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Resource contentions and performance interferences can lead to workload performance degradation in mixed-workload deployment clusters. Previous work guarantees the resource requirements of latency-sensitive tasks and reduces performance losses to batch jobs by reclaiming surplus resources from over-provisioned tasks. While the fragmentation of resources leads to a mismatch between provisioned resources and task requirements, resulting in high operation overheads and losses of task fairness. This paper proposes TERMS , the task management policies based on task relevance, resource distribution, and task fairness to achieve efficient and low-cost task management. TERMS mainly includes three types of management policies. The task scheduling policy can schedule new tasks according to task relevance. Task selection strategies select tasks for resource provisioning and task resumption based on resource requirements and task fairness. If necessary, the node selection strategy can be used to choose befitting target nodes based on task relevance and node resource information for task migration when eliminating straggler tasks. Evaluation results show that TERMS can further improve the performance of latency-sensitive services and batch jobs, reduce management overheads, and avoid operation failures. • Place latency-sensitive new tasks in the queue according to task relevance. • Select batch tasks to provision resources for latency-sensitive new tasks. • Select batch tasks to provision resources for latency-sensitive straggler tasks. • Ensure task fairness when tasks are preempted or resumed. • Choose befitting target nodes for latency-sensitive straggler task migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To use eye tracking to understand the effects of interruptions in different workload conditions as part of a monitoring and change detection task. Background: Interruptions are detrimental to performance in complex, multitasking domains. There is a need for better display design techniques that help users overcome interruptions regardless of their workload level. This requires understanding a user's attentional state immediately after an interruption in order to determine what type of display adjustments are most suitable. Method: An emergency dispatching simulator was developed with a visual primary task and auditory interruptive task. Two levels of workload were induced by varying the number of emergency vehicles to monitor for changes and the rate of changes to monitor. Eye tracking, performance, and subjective measures (NASA-Task Load Index) were collected and analyzed for 41 participants. Results: As expected, high workload interacted with interruptions to further degrade primary task performance and alter participants' attention allocation immediately after the interruption. Participants in the high workload condition had more narrowed, slower scan patterns immediately after the interruption as compared to before the interruption, as evidenced by lower scanpath length per second and mean saccade amplitude. However, this change was not observed in low workload. Conclusion: High workload modulates the effects of interruptions on performance and eye movements. Users in the high workload condition struggle to quickly scan the display in the seconds following an interruption. Application: The results can provide insight into the type of display adjustments needed right after an interruption in a high-workload environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been a shift in the perception of tasks. Tasks are no longer viewed as 'one-off' activities, and the importance of studying the role of task repetition has been increasingly addressed (Bygate, 2018). However, the way task repetition effects are mediated by other instructional conditions such as corrective feedback has not been widely researched. The current study examined the effects of task repetition and indirect synchronous written corrective feedback (WCF) during collaborative writing on the quality of students' written task performance and the learning of Korean grammar. Fifty-four Korean as a foreign language learners completed a pretest, two collaborative writing tasks, and two posttests over 10 weeks. Their task performance was analysed in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency, and the pretest and posttest results were scored for both suppliance and accuracy of the production of target grammatical features. The findings showed that task repetition improved writing fluency, and while synchronous WCF negatively impacted fluency during collaborative writing, it facilitated accuracy in students' writing. In terms of the learning of target grammatical features, no significant benefit of synchronous WCF was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-Task Learning is a learning paradigm that uses correlated tasks to improve performance generalization. A common way to learn multiple tasks is through the hard parameter sharing approach, in which a single architecture is used to share the same subset of parameters, creating an inductive bias between them during the training process. Due to its simplicity, potential to improve generalization, and reduce computational cost, it has gained the attention of the scientific and industrial communities. However, tasks often conflict with each other, which makes it challenging to define how the gradients of multiple tasks should be combined to allow simultaneous learning. To address this problem, we use the idea of multi-objective optimization to propose a method that takes into account temporal behaviour of the gradients to create a dynamic bias that adjusts the importance of each task during backpropagation. The result of this method is to give more attention to tasks that are diverging or not being benefited during the last iterations, ensuring that the simultaneous learning is heading to the performance maximization of all tasks. As a result, we empirically show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches on learning conflicting tasks. Unlike the adopted baselines, our method ensures that all tasks reach good generalization performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, we consider the memory of motor experts using a real-world task--chefs chopping vegetables. We compare expert chefs to competent home cooks, defined as skill enthusiasts or very good performers whose performance experience is narrower than experts. We considered the possibility that competent home cooks' memory for knife skills is organized differently than chefs', and we predicted that their performance will be more vulnerable to interference than experts' in the face of challenges. We used a novel vegetable-chopping task to test the hypothesis that experts are less vulnerable to motor interference than competents. Trained chefs and competent home cooks performed a chopping task in which they were asked to chop a sweet potato into 5-mm wide slices, matching the beat of a metronome (120 beats/min). Following an initial block of trials, each participant was exposed to an altered frequency interference condition and then performed trials of the original task again. Interference was inferred if the second performance of the original task was changed compared with initial performance. Competents' timing and spatial variability were significantly affected by the interference task, but experts' performance was stable. These results support the idea that the vulnerability of motor memory to interference changes with experience, and that in addition to better performance, experts' motor memories are stored and recalled differently than competents'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making decisions is an important aspect of people's lives. Decisions can be highly critical in nature, with mistakes possibly resulting in extremely adverse consequences. Yet, such decisions have often to be made within a very short period of time and with limited information. This can result in decreased accuracy and efficiency. In this paper, we explore the possibility of increasing speed and accuracy of users engaged in the discrimination of realistic targets presented for a very short time, in the presence of unimodal or bimodal cues. More specifically, we present results from an experiment where users were asked to discriminate between targets rapidly appearing in an indoor environment. Unimodal (auditory) or bimodal (audio-visual) cues could shortly precede the target stimulus, warning the users about its location. Our findings show that, when used to facilitate perceptual decision under time pressure, and in condition of limited information in real-world scenarios, spoken cues can be effective in boosting performance (accuracy, reaction times or both), and even more so when presented in bimodal form. However, we also found that cue timing plays a critical role and, if the cue-stimulus interval is too short, cues may offer no advantage. In a post-hoc analysis of our data, we also show that congruency between the response location and both the target location and the cues, can interfere with the speed and accuracy in the task. These effects should be taken in consideration, particularly when investigating performance in realistic tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metacognition