James J. Cummings- Boston University
James J. Cummings
- Boston University
About
46
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Publications
Publications (46)
The integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into web-based individual formative e-assessments in higher education is a nascent field that warrants further exploration. This study investigated the use of GenAI within an 8-week undergraduate-level research methods course at a university in the United States of America, aiming to und...
This report analyzes the potential for large language models (LLMs) to expedite accurate replication of published message effects studies. We tested LLM-powered participants (personas) by replicating 133 experimental findings from 14 papers containing 45 recent studies in the Journal of Marketing (January 2023-May 2024). We used a new software tool...
This study examines how misinformation-susceptible individuals from historically excluded and marginalized communities engage with science topics (e.g., climate change, vaccines, and health/wellness) and interpret misinformation and corrective intervention strategies. Two focus groups reveal that most participants are highly distrustful of authorit...
This study examines facets of robot humanization, defined as how people think of robots as social and human-like entities through perceptions of liking, human-likeness, and rights entitlement. The current study investigates how different trait differences in robots (gender, physical humanness, and relational status) and participants (trait differen...
The chapter is meant to provide an overview to a wide assortment of psychological considerations relevant to media-based behavior interventions. In an age of increased surveillance and integration of sensor technology into all aspects of daily life, this chapter opens with an empirical case study highlighting the potential benefits and limitations...
The present study investigates how the user state of presence is affected by contingencies in the design of virtual environments. The theoretical framework of congruity is herein explicated, which builds upon the concept of plausibility illusion as one of the essential prerequisites for presence, and which systematically explains and predicts prese...
In recent years, virtual reality (VR) technology has been mainstreamed for at-home use, with various consumer-oriented devices released by media firms such as Meta, Google, Samsung, and HTC. The present research investigates the role of psychological traits—including immersive tendencies, absorption, sensation seeking, need for cognition, neophobia...
Initially the province of telecommunication and early computer-mediated communication (CMC) literature, multiple systematic reviews suggest “social presence” is now used for an increasingly diverse set of phenomena across various communication settings. Drawing upon Chaffee’s (1991) description of concept explication as the dialectic process betwee...
Mobile location based services (LBS) often ask users to consent to over disclose location data in exchange for their service. This online experiment manipulated interface features within an LBS consent screen to understand their independent and interactive influence on location data obscurity decisions. Participants (N = 502) were led to believe th...
Much of behavioral science asks a sample of people to respond to a sample of stimuli in two or more different conditions. Concerns about the best ways to sample people to ensure the integrity of research are important and increasingly common. There is much less discussion, however, about stimulus sampling issues that also may significantly impact r...
The primary goal of science is to “get it right,” meaning that scientists seek to accurately document the world as it is. While erroneous conclusions and flawed theories can and do occur, they can only be tolerated as long as reliable mechanisms of self-correction exist. Unfortunately, in recent years, an array of evidence has emerged suggesting th...
Descriptions of moment-by-moment changes in attention contribute critical elements to theory and practice about how people process media. We introduce a new concept called screenertia and use new screen-capture methodology to empirically evaluate its occurrence. We unobtrusively obtained 400,000+ screenshots of 30 participants’ laptop screens every...
Mobile phones have evolved to allow individuals to easily access and disclose the private information of others to a seemingly infinite network. Notably, the permanent nature of mobile data has aided its path between individuals and the police, storing integral evidence for criminal investigations in the palms of peoples' hands. Understanding cogni...
Online dating apps have become an increasingly common way to meet prospective partners and form relationships. Though previous research lends insight into who uses these platforms and why, relatively little is known about the nature of in-app behavior during that usage. The current study directly monitors sessions of dating app usage, observing how...
Popular claims of virtual reality systems serving as ‘empathy machines’ often fail to consider (a) the cognitive mechanisms driving the effects of technological immersion on empathy and (b) the conceptualization of empathy as a multidimensional construct. More, recent research has yielded mixed empirical support. This study investigates how dimensi...
This study examines various locomotion techniques and control schemes that have been used by designers to enable users of virtual reality systems to move within immersive virtual environments (IVEs). An experiment is conducted in which participants use different control schemes to explore and subsequently navigate through a series of increasingly-c...
This study investigates the relationship between immersive virtual environments and users' experience of presence in those environments, through the lens of congruity, with implications for both cognitive processing and environmental design. An experimental manipulation of three dimensions of congruity—sensory, environmental, and thematic—is conduc...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/12980.].
In recent years virtual reality (VR) technology has been mainstreamed for everyday media audiences, with various consumer-facing devices released by media firms such as Facebook, Google, Samsung, and HTC. In order to better understand who is most likely to adopt mainstream commercial VR technology for personal use, the current study seeks to produc...
Background: In recent years, there has been a proliferation of third-party Web-based services available to consumers to interpret raw DNA from direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. Little is known about who uses these services and the downstream health implications. Identifying this hard-to-reach population of consumers for research raised...
Digital experiences capture an increasingly large part of life, making them a preferred, if not required, method to describe and theorize about human behavior. Digital media also shape behavior by enabling people to switch between different content easily, and create unique threads of experiences that pass quickly through numerous information categ...
BACKGROUND
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of third-party online services available to consumers to interpret “raw DNA” from direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies. Little is known about who uses these services and the downstream health implications. Identifying this hard-to-reach population of consumers for research rai...
Personal computers allow multitasking among a greater variety of content than has ever been possible on a single device. We logged all switches made for 4 days for 30 people on personal computers used in natural environments. The median time before a switch occurred was 11 sec, shorter than previously observed. We also measured individual differenc...
