Name: the honeycomb paradigm for research on collective human behavior
Uploaded: 2019-01-19T14:00:00
Duration: 6 min 48 s
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior at JoVE.com

This research was funded by the German Initiative of Excellence (Institutional Strategy: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/32632.html). We thank Margarita Neff-Heinrich for her English proofreading.

Data collection and data analysis in this project have been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Georg-Elias-M&#252;ller Institute for Psychology of the University of G&#246;ttingen (proposal 039/2012).
1. Experimental Setup
<ol>
	<li>Choose a location that is away from a high-traffic area, such as in a computer lab or other specified area with individual workstations that can be configured as an LAN (local area network).</li>
	<li>Arrange for 10 to 12 notebooks of the same type to be used for the experiment as well as one computer to function as the server (Figure 6). The server program as well as client programs need a JAVA runtime environment, which is available on all common operation systems (a Raspberry Pi as client can suffice).</li>
	<li>Equipment configuration
	<ol>
		<li>Arrange notebooks on individual workstation tables with chairs as shown in Figure 7.</li>
		<li>Connect notebooks to the server computer via Ethernet cables and a network switch to create a local area network.</li>
		<li>Install partition walls between individual workstations to prevent visual sensory communication (eye contact, hand gestures, facial expressions, etc.) between neighboring participants.</li>
		<li>Acquire earplugs (for one-time use) to be distributed to all participants to prevent audible communication between participants.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
</ol>
2. Participant Recruitment
<ol>
	<li>Choose a recruiting location where there are a large amount of people, such as the entrance hall of an auditorium.</li>
	<li>Address potential recruits using the standardized text that explains the purpose and background of experiment, experiment duration, maximum payment calculated according to performance, and requirement for participation in a multiplayer game on institution-owned laptops.</li>
	<li>Ensure that participants can understand the English and German instructions and questionnaires related to the experiments.</li>
	<li>If the experimental design includes the use of colors, ensure that participants are free of any color blindness that may prevent them from differentiating the colors used.</li>
	<li>Do not recruit previous participants, as participants should be na&#239;ve to the experiment.</li>
	<li>Lead willing recruits to a waiting area away from the recruiting area. Kindly request that they await completion of the group recruitment without talking to each other. Explain that this restriction is related to integrity of the experimental results.</li>
	<li>Once 10 to 12 participants have been recruited, lead them into the pre-arranged computer lab or specified area where the experiment will take place.</li>
	<li>Before participants take their places in the partition-encased workstations, have the participants sign a form designating informed consent.</li>
	<li>Distribute the hygienic, one-time use earplugs to all participants. Inform them that audio-visual communication with other participants is prohibited. Therefore, the use of earplugs and partition-encased workstations is mandatory.</li>
	<li>Have participants take their places in the partition-encased workstations.</li>
</ol>
3. Experimental Procedure
NOTE: In this experimental procedure, the game used by Boos et al.1 is described as an application example.
<ol>
	<li>Preparation phase
	<ol>
		<li>The program itself is formatted as a zip-file HC.zip containing 1) the runnables HC.jar, 2) three files for configuration, namely hc_server.config, hc_panel.config, and hc_client.config, and 3) two subfolders named intro and rawdata.</li>
		<li>Create a shared folder on the server computer and unzip the HC.zip into this folder.</li>
		<li>On each client computer, mount and access this shared folder and open a terminal (Linux, Mac OS X: spotlight | search | terminal) or a prompt (Windows: search &#34;cmd&#34;), respectively. Use the command &#8220;dir&#8221; or &#8220;ls&#8221; so that the unzipped files appear on each terminal.</li>
		<li>Execute the command &#8220;java -version&#8221; on each terminal to ensure that a java runtime environment is available. If not, install java before continuing.</li>
		<li>Look in the three configure files.
		<ol>
			<li>Edit hc_server.configure to configure the 1) number of players, 2) minimum numbers and maximum numbers of moves each player can make, 3) values of the so-called nuggets, and 4) perception radius condition (local or global). 
			&#8203;NOTE: The two perception conditions are the global condition (player can see positions of avatars of all participants) and local condition (player can see only those avatars adjacent to their avatar; see Figure 3)</li>
			<li>Edit hc_client.configure to tell the clients the server&#39;s IP.</li>
			<li>In hc_panel.config, adjust the size of the hexagons according to the screen&#39;s resolution.</li>
		</ol>
		</li>
		<li>First, start the server program HC_Gui.jar (Figure 8) using the command &#8220;java -jar HC_Gui.jar&#8221;. Then, start the client programs on each workstation using the command &#8220;java -jar HC_ClientAppl.jar&#8221;. 
		NOTE: The clients&#39; screens should display the message, &#34;Please wait. The computer is connecting to the server.&#34; In the server GUI, a line appears displaying the IP address of each of the clients. When all clients are connected, the server program displays the message, &#34;All Clients are connected. Ready to start?&#34; 
		&#8203;NOTE: The experimenter can prepare the session up to this point.</li>
		<li>When all participants have taken their places, give the final instructions before they insert the earplugs.</li>
		<li>Click &#34;OK&#34; to start the session. Hereon, the experiment is controlled only by the instructions on the screens visible to participants. Instructions for a single experiment require multiple screen pages, and reading is made possible by the participants paging back and forth as necessary. 
		NOTE: Each participant indicates, by clicking a designated button on the screen, that he/she has read the instructions. The experiment cannot commence until all participants are finished reading the instructions.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>Testing phase
	<ol>
		<li>Observe whether the participants are mouse-controlling their avatar dot (twice as big as the visible avatar dots of the other participants) on the HoneyComb virtual 97-hexagon playfield (see Figure 1).</li>
		<li>Have participants start the testing phase in the center of the field, then move on the HoneyComb virtual playfield according to the previously provided instructions on screen.
		<ol>
			<li>All instructions on how to play the game are placed as editable html-files within the program folder of the HoneyComb game. See subfolders intro/de and intro/en for German and English instructions, respectively.</li>
			<li>Have players left-click into the adjacent small hexagon of their choice to move their avatar dot. Only adjacent fields can be chosen for the initial and subsequent moves. 
			NOTE: After each move, a small tail appears for 4000 ms for each participant, indicating the last direction from which he/she hailed.</li>
		</ol>
		</li>
		<li>Allow each participant to partake only once in order to avoid possible biases. 
		NOTE: The game described here requires 5-10 min, including the reading of instructions. Overall, 400 participants in 40 ten-person groups were tested by Boos et al.1.</li>
		<li>Do not restart the experiment with the same participants if there is a technical breakdown or if a participant fails.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
</ol>
4. Post-Test Phase
<ol>
	<li>Once the game is completed, have participants fill out questionnaires assessing demographic data, Big Five personality factors, perceived levels of stress or calmness, and pay satisfaction (to be paid upon completion of the experiment). These questionnaires can be offered as stand-alone html-files.</li>
	<li>While participants fill out questionnaires, prepare anonymous envelopes with the appropriate amount of money earned in the HoneyComb game just completed. The game&#8217;s HoneyComb-computed amounts to be paid to each player are stipulated on the server screen.</li>
	<li>Distribute the earned payments to participants as they exit the testing area.</li>
	<li>Close the server program, then close the client programs once the server program has finished closing.</li>
	<li>Transfer the data, in the form of 2 text files marked by day- and time-stamp of the experiment, to a USB stick.</li>
</ol>

