{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"negative_space_design__cognitive_science","archetype_slug":"negative_space_design","domain_slug":"cognitive_science","title":"Protected Inter-Trial Blank Interval for Carryover Control","opportunity_summary":"Test whether a minimally cued, bounded blank interval between rapid cognitive-experiment trials reduces preceding-trial dependence and boundary confusion relative to immediate transitions and duration-matched active masks, without impairing comprehension, accessibility, comfort, or measurement of genuine sequential effects.","adopter_authorizer":"The prospective adopter is a cognitive-science investigator or laboratory; authorization rests with the study principal investigator and ethics-approved protocol owner, while participants retain consent and withdrawal authority.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"If transition carryover materially contaminates trial-level measurements, reducing it could improve interpretability and protect downstream findings; however, the packet provides no evidence of prevalence, effect magnitude, or how often conclusions are altered."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"Investigators and represented groups could benefit from cleaner measurements, but the sealed candidate contains no documented requests, adoption demand, recurring complaints, or evidence that laboratories prioritize this problem."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"The blank-versus-active-mask comparison could isolate protected absence from elapsed time better than an immediate-transition comparison alone, but no results show superiority and timing, predictability, strategy, or motor effects may explain any benefit."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The three-condition design makes a specific mechanistic distinction between absence and active interval content, but prior art is explicitly unsearched, so distinctiveness relative to existing inter-trial-interval and carryover controls is unverified."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A bounded transition interval and minimal cue appear implementable in computerized protocols using ordinary timing and display controls; careful mask matching, accessibility testing, instrumentation, and order control prevent a maximum score."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The principal investigator and ethics-approved protocol owner are identifiable authorities, participant rights are preserved, and rollback is explicit; ethics review and protocol-specific accessibility approval remain necessary."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate specifies immediate, blank, and active-mask conditions; carryover-sensitive outcomes; problem and intervention falsifiers; and stopping rules. Sample size, populations, timing values, mask specifications, and analysis thresholds still require preregistration."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"The intervention is bounded and reversible, with ordinary transitions available as rollback and explicit halts for distress, control inaccessibility, or failure interpretation; residual risks include fatigue, expectancy, and removal of assistive cues."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A software-level protocol change could be replicated across computerized studies, but added session time and the need to validate timing, accessibility, and genuine sequential effects separately across tasks limit demonstrated scalability."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Design, ethics preparation, preregistration, programming, participant recruitment and compensation, execution, analysis, and reporting for one bounded within-participant three-condition pilot.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["One research site uses an existing computerized experiment platform and ordinary display equipment.","The pilot uses a modest sample and does not require specialized clinical recruitment.","Costs include investigator, coordinator, programmer, analyst, participant, accessibility-review, and ethics-administration effort.","No exact sample size, session length, or local labor rate is supplied."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Prepare one validated laboratory protocol for initial post-pilot use, including software integration, timing checks, ethics amendment, staff training, accessibility review, and monitoring procedures.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Deployment follows favorable pilot and ethics findings.","The laboratory already has compatible experiment software and hardware.","This excludes broad multi-site standardization and new specialized equipment.","Protocol-specific timing and cues require validation rather than simple copying."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Launch the intervention across a small laboratory program or limited set of related studies, including protocol adaptations, quality assurance, participant monitoring, documentation, and early outcome review.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Launch remains within one institution or closely coordinated research group.","Existing recruitment, ethics, data, and software infrastructure is reused.","Studies retain immediate-transition rollback and accessible participant controls.","Substantially different tasks or populations would require additional validation."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Annual resource-equivalent cost for added participant and staff time, compensation associated with longer sessions, protocol maintenance, accessibility checks, monitoring, and periodic analysis within a small research program.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The interval modestly lengthens sessions and therefore increases compensation and laboratory time.","Use is limited to a small portfolio of studies rather than institution-wide adoption.","No specialized recurring software license or equipment replacement is required.","Volume, interval duration, and local compensation rates are unspecified."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet supplies observable indicators and a problem falsifier, but describes the contamination as possible and provides no external or empirical evidence that it occurs reliably or materially in target protocols."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The cognitive-science investigator or laboratory is the identifiable adopter, and the principal investigator plus ethics-approved protocol owner hold protocol authority while participants retain consent and withdrawal authority."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that a minimally cued blank interval will outperform both immediate transition and a duration-matched active mask on carryover-sensitive outcomes without unacceptable comprehension, accessibility, distress, or fatigue costs."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A preregistered within-participant three-condition pilot is explicitly bounded, reversible, comparator-based, and falsified if the immediate condition lacks the proposed problem or the blank fails to outperform the active mask safely."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate preserves consent, withdrawal, warnings, accessibility support, and controls; identifies the protocol authority; and provides stopping and rollback rules. Remaining participant risks require monitoring but are not presented as unmanageable stops."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The pilot and adoption activities can be scoped broadly, but the sealed candidate omits sample size, timing duration, study volume, staffing, infrastructure, population needs, and accessibility requirements needed to verify a resource range."}},"blocking_evidence":["Whether immediate transitions produce reliable and practically meaningful preceding-trial dependence, boundary errors, or transition misunderstanding after stimulus, motor, fatigue, and order factors are controlled.","Whether the minimally cued blank outperforms the duration-matched active mask, rather than merely benefiting from delay, predictability, or strategy change.","Whether any measurement improvement survives checks for genuine sequential cognition and is not offset by worse comprehension, accessibility, distress, session fatigue, or withdrawal.","Whether existing experimental-methods prior art already establishes, rejects, or routinely implements the proposed comparison and mechanism."],"next_evidence_step":"Run a preregistered, ethics-approved, within-participant pilot comparing immediate transition, a minimally cued bounded blank, and a duration-matched active mask with controlled order and stimulus properties. Do not proceed if the problem falsifier is met—no reliable transition-related dependence or boundary problem in the immediate condition—or if the blank fails to outperform the active mask on carryover-sensitive outcomes without worse comprehension, accessibility, discomfort, or fatigue.","research_questions":["How large and reproducible is transition-related preceding-trial dependence after controlling stimulus balance, motor refractoriness, fatigue, and condition order?","Does the blank interval outperform a duration-matched active mask when stimulus energy, predictability, and task relevance are predefined and matched as closely as feasible?","Do variable versus fixed interval timings separate protected absence from temporal expectation?","Which observed sequential effects are theoretically meaningful rather than nuisance carryover?","How do participants, including those using assistive technologies, interpret the blank and access controls during it?","How much session extension produces fatigue or compensation burdens that offset measurement gains?","What prior methods compare immediate transitions, blank intervals, masks, and temporal-expectation controls?"] ,"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Problem prevalence and practical severity are unsupported by the sealed packet.","Stakeholder demand and willingness to alter established protocols are unmeasured.","Effect sizes, required sample size, suitable interval duration, and population heterogeneity are unknown.","Prior art, world novelty, and comparative distinctiveness are unverified.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges based on a small existing laboratory and cannot be treated as quoted prices.","Generalization across tasks, laboratories, participant populations, and assistive technologies is unestablished.","A positive result would not by itself distinguish protected absence from every timing, expectation, masking, motor, or strategy mechanism."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior art is unsearched and unverified. This closed-book assessment makes no claim that protected inter-trial blanks, blank-versus-mask comparisons, carryover controls, or temporal-expectation controls are novel, rare, or absent from existing practice."}