LSTM-CNN: An efficient diagnostic network for Parkinson's disease utilizing dynamic handwriting analysis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Dynamic handwriting analysis, due to its noninvasive and readily accessible nature, has emerged as a vital adjunctive method for the early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD). An essential step involves analysing subtle variations in signals to quantify PD dysgraphia. Although previous studies have explored extracting features from the overall signal, they may ignore the potential importance of local signal segments. In this study, we propose a lightweight network architecture to analyse dynamic handwriting signal segments of patients and present visual diagnostic results, providing an efficient diagnostic method. METHODS: To analyse subtle variations in handwriting, we investigate time-dependent patterns in local representation of handwriting signals. Specifically, we segment the handwriting signal into fixed-length sequential segments and design a compact one-dimensional (1D) hybrid network to extract discriminative temporal features for classifying each local segment. Finally, the category of the handwriting signal is fully diagnosed through a majority voting scheme. RESULTS: The proposed method achieves impressive diagnostic performance on the new DraWritePD dataset (with an accuracy of 96.2%, sensitivity of 94.5% and specificity of 97.3%) and the well-established PaHaW dataset (with an accuracy of 90.7%, sensitivity of 94.3% and specificity of 87.5%). Moreover, the network architecture stands out for its excellent lightweight design, occupying a mere 0.084M parameters, with only 0.59M floating-point operations. It also exhibits nearly real-time CPU inference performance, with the inference time for a single handwriting signal ranging from 0.106 to 0.220 s. CONCLUSIONS: We present a series of experiments with extensive analysis, which systematically demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method in quantifying dysgraphia for a precise diagnosis of PD.

Transforming fatigue assessment: Smartphone-based system with digitized motor skill tests.

BACKGROUND: The condition of fatigue is a complex and multifaceted disorder that encompasses physical, mental, and psychological dimensions, all of which contribute to a decreased quality of life. Smartphone-based systems are gaining significant research interest due to their potential to provide noninvasive monitoring and diagnosis of diseases. OBJECTIVE: This paper studies the feasibility of using smartphones to collect motor skill related data for machine learning based fatigue detection. The authors' main goal is to provide valuable insights into the nature of fatigue and support the development of more effective interventions to manage it. METHODS: An application for smartphones running on Android OS is developed. Two aim-based reaction tests, an Archimedean spiral test, and a tremor test, were assembled. 41 subjects participated in the study. The resulting dataset consists of 131 trials of fatigue assessment alongside digital signals extracted from the motor skill tests. Six machine learning classifiers were trained on computed features extracted from the collected digital signals. RESULTS: The collected dataset SmartPhoneFatigue is presented for further research. The real-world utility of this database was shown by creating a methodology to construct a fatigue predictive model. Our approach incorporated 60 distinct features, such as kinematic, angular, aim-based, and tremor-related measures. The machine learning models exhibited a high degree of prediction rate for fatigue state, with an accuracy exceeding 70%, sensitivity surpassing 90%, and an f1-score greater than 80%. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate that the proposed smartphone-based system is suitable for motion data acquisition in non-controlled environments and shows promise as a more objective and convenient method for measuring fatigue.

Studies in the Mentality of Literates: 3. Conceptual Structure and Nonsense of Personality Testing.

In this study, third in a series of studies of the relationships between the dominant type of the Word Meaning Structure (WMS) and various psychic processes, response patterns on personality questionnaires with Likert-type response format of individuals with different levels of education (including adult illiterates) in Brazil (N = 102) and in Estonia (N = 520) were assessed with person oriented methods of data analysis. We found that responses to two personality questionnaires (International Personality Item Pool Questionnaire, IPIP-Q60 and Estonian Collectivism Scale, ESTCOL) are inconsistent and do not correspond to theories that underlie construction and interpretation of such assessment tools. Two novel ways to assess inconsistent response patterns were developed. The Consistency Index (CI) characterizes between-item inconsistency and the Determinacy Index (DI) characterizes within-item inconsistency. The dominant type of the WMS and the level of education were related to both CI and DI. Higher level of between-item inconsistency characterizes everyday conceptual thinkers with lower levels of education and higher level of within-item inconsistency was observed among logical conceptual thinkers with higher levels of education. Systematic relationships between WMS and inconsistent patterns of responses indicate that responses on personality questionnaires cannot be interpreted in terms of personality characteristics. The results of our study also provide further support to the idea that dominant type of the WMS is a pervasive characteristic of the psyche and determines qualitatively possibilities and limits of the psychic processes. The results of this study are in agreement with the idea that WMS defines the "Great Divide."

