adjustment of an independent gradient nonlinearity model adequately described DWI bias for a clinical scanner. Observed efficiency of implemented ADC bias correction quantitatively agreed with previous theoretical predictions and numerical simulations. The described procedure provides an independent benchmark for nonlinearity bias correction of clinical MRI scanners.

Apparatus bias and place conditioning with ethanol in mice.

Science.gov (United States)

Cunningham, Christopher L; Ferree, Nikole K; Howard, MacKenzie A

2003-12-01

Although the distinction between "biased" and "unbiased" is generally recognized as an important methodological issue in place conditioning, previous studies have not adequately addressed the distinction between a biased/unbiased apparatus and a biased/unbiased stimulus assignment procedure. Moreover, a review of the recent literature indicates that many reports (70% of 76 papers published in 2001) fail to provide adequate information about apparatus bias. This issue is important because the mechanisms underlying a drug's effect in the place-conditioning procedure may differ depending on whether the apparatus is biased or unbiased. The present studies were designed to assess the impact of apparatus bias and stimulus assignment procedure on ethanol-induced place conditioning in mice (DBA/2 J). A secondary goal was to compare various dependent variables commonly used to index conditioned place preference. Apparatus bias was manipulated by varying the combination of tactile (floor) cues available during preference tests. Experiment 1 used an unbiased apparatus in which the stimulus alternatives were equally preferred during a pre-test as indicated by the group average. Experiment 2 used a biased apparatus in which one of the stimuli was strongly preferred by most mice (mean % time on cue = 67%) during the pre-test. In both studies, the stimulus paired with drug (CS+) was assigned randomly (i.e., an "unbiased" stimulus assignment procedure). Experimental mice received four pairings of CS+ with ethanol (2 g/kg, i.p.) and four pairings of the alternative stimulus (CS-) with saline; control mice received saline on both types of trial. Each experiment concluded with a 60-min choice test. With the unbiased apparatus (experiment 1), significant place conditioning was obtained regardless of whether drug was paired with the subject's initially preferred or non-preferred stimulus. However, with the biased apparatus (experiment 2), place conditioning was apparent only when

Length bias correction in gene ontology enrichment analysis using logistic regression.

Science.gov (United States)

Mi, Gu; Di, Yanming; Emerson, Sarah; Cumbie, Jason S; Chang, Jeff H

2012-01-01

When assessing differential gene expression from RNA sequencing data, commonly used statistical tests tend to have greater power to detect differential expression of genes encoding longer transcripts. This phenomenon, called "length bias", will influence subsequent analyses such as Gene Ontology enrichment analysis. In the presence of length bias, Gene Ontology categories that include longer genes are more likely to be identified as enriched. These categories, however, are not necessarily biologically more relevant. We show that one can effectively adjust for length bias in Gene Ontology analysis by including transcript length as a covariate in a logistic regression model. The logistic regression model makes the statistical issue underlying length bias more transparent: transcript length becomes a confounding factor when it correlates with both the Gene Ontology membership and the significance of the differential expression test. The inclusion of the transcript length as a covariate allows one to investigate the direct correlation between the Gene Ontology membership and the significance of testing differential expression, conditional on the transcript length. We present both real and simulated data examples to show that the logistic regression approach is simple, effective, and flexible.

Attentional bias mediates the effect of neurostimulation on emotional vulnerability.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Nigel T M; Basanovic, Julian; Notebaert, Lies; MacLeod, Colin; Clarke, Patrick J F

2017-10-01

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a neuromodulatory technique which has garnered recent interest in the potential treatment for emotion-based psychopathology. While accumulating evidence suggests that tDCS may attenuate emotional vulnerability, critically, little is known about underlying mechanisms of this effect. The present study sought to clarify this by examining the possibility that tDCS may affect emotional vulnerability via its capacity to modulate attentional bias towards threatening information. Fifty healthy participants were randomly assigned to receive either anodal tDCS (2 mA/min) stimulation to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), or sham. Participants were then eye tracked during a dual-video stressor task designed to elicit emotional reactivity, while providing a concurrent in-vivo measure of attentional bias. Greater attentional bias towards threatening information was associated with greater emotional reactivity to the stressor task. Furthermore, the active tDCS group showed reduced attentional bias to threat, compared to the sham group. Importantly, attentional bias was found to statistically mediate the effect of tDCS on emotional reactivity, while no direct effect of tDCS on emotional reactivity was observed. The findings are consistent with the notion that the effect of tDCS on emotional vulnerability may be mediated by changes in attentional bias, holding implications for the application of tDCS in emotion-based psychopathology. The findings also highlight the utility of in-vivo eye tracking measures in the examination of the mechanisms associated with DLPFC neuromodulation in emotional vulnerability. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Strong mechanically induced effects in DC current-biased suspended Josephson junctions

