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Article 4
Article 4
Table of Contents
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Planning anticipatory actions: on the interplay between normative and mechanistic models ...................................... S17
Identifying linguistic and neural levels of interaction between gesture and speech during comprehension using EEG
and fMRI ................................................................................................................................................................................................... S17
Neural correlates of gesture-syntax interaction ............................................................................................................................ S18
Interregional connectivity minimizes surprise responses during action perception .......................................................... S18
The development of cognitive and motor planning skills in young children ..................................................................... S18
PREDICTIVE PROCESSING: PHILOSOPHICAL AND NEUROSCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVES ............................. S18
Bayesian cognitive science, unification, and explanation ......................................................................................................... S19
The explanatory heft of Bayesian models of cognition ............................................................................................................. S19
Predictive processing and active inference .................................................................................................................................... S19
Learning sensory predictions for perception and action ............................................................................................................ S19
Layer resolution fMRI to investigate cortical feedback and predictive coding in the visual cortex .......................... S19
HOW LANGUAGE AND NUMERICAL REPRESENTATIONS CONSTITUTE MATHEMATICAL
COGNITION ........................................................................................................................................................................................... S20
Influences of number word inversion on multi-digit number processing: a translingual eye-tracking study .......... S20
On the influence of linguistic and numerical complexity in word problems ..................................................................... S21
Linguistic influences on numerical understanding: the case of Welsh................................................................................. S21
Reading space into numbers: an update ......................................................................................................................................... S21
How language and numerical representations constitute mathematical cognition: an introductory review ............. S21
Language influences number processing: the case of bilingual Luxembourg .................................................................... S21
Language differences in basic numerical tasks ............................................................................................................................ S22
Cognitive components of the mathematical processing network in primary school children: linguistic and language
independent contributions .................................................................................................................................................................... S22
It does exist! A SNARC effect amongst native Hebrew speakers is masked by the MARC effect........................... S22
MODELING OF COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF MOBILE INTERACTION .......................................................................... S22
Creating cognitive user models on the basis of abstract user interface models ................................................................ S22
Expectations during smartphone application use ......................................................................................................................... S22
Evaluating the usability of a smartphone application with ACT-R ....................................................................................... S23
Simulating interaction effects of incongruous mental models................................................................................................. S24
Special offer! Wanna buy a trout?Modeling user interruption and resumption strategies with ACT-R ......... S24
Tutorials .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... S25
Introduction to probabilistic modeling and rational analysis ................................................................................................... S25
Modeling vision ...................................................................................................................................................................................... S25
Visualization of eye tracking data .................................................................................................................................................... S25
Introduction to cognitive modelling with ACT-R ....................................................................................................................... S25
Dynamic Field Theory: from sensorimotor behaviors to grounded spatial language ...................................................... S25
Poster presentations ..................................................................................................................................................................................... S27
The effect of language on spatial asymmetry in image perception ....................................................................................... S27
Towards formally founded ACT-R simulation and analysis.................................................................................................... S27
Identifying inter-individual planning strategies ............................................................................................................................ S28
Simulating events. The empirical side of the event-state distinction .................................................................................... S29
On the use of computational analogy-engines in modeling examples from teaching and education ......................... S30
Brain network states affect the processing and perception of tactile near-threshold stimuli ........................................ S31
A model for dynamic minimal mentalizing in dialogue ........................................................................................................... S32
Actions revealing cooperation: predicting cooperativeness in social dilemmas from the observation of everyday
actions ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ S33
The use of creative analogies in a complex problem situation ............................................................................................... S34
Yes, thats right? Processing yes and no and attention to the right vs. left........................................................................ S35
Perception of background color in head mounted displays: applying the source monitoring paradigm ................... S36
Continuous goal dynamics: insights from mouse-tracking and computational modeling .............................................. S37
Looming auditory warnings initiate earlier event-related potentials in a manual steering task ................................... S38
The creative process across cultures ................................................................................................................................................ S38
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How do human interlocutors talk to virtual assistants? A speech act analysis of dialogues of cognitively impaired people
and elderly people with a virtual assistant..................................................................................................................................... S40
Effects of aging on shifts of attention in perihand space ......................................................................................................... S41
The fate of previously focused working memory content: decay or/and inhibition? ...................................................... S41
How global visual landmarks influence the recognition of a city ......................................................................................... S42
Explicit place-labeling supports spatial knowledge in survey, but not in route navigation .......................................... S44
How important is having emotions for understanding others emotions accurately? ...................................................... S45
Prosody conveys speakers intentions: acoustic cues for speech act perception ............................................................... S46
On the perception and processing of social actions.................................................................................................................... S46
Stage-level and individual-level interpretation of multiple adnominal adjectives as an epiphenomenontheoretical
and empirical evidence ......................................................................................................................................................................... S47
What happened to the crying bird? Differential roles of embedding depth and topicalization modulating syntactic
complexity in sentence processing ................................................................................................................................................... S48
fMRI-evidence for a top-down grouping mechanism establishing object correspondence in the Ternus display . S48
Event-related potentials in the recognition of scene sequences .............................................................................................. S49
Sensorimotor interactions as signaling games .............................................................................................................................. S50
Subjective time perception of verbal action and the sense of agency .................................................................................. S51
Memory disclosed by motion: predicting visual working memory performance from movement patterns ............. S52
Role and processing of translation in biological motion perception ..................................................................................... S53
How to remember Tubingen? Reference frames in route and survey knowledge of ones city of residency ......... S53
The effects of observing other peoples gaze: faster intuitive judgments of semantic coherence .............................. S54
Towards a predictive processing account of mental agency .................................................................................................... S55
The N400 ERP component reflects implicit prediction error in the semantic system: further support from a connectionist
model of word meaning ....................................................................................................................................................................... S56
Similar and differing processes underlying carry and borrowing effects in addition and subtraction: evidence from eyetracking ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... S57
Simultaneous acquisition of words and syntax: contrasting implicit and explicit learning ........................................... S58
Towards a model for anticipating human gestures in human-robot interactions in shared space ............................... S59
Preserved expert object recognition in a case of unilateral visual agnosia ......................................................................... S60
Visual salience in human landmark selection ............................................................................................................................... S60
Left to right or back to front? The spatial flexibility of time ................................................................................................. S61
Smart goals, slow habits? Individual differences in processing speed and working memory capacity moderate
the balance between habitual and goal-directed choice behavior .......................................................................................... S62
Tracing the time course of n - 2 repetition costs ...................................................................................................................... S62
Language cues in the formation of hierarchical representation of space............................................................................. S63
Processing of co-articulated place information in lexical access ........................................................................................... S64
Disentangling the role of inhibition and emotional coding on spatial stimulus devaluation ........................................ S65
The role of working memory in prospective and retrospective motor planning ............................................................... S66
Temporal preparation increases response conflict by advancing direct response activation ......................................... S67
The flexibility of finger-based magnitude representations ....................................................................................................... S68
Object names correspond to convex entities ................................................................................................................................. S69
The role of direct haptic feedback in a compensatory tracking task .................................................................................... S71
Comprehending negated action(s): embodiment perspective ................................................................................................... S71
Effects of action signaling on interpersonal coordination ........................................................................................................ S72
Physiological changes through sensory augmentation in path integration: an fMRI study ........................................... S73
Do you believe in Mozart? The influence of beliefs about composition on representing joint action outcomes
in music ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... S73
Processing sentences describing auditory events: only pianists show evidence for an automatic space pitch
association ................................................................................................................................................................................................ S74
A free energy approach to template matching in visual attention: a connectionist model ............................................ S75
ORAL PRESENTATIONS ....................................................................................................................................................................... S77
Analyzing psychological theories with F-ACT-R: an example F-ACT-R application .................................................... S79
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ABSTRACTS
Keynote lectures
The perception of others goal-directed actions
Harold Bekkering
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud
University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
It is widely assumed that perception of the world is based on internal
models of that world and that models are shaped via prior experiences
that modulate the likelihood of a certain action given a certain context. In this talk, I will outline some experimental and theoretical
ideas how humans perceive goal-directed actions of others on the
basis of object and movement knowledge. I will also discuss a
potential role for language in improving our world model including a
better perception of other agents goal-directed actions.