Psychology Today: Still in Denial, Still Outdated.

The questionable state of psychology as a science has been pointed out repeatedly over last hundred years. Sometimes programs to overcome the obvious limitations of psychology have been also proposed. So far, in vain. Zagaria with coauthors (this issue) bring the subject up again. They demonstrate that psychology today is characterized by the incoherence of definitions of core constructs and lack of consensus in the scientific community. The authors also suggest that psychology would do better by adopting a research program of a specific form of evolutionary psychology. In this paper I show, mostly on the basis of my earlier works on the same subject, that shortcomings of psychology today go much deeper than the authors of the target article have discussed. Psychology today is characterized by fundamental epistemological and methodological problems. As the same shortcomings characterize the version of evolutionary psychology advocated by Zagaria and coauthors, it is not the best candidate to ground the future of psychology. I suggest the psychology misses unifying psychology of a specific kind, which basic principles were outlined by Vygotsky almost a century ago.

Studies in the mentality of literates: 2. Conceptual structure, cognitive inhibition and verbal regulation of behavior.

We studied cognitive inhibitory processes and verbal regulation of behavior of individuals with different levels of education (including adult illiterates) in Brazil (N = 136) and in Estonia (N = 560) with person-oriented methods of data analysis. Our aim was to discover whether dominant type of word meaning structure (WMS) can define the "Great Divide", the single breaking point that universally defines certain direction of subsequent to it cultural evolution. We found that both cognitive inhibition of irrelevant for the task at hand information or actions as well as correct activation of relevant information or actions is significantly more common in individuals who rely predominantly on logical concepts in their thinking. The higher level of education was also associated with more efficient cognitive inhibition and activation. The patterns of test performance also suggest that there can be a qualitative difference in the efficiency of cognitive inhibition-activation processes between everyday conceptual and logical conceptual thinkers. The former group of individuals may achieve much higher performance levels than any individual in the former group. We also discuss cognitive similarities and differences between adults with low or no formal education on the one hand and children and educated adults with brain damage on the other. The results are in agreement with the theory of unilineal hierarchic cultural evolution. Individual psychic development and cultural evolution can be both understood in terms of the WMS development.

Studies in the Mentality of Literates: Searching for the Cultural Great Divide at the Individual Level of Analysis.

Today it is usually agreed that cultures are different but no culture is more developed than some other. It follows that culture did not develop hierarchically. Otherwise some cultures must be more developed than the others. This position, however, contradicts ample evidence that individual mental development is hierarchical. As culture can develop only on the basis of individual development, cultural development has to be hierarchical too. In this paper a research program to study cultural and individual development in one framework is outlined. Particularly it is discussed whether it is possible to define a Great Divide, a characteristic that would distinguish more developed cultures from less developed cultures today. Both literacy and formal education are rejected as candidates for a Great Divide. Then, following and extending Vygotsky's theory, it is demonstrated that a Great Divide can be defined in terms of the development of word meaning structure (WMS). A novel theory of the development of WMS over five hierarchical stages is shortly described and it is suggested that both individuals and cultures develop over the same stages in invariant order. Particularly differences between everyday and logical (or "scientific" in Vygotsky's terms) concepts are discussed. It is theoretically explained how study of adult individuals can be used to support the presented theory of developmental similarities between cultures and individuals. Specific hypotheses for the study are put forward.

Studies in the Mentality of Literates: 1. Conceptual Structure and Aspects of Visual Perception.