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The authors have nothing to disclose.

One fundamental question in using multi-client virtual environments as a research paradigm to investigate human collective behavior is whether the results are applicable to actual scenarios. In other words, does the methodological approach yield results with sufficient ecological or external validity? Representing human participants as avatars on a virtual playfield and letting them move via mouse-clicks reduces social cues. Additionally, keeping communication to a minimum allows experimenters to investigate which tacit behavioral cues are transmitted among humans that may affect human group coordination and leadership behavior and under which environmental affordance (e.g., rescue, competition, evacuation) these behaviors are affected by more and to what extent. As long as there is strict adherence to the two pre-testing phases in the protocol and testing procedures, this reductionist approach guarantees internal validity. In order to allow the transfer of results to &#34;real&#34; group and crowd dynamics, the experimental setup and test phases may be gradually modified to become more complex (e.g., allowing for additional communication beyond mere transmitting/reading movement behavior, adding information on individual characteristics embedded semantically into various real-world scenarios, etc.) and&#160;described in the on-screen instructions read by the participants before the game starts.
To address the matter of external validity, the hexagon playfield [initially chosen to standardize player&#39;s movements to standardized, two-dimensional hexagonal coordinates due to (pre-tested) usability and reduction of confounding factors] can be varied. A two-dimensional grid with free movement choice would enable players to create more continuous and complex movement data. A three-dimensional environment created by Unity- or Unreal-Engine, for example, can also heighten the ecological/external validity. However, with each step towards lessoning the restriction of movement, a problem arises. With rising complexity of freedom-of-movement in the simulated scenario, the influence of confounding factors (e.g., interpersonal differences such as computer experience, familiarity with spatial orientation in three-dimensional games) increases, which can lead to biased results and reduce internal validity.
The advantage of the method outlined in the HoneyComb protocol is that it can be combined with computer simulation models and used as a paradigm to empirically test if collective patterns found in the computer simulations also hold for behavior in groups of humans. To enhance the external validity of such tests, participants should be asked in the post-test phase questionnaire if they felt sufficiently and humanly represented by their avatars and whether they were able to perceive their co-players as human actors. The protocol specifies the physical presence of the co-players sitting in workstations beside each other (even though the protocol parameters preclude sensory auditory or visual communication) in order to enhance these feelings of human embodiment.
In sum, the methods applied by the HoneyComb approach outlined in the protocol&#39;s pre-test, test, and post-test phases provide a novel paradigm to investigate basic mechanisms of collective phenomena such as group coordination, leadership, and intra-group differentiation. The method&#39;s most important limitation is its vulnerability to human error by the recruiters, particularly if they are not stringent enough in ensuring that participants do not communicate with each other during the pre-test and test phases.

The computer-based multi-agent game HoneyComb1 offers a methodological paradigm to experimentally investigate how collective human movement patterns and group structures emerge from individual behavior. Human participants are visually represented as avatars (black dots) on a hexagonal virtual playfield resembling a honeycomb (Figure 1). Participants move their avatars via mouse-click to reach goal hexagons, spend move resources (Video 1), and maximize their monetary rewards by building cohesive groups (Video 2). Spatial conditions (e.g., vision radius), reward structures (e.g., monetary goal fields), and communication channels can be manipulated in order to discover which and to what extent these condition rules impact coordination and leadership in collective movement.
The game&#39;s procedural/condition rules, goals, and reward motivators have been designed by social psychologists to investigate human collective movement. In animal swarms as well as human crowds, one can observe emergent phenomena (i.e., global patterns) transpiring from individual behavior that follows local rules. For example, schools of fish and flocks of birds seem to move as coherent entities towards a spatial goal2,3,4, despite large group sizes that reduce their capacity for global or inter-individual communication. Empirical research5,6,7, behavioral modeling8,9,10, and computer simulations11,12,13 have shown that in diverse species, including humans14,15,16, complex patterns at the group level emerge without internal control or external supervision. Local individual movement and, often times, simple rules on the microscopic level are sufficient to generate orderly movement on the macroscopic level. Such experiments contribute to increasing evidence2,6 that not only large swarms but also small groups (human groups as well as other animal groups) are coordinated by local interaction rules1.