is often considered a critical component of learning and higher-order cognition; however, does metacognitive accuracy remain constant across all tasks, specifically in tasks that involve physical or procedural components? To investigate the consistency of metacognitive judgments across various task types, participants completed word and number recall tasks, and also completed three simple physical skill tasks (e.g., catching a ball in a cup). Participants made metacognitive judgments about their performance in all tasks. Results indicated that while participants demonstrated traditional levels of relative metacognitive accuracy in more cognitive tasks, participants were significantly more accurate in their judgments for physical skill tasks. In other words, relative accuracy for metacognitive judgments in physical tasks appears to be significantly higher than for cognitive tasks. This represents the first such demonstration of this effect and suggests that characteristics of physical tasks somehow improve participants' judgments of how well they have learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For complex dynamic interactive tasks (such as aviating), operators need to continuously extract information from areas of interest (AOIs) through eye movement to maintain high level of situation awareness (SA), as failures of SA may cause task performance degradation, even system accident. Most of the current eye movement models focus on either static tasks (such as image viewing) or simple dynamic tasks (such as video watching), without considering SA. In this study, an eye movement model with the goal of maximizing SA is proposed based on Markov decision process (MDP), which is designed to describe the dynamic eye movement of experienced operators in dynamic interactive tasks. Two top-down factors, expectancy and value, are introduced into this model to represent the update probability and the importance of information in AOIs, respectively. In particular, the model regards sequence of eye fixations to different AOIs as sequential decisions to maximize the SA-related reward (value) in the context of uncertain information update (expectancy). Further, this model was validated with a flight simulation experiment. Results show that the predicted probabilities of fixation on and shift between AOIs are highly correlated ( R = 0.928 and R = 0.951 , respectively) with those of the experiment data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: Increased postural task difficulty was associated with greater responses for pupillary response, posterior alpha power, and fronto-central theta/beta power ratio. Greater pupillary response correlated with lower posterior EEG alpha power during eyes occluded standing with and without dual-task. Lastly, a greater pupillary response was associated with lower CoP displacement in the anterior-posterior direction during dual-task eyes occluded. The pupillary response reflects mental effort (or cognitive workload) during cognitive and/or motor tasks including standing postural control. EEG has been shown to be a non-invasive measure to assess the cortical involvement of postural control. The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of increasing postural task difficulty on the pupillary response and EEG outcomes and their relationship in young adults. Fifteen adults completed multiple trials of standing: eyes open, eyes open while performing a dual-task (auditory two-back), eyes occluded, and eyes occluded with a dual-task. Participants stood on a force plate and wore an eye tracker and 256-channel EEG cap during the conditions. The power spectrum was analyzed for absolute theta (4–7 Hz), alpha (8–13 Hz), and beta (13–30 Hz) frequency bands. Increased postural task difficulty was associated with greater pupillary response (p < 0.001) and increased posterior region alpha power (p = 0.001) and fronto-central region theta/beta power ratio (p = 0.01). Greater pupillary response correlated with lower posterior EEG alpha power during eyes-occluded standing with (r = −0.67, p = 0.01) and without (r = −0.69, p = 0.01) dual-task. A greater pupillary response was associated with lower CoP displacement in the anterior–posterior direction during dual-task eyes-occluded standing (r = −0.60, p = 0.04). The pupillary response and EEG alpha power appear to capture similar cortical processes that are increasingly utilized during progressively more challenging postural task conditions. As the pupillary response also correlated with task performance, this measurement may serve as a valuable stand-alone or adjunct tool to understand the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of postural control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the analysis of a work operation on a virtual model of a production workplace. In order for the virtual workplace to correspond to reality as much as possible, 3D scanning was used to create a digital model of the part that the worker is manipulating. Tecnomatix Jack software was used to create a virtual workplace model and simulate worker movements. The operation was analyzed by four different methods, namely RULA analysis, OWAS analysis, Comfort Assessment analysis and Lower Back analysis. The results of all analyzes for the same task show that the job is not properly designed and it is necessary to propose workplace changes to eliminate the identified problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature suggests that deaf individuals lag behind their hearing peers in terms of mathematical abilities. However, it is still unknown how unique sensorimotor experiences, like deafness, might shape number-space interactions. We still do not know either the spatial frame of reference deaf individuals use to map numbers onto space in different numerical tasks. To examine these issues, deaf, hearing signer and hearing control adults were asked to perform a number comparison and a parity judgment task with the hands uncrossed and crossed over the body midline. Deafness appears to selectively affect the performance of the numerical task relying on verbal processes while keeping intact the task relying on visuospatial processes. Indeed, while a classic SNARC effect was found in all groups and in both hand postures of the number comparison task, deaf adults did not show the SNARC effect in both hand postures of the parity judgment task. These results are discussed in light of the spatial component characterizing the counting system used in sign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experiment tested whether personal choice vs. external assignment of task characteristics moderates the effect of incidental affective stimulation on effort-related cardiovascular response. We expected strong action shielding and low receptivity for incidental affective influences when participants could choose themselves the stimulus color of an easy memory task. By contrast, when the stimulus color was assigned, we expected weak action shielding and high receptivity. As expected, participants in the assigned color condition showed stronger cardiac pre-ejection period reactivity when exposed to sad music than when exposed to happy music during task performance. These music effects did not appear among participants who could personally choose the stimulus color. Our results replicate previous research by showing that personal choice leads to action shielding, whereas individuals remain receptive for affective influences during volition when task characteristics are assigned. • Half the participants got to personally choose task characteristics; the other half got assigned to the task characteristics • Participants worked on an easy memory task and were presented with happy vs. sad music during task performance • PEP reactivity was stronger in the sad than in the happy music condition, but only when participants did not get to choose • The results show that personal choice leads to action shielding against incidental affective influences on action execution [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate cheating in work groups, to empirically test the idea of an honest workplace environment as a determinant of performance. Three individuals receive team-based performance pay for executing a real-effort task. In addition, two of them have the opportunity to obtain a bonus in a dice game, which allows cheating without exposure by misreporting a secret die roll. We are particularly interested in the behavioral response of the bystander as the potential witness to the dishonest action. To identify the implications of lies at work, the rules of the bonus game were altered to randomly prevent cheating, or not, across treatment conditions while holding the monetary consequences constant. Survey data enables us to analyze effect heterogeneity and to explore mechanisms underlying behavioral responses. We begin our analysis by estimating the mean lying rate and find that the opportunity-to-cheat is exploited in roughly 42% of cases. The probability of misreporting increases if the cheater's partner in crime is male. Contrary to claims on the importance of honesty at work, we do not observe a reduction in performance when cheating takes place, neither for the bystander nor for the whole team. Bounded awareness could be an explanation, as