Our Paradigm for Paradigms in IS

In the "publish or perish" world that we exist in as scholars, we note the emergence of an interesting pattern. Research is increasingly oriented around pre-existing, well-known, and widely accepted theoretical models, for which incremental advancements are devised by way of contribution. This is the way of "traditional" scientific work (consistent with Kuhn, 1962; 1970). Yet, this "traditional" approach to science is not as interesting as it could be for those of us editors, reviewers, and readers who are thirsty for new theoretical vistas and fresh ideas to inform our worldview of information systems.

Indeed, it would seem that our paradigm (that which guides us in Kuhnian practice of our scientific craft of article production) has become what Kuhn, himself, might have said of paradigms at the late stage of maturity, just in advance of revolutions in which normal science puzzle solving ceased to work as expected: the paradigm by which we operate in our normal science practice, and the paradigms with which we study our scientific problems, are as limiting to us as anything else.

The Philosophy that Guides our Science?

I come before you in this forum as the Jester in the Court of the Philosopher Kings.

Keeping in mind the medieval commensuration of the term ?fool" with ?jester" and you will have a closer appreciation of the self-deprecating point I seek to make in this sense. I am but a lay reader of the literature of philosophy. However much I appreciate it, enthuse over it, or embrace it as the principle upon which my science is grounded, all the same, I am a simple journeyman, to borrow from Eric Clapton's similar self-deprecation, when it comes to the field of philosophy.

Reduced habit-driven errors in Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s Disease can be understood as a disorder of motor habits. A prediction of this theory is that early stage Parkinson’s patients will display fewer errors caused by interference from previously over-learned behaviours. We test this prediction in the domain of skilled typing, where actions are easy to record and errors easy to identify. We describe a method for categorizing errors as simple motor errors or habit-driven errors. We test Spanish and English participants with and without Parkinson’s, and show that indeed patients make fewer habit errors than healthy controls, and, further, that classification of error type increases the accuracy of discriminating between patients and healthy controls. As well as being a validation of a theory-led prediction, these results offer promise for automated, enhanced and early diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease.

On the March of Time and the Meaning of Days

As of this issue, The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems marks its 50th year of publication. We are minded to introspect, then, on what it means to have been here for 50 years. For some, it means that this journal came to be in the year that astronauts first landed on the moon; that sounds like a very modern occurrence, but having transpired in 1969, it was literally a half century ago. That is 18,250 days, or 2,607 weeks, or 599 months, or, of course, one half of a century.

Century - the Latin root of which connotes groups of 100; half of 100 being fifty, and that being a darned large number in some respects, but in others very small. It depends on point of view, as the physicist Einstein (1921) would have put it. When you are moving at great speeds, time seems to pass more slowly (as compared to the perceptions of a less-fast moving observer). Time and its passage are a subjective perception of the perceiver, even outside of the physics of relativity (Evans, 2005). As Carol Saunders once speculated in a closing essay during her time at MIS Quarterly, it only seems like yesterday that we came to be a field of inquiry in Management Information Systems, and we could consider ourselves in the geological scheme of time to be very young indeed (Saunders, 2007). On the other hand, for those busily engaged in the fast-moving activities of publishing a journal like ours, time flies in different ways when we consider how long significant landmarks of the field of Management Information Systems have been in place (as has this journal, for a similar period of time). It was just yesterday, and it has been forever. We only just took Volume 48, Number 1 to press, it seems, and here we are at 50(1)! Time is in the Einsteinian details.