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Life as we know it
Karl Friston
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology,
University College London, UK
How much about our interaction withand experience ofour world
can be deduced from basic principles? This talk reviews recent
attempts to understand the self-organized behavior of embodied
agentslike ourselvesas satisfying basic imperatives for sustained
exchanges with our world. In brief, one simple driving force appears
to explain nearly every aspect of our behavior and experience. This
driving force is the minimization of surprise or prediction error. In the
context of perception, this corresponds to (Bayes-optimal) predictive
coding that suppresses exteroceptive prediction errors. In the context
of action, simple reflexes can be seen as suppressing proprioceptive
prediction errors. We will look at some of the phenomena that emerge
from this formulation, such as hierarchical message passing in the
brain and the perceptual inference that ensues. I hope to illustrate
these points using simple simulations of how life-like behavior
emerges almost inevitably from coupled dynamical systemsand
how this behavior can be understood in terms of perception, action
and action observation.
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been extended to understand elements of visual cognition such as
scene representations, object recognition, change detection, and
binding. Sequences of cognitive or motor operations can be understood in this framework, which begins to reach into language by
providing simple forms of grounding of spatial and action concepts.
Discrete events emerge from instabilities in the underlying neural
dynamics. Categories emerge from inhomogeneities in the underlying
neural populations that are amplified into macroscopic states by
dynamic instabilities. I will illustrate how the framework makes
contact with psychophysical and neural data, but can also be used to
create artificial cognitive systems that act and think based on its own
sensory and motor systems.
Gregor Schoner
Institut fur Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany
The embodiment stance emphasizes that cognitive processes are
closely linked to the sensory and motor surfaces. This implies that
cognitive processes share with sensory-motor processes fundamental
properties including graded state variables, continuous time dependence, stability, and continuous metric contents. According to the
embodiment hypothesis these properties are pervasive throughout
cognition. This poses the challenge to understand how seemingly
categorical states emerge, on which cognitive processes seem to
operate at discrete event times. I will review Dynamic Field Theory, a
theoretical framework that is firmly grounded in the neurophysiology
of population activation in the higher nervous system. Dynamic Field
Theory has its origins in the sensory-motor domain where it has been
used to understand movement preparation, sensory-motor decisions,
and motor memory. In the meantime, however, the framework has
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Symposia
DRIVER COGNITION
Convenor: Martin Baumann
Ulm University, Germany
From a psychological point of view driving is a highly complex task
despite the fact that millions of people perform this task in a safe and
efficient way each day. It involves many mental processes and
structures, such as perception, attention, memory, knowledge, manual
control, decision making, and action selection. These processes and
structures need to work closely integrated to master the challenges of
driving a vehicle in a highly dynamic task environmentour daily
traffic. On the other hand despite all advances in traffic safety in
recent years still about 31.000 people were killed in 2010 on European roads. A high percentage of these fatalities are due to human
error, which reflects a brake-down of the interplay between the
aforementioned cognitive processes. Therefore, understanding the
cognitive processes that underlie driver behavior is not just a highly
interesting academic endeavor to learn how the human mind masters
highly dynamic tasks but is also vital for further improvement of
traffic safety.
The papers presented in this symposium address different
aspects of driver cognition demonstrating the variety of processes
relevant in the study of driver cognition. They have all in common
that their empirical work is based on models of the underlying
mental processes, ranging from conceptual models to quantitative
and computational models. Two papers present recent results on
models addressing the drivers longitudinal control behavior.
Whereas Kathner and Kuhl present results on the validation of a
specific car following model that is based on those input variables
that are actually available to the human driver, Brandenburg and
Thuring present empirical results on the validation of a general
model of speed behavior based on the interplay of bottom-up and
top-down processes. Weber presents the results of a joint research
project that aimed at developing an integrated driver model within
a computational cognitive architecture, called CASCaS, allowing
simulations of driver behavior in a real-time driving simulation
environment. Both papers of Wortelen and Kaul and Baumann
investigate factors influencing the distribution of attention while
driving. Wortelen implemented a computational model of attention
distribution within the cognitive architecture CASCaS to model the
effects of expectations about event frequencies and of information
value on attention distribution. Kaul and Baumann investigated the
effects of event predictability in comparison to event frequency on
attention distribution to explain related findings on rear-end
accidents.
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References
Andersen GJ, Sauer CW (2007) Optical information for car following: the driving by visual angle (DVA) model. Human Factors
49:878896
Brackstone M, McDonald M (1999) Car-following: a historical
review. Transp Res Part F 2(4):181196
Helly W (1959) Simulation of bottlenecks in single lane traffic flow.
In: International symposium on the theory of traffic flow,
New York, NY, USA
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infotainment systems changes the distribution of attention. This work
presents the Adaptive Information Expectancy (AIE) model, a new
model of attention distribution, which is based on Wickens SEEVmodel. It can be integrated into cognitive architectures which are used
to simulate task models. The AIE model enables a very detailed
simulation of the distribution of attention in close interaction with the
simulation of a task model. Unlike the SEEV model, simulations using
the AIE model allow to derive several measures of human attention
distribution besides the percentage gaze distribution, like gaze frequencies and gaze transition probabilities. Due to the tight integration
with the simulation of task models, it is also possible to simulate the
resulting consequences on the operators behavior (e.g. steering
behavior of drivers). The AIE model considers two factors which have
a great impact on drivers attention: the expectancy of events and the
value of information. The main focus is on the expectancy of events.