we find substantial evidence for effect heterogeneity along the lines of information preferences. Bystanders with higher preferences for inconvenient information provide relatively low task performance, compared to those with lower information preferences, who seem to turn a blind eye to the dishonest action of their co-workers by putting increased effort into their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The working memory Stroop task is to name the color of a rectangular patch with keypress while holding a color word in working memory. Previous studies using this variant of the Stroop task have shown that congruency between the color patch and the color word significantly affects both color naming and working memory, with the worsening of task performance when the color patch is semantically incongruent rather than congruent with the color word. However, it remains unclear with regard to cognitive mechanisms underlying such congruency effects in the working memory Stroop task. By including a control condition among the congruent and incongruent conditions in a working memory Stroop task, the present study showed that nearly all of the working memory Stroop effect can be facilitation, and that interference, if present, is markedly smaller than facilitation in this form of the Stroop effect. There was also a critical contrast between the working memory and classic Stroop effects in terms of facilitation and interference, with larger facilitation and smaller interference in the working memory Stroop effect than in the classic Stroop effect. Moreover, working memory for a color word can be either facilitated or interfered with by the perceptual judgment (color naming) of an interposed color patch during the retention interval, depending on whether the color patch is semantically congruent or incongruent with the color word. Together, these results suggest that both facilitation and interference mechanisms can contribute to the overall congruency effects in the working memory Stroop task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cognitive processes underlying the ability of human performers to trade speed for accuracy is often conceptualized within evidence accumulation models, but it is not yet clear whether and how these models can account for decision-making in the presence of various sources of conflicting information. In the present study, we provide evidence that speed-accuracy tradeoffs (SATs) can have opposing effects on performance across two different conflict tasks. Specifically, in a single preregistered experiment, the mean reaction time (RT) congruency effect in the Simon task increased, whereas the mean RT congruency effect in the Eriksen task decreased, when the focus was put on response speed versus accuracy. Critically, distributional RT analyses revealed distinct delta plot patterns across tasks, thus indicating that the unfolding of distractor-based response activation in time is sufficient to explain the opposing pattern of congruency effects. In addition, a recent evidence accumulation model with the notion of time-varying conflicting information was successfully fitted to the experimental data. These fits revealed task-specific time-courses of distractor-based activation and suggested that time pressure substantially decreases decision boundaries in addition to reducing the duration of non-decision processes and the rate of evidence accumulation. Overall, the present results suggest that time pressure can have multiple effects in decision-making under conflict, but that strategic adjustments of decision boundaries in conjunction with different time-courses of distractor-based activation can produce counteracting effects on task performance with different types of distracting sources of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extractive foraging tasks, such as digging, are broadly practiced among hunter-gatherer populations in different ecological conditions. Despite tuber-gathering tasks being widely practiced by children and adolescents, little research has focused on the physical traits associated with digging ability. Here, we assess how age and energetic expenditure affect the performance of this extractive task. Using an experimental approach, the energetic cost of digging to extract simulated tubers is evaluated in a sample of 40 urban children and adolescents of both sexes to measure the intensity of the physical effort and the influence of several anatomical variables. Digging is a moderately vigorous activity for inexperienced girls and boys from 8 to 14 years old, and it requires significant physical effort depending on strength and body size. However, extracting subterranean resources is a task that may be performed effectively without previous training. Sex-specific and age-specific differences in the net energy expenditure of digging were detected, even though both sexes exhibited similar proficiency levels when performing the task. Our results highlight that both boys and girls spend considerable energy while digging, with differences largely driven by body size and age. Other factors beyond ability and experience, such as strength and body size, may influence the proficiency of juveniles in performing certain physically intensive foraging tasks, such as gathering tubers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals who contract Covid-19 often experience problems with memory, attention, and concentration, even after recovering from the initial illness. In the current manuscript, we argue that these symptoms are likely to manifest as cognitive failures in the workplace. Downstream, cognitive failures were expected to be associated with decreased task performance and increased turnover intentions. We collected data from a sample of working adults who either had (n = 45) or had not (n = 49) contracted Covid-19 at least one month prior to the study. Both groups were matched on key demographic characteristics. As anticipated, individuals who had contracted Covid-19 reported significantly more cognitive failures at work, relative to individuals who did not. More so, having contracted Covid-19 had significant indirect effects on task performance and turnover intentions via cognitive failure. These results indicate that beyond physical harm, Covid-19 can also have a detrimental influence on an individual's capacity to perform at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterning, as a component of early mathematic knowledge, is a common activity carried out at elementary levels in which children are not equally successful. This study aimed to measure different variables affecting performance on patterning tasks in early childhood. For this purpose, the success of Pre-K (N = 33), K (N = 31) and first-grade (N = 33) children when solving 14 repeating-pattern tasks, which varied in complexity, was analysed. The results revealed no significant differences between core-2 and core-4 length patterns, and greater success with patterns involving size. The study also introduces distractors, as a novel factor, in the patterning activities related to the presence of contradictory or surplus data. The impact of each factor and the relations between complexity and difficulty on the patterning tasks are discussed in order to contribute to the design of teaching itineraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

View planning (VP) is a technique that guides the adjustment of the sensor's postures in multi-view perception tasks. It converts the perception process into active perception, which improves the intelligence and reduces the resource consumption of the robot. We propose a generic VP system for multiple kinds of visual perception. The VP system is built on the basis of the formal description of the visual task, and the next best view is calculated by the system. When dealing with a given visual task, we can simply update its description as the input of the VP system, and obtain the defined best view in real time. Formal description of the perception task includes the task's status, the objects' prior information library, the visual representation status and the optimization goal. The task's status and the visual representation status are updated when data are received at a new view. If the task's status has not reached its goal, candidate views are sorted based on the updated visual representation status, and the next best view that can minimize the entropy of the model space is chosen as the output of the VP system. Experiments of view planning for 3D recognition and reconstruction tasks are conducted, and the result shows that our algorithm has good performance on different tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an analysis of the basic assumptions of information theory with an emphasis on its impact on the implementation of occupational health and safety. The concept of information is used today in almost all areas within its own context. In doing so, this concept of application is a specific phenomenon that arises from the nature of a scientific discipline. The first part of the paper presents the connection between information theory and the implementation of occupational health and safety, with the definition of the goal, purpose, tasks and research methods. The second part of the paper presents the basic settings of information theory with