Many Analysts, One Data Set: Making Transparent How Variations in Analytic Choices Affect Results

Twenty-nine teams involving 61 analysts used the same data set to address the same research question: whether soccer referees are more likely to give red cards to dark-skin-toned players than to light-skin-toned players. Analytic approaches varied widely across the teams, and the estimated effect sizes ranged from 0.89 to 2.93 ( Mdn = 1.31) in odds-ratio units. Twenty teams (69%) found a statistically significant positive effect, and 9 teams (31%) did not observe a significant relationship. Overall, the 29 different analyses used 21 unique combinations of covariates. Neither analysts’ prior beliefs about the effect of interest nor their level of expertise readily explained the variation in the outcomes of the analyses. Peer ratings of the quality of the analyses also did not account for the variability. These findings suggest that significant variation in the results of analyses of complex data may be difficult to avoid, even by experts with honest intentions. Crowdsourcing data analysis, a strategy in which numerous research teams are recruited to simultaneously investigate the same research question, makes transparent how defensible, yet subjective, analytic choices influence research results.

New Theoretical Perspectives in Behavioral IS Security Research

As we come to press with this fifth issue of the year, we have an exciting development. It is a special case, this issue; we normally have issues 1 through 4 for each volume, but we chose this year to issue number "SI" in addition to issues 1,2,3, and 4, in order to accommodate something very special. The grand joy of editing a journal is the ability to do something unusual and innovative occasionally. With Stacie's concurrence, that is what we did this time around. As you may know, I am a member of the Behavioral Information Security society that styles itself through the highly prestigious "IFIP Working Group 8.11/11.13 Dewald Roode Behavioral Information Security Workshop." This special workshop is an event that takes place each year among the most visible and prolific information security scholars in the world. And, having gained admittance to their august company not so long ago, I sought an opportunity for The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems to support and promote behavioral information security research through its presence at the meetings (by virtue of my membership, as an Editor). A couple of meetings ago, when the call for papers went out for the annual research competition that provides the manuscripts for the meeting, I sought permission to issue a joint call for papers on behavior for a special issue of The DATA BASE dedicated to "Theoretical Advances in Behavioral Information Security Research." To my vast delight, the colleagues assented, indicating they thought it was a good idea. (Caveat: what follows will gore several oxen. My apologies in advance, but what needs to be said will inevitably cross lines of mild political sensibility, in the greater service of Theoretical Advancement.)

On Impact

Nothing matters as much in our world of published research as does Impact. Perhaps tenure and promotion are more important, on the face of it, but when considered carefully, T&P comes as the result of our own research work having Impact. We want our work to matter; we want our journal to matter. We want the world to notice what we are doing and approve of it. Impact: it's our coin of the realm, pretty much. I like journal editing because it makes me feel like I have an impact on the field. Not in any particularly vainglorious way, but rather in a sense of service. Editing makes me feel like I'm playing a part in helping important research come to the attention of the colleagues. If I can help others have Impact with their carefully crafted research, then I feel my editorial service has Impact, as well-and that satisfies my need for playing a part in the advancement of science. Impact: it's important. It's also sort of vaguely understood, despite the metrics we have at hand to indicate it and assess it. This leads to an issue of internal validity, in my mind, as regards what Impact is and what it means. To repeat a bit of Appalachian wisdom from my youth as regards my naive understanding of Impact, "I'm no judge of beauty, but I sure know ugly when I see it." Impact is like that. We know it better by what it is not than by what it is, from the critical realist's perspective. That is why Stacie and I agreed that at some point a brief essay on Impact and its meaning in the context of your Data Base would be a good thing. I undertake that task here, in this editorial. I undertake it from the perspective of one who has lived and breathed Impact at Data Base for over a decade. I once would have said, "The crowning achievement of my last term in the Editor's seat was achieving Journal Citation Report survey status from Thomson Reuters for development of an Impact Factor score."

Female Chess Players Outperform Expectations When Playing Men

Stereotype threat has been offered as a potential explanation of differential performance between men and women in some cognitive domains. Questions remain about the reliability and generality of the phenomenon. Previous studies have found that stereotype threat is activated in female chess players when they are matched against male players. I used data from over 5.5 million games of international tournament chess and found no evidence of a stereotype-threat effect. In fact, female players outperform expectations when playing men. Further analysis showed no influence of degree of challenge, player age, nor prevalence of female role models in national chess leagues on differences in performance when women play men versus when they play women. Though this analysis contradicts one specific mechanism of influence of gender stereotypes, the persistent differences between male and female players suggest that systematic factors do exist and remain to be uncovered.

