Risky decision making in younger and older adults:The role of learning.

Are older adults risk seeking or risk averse? Answering this question might depend on both the task used and the analysis performed. By modeling responses to the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), our results illustrate the value of modeling as compared to relying on common analysis techniques. While analysis of overall measures suggested initially that older and younger adults do not differ in their risky decisions, our modeling results indicated that younger adults were at first more willing to take greater risks. Furthermore, older adults may be more cautious when their decision making is based on initial perceptions of risk, rather than learning following some experience with a task.

Adaptive Dialogue Strategy Selection through Imprecise Probabilistic Query Answering

In a human-computer dialogue system, the dialogue strategy can range from very restrictive to highly flexible. Each specific dialogue style has its pros and cons and a dialogue system needs to select the most appropriate style for a given user. During the course of interaction, the dialogue style can change based on a user’s response and the system observation of the user. This allows a dialogue system to understand a user better and provide a more suitable way of communication. Since measures of the quality of the user’s interaction with the system can be incomplete and uncertain, frameworks for reasoning with uncertain and incomplete information can help the system make better decisions when it chooses a dialogue strategy. In this paper, we investigate how to select a dialogue strategy based on aggregating the factors detected during the interaction with the user. For this purpose, we use probabilistic logic programming (PLP) to model probabilistic knowledge about how these factors will affect the degree of freedom of a dialogue. When a dialogue system needs to know which strategy is more suitable, an appropriate query can be executed against the PLP and a probabilistic solution with a degree of satisfaction is returned. The degree of satisfaction reveals how much the system can trust the probability attached to the solution.

Imprecise probabilistic query answering using measures of ignorance and degree of satisfaction

In conditional probabilistic logic programming, given a query, the two most common forms for answering the query are either a probability interval or a precise probability obtained by using the maximum entropy principle. The former can be noninformative (e.g.,interval [0; 1]) and the reliability of the latter is questionable when the priori knowledge isimprecise. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose some methods to quantitativelymeasure if a probability interval or a single probability is sufficient for answering a query. We first propose an approach to measuring the ignorance of a probabilistic logic program with respect to a query. The measure of ignorance (w.r.t. a query) reflects howreliable a precise probability for the query can be and a high value of ignorance suggests that a single probability is not suitable for the query. We then propose a method to measure the probability that the exact probability of a query falls in a given interval, e.g., a second order probability. We call it the degree of satisfaction. If the degree of satisfaction is highenough w.r.t. the query, then the given interval can be accepted as the answer to the query. We also prove our measures satisfy many properties and we use a case study to demonstrate the significance of the measures. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Eve and evolution: Christian responses to the first woman question, 1860-1900

Historians of encounters between evolutionary science and Christianity have long been aware of the significance placed upon debates about the applicability of evolution to Adam. It has not been widely noticed, however, that in more conservative circles the creation of Eve was frequently thought to be a more difficult problem to solve. This essay examines how, in distinctive ways, the creation of Eve became a point of contention among three communities of conservative Christian thinkers grappling with the implications of evolutionary theory in the period 1860-1900.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the ethnic density effect in psychotic disorders

A number of studies have found an ethnic density effect in psychotic disorders, where the incidence for ethnic minorities increases as the neighbourhood proportional ethnic composition decreases [Morgan and Hutchinson, Psychol Med 40:705-709, (2010); Singh, Psychol Med 39:1402-1403, (2009); Schofield et al., Psychol Med 41:1263-1269, (2010)]. However, there is a mixed picture with some studies reporting no effect [Schofield et al., Psychol Med 41:1263-1269, (2010)]. This review aimed to establish the existence of the effect by answering the review question: is there an ethnic density dose effect in the prevalence of psychotic disorders?

Risk-Taking Differences Across the Adult Life Span:A Question of Age and Domain

Older adults face important risky decisions about their health, their financial future, and their social environment. We examine age differences in risk-taking behaviors in multiple risk domains across the adult life span.

A question of taste: Recognising the role of latent preferences and attitudes in analysing food choices

There has long been substantial interest in understanding consumer food choices, where a key complexity in this context is the potentially large amount of heterogeneity in tastes across individual consumers, as well as the role of underlying attitudes towards food and cooking. The present paper underlines that both tastes and attitudes are unobserved, and makes the case for a latent variable treatment of these components. Using empirical data collected in Northern Ireland as part of a wider study to elicit intra-household trade-offs between home-cooked meal options, we show how these latent sensitivities and attitudes drive both the choice behaviour as well as the answers to supplementary questions. We find significant heterogeneity across respondents in these underlying factors and show how incorporating them in our models leads to important insights into preferences. 

Expert opinion on the cough hypersensitivity syndrome in respiratory medicine

In 2011, a European Respiratory Society Task Force embarked on a process to determine the position and clinical relevance of the cough hypersensitivity syndrome, a disorder characterised by troublesome coughing often triggered by low levels of thermal, mechanical or chemical exposure, in the management of patients with chronic cough. A 21-component questionnaire was developed by an iterative process supported by a literature review. 44 key opinion leaders in respiratory medicine were selected and interviewed as to their opinions. There was a high degree of unanimity in the responses obtained, with all opinion leaders supporting the concept of cough hypersensitivity as a clinically useful paradigm. The classic stratification of cough into asthmatic, rhinitic and reflux-related phenotypes was supported. Significant disparity of opinion was seen in the response to two questions concerning the therapy of chronic cough. First, the role of acid suppression in reflux cough was questioned. Secondly, the opinion leaders were split as to whether a trial of oral steroids was indicated to establish a diagnosis of eosinophilic cough. The cough hypersensitivity syndrome was clearly endorsed by the opinion leaders as a valid and useful concept. They considered that support of patients with chronic cough was inadequate and the Task Force recommends that further work is urgently required in this neglected area.