the definition of information in the field of semiotics. In addition, the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and aesthetic aspects of information and the impact mentioned in the field of occupational health and safety are considered. The impact of information on the implementation of occupational health and safety is emphasized, especially from the aspect of accurate transmission and understanding of all relevant information. Occupational health and safety are an integral part of every work process, and the importance of transmitting accurate and up-to-date information is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, it is concluded that the impact of information on the implementation of occupational health and safety is very large, and in some situations crucial for the safe performance of work and tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that fear and avoidance responding based on derived transformation of functions may be considered functionally independent. The current study examined the impact of a fear-related verbal-rehearsal task on performance on two implicit relational assessment procedures (IRAPs), actual approach behavior towards a live spider (a BAT), and the relationship between the IRAPs and the BAT. The study was conducted over 3 separate days. Day 1 involved exposure to a series of questionnaires, the fear-related verbal-rehearsal task and homework. Day 2 involved a second exposure to the fear-related verbal-rehearsal task and exposure to the IRAPs and BAT. The final day involved a second exposure to the IRAPs and BAT. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (i.e., control, accept, or reduce fear). Broadly similar findings were obtained for performance on the IRAPs as were reported by Leech et al. (2017). No significant differences between the conditions emerged on the self-report measures, IRAPs, or the BAT. However, correlations between performances on the IRAPs and the BAT were concentrated almost exclusively in the control and reduce-fear conditions rather than the accept-fear condition. The replication of results reported here provide further evidence of the functional independence of approach and avoidance responding. Furthermore, the differential pattern of correlations observed provide further evidence that the fear-related verbal-rehearsal task affected a behavior–behavior relation, which may be directly relevant to the concept of defusion in the ACT literature. In addition, the differential arbitrarily applicable relational responding effects (DAARRE) model offers an alternative explanation for the results reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This three-wave study explored whether living a calling (at work) mediated the relation between unnecessary tasks (time wasting work tasks) and socio-contextual performance at work (cynicism, organizational citizenship behavior). Participants were 518 Finnish white- and blue-collar employees, who were followed up in 2018, 2019, and 2020. The results of structural equation modeling showed that unnecessary tasks at Time 1 related negatively to living a calling at Time 2, which, in turn, related to cynicism and organizational citizenship behavior at T3. Thus, living a calling mediated the relation between unnecessary tasks and the outcomes. We found no evidence for the moderator role of living a calling between unnecessary tasks and the outcomes. Unnecessary tasks should be minimized in organizations to promote living a calling and subsequent positive outcomes predicted by calling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT) has gained validity evidence from several studies. However, various modifications have been applied to the original version, which have never been compared systematically. In Study 1, we tested 120 healthy participants to directly compare two versions of the EEfRT. In Study 2, we tested a larger sample of 394 healthy participants to further examine the original EEfRT. We replicated the split-half reliability of both task versions. However, self-reported personality traits (e.g., trait BAS) correlated with only some task performance parameters in Study 1, which did not replicate for the original EEfRT in Study 2. Our results indicate complex and sometimes inconsistent relations between different personality traits, task properties, and reward attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural oscillations are evident across cortex but their spatial structure is not well- explored. Are oscillations stationary or do they form "traveling waves", i.e., spatially organized patterns whose peaks and troughs move sequentially across cortex? Here, we show that oscillations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) organized as traveling waves in the theta (4-8Hz), alpha (8-12Hz) and beta (12-30Hz) bands. Some traveling waves were planar but most rotated. The waves were modulated during performance of a working memory task. During baseline conditions, waves flowed bidirectionally along a specific axis of orientation. Waves in different frequency bands could travel in different directions. During task performance, there was an increase in waves in one direction over the other, especially in the beta band. Author summary: We found that oscillations in the prefrontal cortex form "traveling waves". Traveling waves are spatially extended patterns in which aligned peaks of activity move sequentially across the cortical surface. Some traveling waves were planar but most rotated. The prefrontal cortex is important for working memory. The traveling waves changed when monkeys performed a working memory task. There was an increase in waves in one direction over the other, especially in the beta band. Traveling waves can serve specific functions. For example, they help maintain network status and help control timing relationships between spikes. Given their functional advantages, a greater understanding of traveling waves should lead to a greater understanding of cortical function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central cloud facilities based on virtual machines offer many benefits to reduce the scheduling costs and improve service availability and accessibility. The approach of cloud computing is practical due to the combination of security features and online services. In the tasks transfer, the source and target domains have differing feature spaces. This challenge becomes more complicated in network traffic, which leads to data transfer delay, and some critical tasks could not deliver at the right time. This paper proposes an efficient optimization method for task scheduling based on a hybrid multi-verse optimizer with a genetic algorithm called MVO-GA. The proposed MVO-GA is proposed to enhance the performance of tasks transfer via the cloud network based on cloud resources' workload. It is necessary to provide adequate transfer decisions to reschedule the transfer tasks based on the gathered tasks' efficiency weight in the cloud. The proposed method (MVO-GA) works on multiple properties of cloud resources: speed, capacity, task size, number of tasks, number of virtual machines, and throughput. The proposed method successfully optimizes the task scheduling of a large number of tasks (i.e., 1000–2000). The proposed MVO-GA got promising results in optimizing the large cloud tasks' transfer time, which reflects its effectiveness. The proposed method is evaluated based on using the simulation environment of the cloud using MATLAB distrusted system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of temporal difference (TD) reinforcement learning is to maximize outcomes and improve future decision-making. It does so by utilizing a prediction error (PE), which quantifies the difference between the expected and the obtained outcome. In gambling tasks, however, decision-making cannot be improved because of the lack of learnability. On the basis of the idea that TD utilizes two independent bits of information from the PE (valence and surprise), we asked which of these aspects is affected when a task is not learnable. We contrasted behavioral data and ERPs in a learning variant and a gambling variant of a simple two-armed bandit task, in which outcome sequences were matched across tasks. Participants were explicitly informed that feedback could be used to improve performance in the learning task but not in the gambling task, and we predicted a corresponding modulation of the aspects of the PE. We used a model-based analysis of ERP data to extract the neural footprints of the valence and surprise information in the two tasks. Our results revealed that task learnability modulates reinforcement learning via the suppression of surprise processing but leaves the processing of valence unaffected. On the basis of our model and the data, we propose that task learnability can selectively suppress TD learning as well as alter behavioral adaptation based on a flexible cost–benefit arbitration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on control adaptation theory, the two aspects of perfectionism are thought to improve task performance when appropriate task performance strategies are required. In this study, perfectionist effort improved speed only in situations requiring speed (i.e., situations requiring aspirational strategies), whereas in situations requiring