Publications
24 publications
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CATS: The Climate Aware Task Scheduler in Journal of Open Source Software
Summary
CATS helps users schedule computational tasks when forecast electricity carbon intensity is lower. The software supports carbon-aware scheduling for research computing and integrates with existing job schedulers.
Ten recommendations for reducing the carbon footprint of research computing in human neuroimaging in Imaging Neuroscience
Summary
This paper outlines practical ways to reduce emissions from neuroimaging computation, covering analysis planning, processing, and data storage. It connects decisions made during everyday research with the environmental costs of large computational workloads.
Spectrum inference for replicated spatial locally time-harmonizable time series in Electronic Journal of Statistics
Summary
The authors develop spectral methods for repeated recordings of spatially distributed signals, with bootstrap procedures for statistical uncertainty. An EEG application examines how connections between brain regions change during a visual working-memory task.
Elevated representational similarity of voluntary action and inhibition in Tourette syndrome in Brain Communications
Summary
Using an intentional-action task and fMRI, the study compares patterns of activity during action and inhibition in people with Tourette syndrome and a comparison group. It reports differences in how these responses are represented, with some findings sensitive to correction for multiple testing.
What’s in a Badge? A Computational Reproducibility Investigation of the Open Data Badge Policy in One Issue of Psychological Science in Psychological Science
Abstract
In April 2019, Psychological Science published its first issue in which all Research Articles received the Open Data badge. We used that issue to investigate the effectiveness of this badge, focusing on the adherence to its aim at Psychological Science: sharing both data and code to ensure reproducibility of results. Twelve researchers of varying experience levels attempted to reproduce the results of the empirical articles in the target issue (at least three researchers per article). We found that all 14 articles provided at least some data and six provided analysis code, but only one article was rated to be exactly reproducible, and three were rated as essentially reproducible with minor deviations. We suggest that researchers should be encouraged to adhere to the higher standard in force at Psychological Science. Moreover, a check of reproducibility during peer review may be preferable to the disclosure method of awarding badges.
Return of the math: Markov blankets, dynamical systems theory, and the bounds of mind in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Abstract
Bruineberg and colleagues highlight work using Markov blankets to demarcate the bounds of the mind. This echoes earlier attempts to demarcate the bounds of the mind from a dynamical systems perspective. Advocates of mechanistic explanation have challenged the dynamical approach to independently motivate the application of the formalism, a challenge that Markov blanket theorists must also meet.
Statistical Inference and the Replication Crisis in Review of Philosophy and Psychology
Abstract
The replication crisis has prompted many to call for statistical reform within the psychological sciences. Here we examine issues within Frequentist statistics that may have led to the replication crisis, and we examine the alternative—Bayesian statistics—that many have suggested as a replacement. The Frequentist approach and the Bayesian approach offer radically different perspectives on evidence and inference with the Frequentist approach prioritising error control and the Bayesian approach offering a formal method for quantifying the relative strength of evidence for hypotheses. We suggest that rather than mere statistical reform, what is needed is a better understanding of the different modes of statistical inference and a better understanding of how statistical inference relates to scientific inference.
No evidence for a core deficit in developmental dyscalculia or mathematical learning disabilities in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Abstract
Background Two hypotheses were tested regarding the characteristics of children with mathematical learning disabilities (MLD): (a) that children with MLD would have a ‘core deficit’ in basic number processing skills; and (b) that children with MLD would be at the end of a developmental continuum and have impairments in many cognitive skills. Methods From a large sample (N = 1,303) of typically developing children, we selected a group definable as having MLD. The children were given measures of basic number processing and domain-general constructs. Differences between the observed sample and a simulated population were estimated using Cohen’s d and Bayes factors. Receiver operating characteristic curves were plotted, and the area under the curve was computed to ascertain the diagnostic power of measures. Results Results suggest that the differences between the MLD and control group can be defined along with general characteristics of the population rather than assuming single or multiple ‘core deficits’. None of the measures of interest exceeded the diagnostic power that could be derived via simulation from the dimensional characteristics of the general population. Conclusions There is no evidence for core deficit(s) in MLD. We suggest that future research should focus on representative samples of typical populations and on carefully tested clinical samples confirming to the criteria of international diagnostic manuals. Clinical diagnoses require that MLD is persistent and resistant to intervention, so studies would deliver results less exposed to measurement fluctuations. Uniform diagnostic criteria would also allow for the easy cross-study comparison of samples overcoming a serious limitation of the current literature.