We studied visual-perceptual abilities of individuals with different levels of education (including adult illiterates) in Brazil (N = 136) and in Estonia (N = 560) with person-oriented methods of data analysis. Our aim was to discover whether dominant type of word meaning structure (WMS) can define the "Great Divide", the single breaking point that universally defines certain direction of subsequent to it cultural evolution. We particularly focused on the everyday concept-logical concept shift that takes place in the formal education system. We found that logical concepts were rarely available for illiterates; availability of logical conceptual thought increases together with the level of education. Most illiterates were able to find figures of concrete objects from complex overlapping and embedded contour figures but none of them could find all abstract figures from the same complex figures. Also none of the illiterates could perform beyond chance level in both mental rotation tasks together. Ability to perform correctly on all visual-spatial tasks increased with the increase in logical concepts and with the increasing level of education. The distribution of respondents according to the WMS level, level of education, and performance on the visual-spatial tasks indicated that individuals are developmentally heterogeneous: achievement of the tertiary level of education and logical conceptual thinking mechanisms does not guarantee high level performance on the visual-spatial tasks. The results are in agreement with the theory of unilineal hierarchic cultural evolution. Individual psychic development and cultural evolution can be both understood in terms of the WMS development.

Why Behavioral Indicators May Fail to Reveal Mental States: Individual Differences in Arousal-Movement Pattern Relationships.

It is commonly assumed that behavior reflects the mental states of individuals. However, recent attempts to detect human states of mind via behavioral indicators have not always been successful; behavioral indicators may be unreliable and invalid. In this study we show that one of the common behavioral indicators, change in the overall amount of movement, correlated well with changes in the skin conductance level (SCL) at the group level, which reflects changes in arousal. At the individual level, however, changes in the SCL were related to movement patterns only in about half of the individuals. It is also noteworthy that the level of movement-SCL correlation was very highly predictable by certain social and cognitive characteristics of the individuals. Our results suggest that behavioral indicators may in many cases fail to predict mental states at the individual level.

What are Higher Psychological Functions?

The concept of Higher Psychological Functions (HPFs) may seem to be well know in psychology today. Yet closer analysis reveals that HPFs are either not defined at all or if defined, then by a set of characteristics not justified theoretically. It is not possible to determine whether HPFs exist or not, unless they are defined. Most commonly the idea of HPFs is related to Vygotsky's theory. According to him, HPFs are: (1) psychological systems, (2) developing from natural processes, (3) mediated by symbols, (4) forms of psychological cooperation, which are (5) internalized in the course of development, (6) products of historical development, (7) conscious and (8) voluntary (9) active forms of adaptation to the environment, (10) dynamically changing in development, and (11) ontogeny of HPFs recapitulates cultural history. In this article these characteristics are discussed together with the relations among them. It is concluded that HPFs are real psychological phenomena.

Relationships between visual figure discrimination, verbal abilities, and gender.

This study investigated the relationships between verbal thinking and performance on visual figure discrimination tasks from a Vygotskian perspective in a large varied adult sample (N = 428). A test designed to assess the structure of word meanings (ie tendency to think in 'everyday' or 'scientific' concepts as distinguished by Vygotsky) together with two contour picture tasks was presented. Visual tasks were a modified version of Poppelreuter's overlapping figures and a picture depicting a meaningful scene. On both tasks concrete objects and abstract meaningless shapes had to be identified. In addition to relationships between visual task performance and word meaning structure, the effects of the meaningful scene and relations with gender were examined. The results confirmed the expected relation between word meaning structure and visual performance. Furthermore, they suggested a specific effect of the meaningful whole and a male advantage, especially for the first task in which women seemed to benefit less from advanced word meaning structure.

Short-term memory in young adults with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.

We examined short-term memory activation processes and task-relevant, task-irrelevant, and dynamic inhibitory processes in a group of young adults with hypoxic-ischaemic prenatal spastic diplegic cerebral palsy (HI-CP, N=27) with group-level and person-oriented methods of data analysis. Performance was compared with age, sex, and education of a matched control group (N=135). We found that HI-CP is accompanied with low level of correct answers and high levels of task-relevant and task-irrelevant intrusions and repetitions on the Memory with Pause and Homogeneous Interference short-term memory tasks. Person-oriented analyses revealed several different configurations of dysfunction in the HI-CP group.

Travel into a fairy land: a critique of modern qualitative and mixed methods psychologies.