accuracy (i.e., situations requiring vigilance strategies) We tested two hypotheses that only perfectionist concerns improve accuracy. Sixty-two university students worked on a dot-to-dot task for a certain amount of time. Experimental participants were assigned to either the aspiration strategy group or the vigilance strategy group. Multiple regression analysis showed that perfectionist effort increased the speed of task performance only in the aspiration strategy group. However, neither of the two aspects of perfectionism affected the accuracy of task performance in either group. The hypothesis was partially supported, and it was shown that perfectionist effort works to perform tasks efficiently and improve task performance in situations where speed is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective: Working memory is an essential cognitive skill for storing and processing limited amounts of information over short time periods. Researchers disagree about the extent to which socioeconomic position affects children's working memory, yet no study has systematically synthesised the literature regarding this topic. The current review therefore aimed to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic position and working memory in children, regarding both the magnitude and the variability of the association. Methods: The review protocol was registered on PROSPERO and the PRISMA checklist was followed. Embase, Psycinfo and MEDLINE were comprehensively searched via Ovid from database inception until 3rd June 2021. Studies were screened by two reviewers at all stages. Studies were eligible if they included typically developing children aged 0–18 years old, with a quantitative association reported between any indicator of socioeconomic position and children's working memory task performance. Studies were synthesised using two data-synthesis methods: random effects meta-analyses and a Harvest plot. Key findings: The systematic review included 64 eligible studies with 37,737 individual children (aged 2 months to 18 years). Meta-analyses of 36 of these studies indicated that socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with significantly lower scores working memory measures; a finding that held across different working memory tasks, including those that predominantly tap into storage (d = 0.45; 95% CI 0.27 to 0.62) as well as those that require processing of information (d = 0.52; 0.31 to 0.72). A Harvest plot of 28 studies ineligible for meta-analyses further confirmed these findings. Finally, meta-regression analyses revealed that the association between socioeconomic position and working memory was not moderated by task modality, risk of bias, socioeconomic indicator, mean age in years, or the type of effect size. Conclusion: This is the first systematic review to investigate the association between socioeconomic position and working memory in children. Socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with lower working memory ability in children, and that this association was similar across different working memory tasks. Given the strong association between working memory, learning, and academic attainment, there is a clear need to share these findings with practitioners working with children, and investigate ways to support children with difficulties in working memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into the earliest development of inhibitory control is limited by a lack of suitable tasks. In particular, commonly used inhibitory control tasks frequently have too high language and working memory demands for children under 3 years of age. Furthermore, researchers currently tend to shift to a new set of inhibitory control tasks between infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood, raising doubts about whether the same function is being measured. Tasks that are structurally equivalent across age could potentially help resolve this issue. In the current report, a new response inhibition task, the Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task (ECITT), was developed. This task can be minimally modified to suit different ages, whilst remaining structurally equivalent. In the new task, participants have to overcome a tendency to respond to a frequently rewarded location on a touchscreen and instead make an alternative response. The ECITT was validated in three independent studies (with additional data, N = 166, reported in Supporting Information). In Study 1 (N = 81), cross-sectional data indicated that inhibitory performance on the task improved significantly between 24 and 30 months of age. In Study 2 (N = 38), longitudinal data indicated steady improvement in inhibitory control between 18, 21 and 24 months, with significant stability in individual performance differences between each consecutive age in terms of accuracy (but not in terms of reaction time). Finally, in Study 3 (N = 64), inhibitory performance on a faster-paced version of the same task showed a similar developmental course across the lifespan (4–84 years) to other response inhibition tasks and was significantly correlated with Stop-signal performance. The ECITT extends the assessment of response inhibition earlier than previous tasks–into early toddlerhood. Because the task is simple and structurally equivalent across age, future longitudinal studies should benefit from using the ECITT to investigate the development of inhibitory control in a consistent manner across the toddler years and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work on physiological and other behavioral correlates of motives often assumes that motives exert a direct effect on behavior once activated. Motivational intensity theory, however, suggests that this does not always apply. In the context of task engagement, motive strength should exert a direct effect on myocardial beta-adrenergic activity if task difficulty is unclear, but not if task difficulty is known. The presented study tested this prediction for the impact of the explicit achievement motive on myocardial beta-adrenergic activity—assessed as pre-ejection period (PEP) reactivity during task performance. Seventy-eight participants performed one of two versions of a mental arithmetic task. After having completed the achievement motive scale of the Personality Research Form, participants were either informed about the difficulty of the task or not before working on it. Participants' PEP reactivity during task performance provided evidence for the predicted moderating impact of clarity of task difficulty: PEP reactivity increased with increasing achievement motive strength if task difficulty was unclear, but not if it was clear. These findings demonstrate that the explicit achievement motive impact on myocardial beta-adrenergic activity is moderated by clarity of task difficulty and suggest that motive strength does not always translate into direct effects on physiology and behavior. • Explicit achievement motive (sanAch) strength affects PEP response. • Clarity of task demand moderates the sanAch-PEP relationship. • Higher sanAch is associated with stronger PEP response if task demand is unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do we compare the difficulty of different kinds of tasks, and how we do sequence tasks of different kinds when the basis for the ordering is the tasks' difficulty levels? The ability to do these things requires a common currency, but the identity of that currency, if it exists, is unknown. We hypothesized that people may believe that the time that attention is paid to tasks enables people to compare and sequence tasks of different kinds. To evaluate this hypothesis, we tested three groups of participants. One group estimated the proportion of time that performance of a task requires attention—what we called attention time proportions or ATPs. We obtained ATPs for tasks that were "more intellectual" (counting) and others that were "more physical" (locomotion). Two additional groups made 2-alternative-forced-choice decisions about the relative ease and preferred sequencing of all possible pairs of tasks for which ATPs were independently obtained. We found that ATPs predicted judgments of task difficulty and preferred task order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We typically observe a decrement in vigilance with time-on-task, which favors the propensity for mind-wandering, i.e., the shifting of attention from the task at hand to task-unrelated thoughts. Here, we examined participants' mind-wandering, either intentional or unintentional, while performing vigilance tasks that tap different components of vigilance. Intentional mind-wandering is expected mainly when the arousal component is involved, whereas unintentional mind-wandering is expected mainly in tasks involving the executive component. The Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) assessed the arousal component, whereas the Sustained Attention to Response task (SART) assessed the executive component of vigilance. The two types of mind-wandering were probed throughout task execution. The results showed that the overall rate of mind-wandering was higher in the PVT than in the SART. Intentional mind-wandering was higher with the PVT than with the SART, whereas unintentional mind-wandering was higher with the SART than with the PVT. Regarding mind-wandering