The AIE model provides a new method to automatically determine the
event expectancy from the simulation of a task model.
It is shown how the AIE model is integrated in the cognitive
architecture CASCaS. A driving simulator study is performed to
analyze the AIE model in a realistic driving environment. The simulation scenario is driven by human drivers as well as by a driver
model developed with CASCaS using the AIE model. This scenario
investigates the effects of both factors on drivers attention distribution: event expectancy and information value. Comparing the
behavior of the human drivers to model behavior shows a good model
fit for the percentage distribution of attention as well as gaze frequencies and gaze transition probabilities.
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view regarding the relationship between individual actions and
interactions. It will provide new insights from several research fields
including decision making, neuroscience, philosophy of neuroscience,
computational neuroscience, and psychology. The aim of the symposium is give a state of the art overview about commonalities and
differences of the perceptual cognitive processes underlying individual actions and social interactions.
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This fact has made this topic highly attractive for researchers in
cognitive neuroscience, and a broad spectrum of partially highly speculative theories have been proposed about the computational processes
that might underlie action vision in primate cortex. In spite of this very
active discussion about hypothetical computational and conceptual theories, our detailed knowledge about the underlying neural processes is
quite limited, and a broad spectrum of critical experiments that narrow
down the relevant computational key steps remain yet to be done.
I will present a physiologically-inspired neural theory for the processing of goal-directed actions, which provides a unifying account for
existing neurophysiological results on the visual recognition of hand
actions in monkey cortex. At the same time, the model accounts for
several new experimental results, where a part of these experiments were
motivated by testing aspects of the proposed neural theory. Importantly,
the present model accounts for many basic properties of cortical actionselective neurons by simple physiologically plausible mechanisms that
are known from visual shape and motion processing, without necessitating a central computational role of motor representations.
The same model also provides an account for experiments on the
visual perception of causality, suggesting that simple forms of causality perception might be a side-effect of computational processes
that mainly subserve the recognition of goal-directed actions. Extensions of the model might provide a basis for the investigation of the
neurodynamic phenomena in the visual processing of action stimuli.
Acknowledgments
Research supported by the EC FP7 projects AMARSi, Koroibot,
ABC, and Human Brain Project, and by the BMBF and the DFG.
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Angelika Lingnau
Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, Department of Psychology
and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Italy
Daily life activities require skillful object manipulations. Whereas
we begin to understand the neural substrates of hand prehension in
monkeys at the level of single cell spiking activity, we still have a
limited understanding of the representation of grasping movements
in the human brain. With recent advances in human neuroimaging,
such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) repetition
suppression (fMRI-RS) and multi-variate pattern (MVP) analysis,
it has become possible to characterize some of the properties
represented in different parts of the human prehension system. In
this talk, I will present several studies using fMRI-RS and MVP
analysis that investigated the representation of reach direction,
wrist orientation, grip type and effector (left/right hand) of simple
non-visually guided reach-to-grasp movements. We observed a
preference for reach direction along the dorsomedial pathway, and
overlapping representations for reach direction and grip type along
the dorsolateral pathway, in line with a growing literature that
casts doubts on a clear-cut distinction between separate pathways
for the reach and grasp component. Moreover, we were able to
distinguish between premotor areas sensitive to grip type, wrist
orientation and effector, and parietal areas that are sensitive to grip
type across wrist orientation and grip type. Our results support the
view of a hierarchical representation of movements within the
prehension system.
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Fig. 1 The plant is above the clock. The 5 9 6 grid was used to
define the objects locations and was invisible to participants
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Beatty J, Lucero-Wagoner B (2000) The pupillary system. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge
Engelhardt PE, Ferreira F, Patsenko EG (2010) Pupillometry reveals
processing load during spoken language comprehension. Quart J
Exp Psychol 63:639645
Frank S, Thompson R (2012) Early effects of word surprisal on pupil
size during reading. In: Miyake N, Peebles D, Cooper RP (eds)
Proceedings of 34th annual conference cognitive science society,
pp 15541559
Gutirrez RS, Shapiro LP (2010) Measuring the time-course of sentence processing with pupillometry. In: CUNY conference on
human sentence processing
Hess E, Polt J (1960) Pupil size as related to interest value of visual
stimuli. Science
Hess E, Polt J (1964) Pupil size in relation to mental activity during
simple problem-solving. Science
Hyona J, Tommola J, Alaja A (1995) Pupil dilation as a measure of
processing load in simultaneous interpretation and other language tasks. Quart J Exp Psychol 48(3):598612
Just MA, Carpenter PA (1993) The intensity dimension of thought:
pupillometric indices of sentence processing. Can J Exp Psychol
47(2)
Kahneman D, Beatty J (1966) Pupil diameter and load on memory.
Science
Marshall S (2000) US patent no. 6,090,051
Marshall S (2002) The index of cognitive activity: Measuring cognitive work-load. In: Proceedings of 7th conference on human
factors and power plants, IEEE, pp 57
Marshall S (2007) Identifying cognitive state from eye metrics. Aviat
Space Environ Med 78(Supplement 1):B165B175
Schluroff M (1982) Pupil responses to grammatical complexity of
sentences. Brain Lang 17(1):133145
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the listener: pupil dilation elucidates discourse processing. Int J
Psychophysiol
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A. While the woman dressed (#) the baby that was cute and cuddly
played on the floor.
B. The superintendent learned [which schools/students] the proposal [that expanded/to expand] upon the curriculum would motivate
____ during the following semester.3
In the second study, we examined a special type of filler gap
dependency, called parasitic gap constructions. Filler gap dependencies occur when a constituent within a sentence has undergone
movement (e.g. Whati did the boy buy ti?). In this sentence, what has
moved from its canonical position as the object of buy, and thus, the
parser must be able to keep track of moved constituents and correctly
associate them with the correct verbs (or gap sites). Difficulty arises
when (1) there are multiple verbs in the sentence, and (2) when those
verbs are optionally transitive (i.e. have the option to take a direct
object or not). Parasitic gaps are a special type of construction
because a filler is associated with two gaps. An example is What did
the attempt to fix _ ultimately damage _?. Even more interestingly,
from a linguistic perspective, is that the first gap occurs in an illegal position. Phillips (2006) used a self-paced word-by-word reading
paradigm to test sentences containing parasitic gap like constructions
(see example B). He found slowdowns only in situations in which
parasitic gap dependency was allowed (i.e. with to expand). Furthermore, reading times were influenced by plausibility (i.e. it is
possible to expand schools but not students). In our second study, we
used similar materials to investigate parasitic gaps using changes in
pupil diameter over time as an index of processing load. Our data
indicates that the parser actively forms dependencies as soon as
possible, regardless of semantic fit.