The relationship between ADHD traits and sensory sensitivity in the general population

Preliminary studies in children and adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) report both hypo-responsiveness and hyper-responsiveness to sensory stimuli, as well as problems modulating sensory input. As it has been suggested that those with ADHD exist at the extreme end of a continuum of ADHD traits, which are also evident in the general population, we investigated the link between ADHD and sensory sensitivity in the general population. Two online questionnaires measuring ADHD traits and sensory responsivity across various sensory domains were administered to 234 participants. Results showed a highly significant positive correlation between the number of ADHD traits and the frequency of reported sensory processing problems. An increased number of sensory difficulties across all modalities were associated with the level of ADHD. Furthermore, ADHD traits predicted sensory difficulties and exploratory factor analysis revealed a factor that combined ADHD trait and sensory processing items. This is the first study to identify a positive relationship between sensory processing and ADHD traits in the general population. Our results suggest that sensory difficulties could be part of the ADHD phenotype.

Multisensory integration and ADHD-like traits: Evidence for an abnormal temporal integration window in ADHD

Abnormalities in multimodal processing have been found in many developmental disorders such as autism and dyslexia. However, surprisingly little empirical work has been conducted to test the integrity of multisensory integration in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The main aim of the present study was to examine links between symptoms of ADHD (as measured using a self-report scale in a healthy adult population) and the temporal aspects of multisensory processing. More specifically, a Simultaneity Judgement (SJ) and a Temporal Order Judgement (TOJ) task were used in participants with low and high levels of ADHD-like traits to measure the temporal integration window and Just-Noticeable Difference (JND) (respectively) between the timing of an auditory beep and a visual pattern presented over a broad range of stimulus onset asynchronies. The Point of Subjective Similarity (PSS) was also measured in both cases. In the SJ task, participants with high levels of ADHD-like traits considered significantly fewer stimuli to be simultaneous than participants with high levels of ADHD-like traits, and the former were found to have significantly smaller temporal windows of integration (although no difference was found in the PSS in the SJ or TOJ tasks, or the JND in the latter). This is the first study to identify an abnormal temporal integration window in individuals with ADHD-like traits. Perceived temporal misalignment of two or more modalities can lead to distractibility (e.g., when the stimulus components from different modalities occur separated by too large of a temporal gap). Hence, an abnormality in the perception of simultaneity could lead to the increased distractibility seen in ADHD.

On Cybersecurity Loafing and Cybercomplacency

As we begin to publish more articles in the area of cybersecurity, a case in point being the fine set of security papers presented in this particular issue as well as the upcoming special issue on Advances in Behavioral Cybersecurity Research which is currently in the review phase, it comes to mind that there is an emerging rubric of interest to the research community involved in security. That rubric concerns itself with the increasingly odd and inexplicable degree of comfort that computer users appear to have while operating in an increasingly threat-rich online environment. In my own work, I have noticed over time that users are blissfully unconcerned about malware threats (Poston et al., 2005; Stafford, 2005; Stafford and Poston, 2010; Stafford and Urbaczewski, 2004). This often takes the avenue of "it can't happen to me," or, "that's just not likely," but the fact is, since I first started noticing this odd nonchalance it seems like it is only getting worse, generally speaking. Mind you, a computer user who has been exploited and suffered harm from it will be vigilant to the end of his or her days, but for those who have scraped by, "no worries," is the order of the day, it seems to me.

This is problematic because the exploits that are abroad in the online world these days are a whole order of magnitude more harmful than those that were around when I first started studying the matter a decade ago. I would not have commented on the matter, having long since chalked it up to the oddities of civilian computing, so to speak, but an odd pattern I encountered when engaging in a research study with trained corporate users brought the matter back to the fore recently. I have been collecting neurocogntive data on user response to security threats, and while my primary interest was to see if skin conductance or pupillary dilation varied during exposure to computer threat scenarios, I noticed an odd pattern that commanded my attention and actually derailed my study for a while as I dug in to examine it.

