Nudged to Win: Designing Robo-Advisory to Overcome Decision Inertia

Decision inertia is a serious problem in financial decision-making and thus a challenge for decision support systems. We discuss recent findings and review antecedents and consequences of decision inertia from a psychological perspective. We use these insights to develop IT-based methods designed to overcome decision inertia using psychologically optimized financial decision support systems. Furthermore, we propose an experimental study to evaluate the design features of such a system. Our work is a first step in designing adaptive decision support systems that detect situations in which the user is prone to decision inertia and react by adapting interface elements appropriately that might otherwise exacerbate decision inertia – for a specific user in a specific decision situation

Flow Cytometry and Polymerase Chain Reaction-Based Analyses of Minimal Residual Disease in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

New therapeutic strategies developed recently for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) have led to remarkable treatment response rates and complete hematological remissions. This means highly sensitive and specific techniques are increasingly needed to evaluate minimal residual disease (MRD) in CLL patients. Quantitative MRD levels can be used as prognostic markers, where total MRD eradication is associated with prolonged survival. Nowadays, PCR and flow cytometry techniques used to detect MRD in CLL patients can generate reliable and quantitative results with the highest sensitivity. MRD Flow is based on four-color flow cytometry using specific antibody combinations. For allele specific oligonucleotide real-time quantification (ASO RQ) PCR individual primers are designed to detect a specific immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) rearrangement in each patient clone. Five comprehensive studies investigated and compared the sensitivity and specificity of both methods. Groups of patients receiving different therapies were analyzed at different time points to generate quantitative MRD levels and MRD kinetics. All studies confirmed that both methods generate equivalent results with regard to sensitivity and MRD quantification, although each method has advantages and disadvantages in the daily routine of a standard hematological laboratory. Here, we review these investigations and compare their results in the light of modern therapies

Multinomiale Modelle in der kognitiven Psychologie

Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist eine Klasse von stochastischen Modellen, die sich vor allem in den letzten zehn Jahren in ganz unterschiedlichen Anwendungskontexten immer wieder als sehr nützlich erwiesen hat. Dies gilt prinzipiell für das Gesamtgebiet der empirischen Psychologie, vor allem aber für die kognitive Psychologie. Multinomiale Modelle sind nach meiner Auffassung besser als andere Ansätze geeignet, eine Verbindung zwischen psychologischen Theorien und psychologischen Daten herzustellen, die einerseits den Kriterien der formalen Präzision und der empirischen Prüfbarkeit genügt, andererseits aber auch einfach, flexibel und robust genug ist, um auf viele unterschiedliche Problemstellungen anwendbar zu sein, auch solche, bei denen auf vorhandene Ansätze formaler Theoriebildung bislang noch nicht zurückgegriffen werden kann. Wie zu zeigen sein wird, erscheint es auf dem Hintergrund vorliegender Befunde zur multinomialen Modellierung immerhin denkbar, daß das „Joch der precision-importance trade-off function” (Schwarz, 1991) in der Psychologie prinzipiell überwindbar ist. Wissenschaftliche Genauigkeit und Eindeutigkeit muß nicht immer mit einem Verlust an praktischer Bedeutsamkeit erkauft werden und umgekehrt muß die Optimierung des Anwendungsaspekts und die Erweiterung des Anwendungsspektrums nicht zwangsläufig einen Verzicht auf Präzision nach sich ziehen

Understanding statistical power in the context of applied research

Estimates of statistical power are widely used in applied research for purposes such as sample size calculations. This paper reviews the benefits of power and sample size estimation and considers several problems with the use of power calculations in applied research that result from misunderstandings or misapplications of statistical power. These problems include the use of retrospective power calculations and standardized measures of effect size. Methods of increasing the power of proposed research that do not involve merely increasing sample size (such as reduction in measurement error, increasing ‘dose’ of the independent variable and optimizing the design) are noted. It is concluded that applied researchers should consider a broader range of factors (other than sample size) that influence statistical power, and that the use of standardized measures of effect size should be avoided (except as intermediate stages in prospective power or sample size calculations)

High lymphoid enhancer-binding factor-1 expression is associated with disease progression and poor prognosis in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

We determined lymphoid enhancer-binding factor-1 (LEF1) mRNA expression in 112 chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) samples and assessed correlations with the prognostic markers ZAP70 and CD38, Binet stages, the percentage of lymphocytes in the peripheral blood, and fibromodulin (FMOD) transcripts. The mean LEF1 relative expression ratios (RER) were 53.72 and 37.10 in ZAP70-positive and ZAP70-negative patients, respectively (P=0.004). However, we did not observe a significant difference in LEF1 expression between CD38-positive and CD38-negative patients. Moreover, patients requiring treatment showed a mean LEF1 RER of 85.61 whereas patients in recently diagnosed Binet A stage had a mean of only 22.01 (P<0.001). We also found significant correlations of LEF1 with the percentage of lymphocytes and FMOD expression. Our results suggest that high LEF1 expression is associated with poor prognosis and disease progression. Thus, LEF1 might be involved in the process of disease progression and possibly can serve as a molecular parameter for risk assessment and/or monitoring of CLL

Alcohol-induced retrograde facilitation? Mixed evidence in a preregistered replication and encoding-maintenance-retrieval analysis

Somewhat counterintuitively, alcohol consumption following learning of new information has been shown to enhance performance on a delayed subsequent memory test. This phenomenon has become known as the retrograde facilitation effect (Parker et al., 1981). Although conceptually replicated repeatedly, serious methodological problems are associated with most previous demonstrations of retrograde facilitation. Moreover, two potential explanations have been proposed, the interference and the consolidation hypothesis. So far, empirical evidence for and against both hypotheses is inconclusive (Wixted, 2004). To scrutinize the existence of the effect, we conducted a pre-registered replication that avoided common methodological pitfalls. In addition, we used Küpper-Tetzel and Erdfelder’s (2012) multinomial processing tree (MPT) model to disentangle encoding, maintenance, and retrieval contributions to memory performance. With a total sample size of N = 93, we found no evidence for retrograde facilitation in overall cued or free recall of previously presented word pairs. In line with this, MPT analyses also showed no reliable difference in maintenance probabilities. However, MPT analyses revealed a robust alcohol advantage in retrieval. We conclude that alcohol-induced retrograde facilitation might exist and be driven by an underlying retrieval benefit. Future research is needed to investigate potential moderators and mediators of the effect explicitly