Iconic store and partial report

The iconic store has recently been challenged on the grounds that data in its favor may have resulted from some procedural artifacts. The display-instruction compatibility and perceptual grouping hypotheses were reexamined in two experiments with the partial-report paradigm. When care was taken to rectify some procedural problems found in Merikle's (1980) study, it was established that the iconic store (as a hypothetical mechanism) can still be validly entertained. This report demonstrates one important procedural point in studying the iconic store with the partial-report task, namely, that subjects must be given more than token training on the partial-report task

Virtual Research Integration Collaboration: Procedural report

The aim of the project is to build a framework for the integration of basic science and clinical research to manage research lifecycles and allow for integration of scientific approaches throughout these lifecycles into the everyday work practice of the consortia that manage translational clinical research. The project will take the CORE VRE and embed it into a National centre for surgical excellence, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH). The VRE will integrate both with the institutional systems and research life cycle, and with the national systems such as the National Health Service (NHS). It is our aim to integrate the CORE VRE with myExperiment to provide a set of services at RNOH to cover the four main areas of the research cycle, namely: the monitoring and governance of trials (experiment research administration); the trial protocols (experiment workflows); the publishing, dissemination and discussion on the results of trials in a repository; and the discovery of information from the repository and other resources. For this community, there are three tightly coupled areas of focus: research, clinical practice, and education (in the form of continuing professional development and training of the next generation of surgeons). In this project, our user community will be heavily involved in co-designing and codeployment of the tool set, and in particular the front end of the workbench will be user focused. The tools will need to be available to staff anywhere with the organisation, as clinicians need to be able to enter the data during clinics and directors of research need to be able to monitor the trials. This will bring with it a number of inter-operability issues, as we move data between the VRE, the hospital systems (NHS) and the institutional systems. To aid the understanding of the how the system will be used, we outline a typical ‘research cycle’ that includes the practice of a clinical specialist in orthopaedics (who may also be a Higher surgical trainee) and a basic scientist. The purpose of this is to identify time essential information provision and interaction with pervasive technologies. For new researchers one of the most difficult tasks is to learn good practice or find related experiments to learn how to instantiate the protocols; in many organisations it is often easier to repeat an experiment than to find the results of a similar previous experiment. In this abstracted model of the research lifecycle, we have split up the cycle into four main research activities. In each of these activities the different issues and stakeholders are addressed. The wider community nationally is represented by the Musculoskeletal network of Greater London, NHS, e-science, Surgical and VRE communities. It is through the Musculoskeletal network of Greater London that we will be able to co-ordinate knowledge and demonstrations to advise the community and for continuity. This project will impact on the wider academic community in the UK, initially through dissemination via organisations such as BriteNet (Tissue Engineering), The British Orthopaedic Association, British Orthopaedic Research Society, and the British Elbow and Shoulder Society as the groups tied into the consortia development

Review, The New Era of Secret Law

In a recent Brennan Center report, The New Era of Secret Law, Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein articulates, examines, and evaluates the claims for and objections to secret law. Under this banner, the report includes any law that is withheld from the public, regardless of whether it may be shared among agencies or with certain members or committees of Congress.” Goitein’s underlying goal is to propose procedural and substantive reforms. Secret Law is a deeply-researched and highly valuable policy brief with an aim of making specific policy recommendations. And readable to boot

TARGET: Rapid Capture of Process Knowledge

TARGET (Task Analysis/Rule Generation Tool) represents a new breed of tool that blends graphical process flow modeling capabilities with the function of a top-down reporting facility. Since NASA personnel frequently perform tasks that are primarily procedural in nature, TARGET models mission or task procedures and generates hierarchical reports as part of the process capture and analysis effort. Historically, capturing knowledge has proven to be one of the greatest barriers to the development of intelligent systems. Current practice generally requires lengthy interactions between the expert whose knowledge is to be captured and the knowledge engineer whose responsibility is to acquire and represent the expert's knowledge in a useful form. Although much research has been devoted to the development of methodologies and computer software to aid in the capture and representation of some types of knowledge, procedural knowledge has received relatively little attention. In essence, TARGET is one of the first tools of its kind, commercial or institutional, that is designed to support this type of knowledge capture undertaking. This paper will describe the design and development of TARGET for the acquisition and representation of procedural knowledge. The strategies employed by TARGET to support use by knowledge engineers, subject matter experts, programmers and managers will be discussed. This discussion includes the method by which the tool employs its graphical user interface to generate a task hierarchy report. Next, the approach to generate production rules for incorporation in and development of a CLIPS based expert system will be elaborated. TARGET also permits experts to visually describe procedural tasks as a common medium for knowledge refinement by the expert community and knowledge engineer making knowledge consensus possible. The paper briefly touches on the verification and validation issues facing the CLIPS rule generation aspects of TARGET. A description of efforts to support TARGET's interoperability issues on PCs, Macintoshes and UNIX workstations concludes the paper

Plea-Bargaining, Negotiating Confessions and Consensual Resolution of Criminal Cases

This report explores the various types of consensual procedures that make up the procedural arsenals of modern criminal justice systems and if and how they have contributed to procedural economy in the respective country. It discusses whether or not important procedural principles have been compromised, undermining the legitimacy of the criminal justice system

A methodical approach to performance measurement experiments : measure and measurement specification

This report describes a methodical approach to performance measurement experiments. This approach gives a blueprint for the whole trajectory from the notion of performance measures and how to define them via planning, instrumentation and execution of the experiments to interpretation of the results. The first stage of the approach, Measurement Initialisation, has been worked out completely. It is shown that a well-defined system description allows a procedural approach to defining performance measures and to identifying parameters that might affect it. For the second stage of the approach, Measurement Planning, concepts are defined that enable a clear experiment description or specification. It is highlighted what actually is being measured when executing an experiment. A brief example that illustrates the value of the method and a comparison with an existing method - that of Jain - complete this report

Frontoparietal action-oriented codes support novel task set implementation

A key aspect of human cognitive flexibility concerns the ability to rapidly convert complex symbolic instructions into novel behaviors. Previous research proposes that this fast configuration is supported by two differentiated neurocognitive states, namely, an initial declarative maintenance of task knowledge, and a progressive transformation into a pragmatic, action-oriented state necessary for optimal task execution. Furthermore, current models predict a crucial role of frontal and parietal brain regions in this transformation. However, direct evidence for such frontoparietal formatting of novel task representations is still lacking. Here, we report the results of an fMRI experiment in which participants had to execute novel instructed stimulus-response associations. We then used a multivariate pattern-tracking procedure to quantify the degree of neural activation of instructions in declarative and procedural representational formats. This analysis revealed, for the first time, format-unique representations of relevant task sets in frontoparietal areas, prior to execution. Critically, the degree of procedural (but not declarative) activation predicted subsequent behavioral performance. Our results shed light on current debates on the architecture of cognitive control and working memory systems, suggesting a contribution of frontoparietal regions to output gating mechanisms that drive behavior

The application of rules in morphology, syntax and number processing: a case of selective deficit of procedural or executive mechanisms?: Deficit of procedural or executive mechanisms

International audienceDeclarative memory is a long-term store for facts, concepts and words. Procedural memory subserves the learning and control of sensorimotor and cognitive skills, including the mental grammar. In this study, we report a single-case study of a mild aphasic patient who showed procedural deficits in the presence of preserved declarative memory abilities. We administered several experiments to explore rule application in morphology, syntax and number processing. Results partly support the differentiation between declarative and procedural memory. Moreover, the patient's performance varied according to the domain in which rules were to be applied, which underlines the need for more fine-grained distinctions in cognition between procedural rules