Sustained attention is necessary in a variety of real-world settings, from baggage screeners and air traffic controllers to lifeguards and drivers on highways. Individual differences in performance on these tasks are prevalent, leading to questions about the sources of these differences. In this paper we compare the behavior of computational models to empirical data to evaluate the validity of ...

This paper presents a computational cognitive model of the construction process of complex, i.e., multi-part, visual mental images. The model is integrated into the cognitive architecture Casimir. The construction process is realized by the interplay of a spatial working memory structure and a passive quasi-pictorial visual representation. Both structures are successively build up on demand fro...

The cognitive diagnostic test can be used to understand the learning effects (such as strengths and weaknesses) of learners for a specific subject area. Based on the evaluation results of the diagnostic test, instructors may suggest or give students additional material on the subject area for students who do not meet the requirements. The S-P (Student-Problem) model has been used for this purpo...

this case report describes a 34-year-old female patient who suffered from chronic vomiting. different diagnostic and therapeutic procedures were noncontributory. ëventually, psychiatric interviews specified that she has a dependent, self-hurting and attention-seeking personality. she wanted to assume the “sick role”. malingering and conversion disorder were ruled out and münchausen’s syndrome w...

This paper presents an approach to modeling social transgressions in agent based systems. The approach is intended to be abstract enough that it may be used with many different theories of transgression, apology, forgiveness, etc. We discuss an implementation of this approach in PMFserv, an agent based socio-cognitive modeling framework.

We address the problem of predicting how people will spontaneously divide into groups a set of novel items. This is a process akin to perceptual organization. We therefore employ the simplicity principle from perceptual organization to propose a simplicity model of unconstrained spontaneous grouping. The simplicity model predicts that people would prefer the categories for a set of novel items ...

We are interested in developing a computational model of Piaget’s theory of sensorimotor intelligence. The main difficulty is that Piaget’s theory is quite vague. We analyse existing approaches and find that they model some of the major features of his theory, but that these are not adequate to account for the stage transitions which Piaget described. Instead of copying features of his theory w...

BACKGROUND Delayed and missed diagnoses lead to significant patient harm. Because physician actions are fundamental to the outpatient diagnostic process, a study was conducted to explore physician perspectives on diagnosis. METHODS As part of a quality improvement initiative, an integrated health system conducted six physician focus groups in 2004 and 2005. The focus groups included questions...

It has recently been suggested that the diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia should include specific reference to cognitive impairments characterizing the disorder. Arguments in support of this assertion contend that such inclusion would not only serve to increase the awareness of cognitive deficits in affected patients, among both clinicians and researchers alike, but also increase the "point ...

OBJECTIVE Network meta-analyses have extensively been used to compare the effectiveness of multiple interventions for healthcare policy and decision-making. However, methods for evaluating the performance of multiple diagnostic tests are less established. In a decision-making context, we are often interested in comparing and ranking the performance of multiple diagnostic tests, at varying level...