Achievement priming takes advantage of achievement-related stimuli. In crowdsourcing platforms, achievement primes have ranged from inspiring words to inspiring quotes. Their aim is to motivate workers and to subsequently increase and ameliorate their performance in microtasks. Additionally, achievement priming increases learning.

Achievement Priming in Microtask Crowdsourcing

Affective priming uses stimuli to alter people's affective states. For example, affective priming can make people feel happy or sad. Its aim is to boost performance in microtask crowdsourcing platforms.

Affective Priming in Microtask Crowdsourcing

Intertask effects refer to the effects of completing sequences of microtasks. Essentially, earlier microtasks can have a priming effect on subsequent microtasks. While intertask effects are a relatively new finding in relevant research, they should be considered when designing microtasks for crowdsourcing platforms.

Intertask Effects in Microtask Crowdsourcing

Priming has been used in the realms of psychology as a way to alter people's behaviors or performance. It can be overt (supraliminal) or covert (subliminal). A subsequent behavior, which is a result of the priming, occurs typically without conscious awareness. In the field of microtask crowdsourcing, multiple types of primes have been used to increase and alter people's performance.

Davidson College

The practice of completing microtasks by using a group of remote workers.

Microtask Crowdsourcing

Small jobs that requires a low level of skill and takes minimal time to complete. Microtasking is the process of splitting up a large job (macro-task) into smaller jobs.

Microtasks/ Microtasking

When a sensory experience (hearing a word/phrase, or seeing a picture), triggers an associational response that effects your decision making afterwards. The presentation of some stimuli affects someones response to the presentation of a following one.

Priming effect

Gadiraju, U., & Dietze, S. (2017). Improving learning through achievement priming in crowdsourced information finding microtasks. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (pp. 105-114).

Improving Learning Through Achievement Priming in Crowdsourced Information Finding Microtasks 

Morris, R. R., Dontcheva, M., & Gerber, E. M. (2012). Priming for better performance in microtask crowdsourcing environments. IEEE Internet Computing, 16(5), 13-19.

Priming for Better Performance in Microtask Crowdsourcing Environments

The process of preparing jobs for  the crowdsourcing marketplace requires planning, as well as the development of an efficient workflow design. Researchers of this study introduce the program Turkomatic, which aims to recruit crowdworkers to develop workflows for larger tasks, where their goal is to break a job down into microtasks which can then be completed by other crowdsource workers. Results suggest that allowing independent crowdworkers to develop the workflow design is partially successful without requester supervision, but requester supervision during workflow planning and execution improves results dramatically. Researchers argue that Turkomatic’s design will be more successful than the conventional workflow design process.

Collaboratively crowdsourcing workflows with Turkomatic

Conversational interfaces can facilitate human-computer interactions, but researchers still speculate as to if conversational interfaces can improve worker experience and work quality in crowdsourcing marketplaces. Researchers explore this concept by designing Chatterbox, aimed at gauging the interest and acceptance by crowdworkers for this type of interface. Results suggest that conversational interfaces can be used effectively for crowdsourcing microtasks, resulting in high satisfaction from workers without a negative impact on task execution time or work quality.

Chatterbox: conversational interfaces for microtask crowdsourcing

This paper proposed a micro-tasking framework that supports skill development of individual workers. Researchers designed the framework based on the review of two micro-tasking projects we have conducted. It consists of four key components, a tutorial generator, a task dispatcher, a feedback visualizer, and a skill assessment engine. The framework will help developers create sustainable micro-tasking systems


Skill Development Framework for Micro-Tasking

Priming to Increase Performance in Microtask Crowdsourcing

Algorithmic crowdsourcing concentrates on computational approaches to solving the problems caused by introducing crowdworkers.

Algorithmic Crowdsourcing

Through the use of microtasking, this explores the basics of mircotasking and how under managing microtasking during emergency use can set back projects. 

Microtasking Models and Managerial Challenges 

Having individuals with skill carrying out research and technical tasks for payment. 

