Eugene Aidman

Incongruence in Doping Related Attitudes, Beliefs and Opinions in the Context of Discordant Behavioural Data: In Which Measure Do We Trust?

Background Social psychology research on doping and outcome based evaluation of primary anti-doping prevention and intervention programmes have been dominated by self-reports. Having confidence in the validity and reliability of such data is vital. Methodology/Principal Findings The sample of 82 athletes from 30 sports (52.4% female, mean age: 21.48±2.86 years) was split into quasi-experimental groups based on i) self-admitted previous experience with prohibited performance enhancing drugs (PED) and ii) the presence of at least one prohibited PED in hair covering up to 6 months prior to data collection. Participants responded to questionnaires assessing a range of social cognitive determinants of doping via self-reports; and completed a modified version of the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT) assessing implicit attitudes to doping relative to the acceptable nutritional supplements (NS). Social projection regarding NS was used as control. PEDs were detected in hair samples from 10 athletes (12% prevalence), none of whom admitted doping use. This group of ‘deniers’ was characterised by a dissociation between explicit (verbal declarations) and implicit (BIAT) responding, while convergence was observed in the ‘clean’ athlete group. This dissociation, if replicated, may act as a cognitive marker of the denier group, with promising applications of the combined explicit-implicit cognitive protocol as a proxy in lieu of biochemical detection methods in social science research. Overall, discrepancies in the relationship between declared doping-related opinion and implicit doping attitudes were observed between the groups, with control measures remaining unaffected. Questionnaire responses showed a pattern consistent with self-reported doping use. Conclusions/Significance Following our preliminary work, this study provides further evidence that both self-reports on behaviour and social cognitive measures could be affected by some form of response bias. This can question the validity of self-reports, with reliability remaining unaffected. Triangulation of various assessment methods is recommended.

Life-space foam: A medium for motivational and cognitive dynamics

General stochastic dynamics, developed in a framework of Feynman path integrals, have been applied to Lewinian field-theoretic psychodynamics [K. Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1951; K. Lewin, Resolving Social Conflicts, and, Field Theory in Social Science, American Psychological Association, Washington, 1997; M. Gold, A Kurt Lewin Reader, the Complete Social Scientist, American Psychological Association, Washington, 1999], resulting in the development of a new concept of life-space foam (LSF) as a natural medium for motivational and cognitive psychodynamics. According to LSF formalisms, the classic Lewinian life space can be macroscopically represented as a smooth manifold with steady force fields and behavioral paths, while at the microscopic level it is more realistically represented as a collection of wildly fluctuating force fields, (loco)motion paths and local geometries (and topologies with holes). A set of least-action principles is used to model the smoothness of global, macro-level LSF paths, fields and geometry. To model the corresponding local, micro-level LSF structures, an adaptive path integral is used, defining a multi-phase and multi-path (multi-field and multi-geometry) transition process from intention to goal-driven action. Application examples of this new approach include (but are not limited to) information processing, motivational fatigue, learning, memory and decision making.

Low cognitive load and reduced arousal impede practice effects on executive functioning, metacognitive confidence and decision making.

The present study investigated the effects of low cognitive workload and the absence of arousal induced via external physical stimulation (motion) on practice-related improvements in executive (inhibitory) control, short-term memory, metacognitive monitoring and decision making. A total of 70 office workers performed low and moderately engaging passenger tasks in two successive 20-minute simulated drives and repeated a battery of decision making and inhibitory control tests three times – before, between and after these drives. For half the participants, visual simulation was synchronised with (moderately arousing) motion generated through LAnd Motion Platform, with vibration levels corresponding to a well-maintained unsealed road. The other half performed the same simulated drive without motion. Participants’ performance significantly improved over the three test blocks, which is indicative of typical practice effects. The magnitude of these improvements was the highest when both motion and moderate cognitive load were present. The same effects declined either in the absence of motion (low arousal) or following a low cognitive workload task, thus suggesting two distinct pathways through which practice-related improvements in cognitive performance may be hampered. Practice, however, degraded certain aspects of metacognitive performance, as participants became less likely to detect incorrect decisions in the decision-making test with each subsequent test block. Implications include consideration of low cognitive load and arousal as factors responsible for performance decline and targets for the development of interventions/strategies in low load/arousal conditions such as autonomous vehicle operations and highway driving.

Evaluating human systems in military training

The paper reviews recent work, conducted at Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation, on the evaluation of military training technologies, including simulators and synthetic learning environments. Practical and conceptual considerations for the development of evaluation criteria and procedures are discussed, along with their conceptual underpinnings in total system performance analysis.

A coupled reaction-diffusion field model for perception-action cycle with applications to robot navigation

A generalised reaction-diffusion field model for robot navigation is proposed. It utilises two mutually antagonistic neural fields counteracting in patterns similar to that of flexor/extensor muscles controlling the movements in major joints in the human body. Combining local activation and generalised inhibition represented by Amaris neural field equations and extended by the Fitzhugh-Nagumo and Wilson-Cowan activator-inhibitor systems, results in the type of neural attractor dynamics that may lead to spontaneous oscillatory pattern formation. Preliminary simulation data suggest that this approach has utility in enabling a team of autonomous vehicles to navigate in a crowded pedestrian crossing.