Frontal theta band oscillations predict error correction and posterror slowing in typing

Performance errors are associated with robust behavioral and electroencephalography (EEG) effects. However, there is a debate about the nature of the relationship between these effects and implicit versus explicit error awareness. Our aim was to study the relationship between error related electrophysiological effects, such as spectral perturbations in fronto-medial theta band oscillations (FMT), and error awareness in typing. Typing has an advantage as an experimental paradigm in that detected errors are quickly and habitually signaled by the participant using backspace, allowing separation of detected from undetected errors without interruption in behavior. Typing is thought to be controlled hierarchically via inner and outer loops, which rely on different sources for error detection. Touch-typist participants were asked to copy-type 100 sentences as EEG was recorded in the absence of visual feedback. Continuous EEG data were analyzed using independent component analysis (ICA). Time-frequency and ERP analyses were applied to emergent independent components. The results show that single-trial FMT parameters and error related negativity (ERN) amplitude predict overt, adaptive posterror actions such as error correction via backspace; and, posterror slowing, reflecting implicit error awareness. In addition, we found that those uncorrected errors which were slowed down the most were also the ones associated with a high level of FMT activity. Our results as a whole show that FMT are related to neural mechanisms involved in explicit awareness of errors, and input from inner loop is sufficient for error correction in typing. (PsycINFO Database Record

In Praise of Workforce and Inclusion

In this issue of The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems, we are reminded of one of the key reasons why we engage in MIS research: to study ways in which technology management serves the enterprise. This connotes the notion of Work and the value of Workforces. This special issue, from the ACM SIGMIS Computers and People Research (CPR) Conference, provides a rich and impactful illumination on the nature of the technological workforce, both in terms of its composition and its management. This is vital research within our field. In this issue, we have a sampling of workforce research that focuses on computers and people issues in two broad ways: ensuring broad participation in the technology workforce through inclusion and informing wise managerial guidance of technological workforces. We typically call the former area of inquiry "inclusion research," while referring to the latter as "workforce research." They are really part and parcel of the same important underlying notion: what can we do to better manage the technological function in the firm, such that work proceeds effectively, productively, profitably?

Increased microsaccade rate in individuals with ADHD traits

Microsaccades are involuntary, small, jerk-like eye-movements with high-velocity that are observed during fixation. Abnormal microsaccade rates and characteristics have been observed in a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders. In this study, we examine microsaccade differences in 43 non-clinical participants with high and low levels of ADHD-like traits, assessed with the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS, Kessler, Adler, et al., 2005). A simple sustained attention paradigm, which has been previously shown to elicit microsaccades, was employed. A positive correlation was found between ADHD-like traits and binocular and monocular microsaccade rates. No other differences in microsaccade properties were observed. The relationship between ADHD traits and microsaccades suggests that abnormal oculomotor behaviour is a core deficit in ADHD and could potentially lead to the development of a biomarker for the disorder.

Evidence for the speed-value trade-off: human and monkey decision making is magnitude sensitive

Complex natural systems from brains to bee swarms have evolved to make adaptive multifactorial decisions. Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that many evolved systems may take advantage of common motifs across multiple domains. We are particularly interested in value sensitivity (i.e., sensitivity to the magnitude or intensity of the stimuli or reward under consideration) as a mechanism to resolve deadlocks adaptively. This mechanism favours long-term reward maximization over accuracy in a simple manner, because it avoids costly delays associated with ambivalence between similar options; speed-value trade-offs have been proposed to be evolutionarily advantageous for many kinds of decision. A key prediction of the value-sensitivity hypothesis is that choices between equally-valued options will proceed faster when the options have a high value than when they have a low value. However, value-sensitivity is not part of idealised choice models such as diffusion to bound. Here we examine two different choice behaviours in two different species, perceptual decisions in humans and economic choices in rhesus monkeys, to test this hypothesis. We observe the same value sensitivity in both human perceptual decisions and monkey value-based decisions. These results endorse the idea that neural decision systems make use of the same basic principle of value-sensitivity in order to resolve costly deadlocks and thus improve long-term reward intake.