In summary, this talk will compare and contrast findings from eye
tracking and reading times with pupil diameter. Both of our studies
showed similarities to the original works, but at the same time, also
showed novel dissociations. The relationship between discrete measures, such as saccadic eye movements, and continuous measures,
such as pupil diameter and mouse tracking, will be discussed.
References
Ferreira F, Henderson JM, Singer M (1995) Reading and language
processing: Similarities and differences. In Henderson JM, Singer
M, Ferreira F (Eds) Reading and language processing. Erlbaum,
Hillsdale, pp 338341
Phillips C (2006) The real-time status of island phenomena. Language
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Tanenhaus MK, Spivey-Knowlton MJ, Eberhard KM, Sedivy JC
(1995) Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken
language comprehension. Science 268(5217):16321634
MANUAL ACTION
Pia Knoeferle
Bielefeld University, Germany
Listeners eye movements to objects in response to auditory verbal input,
as well as their event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have revealed that
non-linguistic cues contribute rapidly towards real-time language comprehension. While the findings from these two measures have contributed
important insights into context effects during real-time language comprehension, there is also considerable ambiguity in the linking between
comprehension processes and each of these two measures (eye
3
The critical items were taken from Phillips (2006) and were
simplified for auditory presentation.
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Our results confirmed a decline in basic components of manual
dexterity, finger force control and tactile perception, with increasing
age, even already during middle adulthood. Also age-related changes
in underlying neurophysiological correlates could be observed in
middle-aged adults. Performing manual tasks on a comparable level
to younger adults required more frontal (i.e. cognitive) brain resources in older workers indicating compensatory plasticity. Furthermore,
in both the motor and tactile domain expertise seemed to counteract
age-related decline and to postpone age effects for about 10 years.
Although older adults generally performed at a lower baseline performance level, they were able to improve motor and tactile
functioning by short term practice or stimulation interventions. Particularly in the tactile domain such an intervention was well suited to
attenuate age-related decline. Overall, our data suggest that the aging
process of manual dexterity seems to start slowly but continuously
goes on during the working lifespan and can be compensated by
continuous use (expertise) or targeted interventions.
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has provided evidence for a syntactic interaction between gesture and
speech (as indexed by the P600 component). Finally, fMRI studies
suggest that areas associated with the detection of semantic mismatches (left inferior frontal gyrus) and audiovisual integration (left
posterior temporal lobe) are crucial components of the brain network
for co-speech gesture comprehension.
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neuroscientific explanation, such as an emphasis on statistical optimality. The science is moving rapidly, but philosophers are
attempting to keep up, in order to understand how these recent
developments might shed light on their traditional concerns about the
nature of mind and agency, as well as concerns about the norms of
psychological explanation. The purpose of this symposium is to bring
together leading neuroscientists and philosophers to discuss how the
Bayesian brain approach might reshape our understanding of the
mind-brain, as well as our understanding of mind-brain science.
Matteo Colombo
Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg
University, Netherlands
Axel Lindner
Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tubingen,
Germany
Lars Muckli
Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, UK
David Mumford (1991) proposed a role for reciprocal topographic
cortical pathways in which higher areas send abstract predictions of
the world to lower cortical areas. At lower cortical areas, top-down
predictions are then compared to the incoming sensory stimulation.
Several questions arise within this framework: (1) do descending
predictions remain abstract, or do they translate into concrete level
predictions, the language of lower visual areas? (2) how is incoming
sensory information compared to top-down predictions? Are input
signals subtracted from the prediction (as proposed in the predictive
coding framework) or are they multiplied (as proposed by other
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models i.e. biased competition or adaptive resonance theory)? Contributing to the debate of abstract or concrete level information, we
aim to investigate the information content of feedback projections with
functional MRI. We have exploited a strategy in which feedforward
information is occluded in parts of visual cortex: i.e. along the nonstimulated apparent motion path, behind a white square that we used to
occlude natural visual scenes, or by blindfolding our subjects (Muckli,
Petro 2013). By presenting visual illusions, contextual scene information or by playing sounds we were able to capture feedback signals
within the occluded areas of the visual cortex. MVPA analysis of the
feedback signal reveals that they are more abstract than the feedforward signal. Furthermore, using high resolution MRI we found that
feedback is sent to the outer cortical layers of V1. We also show that
feedback to V1 can originate from auditory information processing
(Vetter, Smith, Muckli 2014). We are currently developing strategies
to reveal the precision and potential functions of cortical feedback.
Our results link into the emerging paradigm shift that portrays the
brain as a prediction machine (Clark 2013).
References
Clark A (2013) Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and
the future of cognitive science. Behav Brain Sci 36(3):181204
Muckli L, Petro L (2013) Network interactions: non-geniculate input
to V1. Curr Opin Neurobiol 23(2):195201
Mumford D (1991) On the computational architecture of the neo
cortexthe role of the thalamocortical loop Biol Cybern
65(2):135145
Vetter S, Muckli L (2014) Decoding sound and imagery content in
early visual cortex. Curr Biol 24(11):12561262
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interesting, since the decades and units of two-digit number words
follow opposite structures in German (i.e. unit-decade) and French
(decade-unit). In a series of experiments pupils from grades 7, 8, 10,
11, and adults made magnitude comparisons and additions that were
presented in different formats: Arabic digits and number words. Both
tasks were performed in separate German and French testing sessions
and we recorded correct responses rates and response times. The
results obtained during magnitude comparison show that orally presented comparisons are performed differently by the same
participants according to task language (i.e. different compatibility
effects in German vs. French). For additions it appears that the level
of language proficiency is crucial for the computation of complex
additions, even in adults. In contrast, adults tend to retrieve simple
additions equally well in both languages. Taken together, these results
support the view of a strong language influence on numerical representations and computations.
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described in Kurup et al. (2012). Other implementations are possible
(Lindner, Russwinkel 2013). Universal expectations are expectations
that result from the universally inherited pre-structuring of the environment. In ACT-R universal expectations are in part already
reflected in the modelers decisions regarding the content of the
model environment, memory items and production elements.
Both types of expectations play a dynamic role during the adaptation
and use of a technical device. Using a new smartphone app users will
first rely on general expectations derived from past use of other smart
phone apps or computer programs. Universal expectations, especially
in the form of assumed form-function contingencies, play an important role in this phase as well. With time, however, users will
increasingly rely on expectations that are in line with specific
knowledge acquired during use.
