Integration of Temporal Abstraction and Dynamic Bayesian Networks in Clinical Systems. A preliminary approach

Abstraction of temporal data (TA) aims to abstract time-points into higher-level interval concepts and to detect significant trends in both low-level data and abstract concepts. TA methods are used for summarizing and interpreting clinical data. Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) are temporal probabilistic graphical models which can be used to represent knowledge about uncertain temporal relationships between events and state changes during time. In clinical systems, they were introduced to encode and use the domain knowledge acquired from human experts to perform decision support. A hypothesis that this study plans to investigate is whether temporal abstraction methods can be effectively integrated with DBNs in the context of medical decision-support systems. A preliminary approach is presented where a DBN model is constructed for prognosis of the risk for coronary artery disease (CAD) based on its risk factors and using as test bed a dataset that was collected after monitoring patients who had positive history of cardiovascular disease. The technical objectives of this study are to examine how DBNs will represent the abstracted data in order to construct the prognostic model and whether the retrieved rules from the model can be used for generating more complex abstractions

The effects of thinking in silence on creativity and innovation

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies on the effects of thinking in silence on creativity and innovation. In these studies I use a social psychology and cognitive psychology lens to study creativity and innovation at the individual and at the team level of analysis, using randomized experiments to test hypothesized causal relationships. In the first study I find that when the ability to modify self-presentation is low and the sensitivity to expressive behavior of others is high, thinking in silence has a positive impact on individual creativity. In the second study, I theorize and find supportive evidence that the creativity of groups can be enhanced by punctuating group debate with a short intermezzo for thinking in silence, especially if there is at least one team member with relatively low extraversion. In the last study, I shift focus from creativity (idea generation) to idea selection and find that thinking in silence (as opposed to group debate) leads to more decisions in favor of radical innovations, when the team’s average ability to modify self-presentation is low. If the latter is high, thinking in silence leads to more decisions in favor of incremental innovations. Across the three studies, I find that in a number of defined situations thinking in silence has a positive effect on creativity and (radical) innovation. In specific other situations, the effect is neutral or even negative, suggesting that thinking aloud (individual level) or group debate (group level) may be called for.

SELECTION VERSUS REJECTION: THE ROLE OF TASK FRAMING IN DECISION MAKING

Procedure invariance is a basic assumption of rational theories of choice, however, it has been shown to be violated: Different response modes, or task frames, sometimes reveal opposite preferences. This study focused on selection and rejection task frames, involving a unique type of problem with enriched and impoverished options, which has led to conflicting findings and theoretical explanations. On the one hand, greater preference has been found for the enriched option in the selection task than in the rejection task; this result is explained by a compatibility account, in which the positive features of the enriched option are more compatible with the selection task and the negative features with the rejection task (Shafir, 1993). On the other hand, it has been found that this preference difference in the two tasks interacts with the relative attractiveness of the two options: The enriched option is preferred more (less) often in the selection task than in the rejection task when it is more (less) attractiveness than the impoverished option; this finding is attributed to the accentuation of difference between options in the selection task, as stated in the accentuation account (Wedell, 1997)

Predicting Perceived Problems in 24-hour Dietary Recall, and Evaluating its Potential for Behaviour Change: A Quantitative Think-Aloud Approach in an Australian Population

This thesis incorporates the think-aloud methodology across two studies that investigate the experience of 24-hour dietary recall and its potential for improving future nutritional behaviours. The methodological integration incorporated in the thesis aids in revealing different aspects of thinking when recalling and assessing our dietary behaviours, as well as their importance in the accuracy of self-reported psychological and nutritional research

The Effects of Thinking in Silence on Creativity and Innovation.

