Studying and Modeling the Connection between People's Preferences and Content Sharing

People regularly share items using online social media. However, people's decisions around sharing---who shares what to whom and why---are not well understood. We present a user study involving 87 pairs of Facebook users to understand how people make their sharing decisions. We find that even when sharing to a specific individual, people's own preference for an item (individuation) dominates over the recipient's preferences (altruism). People's open-ended responses about how they share, however, indicate that they do try to personalize shares based on the recipient. To explain these contrasting results, we propose a novel process model of sharing that takes into account people's preferences and the salience of an item. We also present encouraging results for a sharing prediction model that incorporates both the senders' and the recipients' preferences. These results suggest improvements to both algorithms that support sharing in social media and to information diffusion models.Comment: CSCW 201

Speech Communication

Contains reports on four research projects.U. S. Air Force (Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Air Research and Development Command) under Contract AF19(604)-6102National Science Foundatio

Strategies for Debt Reduction: Comparing Financial Tips and Financial Counseling

U.S. households hold increasingly more debt, with almost 80% of adults holding debt of some form.1 While ownership of debt is widespread, debt burdens can be particularly challenging for low-income households; debt-to-income ratios can be three times higher for these households compared to those with high-incomes.2 Debt reduction has thus become an aim of initiatives to help lower-income Americans increase their financial well-being. This brief examines two different mechanisms for delivering debt management advice and describes the success of each method in helping individuals reduce their debt

A NWB-based dataset and processing pipeline of human single-neuron activity during a declarative memory task

A challenge for data sharing in systems neuroscience is the multitude of different data formats used. Neurodata Without Borders: Neurophysiology 2.0 (NWB:N) has emerged as a standardized data format for the storage of cellular-level data together with meta-data, stimulus information, and behavior. A key next step to facilitate NWB:N adoption is to provide easy to use processing pipelines to import/export data from/to NWB:N. Here, we present a NWB-formatted dataset of 1863 single neurons recorded from the medial temporal lobes of 59 human subjects undergoing intracranial monitoring while they performed a recognition memory task. We provide code to analyze and export/import stimuli, behavior, and electrophysiological recordings to/from NWB in both MATLAB and Python. The data files are NWB:N compliant, which affords interoperability between programming languages and operating systems. This combined data and code release is a case study for how to utilize NWB:N for human single-neuron recordings and enables easy re-use of this hard-to-obtain data for both teaching and research on the mechanisms of human memory

Longitudinal associations between perceived stress and anhedonia during psychotherapy

Background: Chronic stress alters reward sensitivity and contributes to the emergence of anhedonia. In clinical samples, the perception of stress is a strong predictor of anhedonia. While there is substantial evidence demonstrating psychotherapy reduces perceived stress, little is known regarding the effects of treatment-related decreases in perceived stress on anhedonia. Methods: The current study investigated reciprocal relations between perceived stress and anhedonia using a cross-lagged panel model approach in a 15-week clinical trial examining the effects of Behavioral Activation Treatment for Anhedonia (BATA), a novel psychotherapy to treat anhedonia, compared to a Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) comparison intervention (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifiers NCT02874534 and NCT04036136). Results: Treatment completers (n = 72) experienced significant reductions in anhedonia (M = −8.94, SD = 5.66) on the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (t(71) = 13.39, p < .0001), and significant reductions in perceived stress (M = −3.71, SD = 3.88) on the Perceived Stress Scale (t(71) = 8.11, p < .0001) following treatment. Across all treatment-seeking participants (n = 87), a longitudinal autoregressive cross-lagged model revealed significant paths showing that higher levels of perceived stress at treatment Week 1 predicted reductions in anhedonia at treatment Week 4; lower levels of perceived stress at Week 8 predicted reductions in anhedonia at Week 12. Anhedonia did not significantly predict perceived stress at any stage of treatment. Conclusions: This study showed specific timing and directional effects of perceived stress on anhedonia during psychotherapy treatment. Individuals with relatively high perceived stress at the start of treatment were more likely to report relatively lower anhedonia a few weeks into treatment. At mid-treatment, individuals with low perceived stress were more likely to report lower anhedonia towards the end of treatment. These results demonstrate that early treatment components reduce perceived stress, thus allowing for downstream changes in hedonic functioning during mid-late treatment. The findings presented here suggest it will be critically important for future clinical trials evaluating novel interventions for anhedonia to measure stress levels repeatedly, as an important mechanism of change. Trial name: Development of a Novel Transdiagnostic Intervention for Anhedonia - R61 Phase. Trial URL: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02874534. Trial registration number: NCT02874534

Validity, reliability, and feasibility of a quality of life questionnaire for people with dementia

Public Health and primary careGeriatrics in primary car

The Neural Circuitry Mediating Shifts in Behavioral Response and Cognitive Set in Autism

Recent studies have suggested that the social and cognitive impairments in autism are associated with neural processing deficits in specific brain regions. However, these studies have primarily focused on neural systems responsible for face processing and social behaviors. Although repetitive, stereotyped behaviors are a hallmark of autism, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these behaviors in the disorder

Social influences on organizational attractiveness: Investigating if and when word of mouth matters

Previous recruitment studies have treated potential applicants as individual decision makers, neglecting informational social influences on organizational attractiveness. The present study investigated if and under what conditions word-of-mouth com-munication matters as a recruitment source. Results (N = 171) indicated that word of mouth had a strong impact on organizational attractiveness, and negative word of mouth interfered with recruitment advertising effects. Word of mouth from a strong tie was perceived as more credible and had a more positive effect on organizational attractiveness. For potential applicants high in self-monitoring, word of mouth had a stronger effect when presented after recruitment advertising. Finally, the effect of word of mouth on organizational attractiveness was partially mediated by the per-ceived credibility of recruitment advertising. In today’s business environment, human capital is one of the most valu-able assets a company can have, and recruitment serves the important func-tion of bringing the necessary talent into the organization (Barber, 1998). Despite economic upturns and downturns, recruitment remains a crucia