Agent Teaming Situation Awareness (ATSA): A Situation Awareness Framework for Human-AI Teaming

The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to a growing trend of human-AI teaming (HAT) in various fields. As machines continue to evolve from mere automation to a state of autonomy, they are increasingly exhibiting unexpected behaviors and human-like cognitive/intelligent capabilities, including situation awareness (SA). This shift has the potential to enhance the performance of mixed human-AI teams over all-human teams, underscoring the need for a better understanding of the dynamic SA interactions between humans and machines. To this end, we provide a review of leading SA theoretical models and a new framework for SA in the HAT context based on the key features and processes of HAT. The Agent Teaming Situation Awareness (ATSA) framework unifies human and AI behavior, and involves bidirectional, and dynamic interaction. The framework is based on the individual and team SA models and elaborates on the cognitive mechanisms for modeling HAT. Similar perceptual cycles are adopted for the individual (including both human and AI) and the whole team, which is tailored to the unique requirements of the HAT context. ATSA emphasizes cohesive and effective HAT through structures and components, including teaming understanding, teaming control, and the world, as well as adhesive transactive part. We further propose several future research directions to expand on the distinctive contributions of ATSA and address the specific and pressing next steps.Comment: 52 pages,5 figures, 1 tabl

Attentional biases and daily game craving dynamics: An ecological momentary assessment study

Background and aims: Theories posit that the combination of external (e.g. cue exposure) and internal (e.g. attention biases) factors contributes to the development of game craving. Nevertheless, whether different components of attentional biases (namely, engagement bias and disengagement bias) play separate roles on game craving has not been fully elucidated. We aimed to examine the associations between two facets of attentional biases and game craving dynamics under a daily life setting. Methods: Participants (110 regular internet game players) accomplished the modified attentional assessment task in the laboratory, after which they entered a 10-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to collect data on their momentary game craving and occurrence of game-related events at five different time points per day. Results: We found that occurrence of game-related events was significantly associated with increased game craving. Moreover, attentional disengagement bias, instead of engagement bias, bore on the occasional level variations of game craving as moderating variables. Specifically, attentional disengagement bias, not engagement bias, was associated with a greater increase in game craving immediately after encountering a game-related event; however, neither attentional engagement bias nor disengagement bias was associated with the craving maintenance after a relatively long period. Discussion and conclusions: The present study highlights the specific attentional processes involved in game craving dynamics, which could be crucial for designing interventions for attentional bias modification (ABM) in Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) populations

Serum YKL-40 in coronary heart disease: linkage with inflammatory cytokines, artery stenosis, and optimal cut-off value for estimating major adverse cardiovascular events

ObjectiveYKL-40, previously known as chitinase-3-like protein 1 (CHI3L1), is an inflammation-related glycoprotein that promotes atherosclerosis, but its application and optimal cut-off value as a prognostic biomarker in coronary heart disease (CHD) require more clinical evidence. Thus, this prospective study aimed to evaluate the linkage of serum YKL-40 with disease features, inflammatory cytokines, and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) in CHD patients.MethodsA total of 410 CHD patients were enrolled for serum YKL-40 determination via enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Meanwhile, serum YKL-40 levels in 100 healthy controls (HCs) were also quantified.ResultsYKL-40 level was higher in CHD patients compared with that in HCs (P < 0.001). YKL-40 was positively linked with hyperlipidemia (P = 0.014), diabetes mellitus (P = 0.001), fasting blood glucose (P = 0.045), C-reactive protein (P < 0.001), the Gensini score (P < 0.001), and stenosis degree (graded by the Gensini score) (P < 0.001) in CHD patients. In addition, an elevated YKL-40 level was associated with increased levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha (P = 0.001), interleukin (IL)-1β (P = 0.001), IL-6 (P < 0.001), and IL-17A (P = 0.002) in CHD patients. The 1-/2-/3-year cumulative MACE rates of CHD patients were 5.5%, 14.4%, and 25.0%, respectively. Regarding the prognostic capability, YKL-40 ≥100 ng/ml (the median cut-off value) (P = 0.003) and YKL-40 ≥150 ng/ml (the third interquartile cut-off value) (P = 0.021) reflected an elevated accumulating MACE rate, whereas accumulating MACE was not different between CHD patients with YKL-40 ≥80 and <80 ng/ml (the first interquartile cut-off value) (P = 0.083).ConclusionSerum YKL-40 is positively linked with inflammatory cytokines and the Gensini score, whose high expression cut-off by 100 and 150 ng/ml estimates a higher MACE risk in CHD patients

Visual Working Memory Capacity Does Not Modulate the Feature-Based Information Filtering in Visual Working Memory

Background: The limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM) requires us to select the task relevant information and filter out the irrelevant information efficiently. Previous studies showed that the individual differences in VWM capacity dramatically influenced the way we filtered out the distracters displayed in distinct spatial-locations: low-capacity individuals were poorer at filtering them out than the high-capacity ones. However, when the target and distracting information pertain to the same object (i.e., multiple-featured object), whether the VWM capacity modulates the featurebased filtering remains unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings: We explored this issue mainly based on one of our recent studies, in which we asked the participants to remember three colors of colored-shapes or colored-landolt-Cs while using two types of task irrelevant information. We found that the irrelevant high-discriminable information could not be filtered out during the extraction of VWM but the irrelevant fine-grained information could be. We added 8 extra participants to the original 16 participants and then split the overall 24 participants into low- and high-VWM capacity groups. We found that regardless of the VWM capacity, the irrelevant high-discriminable information was selected into VWM, whereas the irrelevant fine-grained information was filtered out. The latter finding was further corroborated in a second experiment in which the participants were required to remember one colored-landolt-C and a more strict control was exerted over the VWM capacity