The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems

It is a new year and a new editorial team. We are pleased to introduce ourselves as the new editors-in-chief for The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems: Stacie Petter and Tom Stafford.

The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems has been in continuous publication since 1969, marking it as one of the longest-published research publications in the field of information systems. In two short years, we will celebrate our 50th year of publication, and we are pleased to begin our editorial term with initiatives intended to move The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems toward an even more impactful performance and notable presence in the world of information systems scholarship than ever before as we approach this important milestone.

A hallmark of our editorial tenure shall be the broad and inclusive promotion of this publication toward the end of drawing submissions and readership from greatly expanded audiences world-wide. To that end, you will see us exhibiting The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems at leading information systems conferences around the world in the coming months and years. Come greet us when we do! Further, we look to you to lend your voice and presence to the promotion of our emerging editorial agenda for growth and impact.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-Like Traits and Distractibility in the Visual Periphery

We examined the performance of nonclinical subjects with high and low levels of self-reported attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-like traits in a novel distractibility paradigm with far peripheral visual distractors, the likely origin of many distractors in everyday life. Subjects were tested on a Sustained Attention to Response Task with distractors appearing before some of the target or nontarget stimuli. When the distractors appeared 80 ms before the targets or nontargets, participants with high levels of ADHD-like traits were less affected in their reaction times than those with lower levels. Reducing the distractor-target or nontarget interval to 10 ms removed the reaction time advantage for the high group. We suggest that at 80 ms, the distractors were cueing the arrival of the target or nontarget, and that those with high levels of ADHD-like traits were more sensitive to the cues. Increased sensitivity to stimuli in the visual periphery is consistent with hyperresponsiveness at the level of the superior colliculus.

Action Experience and Action Discovery in Medicated Individuals with Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that markedly affects voluntary action. While regular dopamine treatment can help restore motor function, dopamine also influences cognitive portions of the action system. Previous studies have demonstrated that dopamine medication boosts action-effect associations, which are crucial for the discovery of new voluntary actions. In the present study, we investigated whether neural processes involved in the discovery of new actions are altered in PD participants on regular dopamine treatment, compared to healthy age-matched controls. We recorded brain electroencephalography (EEG) activity while PD patients and age-matched controls performed action discovery (AD) and action control tasks. We found that the novelty P3, a component normally present when there is uncertainty about the occurrence of the sensory effect, was enhanced in PD patients. However, AD was maintained in PD patients, and the novelty P3 demonstrated normal learning-related reductions. Crucially, we found that in PD patients the causal association between an action and its resulting sensory outcome did not modulate the amplitude of the feedback correct-related positivity (fCRP), an EEG component sensitive to the association between an action and its resulting effect. Collectively, these preliminary results suggest that the formation of long-term action-outcome representations may be maintained in PD patients on regular dopamine treatment, but the initial experience of action-effect association may be affected.

Connectionist Simulation of Attitude Learning: Asymmetries in the Acquisition of Positive and Negative Evaluations

Connectionist computer simulation was employed to explore the notion that, if attitudes guide approach and avoidance behaviors, false negative beliefs are likely to remain uncorrected for longer than false positive beliefs. In Study 1, the authors trained a three-layer neural network to discriminate “good” and “bad” inputs distributed across a two-dimensional space. “Full feedback” training, whereby connection weights were modified to reduce error after every trial, resulted in perfect discrimination. “Contingent feedback,” whereby connection weights were only updated following outputs representing approach behavior, led to several false negative errors (good inputs misclassified as bad). In Study 2, the network was redesigned to distinguish a system for learning evaluations from a mechanism for selecting actions. Biasing action selection toward approach eliminated the asymmetry between learning of good and bad inputs under contingent feedback. Implications for various attitudinal phenomena and biases in social cognition are discussed.