as a function of vigilance decrement with time-on-task, unintentional mind-wandering in the PVT increased between blocks 1 and 2 and then stabilized, whereas a progressive increase was observed in the SART. Regarding intentional mind-wandering, a progressive increase was only observed in the SART. The differential patterns of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering in both tasks suggest that, intentional mind wandering occurs mainly in arousal tasks in which propensity to mind-wander has little impact on task performance. However, unintentional mind-wandering occurs mainly in executive tasks as a result of a failure of cognitive control, which promotes attentional resources to be diverted toward mind-wandering. These results are discussed in the context of the resource-control model of mind-wandering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the effects of dual tasking in patients with chronic inflammatory rheumatic diseases are limited. The aim of this study was to assess dual tasking while walking in patients with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) in comparison to healthy controls. Thirty patients with axSpA and thirty healthy controls underwent a 10-m walk test at a self-selected comfortable walking speed in single- and dual-task conditions. Foot-worn inertial sensors were used to compute spatiotemporal gait parameters. Analysis of spatiotemporal gait parameters showed that the secondary manual task negatively affected walking performance in terms of significantly decreased mean speed (p < 0.001), stride length (p < 0.001) and swing time (p = 0.008) and increased double support (p = 0.002) and stance time (p = 0.008). No significant interaction of group and condition was observed. Both groups showed lower gait performance in dual task condition by reducing speed, swing time and stride length, and increasing double support and stance time. Patients with axSpA were not more affected by the dual task than matched healthy controls, suggesting that the secondary manual task did not require greater attention in patients with axSpA. Increasing the complexity of the walking and/or secondary task may increase the sensitivity of the dual-task design to axial spondyloarthritis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A clear understanding of how human brain networks reflect task performance has been lacking, in part due to methodological difficulties. A new study combines the temporal resolution of EEG, MRI source localization, and multivariate modeling to address this need. This Primer explores a new study in PLOS Biology that combines the millisecond temporal resolution of EEG with MRI-based source localization and multivariate modeling to track dynamic task representations in human brain networks throughout a trial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Error‐related negativity (ERN), an electroencephalogram (EEG) component following an erroneous response, has been associated with the subjective motivational relevance of error commission. A smaller EEG event, the correct response negativity (CRN), occurs after a correct response. It is unclear why correct behavior evokes a neural response similar to error commission. CRN might reflect suboptimal performance: in tasks where speed is motivationally relevant (i.e., incentivized), a correct but slow response may be experienced as a minor error. The literature is mixed on the relationship between CRN and response time (RT), possibly due to different motivational structures, tasks, or individual traits. We examined ERN and CRN in a go/no‐go task where correctness and speed were encouraged using a points‐based feedback system. A key individual trait, regulatory focus, describes a person's tendency to seek gains (promotion focus) and avoid losses (prevention focus). Trait regulatory focus was measured, and participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: points gain, points loss, and informative‐only feedback. Participants committed too few errors to reliably model ERN effects. CRN amplitude related to RT in all feedback conditions, with slower responses having larger CRN. Participants with stronger promotion focus had a more exaggerated RT/CRN relationship in the point gain condition, suggesting that regulatory fit influences the motivational relevance of speed and thus the negative subjective experience and CRN for slower responses. These findings are consistent with the claim that CRN reflects RT when RT is motivationally relevant and that the CRN/RT relationship reflects the degree of subjective motivational relevance. Our findings show that larger correct response negativities are associated with slower responses in a task with explicit response time feedback. Using regulatory fit theory, we further show that the correct response negativity reflects subjective motivational value from regulatory fit between promotion orientation strength and feedback framed as point gains. These findings suggest that correct response negativity reflects response time when response time is motivationally relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embedding a prospective memory task in an ongoing activity can interfere with performance of that ongoing activity. One explanation of this task interference is that it entails (a) adopting a retrieval mode or readiness to encounter the targets that indicate when to perform the intended action and (b) checking the environment for those targets. An experiment using a new method is reported and provides evidence for these processes. On control trials, participants performed just the ongoing activity (a short-term memory task combined with a 4-choice RT task). On experimental trials, a prospective memory task (press the Enter key if certain words appear in the short-term memory task) was embedded in the ongoing activity. Evidence for adopting a retrieval mode came from finding slower RT task performance on control trials when participants had already been instructed about the prospective memory task than when they had not yet been so instructed. Evidence for target checking came from finding slower RT task performance on experimental trials when a target could appear in any one of five locations than in just one location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have used the Fitts' Law to predict the performance of pointing task on touch screens. It was found that moving distance, target width, and the direction of motion would affect the task performance. The present research aimed to investigate the impact of the initial and terminal positions (ITPs) on pointing performance in two Exps. ITPs were divided into two categories: center of a screen and outer of a screen (center ↔ outer) pointing, and outer of a screen to outer of a screen (outer→outer) pointing. In Exp 1, 30 participants performed the center ↔ outer pointing tasks with 8 directions. The results showed that the outer → center movement was significantly faster than the center → outer at 45°, 90°, and 180°. In Exp 2, 30 participants performed the outer → outer pointing tasks with eight directions. The current study revealed that the ITPs influenced the performance of the pointing task, possibly due to human biomechanical characteristics associated with different movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of Q-learning methods in multi-robot systems is a challenging area. Multi-robot systems have dynamic and partially observable nature because of robot's independent decision-making and acting mechanisms. Whereas, Q-learning is defined on Markovian environments theoretically. One way to apply Q-learning in multi robot systems is centralized learning. It learns optimal Q-values for state space of overall system and joint action spaces of all agents. In this case, the system can be considered as stationary and optimal solutions can be converged. But, centralized learning requires full knowledge of the environment, perfect inter-robot communication and good computational power. Especially for large systems, the computational cost becomes huge because of exponentially growing learning space size with the number of robots. The proposed approach in this study, subG-CQL, divides the overall system into small-sized sub-groups without adversely affecting the system's task performing abilities. Each sub-group consists of less number of robots performing less tasks and learns in centralized manner for its own team. So, the learning space dimension is reduced to a reasonable level and required communication remains limited to the robots in the same the sub-group. Due the centralized learning is used, it is expected that the successful results are achieved. Experimental studies show that the proposed algorithm provides increase in the task assignment performance of the system and efficient use of system resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extended practice on a particular cognitive task can boost the performance of other tasks, even though they themselves have not been practised. This transfer of benefits appears to be specific, occurring most when tasks are very similar to those being trained. But what type of similarity is most important for predicting transfer? This question is addressed with a tightly controlled randomised design, with a relatively large sample (N = 175) and an adaptive