In this article modern qualitative and mixed methods approaches are criticized from the standpoint of structural-systemic epistemology. It is suggested that modern qualitative methodologies suffer from several fallacies: some of them are grounded on inherently contradictory epistemology, the others ask scientific questions after the methods have been chosen, conduct studies inductively so that not only answers but even questions are often supposed to be discovered, do not create artificial situations and constraints on study-situations, are adevelopmental by nature, study not the external things and phenomena but symbols and representations--often the object of studies turns out to be the researcher rather than researched, rely on ambiguous data interpretation methods based to a large degree on feelings and opinions, aim to understand unique which is theoretically impossible, or have theoretical problems with sampling. Any one of these fallacies would be sufficient to exclude any possibility to achieve structural-systemic understanding of the studied things and phenomena. It also turns out that modern qualitative methodologies share several fallacies with the quantitative methodology. Therefore mixed methods approaches are not able to overcome the fundamental difficulties that characterize mixed methods taken separately. It is proposed that structural-systemic methodology that dominated psychological thought in the pre-WWII continental Europe is philosophically and theoretically better grounded than the other methodologies that can be distinguished in psychology today. Future psychology should be based on structural-systemic methodology.

Biological roots of foresight and mental time travel.

Studies of future-oriented capacities today are based on Cartesian epistemology. In this paper it is suggested that, following this epistemology, not only the answers to scientific questions, but even the questions themselves should be replaced. Particularly, instead of asking whether some form of future-oriented cognition might be unique to humans, and what are the "causes" of such capacities; it might be more productive to ask, in the framework of the structural-systemic epistemology, what level of analysis corresponds to future-oriented capacities, and in what form their structure is organized. The structural-systemic theory of functional systems by the Russian physiologist Piotr Anokhin is described, where it is shown that future orientation is the central characteristic of living systems. Furthermore, it is an essential property of all life-forms as wholes. Therefore understanding of future-oriented capacities requires description of what Anokhin called functional systems, systems that can be found in all life forms. Starting from Anokhin's structural-systemic epistemology, it is possible to go further and build a developmental theory of different kinds of future-orientation. It is proposed that future-orientation as a characteristic of life has evolved into psychical future-oriented cognition. From there, in turn, qualitatively novel forms of semiotically mediated future-oriented processes have emerged. Building a theory of future-oriented capacities in this direction seems to be scientifically more productive than continuing the theory-building following the fundamentally limited Cartesian epistemology.

Quantitative methods in psychology: inevitable and useless.

Science begins with the question, what do I want to know? Science becomes science, however, only when this question is justified and the appropriate methodology is chosen for answering the research question. Research question should precede the other questions; methods should be chosen according to the research question and not vice versa. Modern quantitative psychology has accepted method as primary; research questions are adjusted to the methods. For understanding thinking in modern quantitative psychology, two epistemologies should be distinguished: structural-systemic that is based on Aristotelian thinking, and associative-quantitative that is based on Cartesian-Humean thinking. The first aims at understanding the structure that underlies the studied processes; the second looks for identification of cause-effect relationships between the events with no possible access to the understanding of the structures that underlie the processes. Quantitative methodology in particular as well as mathematical psychology in general, is useless for answering questions about structures and processes that underlie observed behaviors. Nevertheless, quantitative science is almost inevitable in a situation where the systemic-structural basis of behavior is not well understood; all sorts of applied decisions can be made on the basis of quantitative studies. In order to proceed, psychology should study structures; methodologically, constructive experiments should be added to observations and analytic experiments.

Variables in psychology: a critique of quantitative psychology.

Mind is hidden from direct observation; it can be studied only by observing behavior. Variables encode information about behaviors. There is no one-to-one correspondence between behaviors and mental events underlying the behaviors, however. In order to understand mind it would be necessary to understand exactly what information is represented in variables. This aim cannot be reached after variables are already encoded. Therefore, statistical data analysis can be very misleading in studies aimed at understanding mind that underlies behavior. In this article different kinds of information that can be represented in variables are described. It is shown how informational ambiguity of variables leads to problems of theoretically meaningful interpretation of the results of statistical data analysis procedures in terms of hidden mental processes. Reasons are provided why presence of dependence between variables does not imply causal relationship between events represented by variables and absence of dependence between variables cannot rule out the causal dependence of events represented by variables. It is concluded that variable-psychology has a very limited range of application for the development of a theory of mind-psychology.