Our novel approach using computer-based multi-user avatar games shows one main advantage in researching dynamic human collective phenomena. Using the HoneyComb avatar platform1,17,18,19, spatio-temporal data of individual movement behavior (movement governed by actual individuals) can be fully collected by the server, and the development of behavioral patterns and collective structures can be analyzed with an accuracy of 50 ms (Table 1). As visual and auditory sensory communication can be restricted by requiring participants to use earplugs and encasing their workstations with partition walls, swarm and other crowd behavior conditions can be approximated experimentally. In several experiments1,17,18,19, we manipulated vision radius (global vs. local, Figure 2), monetary incentives (Figure 3a,b), subgroups (Figure 4), and the co-presence of other players (Figure 5) in order to test the impact of these variables on the emergence of collective behavioral patterns such as human flocking behavior17, leadership1, and competition18. To collect the data, a setup of ten to twelve notebooks and one server was used (Figure 6).
The self-organized coordination of individual activities in group-living species has attracted much scientific attention, particularly within the last decade. Examinations are wide-ranging, from simple trail formation and path selection in ants to the complex emergence of vortex structures in fish shoals, and even the segregation of bidirectional flows of pedestrians2.
With our HoneyComb paradigm, we contribute a methodological approach to empirically investigate the impact of varied situational options/constraints, diverse behavioral rules, and individual characteristics on the microscopic level on the emergence of macroscopic behavioral structures in humans. An important advantage is that the paradigm offers strictly controllable experimental settings defined by experimenters, making it possible for manipulation to measure the outcomes of a single experiment or compare multiple experiments. The virtual playfield can be configured according to the requirements of the study design, and sensory communication channels between the participants can be eliminated or reduced according to the experiment parameters. Additionally, environmental affordances can be shaped (e.g., competitive, non-competitive consensus, and rescue settings). Thus, our platform enforces internal validity (i.e., matching the study design as closely as possible to the research questions) by offering the possibility to manipulate/control variables relevant for the specific research question, using human-governed movement data to examine human movement. Field experiments render benefits in terms of external validity (generalizability) of results15,20,21 to the real world, because they do not preclude effects of unknown uncontrollable/insuppressible social cues as well as non- and para-verbal behaviors in humans1.
The computer-based multi-agent game HoneyComb has served to investigate the emergence of coordination and leadership patterns of human players moving their avatars on the virtual playfield. Participants were only provided local information about monetary incentives obtainable on goal hexagons, which included the incentive for group cohesion based on the multiplication of monetary rewards by the number of co-players who also ended up on the same goal hexagon. In our first series of studies, we restricted the experiment setup to two simple parameters of swarming behavior (alignment and cohesion) and reduced mutual information transfer to &#34;reading/transmitting&#34; of only movement behavior of the other participants. We then varied the sight radius of other participant movement behavior to either a global or local view of the virtual playfield, which consists of 97 smaller hexagons, and limited the expendable movement resources (possible moves) of the players.
The shape and the elements of the virtual platform and the experimenter-defined parameters of games able to be played on said platform can be designed according to the specific research questions. Depending on the research goal, the size of the playfield can be changed; the colors, shapes, and meanings of the avatars can be adapted; resources can be implemented; and the reward structure and content can be varied. More or less information, uncertainty, and conflicting preferences can also be implemented22. Varying global player-view information and control are also possible. Therefore, via experimental instructions, the environmental affordances of the experiment can be altered (e.g., a consensus vs. escape scenario). In the next section, we will clarify how these variables can be applied by describing a real study that used some of these parameters to answer specific study questions.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:572px;" width="573">
	<tbody>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Notebooks</td>
			<td style="width:71px;"></td>
			<td style="width:119px;"></td>
			<td style="width:167px;"></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="42">
			<td height="42" style="height:42px;width:216px;">Partition walls between work stations</td>
			<td style="width:71px;"></td>
			<td style="width:119px;"></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Earplugs</td>
			<td style="width:71px;"></td>
			<td style="width:119px;"></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Equipment for LAN installation</td>
			<td style="width:71px;"></td>
			<td style="width:119px;"></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