Operator fatigue in Army Personnel: A multi-method research program

Since 2012 the Defence Science and Technology Organisation has undertaken a number of studies both in the field and in the laboratory investigating operator fatigue in Army Personnel. This program of research has employed multiple measures, methods and tools to better understand the multi-faceted nature of fatigue and how its effects are manifested.

Advances in Defence Support Systems

This chapter previews the main themes and contributions to this volume, focusing on the design and optimization of socio-technical systems and their performance in defence contexts. Conceptual and methodological considerations for the development of such systems and criteria likely to be useful in their evaluation are discussed, along with their conceptual underpinnings in total system performance analysis.

It's the deceiver, not the receiver: No individual differences when detecting deception in a foreign and a native language.

Individual differences in lie detection remain poorly understood. Bond and DePaulo’s meta-analysis examined judges (receivers) who were ascertaining lies from truths and senders (deceiver) who told these lies and truths. Bond and DePaulo found that the accuracy of detecting deception depended more on the characteristics of senders rather than the judges’ ability to detect lies/truths. However, for many studies in this meta-analysis, judges could hear and understand senders. This made language comprehension a potential confound. This paper presents the results of two studies. Extending previous work, in Study 1, we removed language comprehension as a potential confound by having English-speakers (N = 126, mean age = 19.86) judge the veracity of German speakers (n = 12) in a lie detection task. The twelve lie-detection stimuli included emotional and non-emotional content, and were presented in three modalities–audio only, video only, and audio and video together. The intelligence (General, Auditory, Emotional) and personality (Dark Triads and Big 6) of participants was also assessed. In Study 2, a native German-speaking sample (N = 117, mean age = 29.10) were also tested on a similar lie detection task to provide a control condition. Despite significantly extending research design and the selection of constructs employed to capture individual differences, both studies replicated Bond and DePaulo’s findings. The results of Study1 indicated that removing language comprehension did not amplify individual differences in judge’s ability to ascertain lies from truths. Study 2 replicated these results confirming a lack of individual differences in judge’s ability to detect lies. The results of both studies suggest that Sender (deceiver) characteristics exerted a stronger influence on the outcomes of lie detection than the judge’s attributes.

The impact of caffeine consumption during 50 hr of extended wakefulness on glucose metabolism, self-reported hunger and mood state

Caffeine is known for its capacity to mitigate performance decrements. The metabolic side‐effects are less well understood. This study examined the impact of cumulative caffeine doses on glucose metabolism, self‐reported hunger and mood state during 50 hr of wakefulness. In a double‐blind laboratory study, participants were assigned to caffeine (n = 9, 6M, age 21.3 ± 2.1 years; body mass index 21.9 ± 1.6 kg/m2) or placebo conditions (n = 8, 4M, age 23.0 ± 2.8 years; body mass index 21.8 ± 1.6 kg/m2). Following a baseline sleep (22:00 hours–08:00 hours), participants commenced 50 hr of sleep deprivation. Meal timing and composition were controlled throughout the study. Caffeine (200 mg) or placebo gum was chewed for 5 min at 01:00 hours, 03:00 hours, 05:00 hours and 07:00 hours during each night of sleep deprivation. Continual glucose monitors captured interstitial glucose 2 hr post‐breakfast, at 5‐min intervals. Hunger and mood state were assessed at 10:00 hours, 16:30 hours, 22:30 hours and 04:30 hours. Caffeine did not affect glucose area under the curve (p = 0.680); however, glucose response to breakfast significantly increased after 2 nights of extended wakefulness compared with baseline (p = 0.001). There was a significant main effect of day, with increased tiredness (p < 0.001), mental exhaustion (p < 0.001), irritability (p = 0.002) and stress (p < 0.001) on the second day of extended wake compared with day 1. Caffeine attenuated the rise in tiredness (p < 0.001), mental exhaustion (p = 0.044) and irritability (p = 0.018) on day 1 but not day 2. Self‐reported hunger was not affected by sleep deprivation or caffeine. These data confirm the effectiveness of caffeine in improving performance under conditions of sleep deprivation by reducing feelings of tiredness, mental exhaustion and irritability without exacerbating glucose metabolism and feelings of hunger.

Synchronized drowsiness monitoring and simulated driving performance data under 50-hr sleep deprivation: A double-blind placebo-controlled caffeine intervention

This paper presents the 60-s time-resolution segment from our 50-h total sleep deprivation (TSD) dataset (Aidman et al., 2018) [1] that captures minute-by-minute dynamics of driving performance (lane keeping and speed variability) along with objective, oculography-derived drowsiness estimates synchronised to the same 1-min driving epochs. Eleven participants (5 females, aged 18–28) were randomised into caffeine (administered in four 200 mg doses via chewing gum in the early morning hours) or placebo groups. Every three hours they performed a 40 min simulated drive in a medium fidelity driving simulator, while their drowsiness was continuously measured with a spectacle frame-mounted infra-red alertness monitoring system. The dataset covers 15 driving periods of 40 min each, and thus contains over 600 data points of paired data per participant. The 1-min time resolution enables detailed time-series analyses of both time-since-wake and time-on-task performance dynamics and associated drowsiness levels. It also enables direct examination of the relationships between drowsiness and task performance measures. The question of how these relationships might change under various intervention conditions (caffeine in our case) seems worth further investigation.