On Tue, 05 Aug 2014 15:29:32 -0700, David Epstein wrote:
On Tue, 5 Aug 2014, Mike Palij went:
One would like to have the data from the 18,420 participants in the
survey/smartphone component
I just read the article
< http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/31/1407535111.abstract >
rather quickly, and although the study is interesting, people should
understand that the n=18,420 smartphone component of the study did not
include experience sampling--at least, not sampling of daily-life
experience in all its variety and unpredictability. Instead, the
investigators used the smartphones to administer their gambling task,
during which the phones repeatedly asked "How happy are you?" So the
question was asked only while the participants were busy experiencing
wins and losses determined by the investigators.
Yes, the relevant info is at the end of page 5 and the start of page 6.
|...One of these games was based on the
|task we used for the fMRI experiment. Subjects started the game with
500
|points and made 30 choices in each play. In each trial, subjects chose
between
|a certain option and a gamble. Chosen gambles, represented as spinners,
|were resolved after a brief delay. Subjects were presented with the
question,
|"How happy are you at this moment?" after every two to three trials.
|Subjects completed 30 choice trials and answered the happiness question
12
|times in each play.
Figure 3 provides a screenshot of the smartphone display (Panel A),
the results for the first 200 participants -- I assume for all 12
times --
(Panel B), and the first happiness rating after the first 2-3 trials
(Panel C; why did they use 2-3 trials instead of a constant 2 or 3
trials?). Although the patterns are the same in Panels B and C
I still don't understand how they came up with the values for
Certain Reward (CR), gamble Expected Value (EV), and
gamble Reward Prediction Error (RPE) nor why the model
or equation makes sense. Be that as it may, if I understand
the article (I am unfamiliar with this type of research and
analysis) each participant has the equation calculated and
a summary value is presented but no range of values --
I don't need a confidence interval but the minimum-maximum
could be useful (e.g., Table S3 in the supplemental material
reports median r-squared, a range of values would be useful).
Within that context, the study accomplished some neat things,
but--that's the context.
Not really my area so I have questions about what was done and
why. It is possible that they did to some neat things but you have to
admit that the 18K sample results only generalize to people who
play games on their smartphones -- I'm not sure what the demographics
are for that group.
And who says "anticorrelated" for "negatively correlated"?
See page 3, right column, top paragraph, last sentence.
Doesn't anticorrelated imply unrelated? But "r= -0.58,
P= 0.006; Fig 2D" is not unrelated. Anyway.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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