Dissociated Mechanisms of Extracting Perceptual Information into Visual Working Memory

The processing mechanisms of visual working memory (VWM) have been extensively explored in the recent decade. However, how the perceptual information is extracted into VWM remains largely unclear. The current study investigated this issue by testing whether the perceptual information was extracted into VWM via an integrated-object manner so that all the irrelevant information would be extracted (object hypothesis), or via a feature-based manner so that only the target-relevant information would be extracted (feature hypothesis), or via an analogous processing manner as that in visual perception (analogy hypothesis).High-discriminable information which is processed at the parallel stage of visual perception and fine-grained information which is processed via focal attention were selected as the representatives of perceptual information. The analogy hypothesis predicted that whereas high-discriminable information is extracted into VWM automatically, fine-grained information will be extracted only if it is task-relevant. By manipulating the information type of the irrelevant dimension in a change-detection task, we found that the performance was affected and the ERP component N270 was enhanced if a change between the probe and the memorized stimulus consisted of irrelevant high-discriminable information, but not if it consisted of irrelevant fine-grained information.We conclude that dissociated extraction mechanisms exist in VWM for information resolved via dissociated processes in visual perception (at least for the information tested in the current study), supporting the analogy hypothesis

Selectively Maintaining Object Features within Visual Working Memory: An ERP Study

PURPOSE: The manipulation of visual working memory (VWM) has received increasing interest, by focusing on the underlying mechanisms of manipulation for objects presented at distinct locations. However, no study has explored the manipulation mechanisms for the content of a stored multi-featured object (e.g., retaining color while discarding polygon for a colored-polygon). The current study examined whether participants can selectively retain task-relevant information of a dual-featured object after a retro-cue was presented at the maintenance interval. We hypothesized that the processing nature of a feature at the perceptual stage affected its manipulation in VWM, and tested this hypothesis by adopting two types of dual-featured objects. One is objects composed of highly-discriminable features (colored-oriented-bars) which can be processed via spread attention; the other type is objects containing fine-grained information (colored-polygons) which is processed via focal attention. We predicted that selective maintenance could not occur for the former type but occurred for the latter. METHODS: Contralateral delay activity (CDA) was adopted as a neural marker during a change detection task, in which two features of an object was initnally memorized. During the maintenance phase, we presented a retro-cue to inform participants to selectively retain color, polygon/orientation, or both. RESULTS: In line with our prediction, CDA amplitude was significantly lower for retain-color and retain-polygon conditions than for retain-both when colored-polygons were presented as stimuli; however, there was no significant difference between retain-color, retain-orientation, and retain-both conditions when colored-oriented-bars were used as stimuli (Experiment 1). Moreover, the findings cannot be explained by operations over independent objects (Experiment 2). CONCLUSIONS:we found that the selective maintenance manipulation was modulated by the nature of the constituent elements. In particular, for dual-featured representations containing fine-grained information which needs to be processed via focal attention, the constituent single features can be selectively retained according to the task requirement (e.g., colored polygon). In contrast, for dual-featured representations composed of highly-discriminable information which is processed via spread attention, the stable unit could not be broken to selectively maintain the individual elements (e.g., colored bar).</p

The Influence of Working Memory Load of Binding on Selective Attention

PURPOSE: Ample studies have documented that working memory (WM) load has a comprehensive influence on selective attention in perception. Moreover, the influence of WM on selective attention is modulated by the type of WM subsystem, by revealing opposite modulation by central executive and visual WM. However,&nbsp; no study so far has examined the influence of WM load of binding on selective attention. Moreover, there are two opposite views as to this issue: On the one hand, an independent episodic buffer is suggested to be in charge of binding with the attention from of central executive, suggesting that binding load will functions as a type of central executive; on the other hand, recent studies revealed that object-based attention plays a key role in both visual WM and binding representation in WM, implying that binding load will serve as a type of visual WM load. To this end, we examined the influence of WM load of binding on selective attention by requiring the participants to memorize two or five bindings in WM. METHODS: Critically, a low load perceptual task was interpolated in the maintenance phase of WM. The low load perceptual task contained either a low-priority target or was an response competition task. RESULTS: In three experiments, we found that high WM load of binding led to reduced detection of low-priority target (Experiments 1-2), and less interference from the distractor in the response competition task (Experiment 3). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that WM load of binding is similar to visual WM load, serving as a type of perceptual load and hence competing resources with the perceptual task.&nbsp;</p

More Features in Bound Representations Does Not Require Extra Object-based Attention in Working Memory

PURPOSE: Feature binding is a core concept in many research fields, including the study of working memory (WM).We recently proposed that binding in WM is not passive, but requires more object-based attention to actively bind distinct single features into a coherent unit (Gao et al., Attention, Perception, &amp; Psychophysics, 2017; Shen, Huang, &amp; Gao, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2015). However, a hallmark of object-based attention&mdash;the amount of attention is not modulated by the number features contained in an object&mdash;has not been examined. In the current study, we closed this gap by examining whether this hallmark of object-based attention still holds in WM. METHODS: In two experiments, we required the participants to memorize three bound representations, and manipulated the number of features (2 vs. 3 features) contained in each binding. To examine the role of object-based attention in retaining bindings in WM, we also manipulated whether a secondary task consuming object-based attention was interpolated into the maintenance phase of WM (with vs. without secondary task). If more object-based attention was required after an extra feature was added into the bound representation, then the secondary task would result in worse performance for 3-featured binding than 2-featured binding. RESULTS: In two experiments, we consistently found that the added secondary task significantly impaired the binding performance. However, the added secondary task impaired the 2-featured and 3-featured bindings to the same extent. CONCLUSION: The number of features contained in binding does not modulate the required object-based attention for binding in WM, suggesting that WM and perception share the same hallmark of object-based attention.</p