control group. We created a hierarchical set of nested assessment tasks. Participants then trained on two of the tasks: one was relatively "low" in the hierarchy requiring just simultaneous judgements of shapes' spikiness, whereas the other was relatively "high" requiring delayed judgements of shapes' spikiness or number of spikes in a switching paradigm. Using the full complement of nested tasks before and after training, we could then test whether and how these "low" and "high" training effects cascade through the hierarchy. For both training groups, relative to the control, whether or not an assessment task shared a single specific feature was the best predictor of transfer patterns. For the low-level training group, the overall proportion of feature overlap also significantly predicted transfer, but the same was not true for the high-level training group. Finally, pre-training between-task correlations were not predictive of the pattern of transfer for either group. Together these findings provide an experimental exploration of the specificity of transfer and establish the nature of task overlap that is crucial for the transfer of performance improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-bout focused-attention meditation (FAM) and open-monitoring meditation (OMM) are assumed to bias metacontrol states towards more persistent versus more flexible processing, respectively. In Experiment 1, we tested whether monitoring and updating of working memory (WM) representations in an N -back task with high (3-back), medium (2-back), and low (1-back) WM demands (varied within participants) is affected by preceding single-bout FAM or OMM meditation (varied between participants and compared with a control group). The results showed that FAM promotes WM performance in the medium (2-back), but not in the high (3-back) or low (1-back) demand condition, whereas OMM did not affect WM performance. A replication of the 2-back condition only (Experiment 2) showed no meditation effect, but a replication of the 3-back condition only (Experiment 3) produced a similar pattern as the 2-back condition in Experiment 1, with FAM promoting performance compared with OMM and the control condition. Taken together, these findings suggest that the single-bout FAM does promote WM performance but only if the capacity demands are neither too high nor too low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of biometric data (BD) records promises to advance the software engineering field. The rapid adoption of wearable computing technology has widely increased the amount of BD records available. Several aspects about the use of BD records in software engineering field are unknown, such as body measurements used to support daily tasks, and empirical methods that are used to evaluate their benefits. Consequently, a thorough understanding of state-of-the-art techniques still remains limited. This article, therefore, aims at providing a classification and a thematic analysis of studies on the use of BD records in the context of software development. Moreover, it seeks to introduce a classification taxonomy, and pinpoints research gaps, challenges and trends. A systematic mapping of the literature was designed and performed based on well-established practical guidelines. In total, 40 primary studies were analysed and categorised, which were selected by applying a careful filtering process from a sample of 3930 studies to answer seven research questions. Over 77% of articles use more than one biometric aspect to analyse tasks performed by developers; over 47% of articles used eye-track sensor to analyse biometric factors, followed by brain-wearable sensors with 40%, skin sensor with 22%, cardiac sensor with 20%, and others fewer representatives; most studies analysed had their quality assessed as high; most studies were published in journal. This study provides a systematic map of studies that use BD records in software engineering, thereby serving as a basis for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schizophrenia is known to be associated with attentional deficits. Few studies have examined whether the disorder is also associated with a deficit in the ability to divide attention, and they have given contradictory results. Some have reported that patients show greater loss of performance than healthy controls when moving from single tasks to dual tasks, and others have reported that performance loss is similar in both groups or even that patients perform the dual task better than either task on its own. To help resolve this controversy, we performed a first study in which we designed a dual task paradigm with a group of 36 healthy participants. This dual task involves 2 tasks of equivalent difficulty that make use of different sensory modalities. In the second study, we gave this dual task to 23 patients with schizophrenia and 25 healthy participants. Both groups decreased similarly their performance in dual tasks, but the patients showed lower baseline performance in the single task. Our findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia and healthy participants use similar strategies to divide their attention, but in a high-degrading stimuli condition patients perform below the controls in a single task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to systematically analyze the literature surrounding dual-task (DT) effects on gait in typically developing children (TDC) and to conduct meta-analyses where applicable. After reviewing the abstracts of 676 articles, a total of 22 studies were included. The outcomes of interest were relative change in gait speed, cadence, stride length, double support time, variability in stride length between single and DT walking; and the exposures were concurrent tasks used for DT gait assessment. DT significantly affected each gait parameter (point estimate (PE), ranged from PE, -0.10; 95% CI, -0.13 to -0.08; p < .001 to PE, -0.66; 95% CI, -0.94 to -0.38; p < .001). The strength of DT effects varied by the concurrent task used. The greatest DT effect on gait speed, which was the most commonly presented outcome, was reported when upper extremity complex functional tasks (PE, -0.36; 95% CI, -0.49 to -0.23; p < .001, fine motor tasks (PE, -0.35; 95% CI, -0.38 to -0.32; p < .001), and verbal fluency tasks (PE, -0.26; 95% CI, -0.30 to -0.21; p < .001) were completed concurrently with gait. Children and adolescents experience performance decrements when they walk under DT conditions. Concurrent tasks differentially affect the degree of DT interference for each gait parameter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between cannabis exposure and working memory impairment and its neural substrates remain unclear. In this cross‐sectional observational study, we investigated this by examining the relationship between frequency of exposure to cannabis, working memory performance and regional brain volumes and tested whether lower volumes of cortical and subcortical structures mediate the association between cannabis exposure and working memory deficit using the Human Connectome Project data from 234 individuals with self‐reported cannabis exposure and 174 individuals unexposed to cannabis. We tested the relationship between self‐reported frequency of cannabis exposure and list‐sorting working memory task performance (total number of correct responses), between T1 weighted MRI‐derived regional grey‐matter volumes and working memory task performance as well as between frequency of cannabis exposure and brain volumes after controlling for potential confounders. Finally, mediation analysis was carried out to test whether deficit in working memory performance associated with cannabis use was mediated by its association with lower grey‐matter volume. Participants who reported higher frequency of cannabis use tended to have lower number of correct responses in the list‐sorting working memory task and lower bilateral hippocampal volumes. Association between severity of cannabis exposure as indexed by frequency of cannabis use and impairment in working memory was mediated by lower left hippocampal volume in cannabis users. We report evidence in support of the left hippocampus volume‐mediated working memory impairment associated with recreational cannabis exposure. Future studies employing prospective longitudinal design are necessary to examine the cause–effect relationships of cannabis exposure on working memory and brain volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gestures and speech are clearly synchronized in many ways. However, previous studies have shown that the semantic similarity between gestures and speech breaks down as people approach transitions in understanding. Explanations for these gesture–speech mismatches, which focus on gestures and speech expressing different cognitive strategies, have been criticized for disregarding gestures' and speech's integration and synchronization. In the current study, we applied three different perspectives to investigate gesture–speech synchronization in an easy and a difficult task: temporal alignment, semantic similarity, and complexity matching. Participants engaged in a simple cognitive task and were assigned to either an easy or a difficult condition. We automatically measured pointing gestures, and we coded participant's speech, to determine the