Active Learning and Community Engagement: Pedagogical Synergy through the "Mobile Neuroscience Lab" Project.

The Mobile Neuroscience Lab is a project that facilitates combined pedagogical strategies of active learning and neuroscience outreach as a service learning component of a physiological psychology course. The overall project goals were to improve science knowledge, foster oral communication, and encourage positive science attitudes and beliefs. Of these goals, positive science attitudes and beliefs were assessed. During active learning, university students completed hands-on activities corresponding to the physiological psychology course. Following, during the neuroscience outreach activity ("learning through teaching"), university students and middle school students engaged in small group activities (one university student to five middle school students) using the same hands-on activities. Assessment of the perceived benefit of the active learning showed that university and middle school students responded favorably to the hands-on activities. Students' science attitudes were also assessed (Hillman et al., 2016) using a pre-test, post-test design. Data showed that the neuroscience activity did not change middle school science attitudes and beliefs (p > .05), possibly as the science attitudes and beliefs were already positive (moderate to high) prior to the outreach activity. However, qualitative data showed that the aspect of the neuroscience outreach activity that most assisted the middle school students in their learning was seeing the brain, touching the brain, and social interaction with the university students. Overall, the pedagogical strategies of active learning, and "learning through teaching", were received with enthusiasm by university and secondary education students. Future studies will include classroom teachers' assessment of these hands-on activities.

Top-down (Prior Knowledge) and Bottom-up (Perceptual Modality) Influences on Spontaneous Interpersonal Synchronization.

Coordination with others is such a fundamental part of human activity that it can happen unintentionally. This unintentional coordination can manifest as synchronization and is observed in physical and human systems alike. We investigated the role of top-down influences (prior knowledge of the perceptual modality their partner is using) and bottom-up factors (perceptual modality combination) on spontaneous interpersonal synchronization. We examine this phenomena with respect to two different theoretical perspectives that differently emphasize top-down and bottom-up factors in interpersonal synchronization: joint-action/shared cognition theories and ecological-interactive theories. In an empirical study twelve dyads performed a finger oscillation task while attending to each other's movements through either visual, auditory, or visual and auditory perceptual modalities. Half of the participants were given prior knowledge of their partner's perceptual capabilities for coordinating across these different perceptual modality combinations. We found that the effect of top-down influence depends on the perceptual modality combination between two individuals. When people used the same perceptual modalities, top-down influence resulted in less synchronization and when people used different perceptual modalities, top-down influence resulted in more synchronization. Furthermore, persistence in the change in behavior as a result of having perceptual information about each other ('social memory') was stronger when this top-down influence was present.

Changes in basic psychological needs, passion, and well-being of first-semester graduate students.

OBJECTIVE: Examine changes in graduate student health and well-being in the first semester. PARTICIPANTS: Full-time, first-semester graduate students (N = 74) from a midsized midwestern university. METHOD: Graduate students were surveyed prior to starting their master's program and 10 weeks later. Passion for academics, basic psychological needs, physical and mental health symptoms, positive and negative affects, and quality of life were assessed. RESULTS: Need satisfaction, harmonious passion, and indicators of well-being decreased across the first semester, whereas need frustration and indicators of ill-being increased over the first semester. Obsessive passion, harmonious passion, need satisfaction, and need frustration were associated with students' well-being at the end of the semester, with need frustration being the most robust predictor. CONCLUSIONS: Although most graduate students reported good general health and moderately low mental health symptoms, findings suggest that a need supportive environment may contribute to better health and well-being.

Dynamical analysis in real time: detecting perturbations to team communication.

Dynamical systems methods characterise patterns of change over time. Typically, such methods are applied only after data collection is complete. However, brief disturbances - perturbations - can occur as a process unfolds and can result in undesirable outcomes if not acted on. The application of dynamics in real time would be useful for detecting these sudden changes. Real-time analysis was accomplished by updating dynamical estimates simultaneously across different window sizes. We calculated the largest Lyapunov exponent, a measure of dynamical stability, to detect a perturbation to team communication in a simulated uninhabited air vehicle (UAV) reconnaissance mission. The perturbation consisted of information demands from a confederate that occurred unexpectedly during performance of a UAV mission. We demonstrate the use of real-time methods in detecting that perturbation as it occurred. In application, this technique would have enabled real-time intervention. Extensions of the real-time dynamical method to other domains of psychological inquiry are discussed. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: A real-time dynamical analysis method that was developed to detect unexpected perturbations in team communication is described. The use of the method is demonstrated on perturbed communication from a three-person uninhabited air vehicle command-and-control team. The generalisability of the method is considered with respect to physiological and motor coordination dynamics.

Gender consistency and flexibility: using dynamics to understand the relationship between gender and adjustment.