the honeycomb paradigm for research on collective human behavior

Collective human behavior such as group movement frequently shows surprising patterns and regularities, such as the emergence of leadership. Recent literature has revealed that these patterns, often visible at the global level of the group, are based on self-organized, individual behaviors that follow several simple local parameters. Understanding the dynamics of human collective behavior can help to improve coordination and leadership in group and crowd scenarios, such as identifying the ideal placement and number of emergency exits in buildings.
In this article, we present the experimental paradigm HoneyComb, which can be used to systematically investigate conditions and effects of human collective behavior. This paradigm uses a computer-based multi-user platform, providing a setting that can be shaped and adapted to various types of research questions. Situational conditions (e.g., cost-benefit ratios for specific behavior, monetary incentives and resources, various degrees of uncertainty) can be set by experimenters, depending on the research question. Each participant's motions are recorded by the server as hexagonal coordinates with timestamps at an accuracy of 50 ms and with individual IDs. Thus, a metric can be defined on the playfield, and movement parameters (e.g., distances, velocity, clustering, etc.) of participants can be measured over time. Movement data can in turn be combined with non-computerized data from questionnaires garnered within the same experiment setup.
The HoneyComb paradigm is paving the way for new types of human movement experiments. We demonstrate here that these experiments can render results with sufficient internal validity to meaningfully deepen our understanding of human collective behavior.

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The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior

Here, we present the computer-based, multi-agent game HoneyComb, which enables experimental investigations of collective human movement behavior via black-dot-avatars on a virtual 2D hexagonal playfield. Different experimental conditions, like variable&#160;incentives on goal fields or vision radius, can be set, and their effects on human movement behavior can be investigated.