References
Friston K, Kiebel S (2009) Predictive coding under the free-energy
principle. Philos Trans R Soc Biol Sci 364:12111221
Kurup U, Lebiere C, Stentz A, Hebert M (2012) Using expectations to
drive cognitive behavior. In: Proceedings of the 26th AAAI
conference on artificial intelligence
Lindner S, Russwinkel N (2013). Modeling of expectations and surprise
in ACT-R. In: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on
cognitive modeling, pp 161166. Available online: http://iccmconference.org/2013-proceedings/papers/0027/index.html
Umbach VJ, Schwager S, Frensch PA, Gaschler R (2012) Does
explicit expectation really affect preparation? Front Psychol
3:378. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00378
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References
Anderson JR (2007) How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical
Universe? (p 304) New York Oxford University Press
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ceedings of the sixth international conference on advanced
cognitive technologies and applications. COGNITIVE
Matthias Schulz
TU Berlin, Germany
Maria Wirzberger
TU Berlin, Germany
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acceptance and performance. Comput Human Behav 23(6):2904
2927
Bradley M, Langdon P, Clarkson P (2011) Older user errors in
handheld touchscreen devices: to what extent is prediction
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and the role of cues. In: Proceedings of the 26th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Chicago, Illinois
Tutorials
Introduction to probabilistic modeling and rational
analysis
Organizer: Frank Jakel
University of Osnabruck, Germany
The first part of the course is a basic introduction to probability theory
from a Bayesian perspective, covering conditional probability, independence, Bayes rule, coherence, calibration, expectation, and
decision-making. We will also discuss how Bayesian inference differs
from frequentist inference. In the second part of the course we will
discuss why Bayesian Decision Theory provides a good starting point
for probabilistic models of perception and cognition. The focus here
will be on rational analysis and ideal observer models that provide an
analysis of the task, the environment, the background assumptions
and the limitations of the cognitive system under study. We will go
through several examples from signal detection to categorization to
illustrate the approach.
Modeling vision
Organizer: Heiko Neumann
University of Ulm, Germany
Models of neural mechanisms underlying perception can provide
links between experimental data from different modalities such as,
e.g., psychophysics, neurophysiology, and brain imaging. Here we
focus on visual perception.
The tutorial is structured into three parts. In the first part the role of
models in vision science is motivated. Models can be used to formulate hypotheses and knowledge about the visual system that can be
subsequently tested in experiments which, in turn, may lead to model
improvements. Modeling vision can be described at various levels of
abstraction and using different approaches (first principles approaches, phenomenological models, dynamical systems). In the second
part specific models of early and mid-level vision are reviewed,
addressing topics such as, e.g., contrast and motion detection, perceptual grouping, motion integration, figure-ground segregation,
surface perception, and optical flow. The third part focuses on higherlevel form and motion processing and building learning-based representations. In particular, object recognition, biological/articulated
motion perception, and attention selection are considered.
S25
In this tutorial we will present an overview on further existing
visualization techniques for eye tracking data and demonstrate their
application in different user experiments and use cases. The tutorial
will present three topics of eye tracking visualization:
1.) Visualization for supporting the general analysis process of a
user experiment.
2.) Visualization for static and dynamic stimuli.
3.) Visualization for understanding cognitive and perceptual processes and refining parameters for cognition and perception
simulations.
This tutorial is designed for researchers who are interested in eye
tracking in general or in applying eye tracking techniques in user
experiments. Additionally, the tutorial could be of interest for psychologists and cognitive scientists who would like to evaluate and
refine cognition and perception simulations. It is suitable for PhD
students as well as for experienced researchers. The tutorial requires a
minimal level of pre-requisites. Fundamental concepts of eye tracking
and visualization will be explained during the tutorial.
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for development of visual and spatial working memory, executive
control, scene representation, spatial language, and word learning, as
well as to guide behavior of autonomous cognitive robots. In the
tutorial, we will cover the basic concepts of Dynamic Field Theory in
several short lectures. The topics will be: the attractors and instabilities that model elementary cognitive functions; the couplings
between DNFs and multidimensional DNFs; coordinate transformations and coupling DNFs to sensory and motor systems; autonomy
123
Poster presentations
The effect of language on spatial asymmetry in image
perception
Zaeinab Afsari, Jose Ossandon, Peter Konig
Osnabruck University, Germany
Image viewing studies recently revealed that healthy participants
demonstrated leftward spatial bias while performing free viewing
task. This leftward gaze bias has been suggested to be due to the
lateralization in the cortical attention system, but might be alternatively explained or influenced by reading direction on the horizontal
spatial bias while freely viewing images. Four eye-tracking experiments were conducted by using different bilingual subjects and
different direction of reading paragraphs primes. Participants first
read a text and subsequently freely viewed nine images while the eye
movements were recorded. Experiment 1 investigates the effect of
reading direction among bilingual participants with right-to-left
(RTL) and left-to-right (LTR) text primes. Those participants were
native Arabic/Urdu speakers. In concordance with previous studies,
after reading LTR prime, a leftward shift in the first second of image
exploration was observed. In contrast, after reading RTL text primes,
participants displayed a rightward spatial bias. This result demonstrates that reading direction of text primes influences later
exploration of complex stimuli. In experiment 2, we investigated
whether this effect was due to a systematic influence of native vs.
secondary language, independently of the direction of reading. For
this purpose, we measured German/English bilinguals with German/
English LTR reading direction text stimuli. Here, participants showed
leftward spatial bias after reading LTR texts in either cases. This
demonstrates that for the present purpose, the difference between
primary and secondary language is not important. In Experiment 3,
we investigated the relative influence of scanning direction and actual
reading direction. LTR bilingual participants were presented with
normal (LTR) and mirrored left-to-right (mLTR) texts. Upon reading
the primes, reading direction differed markedly, reflecting mirrored
and not mirrored conditions. However, we did not observe significant
differences in the leftward bias. The bias is even slightly stronger
after reading mLTR. This experiment demonstrates that the actual
scanning direction did not influence the asymmetry on later complex
image stimuli. In Experiment 4, we studied the effect of reading
direction among bilingual participants with LTR as primary language
and RTL as secondary language. These participants were native
Germans and Arabic Germans who learned Arabic mainly later in life.
They showed a leftward bias after reading both LTR and RTL text
primes. In conclusion, although it seems like the reading direction
was the main factor for modulating the perceptual bias, there could be
another explanation. The innate laterality systems in our brain (left
lateralized linguistic and right lateralized attention) play a role in
increasing/decreasing the bias.
S27
which, e.g., intend to provide a more concise syntax cannot be proven
correct. We present a re-implementation of ACT-R which is based on
a formal abstract semantics of ACT-R.
Keywords
ACT-R Implementation, Formal Semantics
Introduction
ACT-R (Anderson 1983, 2007) is a widely used cognitive architecture. It provides an agent programming language to create a
cognitive model and an interpreter to execute the model. A model
consists of a set of chunk types, a set of production rules, and the
definition of an initial cognitive state. An execution of a model is a
sequence of time-stamped cognitive states where one cognitive state
is obtained by the execution of a production rule on its predecessor
in the sequence.