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies on the effects of thinking in silence on creativity and innovation. In these studies I use a social psychology and cognitive psychology lens to study creativity and innovation at the individual and at the team level of analysis, using randomized experiments to test hypothesized causal relationships. In the first study I find that when the ability to modify self-presentation is low and the sensitivity to expressive behavior of others is high, thinking in silence has a positive impact on individual creativity. In the second study, I theorize and find supportive evidence that the creativity of groups can be enhanced by punctuating group debate with a short intermezzo for thinking in silence, especially if there is at least one team member with relatively low extraversion. In the last study, I shift focus from creativity (idea generation) to idea selection and find that thinking in silence (as opposed to group debate) leads to more decisions in favor of radical innovations, when the team’s average ability to modify self-presentation is low. If the latter is high, thinking in silence leads to more decisions in favor of incremental innovations. Across the three studies, I find that in a number of defined situations thinking in silence has a positive effect on creativity and (radical) innovation. In specific other situations, the effect is neutral or even negative, suggesting that thinking aloud (individual level) or group debate (group level) may be called for.

Bibliometrically Mapping Team Cognition Literature: A Co-citation Analysis

Researchers investigating team cognition must source and review a challenging set of relevant, mature literature from a diverse array of academic disciplines. Such disciplines may include psychology, management, information science, military science, anthropology, and nursing science, etc. This thesis summarizes an effort to bibliometrically map team cognition literature using an author co-citation analysis methodology. The work began with a traditional literature review that identified key authors who were published in peer-reviewed journals. These authors were contacted and asked to provide their own listings of key researchers in the field, which were used in conjunction with the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) to construct a co-citation matrix of authors. Using factor analysis and multi-dimensional analysis techniques, visual maps were constructed that highlight the influence of specific authors, the relationships between authors, and the branching of sub-domains in the literature over time. The overall goals of the research were to provide team cognition researchers with a tool they could use to better inform their efforts, and to provide an explicit mapping of the field in terms of where it has been, and where it may be going

Expert knowledge elicitation in the firefighting domain and the implications for training novices

Background/Purpose: Experienced fireground commanders are often required to make important decisions in time-pressured and dynamic environments that are characterized by a wide range of task constraints. The nature of these environments is such that firefighters are sometimes faced with novel situations that seek to challenge their expertise and therefore necessitate making knowledge-based as opposed to rule-based decisions. The purpose of this study is to elicit the tacitly held knowledge which largely underpinned expert competence when managing non-routine fire incidents. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study utilized a formal knowledge elicitation tool known as the critical decision method (CDM). The CDM method was preferred to other cognitive task analysis (CTA) methods as it is specifically designed to probe the cognitive strategies of domain experts with reference to a single incident that was both challenging and memorable. Thirty experienced firefighters and one staff development officer were interviewed in-depth across different fire stations in the UK and Nigeria (UK=15, Nigeria=16). The interview transcripts were analyzed using the emergent themes analysis (ETA) approach. Findings: Findings from the study revealed 42 salient cues that were sought by experts at each decision point. A critical cue inventory (CCI) was developed and cues were categorized into five distinct types based on the type of information each cue generated to an incident commander. The study also developed a decision making model — information filtering and intuitive decision making model (IFID), which describes how the experienced firefighters were able to make difficult fireground decisions amidst multiple informational sources without having to deliberate on their courses of action. The study also compiled and indexed the elicited tacit knowledge into a competence assessment framework (CAF) with which the competence of future incident commanders could potentially be assessed. Practical Implications: Through the knowledge elicitation process, training needs were identified, and the practical implications for transferring the elicited experts’ knowledge to novice firefighters were also discussed. The four component instructional design model aided the conceptualization of the CDM outputs for training purposes. Originality/Value: Although it is widely believed that experts perform exceptionally well in their domains of practice, the difficulty still lies in finding how best to unmask expert (tacit) knowledge, particularly when it is intended for training purposes. Since tacit knowledge operates in the unconscious realm, articulating and describing it has been shown to be challenging even for experts themselves. This study is therefore timely since its outputs can facilitate the development of training curricula for novices, who then will not have to wait for real fires to occur before learning new skills. This statement holds true particularly in this era where the rate of real fires and therefore the opportunity to gain experience has been on a decline. The current study also presents and discusses insights based on the cultural differences that were observed between the UK and the Nigerian fire service

Linguistic Representation of Problem Solving Processes in Unaided Object Assembly

This thesis investigates the linguistic representation of problem solving processes in data recorded during unaided object assembly. It combines traditional approaches of analyzing verbal protocols with the recent approach of Cognitive Discourse Analysis