Registered Replication Report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003) in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
Abstract
The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for embodied number representations and to support strong claims about the link between number and space (e.g., a mental number line). We attempted to replicate Experiment 2 of Fischer et al. by collecting data from 1, 105 participants at 17 labs. Across all 1,105 participants and four interstimulus-interval conditions, the proportion of times the effect we observed was positive (i.e., directionally consistent with the original effect) was .50. Further, the effects we observed both within and across labs were minuscule and incompatible with those observed by Fischer et al. Given this, we conclude that we failed to replicate the effect reported by Fischer et al. In addition, our analysis of several participant-level moderators (finger-counting habits, reading and writing direction, handedness, and mathematics fluency and mathematics anxiety) revealed no substantial moderating effects. Our results indicate that the Att-SNARC effect cannot be used as evidence to support strong claims about the link between number and space.
Predictors of mathematics in primary school: Magnitude comparison, verbal and spatial working memory measures in Developmental Science
Abstract
We determined the relative importance of the so-called approximate number system (ANS), symbolic number comparison (SNC) and verbal and spatial short-term and working memory (WM) capacity for mathematics achievement in 1,254 Grade 2, 4 and 6 children. The large sample size assured high power and low false report probability and allowed us to determine effect sizes precisely. We used reading decoding as a control outcome measure to test whether findings were specific to mathematics. Bayesian analysis allowed us to provide support for both null and alternative hypotheses. We found very weak zero-order correlations between ANS measures and math achievement. These correlations were not specific to mathematics, became non-significant once intelligence was considered and ANS measures were not selected as predictors of math by regression models. In contrast, overall SNC accuracy and spatial WM measures were reliable and mostly specific predictors of math achievement. Verbal short-term and WM and SNC reaction time were predictors of both reading and math achievement. We conclude that ANS tasks are not suitable as measures of math development in school-age populations. In contrast, all other cognitive functions we studied are promising markers of mathematics development.
Planning togeher and playing together in Handbook of embodied cognition and sports psychology
Abstract
This chapter offers a systematic review of the experimental literature on joint action. It provides an articulated portray of the cognitive systems underlying shared knowledge and co-planning of actions, with particular reference to action coordination in team sports. Furthermore, the chapter suggests that actually predicting the timing and unfolding dynamics of the teammates’ actions rely on the same mechanisms that they uses to predict their own actions during action control. On account of action prediction suggests that mechanisms are grounded in the motor control system and carry traces of an actor’s motor experience and biomechanics. If this is true, then it may be the case that, if certain people are better matched in terms of biomechanics or other anthropometric factors, then this might have an influence on how accurately they can predict or align with each other. If future research is able to accurately determine these factors, then it might be possible to incorporate these into crew or team selection so as to benefit from any prediction or alignment advantage.
From Symbols to Icons: The Return of Resemblance in the Cognitive Neuroscience Revolution in Synthese
Abstract
We argue that one important aspect of the “cognitive neuroscience revolution” identified by Boone and Piccinini (Synthese 193(5):1509–1534. doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0783-4, 2015) is a dramatic shift away from thinking of cognitive representations as arbitrary symbols towards thinking of them as icons that replicate structural characteristics of their targets. We argue that this shift has been driven both “from below” and “from above”—that is, from a greater appreciation of what mechanistic explanation of information-processing systems involves (“from below”), and from a greater appreciation of the problems solved by bio-cognitive systems, chiefly regulation and prediction (“from above”). We illustrate these arguments by reference to examples from cognitive neuroscience, principally representational similarity analysis and the emergence of (predictive) dynamical models as a central postulate in neurocognitive research.
Justify your alpha in Nature Human Behaviour
Abstract
In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to P ≤ 0.005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level.