Over the past thirty years the ACT-R interpreter has been extended
and changed immensely based on findings in psychological research.
Unfortunately, the relation between concepts of the ACT-R theory
and the implementation of the ACT-R interpreter are not always clear.
So today, strictly speaking, only the Lisp source code of the ACT-R
interpreter is defining the exact semantics of an ACT-R model, so it
is often felt that modelers merely write computer code that mimics the
human data (Stewart, West 2007). Due to this situation, it is
unnecessarily hard to compare different ACT-R models for similar
tasks and ACT-R modelling is often perceived to be rather inefficient
and error prone (Morgan, Haynes, Ritter, Cohen 2005) in the literature. To overcome these problems, we propose a formal abstract
syntax and semantics for the ACT- R cognitive architecture (Albrecht
2013; Albrecht, Westphal 2014b). The semantics of an ACT-R model
is the transition system which describes all possible computations of
an ACT-R model.
In this work, we report on a proof-of-concept implementation of
the formal semantics given in Albrecht (2013) which demonstrates a
formally founded approach to ACT-R model execution and provides a
basis for new orthogonal analyzes of (partial) ACT-R models, e.g., for
the feasibility of certain sequences of rule executions (Albrecht,
Westphal 2014a).
Related Work
Closest to our work is the deconstruction and reconstruction of ACTR by Stewart and West (2007). Their work aims to ease the evaluation
of variations in the structure of computational models of cognition.
To this end, they analyzed the Lisp implementation of the ACT- R 6
interpreter and re-engineered it, striving to clarify fundamental concepts of ACT-R. To describe these fundamental concepts they use the
Python programming language and obtain another working ACT-R
in- terpreter called Python ACT-R. To validate Python ACT-R, they
statistically compare predictions of both implementations on a set of
ACT-R models.
In our opinion, firstly, there should be an abstract, formal definition
of ACT-R syntax and semantics to describe fundamental concepts.
And only secondly, another interpreter should be implemented based
on this formal foundation which may, as Python ACT-R does, also
offer a more convenient concrete syntax for ACT-R models. This twostep approach in particular allows to not only test but formally verify
that each interpretation implements the formal semantics.
The ACT-UP (Reitter, Lebiere 2010) toolbox for rapid prototyping
of complex models is also not based on a formal basis. ACT-UP
offers higher level means to access fundamental concepts of the ACTR theory for more efficient modelling, but the aim is not to clarify
these fundamental concepts. Re-implementations of ACT-R in the
Java programming language (jACT-R, 2010; ACT-R: The Java Simulation and Development Environment 2013) have the main purpose
to make ACT-R accessible for other applications written in Java.
They do not contribute to a more detailed understanding of basic
concepts of the ACT-R theory.
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Implementation
We implemented the formal ACT-R semantics provided by (Albrecht
2013; Albrecht, Westphal 2014b) in the Lisp dialect Clojure, which
targets the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). As a Lisp dialect, it is
possible to establish a close relation between the formalization and
the implementation. By targeting the JVM, our approach subsumes
the work of (Buttner 2010) without the need for TCP/IP based interprocess communication.
In the formal semantics the signature for the abstract syntax is
described using relation symbols, function symbols, and variables.
Chunk types are given as functions and production rules as tuples
over the signature. An ACT-R architecture is defined as a set of
interpretation functions for symbols used in the signature. The components can be directly translated into a Clojure implementation.
The current implementation supports ACT-R tutorial examples for
base level learning and spreading activation using an own declarative
module (Giewein 2014). The results of the ACT-R 6 interpreter are
reproduced up to small rounding errors.
Conclusion
Our implementation of an ACT-R interpreter based on a formal
semantics of ACT-R demonstrates the feasibility of the two-step
approach to separate the clarification of fundamental concepts and
a re-implementation. In future work, we plan to extend our
implementation to support further models. Technically, our choice
of Clojure allows to more conveniently interface Java code and
cognitive models. Conceptually, we plan to use our implementation
as a basis for more convenient modelling languages and as an
intermediate format for new, exhaustive analyzes of cognitive
models based on model- checking techniques and constraint
solvers.
References
ACT-R The Java Simulation and Development Environment (2013)
Retrieved from http://cog.cs.drexel.edu/act-r/about.html, 16
May 2014
Albrecht R (2013) Towards a formal description of the ACT-R unified
theory of cognition. Unpublished masters thesis, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg
Albrecht R, Westphal B (2014a) Analyzing psychological theories
with F-ACT-R. In: Proceedings of KogWis 2014, to appear
Albrecht R, Westphal B (2014b) F-ACT-R: defining the architectural
space. In: Proceedings of KogWis 2014, to appear
Anderson JR (1983) The architecture of cognition, vol 5. Psychology
Press
Anderson JR (2007) How can the human mind occur in the physical
universe? Oxford University Press, Oxford
Buttner P (2010) Hello Java! Linking ACT-R 6 with a Java simula
tion. In: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on
cognitive modeling, pp 289290
Giewein M (2014) Formalisierung und Implementierung des de
klarativen Moduls der kognitiven Architektur ACT-R. (Bachelors Thesis, Albert- Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg)
jACT-R (2010). Retrieved from http://jactr.org, 16 May 2014
Morgan GP, Haynes SR, Ritter FE, Cohen MA (2005) Increasing effi
ciency of the development of user models. In SIEDS, pp 8289
Reitter D, Lebiere C (2010) Accountable modeling in ACT-UP, a
scalable, rapid-prototyping ACT-R implementation. In: Proceedings ofthe 10th international conference on cognitive
modeling (ICCM), pp 199204
Stewart TC, West RL (2007) Deconstructing and reconstructing
ACT-R: exploring the architectural space. Cogn Syst Res
8(3):227236
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Flake GW, Baum EB (2002) Rush hour is PSPACE-complete, or
Why you should generously tip parking lot attendants. Theor
Comput Sci 270:895911
Mcdermott D (1996) A heuristic estimator for means-ends analysis in
planning. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on AI
planning systems, pp 142149
Smith TF, Waterman MS (1981) Identification of common molecular
subsequences. J Mol Biol 147:195197
Steffenhagen F, Albrecht R, Ragni M (2014) Automatic identification
of human strategies by cognitive agents. In: Proceedings of the
37th German conference on artificial intelligence, to appear
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Note that in the event sentences all referents described by the
grammatical subjects were animate, whereas in the state sentences all
subjects were inanimate. Many empirical studies investigating animacy
suggest that animate objects are remembered better than inanimate
objects (see, for example, Bonin et al. 2014). Therefore, shorter RTs on
the subject position of event sentences than of state sentences were
expected, resulting in a main effect of animacy. Since this effect could
influence the potential event-state effect measured on the verb position
as a spillover effect, control items containing the same subjects, but
different, non-ambiguous verbs like stehen (to stand) were added:
Control items:
(5) Der Konditor/steht/hinter der Theke/[].