Collective human behavior such as group movement frequently shows surprising patterns and regularities, such as the emergence of leadership. Recent ...

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The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress

This video publication explains in detail the experimental protocol of the resident-intruder paradigm in rats. This test is a standardized method to measure offensive aggression and defensive behavior in a semi natural setting. The most important behavioral elements performed by the resident and the intruder are demonstrated in the video and illustrated using artistic drawings. The use of the resident intruder paradigm for acute and chronic social stress experiments is explained as well. Finally, some brief tests and criteria are presented to distinguish aggression from its more violent and pathological forms.

This video shows the resident-intruder paradigm in rats. This test is a standardized method to measure offensive aggression, defensive behavior and violence in a semi-natural setting. The use of the paradigm for social stress experiments is explained as well.

This video publication explains in detail the experimental protocol of the resident-intruder paradigm in rats. This test is a standardized method to ...

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm

The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is commonly assessed using verbal report paradigms in adults, studying the development of this ability in preverbal infants and children proved challenging. Over the past 30 years, researchers have developed a non-verbal means of assessing recall memory known as the elicited or deferred imitation paradigm. In one variant of the procedure, participants are presented with novel three-dimensional stimuli for a brief baseline period before a researcher demonstrates a series of actions that culminate in an end- or goal-state. The participant is allowed to imitate the demonstrated actions immediately, after a delay, or both. Recall performance is then compared to baseline or to performance on novel control sequences presented at the same session; memory can be assessed for the individual target actions and the order in which they were completed. This procedure is an accepted analogue to the verbal report techniques used with adults, and it has served to establish a solid foundation of the nature of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. In addition, the elicited or deferred imitation procedure has been modified and adapted to answer questions relevant to other aspects of cognitive functioning. The broad utility and application of imitation paradigms is discussed, along with limitations of the approach and directions for future research.

The elicited imitation procedure was established to examine the development of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. This procedure has been widely used to establish a solid foundation of the nature of recall memory in infancy and early childhood.

The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is ...

The Modified Temptation Resistance Task: A Paradigm to Elicit Children's Strategic Lie-telling

The protocol for the temptation resistance paradigm was designed to elicit 2- to 8-year-old children's strategic lie-telling behaviors. The reward of transgression was intended to be too tempting to resist, so that children's spontaneous lie-telling behavior in the presence of irreversible evidence due to the transgression could be observed. Conducted in a developmental psychology laboratory behind a one-way mirror and video recorded with a hidden camcorder, the protocol starts with a guessing game where the child is given three trials to guess the identities of hidden objects under an upside down cup. The experimenter gives hints in the first two trials to make sure the child "guess" them correctly. At the beginning of the final trial, the experimenter leaves the room briefly and asks the child not to peek under the cup. If the child could not resist the temptation and peeks, small particles previously filled in the cup would scatter on a grooved surface. Upon the experimenter's return, the child is asked if he/she has peeked. If he/she denies transgression contrary to the presence of the physical evidence, he/she is asked to explain why the particles are on the table. Three responses could be observed in the procedure, including the initial transgression, truth-telling or lie-telling behavior if the child peeked, and the strategic lie-telling behavior in the presence of the physical evidence.

The Modified Temptation Resistance Task: A Paradigm to Elicit Children&#039;s Strategic Lie-telling

The protocol for the temptation resistance paradigm was designed to elicit 2- to 8-year-old children&#39;s strategic lie-telling behaviors. The reward of transgression was intended to be too tempting to resist, so that children&#39;s spontaneous lie-telling behavior in the presence of irreversible evidence due to the transgression could be observed.

The protocol for the temptation resistance paradigm was designed to elicit 2- to 8-year-old children's strategic lie-telling behaviors. The reward of ...

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language

In a typical eye tracking study using the visual world paradigm, participants' eye movements to objects or pictures in the visual workspace are recorded via an eye tracker as the participant produces or comprehends a spoken language describing the concurrent visual world. This paradigm has high versatility, as it can be used in a wide range of populations, including those who cannot read and/or who cannot overtly give their behavioral responses, such as preliterate children, elderly adults, and patients. More importantly, the paradigm is extremely sensitive to fine grained manipulations of the speech signal, and it can be used to study the online processing of most topics in language comprehension at multiple levels, such as the fine grained acoustic phonetic features, the properties of words, and the linguistic structures. The protocol described in this article illustrates how a typical visual world eye tracking study is conducted, with an example showing how the online processing of some semantically complex statements can be explored with the visual world paradigm.

