Predicting and Facilitating the Emergence of Optimal Solutions for a Cooperative “Herding” Task and Testing Their Similitude to Contexts Utilizing Full-Body Motion
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Predicting and Facilitating the Emergence of Optimal Solutions for a Cooperative “Herding” Task and Testing their Similitude to Contexts Utilizing Full-Body Motion A dissertation submitted to the Division of Graduate Education and Research of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Psychology of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences by Patrick Nalepka M. A. University of Cincinnati, 2016 January, 2018 Committee Chair: Kevin Shockley, Ph.D. Committee: Michael J. Richardson, Ph.D. Anthony Chemero, Ph.D. Rachel W. Kallen, Ph.D. Paula Silva, Ph.D. ii Abstract Multi-agent activity is an emergent process, with the roles and responsibilities of individual actors a self-organized consequence of task-dynamic constraints and perturbations. The shepherding paradigm, first investigated by Nalepka, Kallen, Chemero, Saltzman, and Richardson, (2017), was directed towards exploring the emergence of stable multi-agent behavioral modes within dynamically changing task-environments. The task involved pairs of participants using their hands to contain a herd of autonomous and reactive “sheep” within a virtual game field projected on a tabletop display. Initially, all participants employed a search-and-recover (S&R) mode of behavior, moving from sheep-to-sheep to corral the herd to a target containment region in the center of the game field. However, a subset of dyads learned to coordinate their movements, forming an oscillating “wall” that contained the herd (termed coupled oscillatory containment)— a behavioral mode termed coupled oscillatory containment (COC)—which allowed dyads to achieve superior task performance. Experiment 1 investigated a potential control parameter to promote the emergence of COC behavior, as well as determine whether changes in oculomotor behavior might predict its emergence using recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). Experiment 2 sought to validate weather S&R and COC behavior also defined a more realistic herding situation that involved the full-body movement of participants in a large task space. Results indicated that manipulating task difficulty, by controlling how fast the sheep could move, promoted the use of more coordinated modes of behavior (Experiment 1 and 2). Significant changes in the determinism and complexity (entropy) of oculomotor behavior was observed two trials prior to the discovery of COC behavior using RQA (Experiment 1). In full-body herding (Experiment 2), a subset of dyads discovered a coordinated mode of behavior that involved a joint circling pattern in a fixed direction, with the frequency with which this behavioral mode emerged increasing with increases iii in task difficulty. Future work will investigate the informational basis that leads to the discovery of optimal solutions (i.e., oscillatory behavioral coordination) in the shepherding task, as well as the design of flexible, adaptive artificial (machine) systems that can learn and work alongside humans in these unstable task-environments. Keywords: multi-agent coordination, shepherding, strategy discovery, recurrence quantification analysis iv v Acknowledgments Special thanks to the committee who reviewed this work, my instructors, both past and present, for giving me the tools needed to carve my own path, and to my friends and family for supporting me throughout my academic career. I would like to acknowledge Elliot Saltzman and Maurice Lamb, who are collaborators on the “shepherding” project. I would also like to acknowledge Carl Bou Mansour, Christopher Riehm, Guilherme Sanches De Oliveira and Riley Mayr, who assisted in either equipment setup, data collection or data post-processing on one or more of the “shepherding” experiments throughout the years. Finally, I would like to acknowledge Melissa Kathryn Ridgley for her love and support the past four years that made my time in Cincinnati unforgettable. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01GM105045). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. vi Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix CHAPTER 1 Introduction............................................................................................................... 1 Current Dissertation .................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 2 Experiment 1 Facilitating and Predicting the Emergence of Coupled Oscillatory Containment .................................................................................................................................... 8 Dynamics of Behavioral Change ................................................................................................ 8 Predictors to Behavioral Change .............................................................................................. 11 Current Experiment ................................................................................................................... 16 Method ...................................................................................................................................... 18 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 25 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 38 CHAPTER 3 Experiment 2 Shepherding Dynamic Similitude to Full-Body Movement ............ 44 Dynamic Similitude of Shepherding and Herding Behavior .................................................... 45 Dynamic Motor Primitives of Task-Dynamics ......................................................................... 47 Current Experiment ................................................................................................................... 48 Method ...................................................................................................................................... 48 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 52 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 59 CHAPTER 4 General Discussion ................................................................................................. 67 Summary of Findings in Experiment 1 ..................................................................................... 67 Summary of Findings in Experiment 2 ..................................................................................... 68 vii General Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 69 References ..................................................................................................................................... 73 viii List of Figures Figure 1. Depiction of experiment setup from Nalepka, Kallen et al. (2017). .............................. 2 Figure 2. Illustrations of the behavioral modes observed in Nalepka, Kallen et al., (2017). ....... 4 Figure 3. Example gear-problems from Stephen, Boncoddo et al., (2009). ................................. 13 Figure 4. Change in Entropy during a phase transition in a Lorenz system indexed using recurrence quantification analysis. Taken from Stephen, Dixon and Isenhower (2009). ............................... 14 Figure 5. Example recurrence plot used for recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). Taken from Webber & Zbilut (2005). .............................................................................................................. 15 Figure 6. Depiction of Experiment 1. ........................................................................................... 19 Figure 7. Behavior classification for Experiment 1. ................................................................... 22 Figure 8. Summary plots depicting within-subject differences in behavioral mode on shepherding performance.for Experiment 1. .................................................................................................... 28 Figure 9. Summary plots depicting within-subject differences on ocular descriptive measures for unsuccessful performance, successful S&R performance, and successful COC performance for Experiment 1. ................................................................................................................................ 30 Figure 10. Summary plots depicting within-subject differences on ocular dynamics for unsuccessful performance, successful S&R performance, and successful COC performance for Experiment 1. ................................................................................................................................ 31 Figure 11. Summary plots depicting within-subject differences on ocular descriptive measures for unsuccessful performance, successful S&R performance, and successful COC performance for Experiment 1 using a 0.5 Hz cutoff criterion for COC trials. ...................................................... 33 ix Figure 12. Summary plots depicting within-subject differences on ocular dynamics for unsuccessful performance, successful