An Associative Approach to Task Switching

This thesis explores the behaviour of participants taking an associative approach to a task-cueing paradigm. Task-cueing is usually intended to explore controlled processing of task-sets. But small stimulus sets plausibly afford associative learning via simple and conditional discriminations. In six experiments participants were presented with typical task-cueing trials: a cue (coloured shape) followed by a digit (or in Experiment 5 a symbol) requiring one of two responses. In the standard Tasks condition (Monsell Experiment and Experiments 1-3), the participant was instructed to perform either an odd/even or a high/low task dependent on the cue. The second condition was intended to induce associative learning of cue + stimulus-response mappings. In general, the Tasks condition showed a large switch cost that reduced with preparation time, a small, constant congruency effect and a small perturbation when new stimuli were introduced. By contrast the CSR condition showed a small, reliable switch cost that did not reduce with preparation time, a large congruency effect that changed over time and a large perturbation when new stimuli were introduced. These differences may indicate automatic associative processing in the CSR condition and rule-based classification in the Tasks condition. Furthermore, an associative model based on the APECS learning algorithm (McLaren, 1993) provided an account of the CSR data. Experiment 3 showed that participants were able to deliberately change their approach to the experiment from using CSR instructions to using Tasks instructions, and to some extent vice versa. Experiments 4 & 5 explored the cause of the small switch cost in the CSR condition. Consideration of the aspects of the paradigm that produced the switch cost in the APECS model produced predictions, which were tested against behavioural data. Experiment 4 found that the resulting manipulation made participants more likely to induce task-sets. Experiment 5 used random symbols instead of numbers, removing the underlying task-sets. The results of this experiment broadly agreed with the predictions made using APECS. Chapter 6 considers an initial attempt to create a real-time version of APECS. It also finds that an associative model of a different class (AMAN, Harris & Livesey, 2010) can provide an account of some, but not all, of the phenomena found in the CSR condition. This thesis concludes that performance in the Tasks condition is suggestive of the use of cognitive control processes, whilst associatively based responding is available as a basis for performance in the CSR condition

Navigating Change:Planning for Societal and Spatial Transformations Debates during the 12th AESOP Young Academics Conference

The 12th Young Academics Conference of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) was hosted at the University of Groningen from the 26th-29th March 2018. The conference theme was "Navigating Change: Planning for societal and spatial transformation". We welcomed 53 participants from over 30 universities and organisations from across Europe and the USA. The aim of the conference was to understand how various disciplines within planning and related to planning are dealing with change. Researchers and practitioners presented their research on dealing with environmental, technological, population and political change, and approaches to study this. Understanding these processes and exploring appropriate planning approaches became apparent in framing as a bridging concept in the need for more explicit attention to the role of planners as actors in navigating change and the practice of respectful planning

Individual differences in upright and inverted face recognition, simultaneous face matching and object recognition ability throughout the adult lifespan

Objectives: Superior face recognition ability is important for policing and other security roles, and selection of suitable staff for certain operations is essential. Age may be a factor. Our research aims were to enhance theoretical understanding of the relationship between different visual processing tasks, as well as to examine whether the normal mid-thirties peak in face recognition ability would transfer to alternative forensically-relevant face processing tests. Design: Correlational designs examined the relationships between upright and inverted face recognition, simultaneous face matching, object recognition and age in Experiment 1; and face matching CCTV images, passport images and age in Experiment 2. Methods: Worldwide media articles led to participants (n = 250,000) completing a ‘could you be a super-recogniser?’ teaser-test, and in Experiment 1, teaser-test high performers (n = 20,000+; 18-76 years-old) were recruited. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 5,000+) included Metropolitan Police ‘super-recognisers’. Results: Performances across all tests correlated. Face recognition ability peaked at approximately 34-years; face matching high-quality images at 36. Performance subsequently declined. In contrast, the face inversion effect positively correlated with age, while object recognition ability remained consistent throughout the lifespan. No reliable peak age was found for CCTV and passport image matching. Conclusions: The optimum age for high performance (including police officers) on forensic facial examination and recognition tasks appears to be the mid-thirties. Regardless of age, some exceptional participants made few errors on any task, and discussion will focus on these individuals, as well as how high performers in the police positively impact investigations

The wisdom of the crowd: a case of post- to ante-mortem face matching by police super-recognisers