Science.gov (United States)

McDermott, Thomas; Deng, Hai-Yao; Isacsson, Andreas; Mariani, Eros

2018-01-01

Superconductivity is a result of quantum coherence at macroscopic scales. Two superconductors separated by a metallic or insulating weak link exhibit the AC Josephson effect: the conversion of a DC voltage bias into an AC supercurrent. This current may be used to activate mechanical oscillations in a suspended weak link. As the DC-voltage bias condition is remarkably difficult to achieve in experiments, here we analyze theoretically how the Josephson effect can be exploited to activate and detect mechanical oscillations in the experimentally relevant condition with purely DC current bias. We unveil how changing the strength of the electromechanical coupling results in two qualitatively different regimes showing dramatic effects of the oscillations on the DC-voltage characteristic of the device. These include the appearance of Shapiro-type plateaus for weak coupling and a sudden mechanically induced retrapping for strong coupling. Our predictions, measurable in state-of-the-art experimental setups, allow the determination of the frequency and quality factor of the resonator using DC only techniques.

Self-relevant beauty evaluation: Evidence from an event-related potentials study.

Science.gov (United States)

Kong, Fanchang; Zhang, Yan; Tian, Yuan; Fan, Cuiying; Zhou, Zongkui

2015-03-01

This study examines the electrophysiological correlates of beauty evaluation when participants performed the self-reference task. About 13 (7 men, 6 women) undergraduates participated in the experiment using event-related potentials. Results showed that the response to self-relevant information was faster compared to other-relevant information and no significant differences for self-relevant relative to mother-relevant information were observed. Both physical and interior beauty words for self-relevant information showed an enhanced late positive component as compared to other-relevant information. Physical beauty for self-relevant information yielded a larger late positive component in contrast to mother-relevant information but not for interior beauty. This study indicates that beauty is specific to the person who judges it though an individual and one's mother may hold similar views of interior beauty.

Bias against foreign-born or foreign-trained doctors: experimental evidence.

Science.gov (United States)

Louis, Winnifred R; Lalonde, Richard N; Esses, Victoria M

2010-12-01

Bias against foreign-born or -trained medical students and doctors is not well understood, despite its documented impact on recruitment, integration and retention. This research experimentally examines the interaction of location of medical education and nationality in evaluations of doctors' competence and trustworthiness. A convenience sample of prospective patients evaluated fictitious candidates for a position as a doctor in community practice at a new local health clinic. All applicants were described as having the same personality profile, legal qualifications to practise, a multi-degree education and relevant work experience. The location of medical education (the candidate's home country or the UK) and national background (Australia or Pakistan) of the applicants were independently experimentally manipulated. Consistent with previous research on skills discounting and bias, foreign-born candidates were evaluated less favourably than native-born candidates, despite their comparable education level, work experience and personality. However, overseas medical education obtained in the First World both boosted evaluations (of competence and trustworthiness) and attenuated bias based on nationality. The present findings demonstrate the selective discounting of foreign-born doctors' credentials. The data show an interaction of location of medical education and birth nationality in bias against foreign doctors. On an applied level, the data document that the benefits of medical education obtained in the First World can extend beyond its direct outcomes (high-quality training and institutional recognition) to the indirect benefit of the attenuation of patient bias based on nationality. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010.

An analysis of contingent factors for the detection of strategic relevance in business information technologies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Antonio Paños Álvarez

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Information Technologies are resources able to create competitive advantages for companies. In this analysis, the Resource-based perspective have taken special relevance, because it is argued that this advantages should be identified, reached and maintained. This work is positioned in the analysis of several contingent factors in the process of pointing the possible assesment of these advantages. It is aproaching a portfolio for helping to select what Information Technologies are valuable for what companies and in what activity areas and the study of in what way the sector, the technological innovation profile, the size and the financial capacity of the companies affects this process

Both physical exercise and progressive muscle relaxation reduce the facing-the-viewer bias in biological motion perception.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adam Heenan