temporal alignment and semantic similarity between gestures and speech. Multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis was used to determine the extent of complexity matching between gestures and speech. We found that task difficulty indeed influenced gesture–speech synchronization in all three domains. We thereby extended the phenomenon of gesture–speech mismatches to difficult tasks in general. Furthermore, we investigated how temporal alignment, semantic similarity, and complexity matching were related in each condition, and how they predicted participants' task performance. Our study illustrates how combining multiple perspectives, originating from different research areas (i.e., coordination dynamics, complexity science, cognitive psychology), provides novel understanding about cognitive concepts in general and about gesture–speech synchronization and task difficulty in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Prior work has demonstrated that competing tasks impact habitual speech production. The purpose of this investigation was to quantify the extent to which clear and loud speech are affected by concurrent performance of an attention-demanding task. Method: Speech kinematics and acoustics were collected while participants spoke using habitual, loud, and clear speech styles. The styles were performed in isolation and while performing a secondary tracking task. Results: Compared to the habitual style, speakers exhibited expected increases in lip aperture range of motion and speech intensity for the clear and loud styles. During concurrent visuomotor tracking, there was a decrease in lip aperture range of motion and speech intensity for the habitual style. Tracking performance during habitual speech did not differ from single-task tracking. For loud and clear speech, speakers retained the gains in speech intensity and range of motion, respectively, while concurrently tracking. A reduction in tracking performance was observed during concurrent loud and clear speech, compared to tracking alone. Conclusions: These data suggest that loud and clear speech may help to mitigate motor interference associated with concurrent performance of an attention-demanding task. Additionally, reductions in tracking accuracy observed during concurrent loud and clear speech may suggest that these higher effort speaking styles require greater attentional resources than habitual speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upper and lower limb impairments are common in people with multiple sclerosis (pwMS), yet difficult to clinically identify in early stages of disease progression. Tasks involving complex motor control can potentially reveal more subtle deficits in early stages, and can be performed during functional MRI (fMRI) acquisition, to investigate underlying neural mechanisms, providing markers for early motor progression. We investigated brain activation during visually guided force matching of hand or foot in 28 minimally disabled pwMS (Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) < 4 and pyramidal and cerebellar Kurtzke Functional Systems Scores ≤ 2) and 17 healthy controls (HC) using ultra‐high field 7‐Tesla fMRI, allowing us to visualise sensorimotor network activity in high detail. Task activations and performance (tracking lag and error) were compared between groups, and correlations were performed. PwMS showed delayed (+124 s, p =.002) and more erroneous (+0.15 N, p =.001) lower limb tracking, together with lower cerebellar, occipital and superior parietal cortical activation compared to HC. Lower activity within these regions correlated with worse EDSS (p =.034), lower force error (p =.006) and higher lesion load (p <.05). Despite no differences in upper limb task performance, pwMS displayed lower inferior occipital cortical activation. These results demonstrate that ultra‐high field fMRI during complex hand and foot tracking can identify subtle impairments in lower limb movements and upper and lower limb brain activity, and differentiates upper and lower limb impairments in minimally disabled pwMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have suggested that people are sensitive to anticipated cognitive processing demands when deciding which task to perform, but the influence of perceptual processing demands on voluntary task choice is still unclear. The present study tested whether voluntary task choice behavior may be influenced by unpredictable task-specific perceptual processing demands. Across four experiments using different voluntary task choice procedures, we randomly varied the perceptual discriminability of stimuli (easy vs. hard color discrimination) for one of the two tasks. We reasoned that people could only reactively adjust their task choice behavior to the unpredictable discriminability manipulation if they engaged in some perceptual processing before a task goal becomes sufficiently activated to select the task for further processing. The results confirmed this hypothesis: Task performance data demonstrated the presence of perceptual (discriminability effects) and cognitive (switch costs) processing demands. Participants' choice behavior was affected by both types of processing demands (as reflected in a task repetition bias and a bias to select the color task with easy compared to hard discriminations). Thus, the present findings indicate that both perceptual and cognitive processing demands influence voluntary task choice behavior. We propose that higher-level goal activations interact at least partially with early perceptual processes to influence task choice behavior, suggesting a locus of voluntary choices during or after the perceptual stage within the information-processing stream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, researchers have argued that playing action video games can substantially improve cognitive abilities and enhance learning. However, consensus has not been reached regarding the mechanisms through which action game experience facilitates superior performance on untrained perceptually and cognitively demanding transfer tasks. We argue that analysis of behaviors engaged in during transfer task performance may provide key insights into answering this question. In the current investigation, we examined potential action game effects in the context of a complex psychomotor task, the Space Fortress (SF) game, that allows for the detailed examination of player behaviors beyond aggregate score reports. Performance (game score) was compared between action video game players (VGPs) and non-gamers (nVGPs) in two different control interface conditions (keyboard or joystick), followed by analyses of behaviors associated with superior performance. Against expectations, VGPs displayed superior performance only in the keyboard condition, suggesting that the action gamer advantage may not generalize to less-familiar control interfaces. Performance advantages were specifically associated with more efficient ship control behaviors by VGPs. Findings highlight how process-tracing approaches may provide insight into the nature of, and mechanisms producing, action gamers' advantages on learning untrained tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Compared variance in d ′ for replicated performance across task type and difficulty. • Employed 2-AFC with Reminder (2-AFCR), Triangle, and Tetrad tasks. • On a difficult task, 2-AFCR had lower variance than the Triangle or Tetrad tasks. • On a mid-difficulty task, 2-AFCR had lower variance than the Triangle. • No differences in the variance of d ′ were observed for the easy task. Sensory scientists are commonly tasked with determining whether consumers will be able to detect changes in product formulations or ingredients. To this end, sensory panels are formed and discrimination tasks employed, of which numerous types exist. This research compares the performance of three discrimination tasks: the traditional triangle task and two more modern tasks, the two-alternative forced-choice with reminder (2-AFCR) and Tetrad tasks. Comparisons were in terms of observed performance without reliance on the binomial assumption implicit in most contemporary methods of analysis. Seven judges tasted aqueous solutions containing orange essence and were asked to identify the sample containing the greatest amount of essence. Orange essence concentrations were tailored to each individual judge during preliminary testing, and three concentrations of orange essence, greater than the fixed concentration of the reference sample were determined for each judge. Across judges, these were referred to as the easy, medium, and hard levels. To compare discriminability across the three tasks the sensitivity index dʹ was calculated. For the 2-AFCR task, this first required the decision strategy used by the judges to be determined. In general, the judges most likely used the β/τ strategy in 2-AFCR. Across the three tasks, average dʹ values for the same judges, discriminating between the same stimuli, were not significantly different. However, the 2-AFCR task had significantly lower sample variances of d ′ than the Triangle or Tetrad tasks at low levels of d ′ (the hard level), and than the Triangle task at the medium level of difficulty. No differences were observed at the easy level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]