Flexibility in partitioning strategies of fourth graders

This study combines the concepts of flexibility and partitioning, and aims to probe fourth grade students’ flexibility in partitioning strategies. Seven students participated in this descriptive case study. Students were given three partitioning tasks. Forty-eight answers produced by students were evaluated and classified based on the strategies defined in the taxonomy developed by Charles and Nason (2000). Results showed that students could easily change their strategies both within and across tasks. Namely, they displayed both inter- and intra-task strategy flexibility to a large extent even though they did not have any intervention on partitioning. Another point that findings have implicated was that the fourth graders’ flexibility in partitioning strategies may be utilized to introduce concepts of equivalent fractions and mixed numbers. Results are discussed in terms of their implications related to mathematics education, and some recommendations aimed at learning environments and future studies are presented.

Strong and opponent contributions of dorsomedial striatal pathways to behavior depends on cognitive demands and task strategy

A classic view of the striatum holds that activity in direct and indirect pathways oppositely modulates motor output. Whether this involves direct control of movement, or reflects a cognitive process underlying movement, has remained unresolved. Here we find that strong, opponent control of behavior by the two pathways of the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) depends on a task's cognitive demands. Furthermore, a latent state model (a hidden markov model with generalized linear model observations) reveals that - even within a single task - the contribution of the two pathways to behavior is state-dependent. Specifically, the two pathways have large contributions in one of two states associated with a strategy of evidence accumulation, compared to a state associated with a strategy of repeating previous choices. Thus, both the cognitive demands imposed by a task, as well as the strategy that mice pursue within a task, determine whether DMS pathways provide strong and opponent control of behavior.

OmiEmbed: A Unified Multi-Task Deep Learning Framework for Multi-Omics Data

High-dimensional omics data contain intrinsic biomedical information that is crucial for personalised medicine. Nevertheless, it is challenging to capture them from the genome-wide data, due to the large number of molecular features and small number of available samples, which is also called “the curse of dimensionality” in machine learning. To tackle this problem and pave the way for machine learning-aided precision medicine, we proposed a unified multi-task deep learning framework named OmiEmbed to capture biomedical information from high-dimensional omics data with the deep embedding and downstream task modules. The deep embedding module learnt an omics embedding that mapped multiple omics data types into a latent space with lower dimensionality. Based on the new representation of multi-omics data, different downstream task modules were trained simultaneously and efficiently with the multi-task strategy to predict the comprehensive phenotype profile of each sample. OmiEmbed supports multiple tasks for omics data including dimensionality reduction, tumour type classification, multi-omics integration, demographic and clinical feature reconstruction, and survival prediction. The framework outperformed other methods on all three types of downstream tasks and achieved better performance with the multi-task strategy compared to training them individually. OmiEmbed is a powerful and unified framework that can be widely adapted to various applications of high-dimensional omics data and has great potential to facilitate more accurate and personalised clinical decision making.

Can Children With Perinatal Stroke Use a Simple Brain Computer Interface?

Background and Purpose: Perinatal stroke is the leading cause of hemiparetic cerebral palsy resulting in lifelong disability for millions of people worldwide. Options for motor rehabilitation are limited, especially for the most severely affected children. Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) sample brain activity to allow users to control external devices. Functional electrical stimulation enhances motor recovery after stroke, and BCI-activated functional electrical stimulation was recently shown to improve upper extremity function in adult stroke. We aimed to determine the ability of children with perinatal stroke to operate a simple BCI. Methods: Twenty-one children with magnetic resonance imaging–confirmed perinatal stroke (57% male, mean [SD] 13.5 [2.6] years, range 9–18) were compared with 24 typically developing controls (71% male, mean age [SD] 13.7 [3.7] years, range 6–18). Participants trained on a simple EEG-based BCI over 2 sessions (10 trials each) utilizing 2 different mental imagery strategies: (1) motor imagery (imagine opening and closing of hands) and (2) goal oriented (imagine effector object moving toward target) to complete 2 tasks: (1) drive a remote controlled car to a target and (2) move a computer cursor to a target. Primary outcome was Cohen Kappa with a score >0.40 suggesting BCI competence. Results: BCI performance was comparable between stroke and control participants. Mean scores were 0.39 (0.18) for stroke versus 0.42 (0.18) for controls (t[42]=0.478, P =0.94). No difference in performance between venous (M=0.45, SD=0.29) and arterial (M=0.34, SD=0.22) stroke (t[82]=1.89, P =0.090) was observed. No effect of task or strategy was observed in the stroke participants. Over 90% of stroke participants demonstrated competency on at least one of the 4 task-strategy combinations. Conclusions: Children with perinatal stroke can achieve proficiency in basic tasks using simple BCI systems. Future directions include exploration of BCI-functional electrical stimulation systems for rehabilitation for children with hemiparesis and other forms of cerebral palsy.