Culture of science: strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology.

In pre-World-War-II psychology, two directions in methodological thought-the German-Austrian and North American ways-could be differentiated. After the war, the German-Austrian methodological orientation has been largely abandoned. Compared to the pre-WWII German-Austrian psychology, modern mainstream psychology is more concerned with accumulation of facts than with general theory. Furthermore, the focus on qualitative data-in addition to quantitative data-is rarely visible. Only external-physical or statistical-rather than psychological controls are taken into account in empirical studies. Fragments--rather than wholes-and relationships are studied, and single cases that contradict group data are not analyzed. Instead of complex psychological types simple trait differences are studied, and prediction is not followed by thorough analysis of the whole situation. Last (but not least), data are not systematically related to complex theory. These limits have hindered the growth of knowledge in the behavioral sciences. A new return to an updated version of the German-Austrian methodological trajectory is suggested.

Sometimes one is more than two: when collaboration inhibits knowledge construction.

In this paper I suggest that to better understand knowledge construction in science, and the role of social processes and collaboration in it, it is useful to distinguish between "elaborative knowledge" and "emergent knowledge." Elaborative knowledge is constructed for solving clearly defined problems in established theoretical frameworks, and emergent knowledge refers to the knowledge constructed to reach a hierarchically higher and more complex level of scientific understanding. There are also two types of collaboration. On the one hand there is "dialogical collaboration" in which team members contribute to reaching the common clearly defined objective so that a team as a whole becomes qualitatively more complex than its members alone. On the other hand there is "unidirectional collaboration" where the result of collaboration is determined by one person, should be distinguished. There is evidence from multiple perspectives indicating that "elaborative knowledge" can be developed in both kinds of collaboration and sometimes 'dialogical collaboration" is necessary for knowledge construction. However, for building "emergent knowledge," it is argued, only individual or "unidirectional collaboration" is productive, and "dialogical collaboration" can hinder or even prevent the construction of this kind of knowledge.

Possible interpretation of subjective complaints in patients with spontaneous subarachnoid haemorrhage.

OBJECTIVE: To analyse factors related to subjective non-cognitive and cognitive complaints in patients with spontaneous subarachnoid haemorrhage. SUBJECTS: Twenty-seven patients with subarachnoid haemorrhage and 27 age-, sex- and education-matched healthy controls. METHODS: A battery of cognitive tests measuring visuo-spatial abilities, verbal abilities, and fine-motor skill, Brief Social Support Questionnaire, and Life Orientation Scale were individually presented to all participants. RESULTS: Cognitive complaints were related to low social support but not to cognitive performance. Complaints about headaches and dizziness were also related to decreased cognitive performance. Above-normal optimistic life-orientation was related to the absence of complaints in patients with subarachnoid haemorrhage. Healthy participants were best discriminated from patients with subarachnoid haemorrhage by less satisfactory social support system and decreased fine motor skills in the latter group. CONCLUSION: Change in social support network may be an important resource for increasing quality of life in patients with subarachnoid haemorrhage not only through help provided by supporters but also indirectly, through increasing subjective well-being. The absence of subjective complaints in patients with subarachnoid haemorrhage is not necessarily related to better objective condition but rather to inadequately optimistic life orientation.

Relationships between personality structure, structure of word meaning, and cognitive ability: a study of cultural mechanisms of personality.

Native-born Estonian men (N=912), 17-68 years old, participated in a study on relationships between personality characteristics, dominant structure of word meaning ("everyday concepts" thinking or "scientific concepts" thinking), and level of cognitive ability. Individuals who primarily used everyday concepts thinking or who possessed relatively low levels of cognitive ability did not reveal a coherent Big Five personality structure, whereas individuals who primarily used scientific concepts thinking or possessed high levels of cognitive ability did. Thus, personality may be shaped by a cultural factor--word meaning structure. Earlier studies, which seem to support the idea that Big Five personality structure is a biologically determined human universal, suffer from serious sampling problems and insufficient data analyses.