5 ms·

Interesting, the patient only has Yes/No control, and that's then used to spell whole words and sentences. There is a supplementary movie to the study showing

Interesting, the patient only has Yes/No control, and that's then used to spell whole words and sentences. There is a supplementary movie to the study showing this in action [0], it's slow but quite impressive when the patient spells out "Jungs es funktioniert gerade so mühelos"/"Boys right now its working so effortlessly". That particular session came out at 171 characters in 157 minutes, 1.1 characters/minute. [0] https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-022-28859-8/MediaObjects/41467_2022_28859_MOESM5_ESM.mp4 https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs414...

aero-glide2 5y ago
Thanks for the video! 2:27 shows the process. They go letter by letter in order and then ask yes or no. I think asking about the next letter based on previous letters would vastly improved the speed
- narcindin 5y ago
  Yes! Binary search through the alphabet. Or, better yet, Hoffman encode common German words!
  - nullc 5y ago
    There are assistive typing devices that use complex models to predict characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) The downside is that with a powerful enough model you could replace the patient with a coinflip and have a hard time telling the difference.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    One of my friends worked with David J. C. MacKay on Dasher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) I think that may already do what you want?
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    Is binary search really the most practical? Can most people answer questions like "Is P after M" without a lot of thought and counting out all the letters one by one starting at one of the input letters? A basic markov chain predictor seems like it could work, if you had a short enough window to be sure it couldn't invent its own nonsense.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I did think it was going to be a very slow process, I'm sure a binary search / predictive text algorithm would work better. But that needs R&D costs, not to mention the patient would have to be taught how to use it.

aero-glide2 5y ago

Thanks for the video! 2:27 shows the process. They go letter by letter in order and then ask yes or no. I think asking about the next letter based on previous letters would vastly improved the speed

narcindin 5y ago
Yes! Binary search through the alphabet. Or, better yet, Hoffman encode common German words!
- nullc 5y ago
  There are assistive typing devices that use complex models to predict characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) The downside is that with a powerful enough model you could replace the patient with a coinflip and have a hard time telling the difference.
- ben_w 5y ago
  One of my friends worked with David J. C. MacKay on Dasher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) I think that may already do what you want?
- eternityforest 5y ago
  Is binary search really the most practical? Can most people answer questions like "Is P after M" without a lot of thought and counting out all the letters one by one starting at one of the input letters? A basic markov chain predictor seems like it could work, if you had a short enough window to be sure it couldn't invent its own nonsense.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I did think it was going to be a very slow process, I'm sure a binary search / predictive text algorithm would work better. But that needs R&D costs, not to mention the patient would have to be taught how to use it.