The confectioner/stands/behind the counter/[].
(6) Der Teig/steht/hinter der Theke/[].
The dough/stands/behind the counter/[].
The results confirmed this assumption: Mean RT measured on the
subject position was significantly shorter for the animate than for the
inanimate referents, F(1, 56) = 9.65, p = .003 (587 vs. 602 ms).
Within the control items, this animacy effect influenced the RTs on
the verb position: After animate subjects RTs of the (non-ambiguous)
verb were shorter than after inanimate subjects (502 vs. 515 ms),
revealing the expected spillover effect.
However, within the target items mean RT measured on the
position of the (ambiguous) verb showed the opposite pattern: After
animate subjects it was significantly longer than after inanimate
subjects, F(1, 56) = 4.12, p = .047 (534 vs. 520 ms). Here no
spillover effect emerged, but a main effect which can be attributed to
the different lexical aspect of the two situation types.
If indeed processing times are longer for events than for states,
how could this effect be explained? The simulation account, proposed, for example, by Glenberg and Kaschak (2002) und Zwaan
(2004), provides an elegant solution. A strong simulation view of
comprehension suggests that the mental representation of a described
situation comes about in exactly the same way than when this situation is perceived in real-time. This means that language is made
meaningful by cognitively simulating the actions implied by sentences (Glenberg and Kaschak 2002:595).
Imagine what is simulated during the processing of a state like the
dough fills the pan: The simulation contains a pan and some dough in
this pan, but nothing more. In contrast, the simulation of an event like
the confectioner fills the pan not only requires additional participants
like the confectioner and perhaps a spatula, but also action (of the
confectioner), movement (of the confectioner, the dough, and the
spatula), situation change (from an empty to a full pan) and a relevant
time course. The simulation of a state can be envisioned as a picture,
for the imagination of an events simulation a film is needed. In short,
the simulation evoked by an event is more complex than that of a
state.
Under the assumption that a simulation constitutes at least a part of
the mental representation of a situation, it seems comprehensible that
the complexity of such a simulation has an influence on its processing
and that the higher degree of complexity in the simulation of events
leads to longer RTs.
References
Bonin P, Gelin M, Bugaiska A (2014) Animates are better remembered
than inanimates: further evidence from word and picture stimuli.
Mem Cognit 42: 370382. doi:10.3758/s13421-013-0368-8
Coll-Florit M, Gennari SP (2011) Time in language: Event duration in
language comprehension. Cogn Psych 62:4179
Gennari SP, Poeppel D (2003) Processing correlates of lexical
semantic complexity. Cognition 89:B27B41
Glenberg AM, Kaschak MP (2002) Grounding language in action.
Psychon Bull Rev 9:558565
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Gentner D, Holyoak K, Kokinov B (eds) (2001) The analogical mind:
perspectives from cognitive science. MIT Press
Goswami U (2001) The analogical mind: perspectives from cognitive
science, MIT Press, chap Analogical reasoning in children,
pp 437470
Guerra-Ramos M (2011) Analogies as tools for meaning making in
elementary science education: how do they work in classroom
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Schmidt M, Krumnack U, Gust H, Kuhnberger KU (2014) Heuristicdriven theory projection: an overview. In: Prade H, Richard G
(eds) Computational approaches to analogical reasoning: current
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Schwank I, Aring A, Blocksdorf K (2005) Beitrage zum Mathematikunterricht, Franzbecker, Hildesheim, chap Betreten
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Siegler R (1989) Mechanisms of cognitive development. Annu Rev
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Thagard P, Cohen D, Holyoak K (1989) Chemical analogies: two
kinds of explanation. In: Proceeding of the 11th international
joint conference on artificial intelligence, pp 819824
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was followed by a supra-threshold stimulus to probe the cortical
activation of the first stimulus. Control conditions in which the first
stimulus was omitted and in which the first stimulus was delivered at
supra-threshold intensities were also added. Subjects reported in all
trials how many stimuli they had perceived.
Pre-stimulus network states and post-stimulus cortical processing
of the sensory input were studied by means of magnetoencephalography. To assess the cortical network prior to stimulation, source
activity was estimated for nodes of an equally spaced grid and all-toall imaginary coherence was calculated. Alterations in power and
graph theoretical network parameters were estimated. Since secondary somatosensory cortex (SII) appears to play a crucial role in the
processing of consciously perceived tactile stimuli we used it as a
seed region for identifying the related brain network. In order to
assess post-stimulus processing and its dependency from the prestimulus network state, evoked responses were recorded. Since evoked
responses to near-threshold stimulation are rather weak, the activation
induced by near-threshold stimulus was probed by subsequently
applying a suprathreshold test stimulus. To determine the source
activity, a spatio-temporal dipole model with one source for primary
somatosensory cortex (SI) contralateral to the stimulation site and two
dipoles for ipsi- and contralateral SII were used. The model was
applied to both, the direct evoked responses of the near-threshold
stimuli and to the activation evoked by the probe stimulus. Since the
duration of activation differs across the different sensory brain areas
in the paired pulse approach varying ISIs of 30, 60, and 150 ms
between the near-threshold and the test stimulus allowed for probing
the sensory processing of the near-threshold stimulus at different
levels (Wuhle et al. 2010).
Results
Network analysis for the prestimulus period yielded increased alpha
power in trials in which the near-threshold stimulus was not detected. On
a global level brain networks appeared to be more strongly clustered for
misses than for hits. In contrast, on a local level, clustering coefficients
were stronger for hits than for misses in particular for contralateral SII. A
detailed analysis of the connectedness of SII revealed that except for
connections to the precuneus SII was more strongly connected to other
brain areas such as ipsilateral inferior frontal/anterior temporal cortex and
middle frontal gyrus for hits than for misses. Results suggest that the state
of the prestimulus somatosensory network involving particularly middle
frontal gyrus, cingulate cortex and fronto temporal regions determine
whether near-threshold tactile stimuli elicit activation of SII and are
subsequently perceived and reported.
Studying poststimulus activation, no significant difference
between hits and misses was found on the level of SI, neither for the
direct evoked response of the near-threshold stimulus nor for its
effects on the subsequent probe stimulus. In contrast, on the level of
SII a significant difference between hits and misses could be shown in
response to the near-threshold stimuli. Moreover, the SII response of
the probe stimulus was inhibited by the primarily applied nearthreshold for exclusively an ISI of 150 ms, but not for shorter ISIs
(Wuhle et al. 2011).
