Temporal patterns of human behaviour: are there signs of deterministic 1/f scaling?

Rudolf M Dünki, Elvira Keller, Peter F Meier and Brigitte Ambühl

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2000, vol. 276, issue 3, 596-609

Abstract: Temporal patterns apparently exhibiting scaling properties may originate either from fractal stochastic processes or from causal (i.e., deterministic) dynamics. In general, the distinction between the possible two origins remains a non-trivial task. This holds especially for the interpretation of properties derived from temporal patterns of various types of human behaviour, which were reported repeatedly. We propose here a computational scheme based on a generic intermittency model to test predictability (thus determinism) of a part of a time series with knowledge gathered from another part. The method is applied onto psychodynamic time series related to turns from non-psychosis to psychosis. A nonrandom correlation (ρ=0.76) between prediction and real outcome is found. Our scheme thus provides a particular kind of fractal risk-assessment for this possibly deterministic process. We briefly discuss possible implications of these findings to evaluate the risk to undergo a state transition, in our case a patients risk to enter a next psychotic state. We further point to some problems concerning data sample pecularities and equivalence between data and model setup.

Keywords: Generic intermittency model; 1/f scaling; Risk assessment; Schizophrenia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:276:y:2000:i:3:p:596-609

DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(99)00443-4

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