The visual world paradigm monitors participants' eye movements in the visual workspace as they are listening to or speaking a spoken language. This paradigm can be used to investigate the online processing of a wide range of psycholinguistic questions, including semantically complex statements, such as disjunctive statements.

In a typical eye tracking study using the visual world paradigm, participants' eye movements to objects or pictures in the visual workspace are recorded ...

Using a Classroom-Based Deese Roediger McDermott Paradigm to Assess the Effects of Imagery on False Memories

Associated word list procedures can elicit false memories in predictable ways by inducing associative processing, thus making it harder to monitor the accuracy of memories. The purpose of the method presented here was to induce false memories using lists of either semantically or phonologically related words and to assess the effects of imagery instructions on the recall and recognition of those false memories. To do this, we used a modified version of the Deese Roediger McDermott (DRM) paradigm. We adapted word lists from previous DRM studies to suit imagery procedures and created an automated presentation to present the word lists in classroom settings. We then recruited undergraduate classes and instructed some of the classes to create mental images of the list words as they were being presented, while instructing the other classes to simply remember the words. The automated presentation presented word lists to participants, one word at a time, alternating between phonologically and semantically related lists. Participants used paper-pencil recall packets to immediately recall list items, complete a distractor activity, and take a subsequent final recognition test. Often, participants immediately recalled and later recognized words that were related to the list items but were not actually presented; these are known as critical lures and indicate a false memory. The protocol detailed here describes a four-step procedure - list presentation, immediate recall, distractor phase, and final recognition - that can assess the effects of list type and imagery instruction within the DRM paradigm on memory. The automated nature of the list presentation provides the ability to systematically vary variables of interest, and the paper and pencil method of data collection affords an easily accessible method for collecting data in classroom settings. The protocol also offers options to modify the procedure to a more traditional DRM paradigm without imagery and/or list type manipulations. The use of this protocol can provide results relevant to both classroom learning and cognitive science principles.

The method presented here induced false memories using lists of related words and also assessed the effects of imagery instructions on the recall and recognition of those false memories. This protocol details a modified version of the Deese Roediger McDermott (DRM) paradigm.

Associated word list procedures can elicit false memories in predictable ways by inducing associative processing, thus making it harder to monitor the ...

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is currently a paucity of research exploring how preschool children with autism understand sentences using different types of cues. The mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension remains largely unclear. The present study presents a protocol to examine the sentence comprehension abilities of preschool children with autism. More specifically, a visual world paradigm of eye-tracking is used to explore the moment-to-moment sentence comprehension in the children. The paradigm has multiple advantages. First, it is sensitive to the time course of sentence comprehension and thus can provide rich information about how sentence comprehension unfolds over time. Second, it requires minimal task and communication demands, so it is ideal for testing children with autism. To further minimize the computational burden of children, the present study measures eye movements that arise as automatic responses to linguistic input rather than measuring eye movements that accompany conscious responses to spoken instructions.

We present a protocol to examine the use of morphological cues during real-time sentence comprehension by children with autism.

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is ...

Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Self-distancing in Young Children

Self-distancing (i.e., creating mental distance between the self and a stimulus by adopting a less egocentric perspective) has been studied as a way to improve adolescents' and adults' emotion regulation. These studies instruct adolescents and adults to use visual imagery or language to create distance from the self before engaging in self-regulation tasks and when thinking about past and future events. For example, adults are asked to recall past, negative emotional experiences from either a first-person perspective (no distance) or a third-person perspective (self-distanced). These studies show that a self-distanced perspective allows adults to cope more adaptively when recalling negative feelings. However, the self-distancing paradigm used with adults was not developmentally appropriate for young children. This modified self-distancing paradigm involves instructing children to think about their thoughts, feelings, and actions from different perspectives that vary in their distance from the self while completing a self-regulation task. The paradigm involves randomly assigning children to use one of three perspectives: self-immersed, third-person, or exemplar. In the self-immersed condition, children are asked to think about themselves using the first-person perspective (e.g., "How am I feeling?") and no distance is created from the self. In the third-person condition, children are asked to create distance from the self by using the third-person perspective (e.g., "How is [child's name] feeling?"). In the exemplar condition, the greatest distance from the self is created by asking children to pretend to be a media character and to think about that character's thoughts and feelings (e.g., "How is Batman feeling?"). Studies using the self-distancing paradigm with 4-6-year-olds have found that as the amount of distance from the self increases (self-immersed &lt; third-person &lt; exemplar), children perform better on self-regulation tasks. These findings suggest that the strategies implemented in the self-distancing protocol may be useful to include in self-regulation interventions for young children.

