Using a computational cognitive model to simulate the effects of personal and social network experiences on seasonal influenza vaccination decisions.

Introduction: Seasonal influenza poses significant societal costs, including illness, mortality, and reduced work productivity. Vaccination remains the most effective strategy for preventing the disease, yet vaccination rates in the United States fall below 50% for adults. Understanding the factors influencing vaccination decisions is crucial for designing interventions to improve uptake.

Enhancing learning and retention through the distribution of practice repetitions across multiple sessions.

The acquisition and retention of knowledge is affected by a multitude of factors including amount of practice, elapsed time since practice occurred, and the temporal distribution of practice. The third factor, temporal distribution of practice, is at the heart of research on the spacing effect. This research has consistently shown that separating practice repetitions by a delay slows acquisition but enhances retention.

Reciprocal relationships among influenza experiences, perceptions, and behavior: Results from a national, longitudinal survey of United States adults.

Objective: Our objective was to model the reciprocal relationships of perceived risk of contracting influenza with and without influenza vaccination, vaccination behavior, and reported influenza illness.

Methods: We fit structural equation models to data from a longitudinal survey of adults in the United States collected through the RAND American Life Panel. Data come from fall and spring surveys fielded before and after each of 3 influenza seasons, 2016/2017, 2017/2018, and 2018/2019, for a total of 6 waves.

The Stability of Influenza Vaccination Behavior Over Time: A Longitudinal Analysis of Individuals Across 8 Years.

Background: Seasonal influenza vaccination is an important behavior with significant individual and public health consequences, yet fewer than half of individuals in the USA are vaccinated annually. To promote vaccination adherence, it is important to understand the factors that affect vaccination behavior.

Purpose: In this research, we focused on one such factor, an individual's vaccination history.

Mechanisms underlying the spacing effect in learning: A comparison of three computational models.

The spacing effect is one of the most widely replicated results in experimental psychology: Separating practice repetitions by a delay slows learning but enhances retention. The current study tested the suitability of the underlying, explanatory mechanism in three computational models of the spacing effect. The relearning of forgotten material was measured, as the models differ in their predictions of how the initial study conditions should affect relearning.

Evaluating the Theoretic Adequacy and Applied Potential of Computational Models of the Spacing Effect.

The spacing effect is among the most widely replicated empirical phenomena in the learning sciences, and its relevance to education and training is readily apparent. Yet successful applications of spacing effect research to education and training is rare. Computational modeling can provide the crucial link between a century of accumulated experimental data on the spacing effect and the emerging interest in using that research to enable adaptive instruction.

Computational cognitive modeling of the temporal dynamics of fatigue from sleep loss.

Computational models have become common tools in psychology. They provide quantitative instantiations of theories that seek to explain the functioning of the human mind. In this paper, we focus on identifying deep theoretical similarities between two very different models.

The Effects of Probe Similarity on Retrieval and Comparison Processes in Associative Recognition.

In this study, we investigated the information processing stages underlying associative recognition. We recorded EEG data while participants performed a task that involved deciding whether a probe word triple matched any previously studied triple. We varied the similarity between probes and studied triples.

Relationship of P3b single-trial latencies and response times in one, two, and three-stimulus oddball tasks.

The P300 is one of the most widely studied components of the human event-related potential. According to a longstanding view, the P300, and particularly its posterior subcomponent (i.e.

The discovery of processing stages: Extension of Sternberg's method.

We introduce a method for measuring the number and durations of processing stages from the electroencephalographic signal and apply it to the study of associative recognition. Using an extension of past research that combines multivariate pattern analysis with hidden semi-Markov models, the approach identifies on a trial-by-trial basis where brief sinusoidal peaks (called bumps) are added to the ongoing electroencephalographic signal. We propose that these bumps mark the onset of critical cognitive stages in processing.

Hitting the reset button: An ERP investigation of memory for temporal context.

This study explored how temporal context influences recognition. In an ERP experiment, subjects were asked to judge whether pictures, presented one at a time, had been seen since the previous appearance of a special reset screen. The reset screen separated sequences of successively presented stimuli and signaled a change in temporal context.

Mechanisms for Robust Cognition.

To function well in an unpredictable environment using unreliable components, a system must have a high degree of robustness. Robustness is fundamental to biological systems and is an objective in the design of engineered systems such as airplane engines and buildings. Cognitive systems, like biological and engineered systems, exist within variable environments.

An attentional-adaptation account of spatial negative priming: evidence from event-related potentials.

Negative priming (NP) refers to a slower response to a target stimulus if it has been previously ignored. To examine theoretical accounts of spatial NP, we recorded behavioral measures and event-related potentials (ERPs) in a target localization task. A target and distractor briefly appeared, and the participant pressed a key corresponding to the target's location.

Stages of processing in associative recognition: evidence from behavior, EEG, and classification.

In this study, we investigated the stages of information processing in associative recognition. We recorded EEG data while participants performed an associative recognition task that involved manipulations of word length, associative fan, and probe type, which were hypothesized to affect the perceptual encoding, retrieval, and decision stages of the recognition task, respectively. Analyses of the behavioral and EEG data, supplemented with classification of the EEG data using machine-learning techniques, provided evidence that generally supported the sequence of stages assumed by a computational model developed in the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational cognitive architecture.

Electrophysiological responses to feedback during the application of abstract rules.

Much research focuses on how people acquire concrete stimulus-response associations from experience; however, few neuroscientific studies have examined how people learn about and select among abstract rules. To address this issue, we recorded ERPs as participants performed an abstract rule-learning task. In each trial, they viewed a sample number and two test numbers.

Navigating complex decision spaces: Problems and paradigms in sequential choice.

To behave adaptively, we must learn from the consequences of our actions. Doing so is difficult when the consequences of an action follow a delay. This introduces the problem of temporal credit assignment.

Learning from experience: event-related potential correlates of reward processing, neural adaptation, and behavioral choice.

To behave adaptively, we must learn from the consequences of our actions. Studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have been informative with respect to the question of how such learning occurs. These studies have revealed a frontocentral negativity termed the feedback-related negativity (FRN) that appears after negative feedback.

Modulation of the feedback-related negativity by instruction and experience.

A great deal of research focuses on how humans and animals learn from trial-and-error interactions with the environment. This research has established the viability of reinforcement learning as a model of behavioral adaptation and neural reward valuation. Error-driven learning is inefficient and dangerous, however.

Learning from delayed feedback: neural responses in temporal credit assignment.

When feedback follows a sequence of decisions, relationships between actions and outcomes can be difficult to learn. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to understand how people overcome this temporal credit assignment problem. Participants performed a sequential decision task that required two decisions on each trial.

Deciding how to act is not achieved by watching mental movies.

In the early days of research on visual imagery, it was believed that visual images are like pictures in one's head. Only as the field matured did it come to be appreciated that visual images do not bear a first-order isomorphic relation to visual percepts. Now that the early days of research on motor imagery are coming to an end, it is important to ask whether motor images bear a first-order isomorphic relation to movements.

Trajectories emerging from discrete versus continuous processing models in phonological competitor tasks: a commentary on Spivey, Grosjean, and Knoblich (2005).

M. J. Spivey, M.

The strategic nature of changing your mind.

In two experiments, we studied how people's strategy choices emerge through an initial and then a more considered evaluation of available strategies. The experiments employed a computer-based paradigm where participants solved multiplication problems using mental and calculator solutions. In addition to recording responses and solution times, we gathered data on mouse cursor movements.