Neural entrainment and sensorimotor synchronization to the beat in children with developmental dyslexia: An EEG study in Frontiers in Neuroscience
Abstract
Tapping in time to a metronome beat (hereafter beat synchronization) shows considerable variability in child populations, and individual differences in beat synchronization are reliably related to reading development. Children with developmental dyslexia show impairments in beat synchronization. These impairments may reflect deficiencies in auditory perception of the beat which in turn affect auditory-motor mapping, or may reflect an independent motor deficit. Here, we used a new methodology in EEG based on measuring beat-related steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs, Nozaradan et al., 2015) in an attempt to disentangle neural sensory and motor contributions to behavioral beat synchronization in children with dyslexia. Children tapped with both their left and right hands to every second beat of a metronome pulse delivered at 2.4 Hz, or listened passively to the beat. Analyses of preferred phase in EEG showed that the children with dyslexia had a significantly different preferred phase compared to control children in all conditions. Regarding SS-EPs, the groups differed significantly for the passive Auditory listening condition at 2.4 Hz, and showed a trend toward a difference in the Right hand tapping condition at 3.6 Hz (sensorimotor integration measure). The data suggest that neural rhythmic entrainment is atypical in children with dyslexia for both an auditory beat and during sensorimotor coupling (tapping). The data are relevant to a growing literature suggesting that rhythm-based interventions may help language processing in children with developmental disorders of language learning.
Neural encoding of the speech envelope by children with developmental dyslexia in Brain and Language
Abstract
Developmental dyslexia is consistently associated with difficulties in processing phonology (linguistic sound structure) across languages. One view is that dyslexia is characterised by a cognitive impairment in the “phonological representation” of word forms, which arises long before the child presents with a reading problem. Here we investigate a possible neural basis for developmental phonological impairments. We assess the neural quality of speech encoding in children with dyslexia by measuring the accuracy of low-frequency speech envelope encoding using EEG. We tested children with dyslexia and chronological age-matched (CA) and reading-level matched (RL) younger children. Participants listened to semantically-unpredictable sentences in a word report task. The sentences were noise-vocoded to increase reliance on envelope cues. Envelope reconstruction for envelopes between 0 and 10 Hz showed that the children with dyslexia had significantly poorer speech encoding in the 0–2 Hz band compared to both CA and RL controls. These data suggest that impaired neural encoding of low frequency speech envelopes, related to speech prosody, may underpin the phonological deficit that causes dyslexia across languages.
Awareness of rhythm patterns in speech and music in children with specific language impairments in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Abstract
Children with specific language impairments (SLIs) show impaired perception and production of language, and also show impairments in perceiving auditory cues to rhythm [amplitude rise time (ART) and sound duration] and in tapping to a rhythmic beat. Here we explore potential links between language development and rhythm perception in 45 children with SLI and 50 age-matched controls. We administered three rhythmic tasks, a musical beat detection task, a tapping-to-music task, and a novel music/speech task, which varied rhythm and pitch cues independently or together in both speech and music. Via low-pass filtering, the music sounded as though it was played from a low-quality radio and the speech sounded as though it was muffled (heard “behind the door”). We report data for all of the SLI children (N = 45, IQ varying), as well as for two independent subgroupings with intact IQ. One subgroup, “Pure SLI,” had intact phonology and reading (N = 16), the other, “SLI PPR” (N = 15), had impaired phonology and reading. When IQ varied (all SLI children), we found significant group differences in all the rhythmic tasks. For the Pure SLI group, there were rhythmic impairments in the tapping task only. For children with SLI and poor phonology (SLI PPR), group differences were found in all of the filtered speech/music AXB tasks. We conclude that difficulties with rhythmic cues in both speech and music are present in children with SLIs, but that some rhythmic measures are more sensitive than others. The data are interpreted within a “prosodic phrasing” hypothesis, and we discuss the potential utility of rhythmic and musical interventions in remediating speech and language difficulties in children.
Entrainment and motor emulation approaches to joint action: Alternatives or complementary approaches? in Frontiers in human neuroscience
Abstract
Joint actions, such as music and dance, rely crucially on the ability of two, or more, agents to align their actions with great temporal precision. Within the literature that seeks to explain how this action alignment is possible, two broad approaches have appeared. The first, what we term the entrainment approach, has sought to explain these alignment phenomena in terms of the behavioral dynamics of the system of two agents. The second, what we term the emulator approach, has sought to explain these alignment phenomena in terms of mechanisms, such as forward and inverse models, that are implemented in the brain. They have often been pitched as alternative explanations of the same phenomena; however, we argue that this view is mistaken, because, as we show, these two approaches are engaged in distinct, and not mutually exclusive, explanatory tasks. While the entrainment approach seeks to uncover the general laws that govern behavior the emulator approach seeks to uncover mechanisms. We argue that is possible to do both and that the entrainment approach must pay greater attention to the mechanisms that support the behavioral dynamics of interest. In short, the entrainment approach must be transformed into a neuroentrainment approach by adopting a mechanistic view of explanation and by seeking mechanisms that are implemented in the brain.