Background:
With the availability of raw DNA generated from direct-to-consumer (DTC) testing companies, there has been a proliferation of third-party online services that are available to interpret the raw data for both genealogy and/or health purposes. This study examines the current landscape and downstream clinical implications of consumer use...
Media psychologists have theoretical interests in both people and media, yet research investments considerably favor subjects over stimuli. An analysis of 306 studies, taken from the journal Media Psychology over the last 10 years, and from the most cited media experiments in other journals, shows that studies invested in tens of thousands of human...
The concept of presence, or “being there” is a frequently emphasized factor in immersive mediated environments. It is often assumed that greater levels of immersive quality elicit higher levels of presence, in turn enhancing the effectiveness of a mediated experience. To investigate this assumption the current meta-analysis synthesizes decades of e...
This study measured arousal responses to multitasking by recording switches between content on personal computers over a day. Results showed that switches occurred every 19 seconds, more often than has been reported in previous research. Arousal was highest at the point of a switch with declines in skin conductance afterward. Switches were also pre...
Energy information for consumers can be complex and uninteresting. Games offer a compelling new context for home energy information that may engage consumers and change behaviors. Based on research showing the effectiveness of game elements used in serious contexts, we built a professional quality social game about energy use in a virtual home. In...
This paper suggests that the paradox of choice can be resolved in game environments by promoting heuristics-based decision-making, thereby maintaining player freedom while also avoiding the potential negative consequences of excessive deliberation. To do this, the informational cues relevant to such decisions must be made transparent, allowing play...
In this paper we present an ongoing research project that seeks to improve home energy behavior by connecting it to gameplay within an online multiplayer game. The project examines how the engagement mechanisms common in popular games may be leveraged to promote desired real-world energy behaviors among players. By inputting real world home energy...
We report results of an experiment on prices and demand in a fantasy-based virtual world. A virtual world is a persistent, synthetic, online environment that can be accessed by many users at the same time. Because most virtual worlds are built around a fantasy theme, complete with magic, monsters, and treasure, there is considerable skepticism that...
This paper suggests that the paradox of choice can be resolved in game environments by promoting heuristics-based decision-making, thereby maintaining player freedom while also avoiding the potential negative consequences of excessive deliberation. To do this, the informational cues relevant to such decisions must be made transparent, allowing play...
We report results of an experiment on prices and demand in a fantasy-based virtual world. A virtual world is a persistent, synthetic, online environment that can be accessed by many users at the same time. Because most virtual worlds are built around a fantasy theme, complete with magic, monsters, and treasure, there is considerable skepticism that...
A synthetic world is a computer-generated Earth-like environment that is accessible online to hundreds or thousands of people on a persistent basis. Due to the genuine human interactions that are cultivated in these environments, this technology may stand to offer much as a social science research tool. In this paper we describe a synthetic world,...
We report results of an experiment on prices and demand in a fantasy-based virtual world. A virtual world is a persistent, synthetic, online environment that can be accessed by many users at the same time. Because most virtual worlds are built around a fantasy theme, complete with magic, monsters, and treasure, there is considerable skepticism that...
Questions
Question (1)
I've been killing myself over the following and would love to hear folks' thoughts.
I have a dataset in which individuals (subID), each belonging to a particular group (group), repeatedly chose between multiple discrete outcomes (choice). I'd like to test how group membership influences choice, and want to account for non-independence of observations due to repeated choices being made by the same individuals. In turn, I planned to implement a mixed multinomial regression treating *group* as a **fixed effect** and *subID* as a **random effect**. It seems that there are a few options for multinomial logits in R, and I'm hoping for some guidance on which may be most easily implemented for this mixed model:
1) multinom
GLM, via nnet, allows the usage of the multinom function. This appears to be a nice, clear, straightforward option (https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/r/dae/multinomial-logistic-regression/)... for **fixed effect** models. However is there a manner to implement random effects with multinom? Evidently multinom is able to handle mixed-effects GLM with poisson distribution and a log link (https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/299229/test-repeated-within-subjects-observations-of-multinomial-categorical-data). However, I don't understand (a) why this is the case or (b) the required syntax. Can anyone clarify?
2) mlogit
A fantastic package, with incredibly helpful vignettes. However, the "mixed logit" documentation refers to models that have random effects related to alternative specific covariates (implemented via the rpar argument). My model has no alternative specific variables; I simply want to account for the random intercepts of the participants. Is this possible with mlogit? Is that variance automatically accounted for by setting subID as the id.var when shaping the data to long form with mlogit.data(https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/mlogit/versions/0.4-1/topics/mlogit.data)? I found an example of "tricking" mlogit to provide random coefficients for variables that vary across individuals (very bottom here: http://www.polsci.ucsb.edu/faculty/glasgow/ps206/ps206_mixed.r), but I don't quite understand the syntax involved.
3) MCMCglmm
Evidently another option. However, as a relative novice with R and someone completely unfamiliar with Bayesian stats, I'm not personally comfortable parsing example syntax of mixed logits with this package (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22020050/multinomial-mixed-logit-model-mlogit-r-package), or, even following the syntax, making guesses at priors or other needed arguments.
Any guidance toward the most straightforward approach and its syntax implementation would be thoroughly appreciated. Note - I'm also wondering if the random effect of subID needs to be nested within group (as individuals are members of groups), but that may be a question for a separate post. In any case, many thanks for any insights!