Enterprise Crowdsourcing

More resilient to interruptions, yield higher quality work, can be used to scaffold the cognitive process of maintaining and rebuilding context for complex tasks and make tasks more engaging 

Microtask characteristics

The use of microtasks to break down large-scale collaborative projects into small chunks that can be conducted individually and with little need for coordination between individual workers. 

Microtasks in Crowd Work

Completing a set of microtasks in succession. The ways that microtasks are ordered in a chain affects the extent to which people complete the tasks productively and accurately and continue to engage with subsequent tasks.

Microtask Chaining

A predefined series of microtasks designed such that the output of the set of microtasks can be used to successfully complete a larger task. While most existing microproductivity approaches currently expect task structure to be provided up front, workflows can also be developed dynamically.


Workflow

- 1) decompose large tasks into microtasks, 
- 2) efficiently complete each microtasks, 
- 3) source microtasks to the most appropriate actor.


3 Areas of Microtask development (The future of Microproductivity) 

Soliciting support from peers (via “friendsourcing”) or paid crowd workers (via “crowdsourcing”) is easy with microproductivity, because sharing a self-contained microtask with another person requires almost no coordination overhead. Microtasks can be allocated to the most appropriate person depending on the required level of expertise, the person’s availability, and their familiarity with the task. 

Microtask Sourcing 

Mobile devices offer people the opportunity to get useful tasks done during time previously thought to be unusable. Because cell phones have small screens, they’re useful for short, simple tasks. The researchers in this study designed a special app, Play Write, whose purpose is to make complex editing tasks more fragmented and achievable while working on mobile devices. Results suggested that the app made participants feel more productive and less stressed, and they completed more edits on a document using the app.

Multitasking with Play Write, a mobile microproductivity writing tool

Complex tasks are characterized in two ways: 
- (1) intellectually, they require reasoning and non-repetitive creativity and 
- (2) organizationally, they require multiple people working in multiple roles with interdependencies among the microtasks they perform


Complex Tasks in Crowd Work

Differences have been noted in terms of performance between microtasks and macrotasks. These are related to the time taken to complete them, their quality/accuracy, and the workers' preferences. There are also differences in the effects of interruption on micro- and macrotasks.


Performance Differences In Micro- and Macrotasks

Microtasks can give people a sense of accomplishment early on in the task, which can help with motivation. Concrete progress with lots of feedback contributes to a sense of self-efficacy, and completing microtasks is functionally efficient and helps with motivation, so people are more likely to be productive for longer.

Microtasks and Motivation

The process of breaking large tasks down into microtasks such that each microtask contributes towards the overall goal.

Task Decomposition Definition

While microtasking is more pertinent to work environments, it can be used in educational contexts to ameliorate students' performance. Teachers can implement microtasks into their curricula to help students who underperform compared to their peers.

Microtasking in an Educational Context

The presentation of some stimulus affects how someone perceives/reacts to the presentation of a following one because the first one was similar in some way to the latter (one does not need to remember the previous or be conscious of its affects for there to be an affect).

Repetition Priming 

Nodes are activated when nodes with links to them (or close to them) are activated. The nearby nodes are primed to be retrieved by memory more easily.

Spreading activation

Information shown in the beginning of something has a greater affect than information revealed later. Embodied by the quote "put your best foot forward."

The Primacy Effect

Participants were given a headline that did not relate to COVID-19, and they were asked to rate its accuracy. The prompt was essentially priming the participants with the concept of accuracy.

COVID-19 Misinformation Prompt Toolkit: Evaluation Prompt

When people consider a value and then have to estimate an unknown quantity. The estimated number will stay close to original number considered, whether or not the original number is related to the unknown quantity. There is debate on whether the effect is an adjustment heuristic (Tversky), an example of priming (Kahneman), or both.

Anchoring

The common association between 'peanut butter' and 'jelly' serves as an example of priming. When an individual is prompted with the term 'peanut butter,' the concept of 'jelly' is primed and becomes more easily retrievable. This occurs because of the strong, frequently reinforced link between these two concepts within a person's semantic network.

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