An experimental paradigm was created to measure the effects of self-distancing in young children (4-6-year-olds). Self-distancing is a process through which individuals adopt a less egocentric perspective. This paradigm has been used to examine the effects of self-distancing on young children&#39;s self-regulation.

Self-distancing (i.e., creating mental distance between the self and a stimulus by adopting a less egocentric perspective) has been studied as a way to ...

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

We discuss the use of the preferential looking paradigm in eye tracking studies in order to study how infants develop, understand, and attend to the world around them. Eye tracking is a safe and non-invasive way to collect gaze data from infants, and the preferential looking paradigm is simple to design and only requires the infant to be attending to the screen. By simultaneously showing two visual stimuli that differ in one dimension, we can assess whether infants show different looking behavior for either stimulus, thus demonstrating sensitivity to that difference. The challenges in such experimental approaches are that experiments must be kept brief (no more than 10 min) and be carefully controlled such that the two stimuli differ in only one way. The interpretation of null results must also be carefully considered. In this paper, we illustrate a successful example of an infant eye tracking study with a preferential looking paradigm to discover that 6-month-olds are sensitive to linguistic cues in a signed language despite having no prior exposure to signed language, suggesting that infants possess intrinsic or innate sensitivities to these cues.

Eye tracking studies using a preferential looking paradigm can be used to study infants&#39;&#160;emerging understanding of, and attention to, their external visual world.

We discuss the use of the preferential looking paradigm in eye tracking studies in order to study how infants develop, understand, and attend to the world ...

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing

Previous studies have found that older adults have greater difficulties in processing syntactically complex sentences than younger adults. However, the exact regions where the difficulties arise have not been fully identified. In this study, a maze task was implemented to investigate how older adults and younger adults differentially processed two types of sentences with different levels of syntactic complexity, namely subject relative clauses and object relative clauses. Participants were asked to choose between two alternatives at each segment of the sentences. The task required participants to engage in a strictly incremental mode of processing. The reading times for each segment were recorded, allowing the quantification of the difficulty of sentence reading. The task allowed us to identify the exact locations of the processing difficulty and thus facilitate a more accurate assessment of the age-related decline in sentence processing. The results indicate that the effect of ageing was found mainly at the head nouns, but not at other regions of the sentences, a finding which suggests that the maze task is an effective method to identify the exact location of the ageing effect on sentence processing. The implications of this experimental paradigm for investigating the effect of ageing on sentence processing are discussed.

Here, we present a protocol to examine the age-related decline in sentence processing using a maze task that allowed us to localize the processing difficulty at each word of the sentences during reading.

Previous studies have found that older adults have greater difficulties in processing syntactically complex sentences than younger adults. However, the ...

Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning

Previous studies have found that emotion has significant influence on the learning of foreign language vocabulary and textual comprehension. However, little attention has been given to the effect of induced emotion on grammar learning. This research examined the influence of positive induced emotion on the learning of Japanese grammatical rules among a group of learners with Chinese as their native language, using a semi-artificial language (i.e. Chipanese), which combines the grammatical rules of Japanese and the vocabulary of Chinese. Music was used to invoke positive emotional conditions in participants. Participants were required to learn Chipanese sentences in a training session through practice and then a grammaticality judgment task was administered to measure learning outcomes. We found that participants in positive emotional states performed less accurately and efficiently than those in the control group. The findings suggest that the protocol is effective in identifying the effect of positive induced emotion on grammar learning. The implications of this experimental paradigm for investigating foreign language learning are discussed.

Here, we present a protocol to measure the effect of positive induced emotion on grammar learning in foreign language learners using a semi-artificial language that integrates the grammatical rules of a foreign language with the lexicon of the learners&#39; native language.

Previous studies have found that emotion has significant influence on the learning of foreign language vocabulary and textual comprehension. However, ...