This case report describes novel methodology used to identify a 43-year-old post-mortem photo of a drowned male recovered from a London river in the 1970’s. Embedded in an array of foils, police super-recognisers (n = 25) possessing superior simultaneous face matching ability, and police controls (n = 139) provided confidence ratings as to the similarity of the post-mortem photo to an ante-mortem photo of a man who went missing at about the same time Indicative of a match, compared to controls, super-recognisers provided higher ratings to the target than the foils. Effects were enhanced when drawing on the combined wisdom of super-recogniser crowds, but not control crowds. These findings supported additional case evidence allowing the coroner to rule that the deceased male and missing male were likely one and the same person. A description of how similar super-recogniser wisdom of the crowd procedures could be applied to other visual image identification cases when no other method is feasible is provided

Basal cell carcinomas without histological confirmation and their treatment : an audit in four European regions

Summary- Background: Limited data are available on how often basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) are clinically diagnosed without histological confirmation and how they are treated. Objectives Within the framework of the EPIDERM project, an audit was conducted in four European countries to study the occurrence of clinically diagnosed BCCs without histological confirmation and to investigate how these are treated. Methods: In the Netherlands, Scotland, Finland and Malta studies were performed within different timeframes. Patients with one or more BCC(s) were selected and the number of clinically diagnosed BCCs without histological confirmation and their treatment was investigated by (manually) reviewing the (electronic) patient records and checking the (hospital) pathology databases to find evidence of histological confirmation. Results: In the Netherlands, 1089 patients with a first histologically confirmed BCC developed 1974 BCCs of which 1833 (92.9%) were histologically confirmed and 141 (7.1%) were not. A 4-month retrospective study conducted in Scotland selected 294 patients with 344 BCCs; 306 (89.0%) were histologically confirmed and 38 (11.0%) were not. A 3-month prospective study performed at the same centre in Scotland identified 44 patients who developed 58 BCCs; 44 (75.9%) of these were histologically confirmed and 14 (24.1%) were not. In Finland, there were 701 patients who developed 977 BCCs, of which 807 (82.6%) were histologically and 170 (17.4%) nonhistologically confirmed. In Malta, there were 420 patients with 477 BCCs. Only three (0.7%) of them were clinically diagnosed without histological confirmation. In the Netherlands and Finland, clinically diagnosed BCCs without histological confirmation were most often treated with cryotherapy, whereas in Scotland 5% imiquimod cream was the preferred treatment modality. Conclusions: Although the frequency of clinically diagnosed BCCs without histological confirmation differed between the four European regions (range 0.7-24.1%), this confirms that the burden of BCC in Europe is underestimated when based on data from pathology and/or cancer registries.peer-reviewe

Treatment guided by fractional exhaled nitric oxide in addition to standard care in 6- to 15-year-olds with asthma : the RAACENO RCT

Funding This project was funded by the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) programme, a MRC and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) partnership. This will be published in full in Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation; Vol. 9, No. 4. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

MEDELLER: homology-based coordinate generation for membrane proteins

Motivation: Membrane proteins (MPs) are important drug targets but knowledge of their exact structure is limited to relatively few examples. Existing homology-based structure prediction methods are designed for globular, water-soluble proteins. However, we are now beginning to have enough MP structures to justify the development of a homology-based approach specifically for them

Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modelling approaches in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology.

Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PKPD) modelling is used to describe and quantify dose-concentration-effect relationships. Within paediatric studies in infectious diseases and immunology these methods are often applied to developing guidance on appropriate dosing. In this paper, an introduction to the field of PKPD modelling is given, followed by a review of the PKPD studies that have been undertaken in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology. The main focus is on identifying the methodological approaches used to define the PKPD relationship in these studies. The major findings were that most studies of infectious diseases have developed a PK model and then used simulations to define a dose recommendation based on a pre-defined PD target, which may have been defined in adults or in vitro. For immunological studies much of the modelling has focused on either PK or PD, and since multiple drugs are usually used, delineating the relative contributions of each is challenging. The use of dynamical modelling of in vitro antibacterial studies, and paediatric HIV mechanistic PD models linked with the PK of all drugs, are emerging methods that should enhance PKPD-based recommendations in the future

Superspreaders drive the largest outbreaks of hospital onset COVID-19 infections.

SARS-CoV-2 is notable both for its rapid spread, and for the heterogeneity of its patterns of transmission, with multiple published incidences of superspreading behaviour. Here, we applied a novel network reconstruction algorithm to infer patterns of viral transmission occurring between patients and health care workers (HCWs) in the largest clusters of COVID-19 infection identified during the first wave of the epidemic at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK. Based upon dates of individuals reporting symptoms, recorded individual locations, and viral genome sequence data, we show an uneven pattern of transmission between individuals, with patients being much more likely to be infected by other patients than by HCWs. Further, the data were consistent with a pattern of superspreading, whereby 21% of individuals caused 80% of transmission events. Our study provides a detailed retrospective analysis of nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and sheds light on the need for intensive and pervasive infection control procedures