A study of fuzzy modeling analysis of factors influencing socially regulation of learning performance in an online environment

Investigating the factors influencing the performance of social conditioning in the network environment is the core issue for improving academic performance. Through the search of existing literature, the paper analyzes the main factors that influence social conditioning learning in current research, and through the questionnaire survey and in-depth processing of the raw data, the advanced behavioral indicators related to learning are obtained and analyzed by Spearman correlation coefficient and fuzzy modeling in machine learning. The results showed that the twelve dimensions of motivation regulation, trust building, efficacy management, cognitive strategy, time management, goal setting, task strategy, peer support, team assessment, help seeking, environment construction, and team supervision were significantly related to group performance, with team supervision having a significant negative relationship with group performance. In addition, trust building, team supervision and environment construction were the main factors for online social learning, effectiveness management, task strategy, peer support and help-seeking were the secondary factors, while motivation regulation, cognitive strategies, goal setting and team assessment had little impact on the final performance. The findings have some implications for the optimization of social conditioning learning support services and the improvement of social conditioning learning performance.

Adaptive Behavior and the Role of Primary Somatosensory Cortex

ABSTRACTBehavioral experience and flexibility are crucial for survival in a constantly changing environment. What are the neuronal processes that selectively transform dynamic sensory information into an appropriate behavioral response, and how do these processes adapt to changes in the environment? Here, we use voltage imaging to measure signals in primary somatosensory cortex (S1) during sensory learning and behavioral adaptation in the mouse. We found that in response to changing sensory stimulus statistics, mice adopt a task strategy that modifies their detection behavior in a context dependent manner as to maintain reward expectation. Correspondingly, neuronal activity in S1 shifts from simply representing stimulus properties to adaptively representing stimulus context in an experience dependent manner. Our results suggest that neuronal signals in S1 are part of an adaptive and dynamic framework that facilitates flexible behavior as an individual gains experience.

Performance and Eye Metrics Correlates to Out-of-the-zone Sustained Attention in GradCPT

The purpose of this study was to replicate previous behavioral performance results and investigate eye met- rics correlates in the Gradual Onset Continuous Performance Task (gradCPT). Previous research has shown that gradCPT can provide a measurement of fluctuations in sustained attention over time. In this study, 30 participants each completed three eight-minute sessions of gradCPT. “In the zone” and “out of the zone” periods were identified according to the Variance Time Course measure. Patterns of reaction time, d’, and error rates were consistent with previous studies, while criterion scores differed between the two-zone peri- ods. Eye-tracking data indicated that mean and variation of pupil size, saccade duration, saccade peak veloc- ity, and fixation duration were sensitive to the in-the-zone vs. the out-of-the-zone periods. These results sug- gest that some individuals may change their task strategy during out-of-the-zone periods. Eye metrics might be useful indicators for out-of-the-zone performance when behavioral performance metrics were not availa- ble.

Spatial Ability Stress Test for Screening and Selection: The Development of SCOUT-R

Spatial abilities are often predictive of occupational success. Specifically, they are thought to play a role in aviator success and thus, are evaluated in Naval and Air Force aviation selection. However, the selection process only includes a single assessment of spatial ability which recent findings have called into question its validity. The creation of a speeded spatial ability stress test with face validity for the Navy and Marine Corps aviation community was investigated. We developed SCOUT-R, a multitask environment where participants quickly discriminated target objects from distractors, all of which could appear in any 90° orientation. The results showed the speeded presentation affected subjective workload and task strategy; however, target discrimination improved as the speed of presentation increased. The implications for SCOUT-R as a spatial ability selection test are considered.