Full Text Available Biological motion stimuli, such as orthographically projected stick figure walkers, are ambiguous about their orientation in depth. The projection of a stick figure walker oriented towards the viewer, therefore, is the same as its projection when oriented away. Even though such figures are depth-ambiguous, however, observers tend to interpret them as facing towards them more often than facing away. Some have speculated that this facing-the-viewer bias may exist for sociobiological reasons: Mistaking another human as retreating when they are actually approaching could have more severe consequences than the opposite error. Implied in this hypothesis is that the facing-towards percept of biological motion stimuli is potentially more threatening. Measures of anxiety and the facing-the-viewer bias should therefore be related, as researchers have consistently found that anxious individuals display an attentional bias towards more threatening stimuli. The goal of this study was to assess whether physical exercise (Experiment 1 or an anxiety induction/reduction task (Experiment 2 would significantly affect facing-the-viewer biases. We hypothesized that both physical exercise and progressive muscle relaxation would decrease facing-the-viewer biases for full stick figure walkers, but not for bottom- or top-half-only human stimuli, as these carry less sociobiological relevance. On the other hand, we expected that the anxiety induction task (Experiment 2 would increase facing-the-viewer biases for full stick figure walkers only. In both experiments, participants completed anxiety questionnaires, exercised on a treadmill (Experiment 1 or performed an anxiety induction/reduction task (Experiment 2, and then immediately completed a perceptual task that allowed us to assess their facing-the-viewer bias. As hypothesized, we found that physical exercise and progressive muscle relaxation reduced facing-the-viewer biases for full stick figure walkers only. Our

Journal bias or author bias?

Science.gov (United States)

Harris, Ian

2016-01-01

I read with interest the comment by Mark Wilson in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics regarding bias and conflicts of interest in medical journals. Wilson targets one journal (the New England Journal of Medicine: NEJM) and one particular "scandal" to make his point that journals' decisions on publication are biased by commercial conflicts of interest (CoIs). It is interesting that he chooses the NEJM which, by his own admission, had one of the strictest CoI policies and had published widely on this topic. The feeling is that if the NEJM can be guilty, they can all be guilty.

Investigating vulnerability to eating disorders: biases in emotional processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Pringle, A; Harmer, C J; Cooper, M J

2010-04-01

Biases in emotional processing and cognitions about the self are thought to play a role in the maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). However, little is known about whether these difficulties exist pre-morbidly and how they might contribute to risk. Female dieters (n=82) completed a battery of tasks designed to assess the processing of social cues (facial emotion recognition), cognitions about the self [Self-Schema Processing Task (SSPT)] and ED-specific cognitions about eating, weight and shape (emotional Stroop). The 26-item Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26; Garner et al. 1982) was used to assess subclinical ED symptoms; this was used as an index of vulnerability within this at-risk group. Regression analyses showed that biases in the processing of both neutral and angry faces were predictive of our measure of vulnerability (EAT-26). In the self-schema task, biases in the processing of negative self descriptors previously found to be common in EDs predicted vulnerability. Biases in the processing of shape-related words on the Stroop task were also predictive; however, these biases were more important in dieters who also displayed biases in the self-schema task. We were also able to demonstrate that these biases are specific and separable from more general negative biases that could be attributed to depressive symptoms. These results suggest that specific biases in the processing of social cues, cognitions about the self, and also about eating, weight and shape information, may be important in understanding risk and preventing relapse in EDs.

Setting a new paradigm in cognitive science information: contributions to the process of knowing the information professional

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paula Regina Dal' Evedove

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Studies about human cognition represent a relevant perspective in information science, considering the subjective actions of information professionals and dialogic process that should permeate the activity of subjects dealing with the organization and representation of information.Objective: Explore the approach of the cognitive perspective in information science and their new settings by contemporary needs of information to reflect on the process of meeting the professional information through the social reality that permeates the contexts of information.Methodology: Reflection on theoretical aspects that deal with the cognitive development to discuss the implications of the cognitive approach in information science and its evolution in the scope of the representation and processing of information.Results: Research in Information Science must consider issues of cognitive and social order that underlie information processing and the process of knowing the information professional as knowledge structures must be explained from the social context of knowing subjects.Conclusions: There is a need to investigate the process of knowing the information professional in the bias of socio-cognitive approach, targeting new elements for the understanding of the relationship information (cognitive manifestations and its implications on the social dimension.

Predicting Aggressive Tendencies by Visual Attention Bias Associated with Hostile Emotions.