The effect of movement kinematics on predicting the timing of observed actions in Experimental Brain Research
Abstract
The ability to predict the actions of other agents is vital for joint action tasks. Recent theory suggests that action prediction relies on an emulator system that permits observers to use a model of their own movement kinematics to predict the actions of other agents. If this is the case, then people should be more accurate at generating predictions about actions that are similar to their own. We tested this hypothesis in two experiments in which participants were required to predict the occurrence and timing of particular critical points in an observed action. In Experiment 1, we employed a self/other prediction paradigm in which prediction accuracy for recordings of self-generated movements was compared with prediction accuracy for recordings of other-generated movements. As expected, prediction was more accurate for recordings of self-generated actions because in this case the movement kinematics of the observer and observed stimuli are maximally similar. In Experiment 1, people were able to produce actions at their own tempo and, therefore, the results might be explained in terms of self-similarity in action production tempo rather than in terms of movement kinematics. To control for this possibility in Experiment 2, we compared prediction accuracy for stimuli that were matched in tempo but differed only in terms of kinematics. The results showed that participants were more accurate when predicting actions with a human kinematic profile than tempo-matched stimuli that moved with non-human kinematics. Finally, in Experiment 3, we confirmed that the results of Experiment 2 cannot be explained by human-like stimuli containing a slowing down phase before the critical points. Taken together, these findings provide further support for the role of motor emulation in action prediction, and they suggest that the action prediction mechanism produces output that is available rapidly and available to drive action control suggesting that it can plausibly support joint action coordination.
Music, Action, and Affect in The Emotional Power of Music
Abstract
In this chapter, the authors outline a model that aims to explain how music, as the paradigm example of an embodied signal, can evoke powerful emotional experiences. They argue that direct, unmediated emotional responses to music can be explained by viewing music listening as an embodied experience that engages sensory-motor processes. First, they illustrate the multi-modal nature of music by reviewing evidence that shows that merely observing the actions that accompany music performance greatly influences our perception and interpretation of the acoustic dimension of music. Second, they introduce a theoretical framework that views perception and action as inextricably linked, and that construes music as a unique type of multi-modal behavior specialized for engaging predictive, sensory-motor processes in listeners. Finally, they demonstrate that this framework allows for a unification of expectancy-based models of musical emotion and action-based models of emotional experience.
Motor experience interacts with effector information during action prediction in Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
How does “mirroring” support joint action in Cortex
Abstract
The discovery of mirror neurons (e.g., Gallese et al., 1996) has reignited interest in theories that postulate a tight functional link between perception and action. According to these theories, perception and action share a common representational code, with actions coded in terms of the distal perceptual effects that they produce (Prinz, 1997). Accordingly, action representations should be activated when perceiving actions or perceiving the perceptual effects generated by actions. Mirror neurons have been regarded as a neural substrate implementing this functional principle. Perhaps the most important implication of common coding is that it establishes a social link between actor and observer that supports action understanding (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2010) and/or prediction (Wilson and Knoblich, 2005). How might close perception–action links help people to perform actions together? In the sections that follow, we discuss three possible functions of mirroring for joint action: 1) supporting temporal coordination in real time, 2) enabling seamless integration of one’s own and others’ actions in joint action planning, and 3) enabling groups to imitate the coordinated actions of other groups.
Cognitive Psychology Does Not Reduce to Neuroscience in Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science
Action synchronization with biological motion in Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science
Event-related potentials for interaural time differences and spectral cues in NeuroReport
Abstract
Dichotic pitches and mistuned harmonics can each lead to the perception of one or two auditory objects. Comparison of event-related potentials for the perception of one versus two objects reveals an early negative and a late positive component. The relationship of these components with auditory segregation was further investigated using stimuli containing monaural spectral cues to pitch, binaural timing cues to pitch, or a combination of both, interleaved with control stimuli (no pitch). Stimuli containing timing cues or a combination of timing and spectral cues reliably elicited both components, which were of larger amplitude when both cues were present. For stimuli containing only spectral cues, the early component was attenuated in amplitude and no measurable late component was detected.