Controversy surrounds questions regarding the influence of being gender consistent (i.e., having and expressing gendered characteristics that are consistent with one's biological sex) versus being gender flexible (i.e., having and expressing gendered characteristics that vary from masculine to feminine as circumstances arise) on children's adjustment outcomes, such as self-esteem, positive emotion, or behavior problems. Whereas evidence supporting the consistency hypothesis is abundant, little support exists for the flexibility hypothesis. To shed new light on the flexibility hypothesis, we explored children's gendered behavior from a dynamical perspective that highlighted variability and flexibility in addition to employing a conventional approach that emphasized stability and consistency. Conventional mean-level analyses supported the consistency hypothesis by revealing that gender atypical behavior was related to greater maladjustment, and dynamical analyses supported the flexibility hypothesis by showing that flexibility of gendered behavior over time was related to positive adjustment. Integrated analyses showed that gender typical behavior was related to the adjustment of children who were behaviorally inflexible, but not for those who were flexible. These results provided a more comprehensive understanding of the relation between gendered behavior and adjustment in young children and illustrated for the first time the feasibility of applying dynamical analyses to the study of gendered behavior.

Oscillations in daily pain prediction accuracy.

Dynamical systems modeling was used to analyze fluctuations in the pain prediction process of people with rheumatoid arthritis. 170 people diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis completed 29 consecutive days of diaries. Difference scores between pain predictions and next-day pain experience ratings provided a time series of pain prediction accuracy. Pain prediction accuracy oscillated over time. The oscillation amplitude was larger at the start of the diary than at the end, which indicates damping toward more accurate predictions. State-level psychological characteristics moderated the damping pattern such that the oscillations for patients with lower negative affect and higher pain control damped more quickly than the oscillations for their counterparts. Those findings suggest that low negative affect and high pain control generally contributed to a more accurate pain prediction process in the chronically ill. Positive affect did not differentiate the damping pattern but, within each oscillation cycle, patients with higher positive affect spent more time making inaccurate predictions than their counterparts. The current analyses highlight the need to account for change in data through dynamical modeling, which cannot be fully observed through traditional statistical techniques.

Grouping feedback components by common fate benefits motor-respiratory coordination.

The purpose of this study was to see how motor-respiratory coordination could improve with augmented visual feedback. Participants performed inphase and antiphase patterns between movement and breathing. When the target pattern was performed properly, balls in a feedback display either moved up and down together (inphase feedback) or opposite each other (antiphase feedback). Relative phase performance was less variable in the augmented feedback conditions than in a no display control condition. Within the augmented feedback conditions, variability was lower with inphase feedback than antiphase feedback. Cross-recurrence analysis was used to determine whether other changes occurred on shorter time scales. On cross-recurrence measures, performance was more variable with inphase feedback than in the control condition and with antiphase feedback. Those results suggest that, with inphase feedback, participants were able to achieve more stable overall relative phase patterns using small within-cycle trajectory changes. Those small changes were possible because the balls in the inphase feedback display were grouped by common fate. That perceptual organization made it possible for participants to see slight mismatches between movement and breathing and control coordination accordingly.

Learning and transfer in motor-respiratory coordination.

Motor-respiratory coordination occurs naturally during exercise, but the number of coordination patterns performed between movement and breathing is limited. We investigated whether participants could acquire novel ratios (either 5:2 or 5:3). To examine complex temporal relationships between movement and breathing, we used lagged return plots that were produced by graphing relative phase against relative phase after a time delay. By the end of practice, participants performed 5:2 consistently and performed 5:3 using more stable ratios (3:2 and 2:1). Lagged return plots revealed that 5:3 learners harnessed the stable inphase and antiphase patterns to stabilize the required ratio. That strategy resulted in the performance of smaller-integer ratios in the production of 5:3 but not 5:2. Despite those differences, there was positive transfer to unpracticed ratios that was similar in both learning conditions. The time series analysis of lagged return plots revealed differences in ratio performance at transfer. Ratios whose component frequencies were farther apart, like 7:2, were performed consistently, while ratios whose component frequencies were more similar, like 5:4, elicited attraction to inphase and antiphase. The implication is that participants can combine more stable chunks of rhythmic behavior to produce more complex ratios.

Displays that facilitate performance of multifrequency ratios during motor-respiratory coordination.

A large number of ratios between movement and breathing are possible, but only a small number have been performed during exercise. The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to investigate displays that might facilitate the performance of other ratios; and (2) to test predictions from the sine circle map and continued fractions in a model motor-respiratory task in which participants coordinated arm movement and breathing. Displays consisted of either real-time feedback or a template (non-feedback). The accuracy of ratio performance was significantly greater with the template in which the number and relative positioning of movements and breaths was depicted, compared to with real-time feedback. Across displays, the stability of ratio performance conformed to principles of the sine circle map and was significantly greater for ratios with longer continued fractions. Therefore, the motor-respiratory repertoire can be expanded by increasing participants' understanding of the pattern to be performed, but performance is constrained by general dynamical principles.

Attentional demands on motor-respiratory coordination.

Athletic performance requires the pacing of breathing with exercise, known as motor-respiratory coordination (MRC). In this study, we added cognitive and physical constraints while participants intentionally controlled their breathing locations during rhythmic arm movement. This is the first study to examine a cognitive constraint on MRC. Cognitive constraints included either instruction (Experiments 1 and 2) or signal detection (Experiment 1). Physical constraints were nonoptimal movement frequencies (Experiment 2). Instruction shifted breathing locations and both shifted and increased variability in the number of movements produced per breath (frequency ratio). Signal detection had no effect on MRC. Fast movement frequency resulted in higher more variable frequency ratios. Cognitive and physical constraints can generate unnatural and variable breathing during athletic performance.