The psychophysiology of Mastermind: Characterizing response times and blinking in a high-stakes television game show.

Television game shows have proven to be a valuable resource for studying human behavior under conditions of high stress and high stakes. However, previous work has focused mostly on choices-ignoring much of the rich visual information that is available on screen. Here, we take a first step to extracting more of this information by investigating the response times and blinking of contestants in the BBC show Mastermind. In Mastermind, contestants answer rapid-fire quiz questions while a camera slowly zooms in on their faces. By labeling contestants' behavior and blinks from 25 episodes, we asked how accuracy, response times, and blinking varied over the course of the game. For accuracy and response times, we tested whether contestants responded more accurately and more slowly after an error-exhibiting the "post-error increase in accuracy" and "post-error slowing" which has been repeatedly observed in the lab. For blinking, we tested whether blink rates varied according to the cognitive demands of the game-decreasing during periods of cognitive load, such as when pondering a response, and increasing at event boundaries in the task, such as the start of a question. In contrast to the lab, evidence for post-error changes in accuracy and response time was weak, with only marginal effects observed. In line with the lab, blinking varied over the course of the game much as we predicted. Overall, our findings demonstrate the potential of extracting dynamic signals from game shows to study the psychophysiology of behavior in the real world.

Visitor restriction during the COVID-19 pandemic did not impact rates of Staphylococcus aureus colonization in the NICU patients.

OBJECTIVES: In our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), patients are screened for colonization with Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and decolonized if positive. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our NICU significantly limited its visitor policy. We assessed for a difference between S. aureus colonization rates before and after the visitor policy change, which coincided with the exponential rise of COVID-19 cases in New York City (NYC). METHODS: We calculated rates of newly S. aureus colonized NICU patients during January to June 2020 and compared rates pre- and post-implementation of the new visitor policy. Additionally, we obtained the weekly incidence of COVID-19 in NYC and assessed for a correlation between COVID-19 rates and S. aureus colonization. RESULTS: The number of newly colonized patients per thousand patient days was 4.65 pre- and 3.95 post-implementation of the new visitor policy. The difference was not statistically significant (p=0.66). Furthermore, there was no correlation between the incidence of COVID-19 in NYC and the rates of S. aureus colonization in our NICU (R2=0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that limiting visitation of patients is not associated with a decrease in S. aureus colonization rate. Hospital unit leaders may need to focus on other strategies in order to reduce colonization.