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Browsing by Author "Ewen, Joshua B."
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Item B-Value and Empirical Equivalence Bound: A New Procedure of Hypothesis Testing(Wiley, 2022) Zhao, Yi; Caffo, Brian S.; Ewen, Joshua B.; Biostatistics and Health Data Science, School of MedicineIn this study, we propose a two-stage procedure for hypothesis testing, where the first stage is conventional hypothesis testing and the second is an equivalence testing procedure using an introduced Empirical Equivalence Bound. In 2016, the American Statistical Association released a policy statement on P-values to clarify the proper use and interpretation in response to the criticism of reproducibility and replicability in scientific findings. A recent solution to improve reproducibility and transparency in statistical hypothesis testing is to integrate P-values (or confidence intervals) with practical or scientific significance. Similar ideas have been proposed via the equivalence test, where the goal is to infer equality under a presumption (null) of inequality of parameters. However, the definition of scientific significance/equivalence can sometimes be ill-justified and subjective. To circumvent this drawback, we introduce the B-value and the Empirical Equivalence Bound, which are both estimated from the data. Performing a second-stage equivalence test, our procedure offers an opportunity to improve the reproducibility of findings across studies.Item Learning of Skilled Movements via Imitation in ASD(Wiley, 2020-05) McAuliffe, Danielle; Zhao, Yi; Pillai, Ajay S.; Ament, Katarina; Adamek, Jack; Caffo, Brian S.; Mostofsky, Stewart H.; Ewen, Joshua B.; Biostatistics, School of Public HealthAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) consists of altered performance of a range of skills, including social/communicative and motor skills. It is unclear whether this altered performance results from atypical acquisition or learning of the skills or from atypical “online” performance of the skills. Atypicalities of skilled actions that require both motor and cognitive resources, such as abnormal gesturing, are highly prevalent in ASD and are easier to study in a laboratory context than are social/communicative skills. Imitation has long been known to be impaired in ASD; because learning via imitation is a prime method by which humans acquire skills, we tested the hypothesis that children with ASD show alterations in learning novel gestures via imitation. Eighteen participants with ASD and IQ > 80, ages 8–12.9 years, and 19 typically developing peers performed a task in which they watched a video of a model performing a novel, meaningless arm/hand gesture and copied the gesture. Each gesture video/copy sequence was repeated 4–6 times. Eight gestures were analyzed. Examination of learning trajectories revealed that while children with ASD made nearly as much progress in learning from repetition 1 to repetition 4, the shape of the learning curves differed. Causal modeling demonstrated the shape of the learning curve influenced both the performance of overlearned gestures and autism severity, suggesting that it is in the index of learning mechanisms relevant both to motor skills and to autism core features.