Discussion
The here reported study emphasizes the importance of the prestimulus
state of brain networks for the subsequent activation of brain regions
involved in higher level stimulus processing and for the conscious
perception of sensory input. In tactile stimulus processing, secondary
somatosensory cortex appears to be the critical region that is
embedded in a wide brain network and that is relevant for the gating
of sensory input to higher level analysis. This finding corresponds
with the established view that processing of sensory information SII is
strongly modulated by top-down control. Network analyzes indicated
that the sensory network involving SII, middle frontal gyrus, cingulated cortex and fronto temporal brain regions has to be distinguished
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Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG) through the Center of Excellence EXC 277 Cognitive Interaction Technology.
References
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525X04000056
Introduction
Human actions contain an extensive array of socially relevant information. Previous studies have shown that even brief exposure to
visually-observed human actions can lead to accurate predictions of
goals or intentions accompanying human actions. For example, motion
kinematics can enable predicting the success of a basketball shot, or
whether a hand movement is carried out with cooperative or competitive intentions. It has been also reported that gestures accompanying a
conversation can serve as a rich source of information for decision
making to judge about the trustworthiness of another person. Based on
these previous findings we wondered whether humans could actually
predict the cooperativeness of another individual by identifying visible
social cues. Would it be possible to predict the cooperativeness of a
person by just observing everyday actions such as walking or running?
We hypothesized that even brief excerpts of human actions depicted and
presented as biological motion cues (i.e. point-light-figures) would
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provide sufficient information to predict cooperativeness. Using
motion-capture technique and a game-theoretical interaction setup we
explored whether prediction of cooperation was possible merely by
observing biological motion cues of everyday actions, and which
actions were enabling these predictions.
Methods
We recorded six different human actionswalking, running, greeting,
table tennis playing, choreographed dancing (Macarena) and spontaneous dancingin normal participants using an inertia-based motion
capture system. We used motion capture technology (MVN Motion
Capture Suit from XSense, Netherlands) to record all actions. A total
number of 12 participants (6 male, 6 female) participated in motion
recording. All actions were then post-processed to short movies (ca.
5 s) showing point light stimuli. These actions were then evaluated by
24 other participants in terms of personality traits such as cooperativeness and trustworthiness, on a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 7. The
original participants who provided the recorded actions then returned a
few months later to be tested for their actual cooperativeness performance. They were given standard social dilemmas used in game
theory such as the give some game, stag hunt game, and public goods
game. In those interaction games, they were asked to exchange or give
tokens to another player, and depending on their choices they were
able to win or lose an additional amount of money. The choice of
behavior for each participant was then recorded and coded for cooperativeness. This cooperativeness performance was then compared
with the perceived cooperativeness based on the different ratings of
their actions performed and evaluated by other participants.
Results and Discussion
Preliminary results showed a significant correlation between cooperativeness ratings and actual cooperativeness performance. The
actions showing a consistent correlation were Walking, Running and
Choreographed Dancing (Macarena). No significant correlation was
observed for actions such as Greeting, Table tennis playing or
Spontaneous Dancing. A similar tendency was consistently observed
across all actions, although no significant correlations were found for
all social dilemmas. The ratings of different actors and actions were
highly consistent across different raters and high inter-rater-reliability
was achieved. It seems possible that natural and constrained actions
carry more social cues enabling prediction of cooperation than actions
showing more variance across different participants. Further studies
with higher number of actors and raters are planned to confirm
whether accurate prediction of cooperation is really possible.
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control group (see Fig. 1). Mean differences among the three groups
were not significant for Actions, F(2, 26) = 1.81, p = .18; but for
Information Searches, F(2, 26) = 5.63, p = .009; and for Reflection
Times, F(2, 26) = 4.81, p = .02.
An alternative explanation for the strategic differences among the
three groups could be individual difference variables. We assessed the
need to reduce cognitive uncertainty, final high school leaving
examination grade, age, and gender. None of the four variables correlated significantly with either actions, or information searches, or
reflection time periods (see Table 1). Yet the three decision-making
measures correlated significantly with each other. Obviously, the
more time spent for reflection, the fewer actions and the fewer
information searches took place. Or, the more actions and the more
information searches, the fewer reflection times took place.
Conclusion
Creativity has been rarely studied in relation to complex microworlds.
Thus, a process-analysis of creative analogical reasoning in a complex, uncertain, and dynamic microworld is a novel research topic and
other researchers expressed the need to experimentally assess creativity in a complex and novel problem situation and to focus on idea
evaluation and implementation (Funke 2000).
Further data analysis will also include the correlation of strategy
and performance in MORO. Preliminary results of the current study
showed that the presented analogy stories primed decision making and
problem solving but not in the expected direction. Participants primed
with the systems story followed a balanced approach where number of
actions, information searches, and reflection times were similarly
frequent. Participants primed with the linear story spent most time
reflecting and searching information, perhaps because they were
primed that a decision leads to a linear consequence. Participants who
did not receive any story showed most actions and fewest reflection
times. It is possible that no story provided no helpful cues and lead to
most uncertainty and to actionism (see Dorner 1996). These findings
could have implications for training programs and education which
focus on teaching children, students, and experts to be sensitive to the
characteristics of complex, uncertain, and dynamic problems.
Information Searches
**
Reflection Times **
Acknowledgments
This research was supported through a Marie-Curie IIF Fellowship to
the last author.
References
Dorner D (1996) The logic of failure. Metropolitan Books, New York
Funke J (2000) Psychologie der Kreativitat [Psychology of creativity]. In: Holm-Hadulla RM (ed) Kreativitat. Springer,
Heidelberg, pp 283300
Keane MT (1988) Analogical problem solving. Ellis Horwood,
Chichester
Lutsevich A, Dorner D (2013) MORO 2 (completely revised new
version). Program documentation. Otto-Friedrich Universitat
Bamberg
Wiese E, Konerding U, Schmid U (2008) Mapping and inference in
analogical problem solvingas much as needed or as much as
possible? In: Love BC, McRae K, Sloutsky VM (eds) Proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the cognitive science
society. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah pp 927932
Table 1 Correlations of individual difference variables and behavioral complex-problem solving measures
Cognitive uncertainty
Age
Gender
Actions
-.05
-.11
-.20
-.14
Information searches
Reflection times
-.24
.24
.17
.04
-.18
.30
.09
.07
Actions
Information searches
.27
-.70***
-.53**
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Fig. 1 Mean response times in the target detection task. Error bars
represent confidence intervals (95 %) for within-subject designs and
were computed as recommended by Masson and Loftus (2003)
to press a key as soon as they had detected the target in the left or
right box. Responses under 100 ms were excluded from analysis
(1.1 %). The remaining RTs were submitted to a 2 (word: yes vs. no)
x 2 (target location: left vs. right) ANOVA. Visuospatial attention
was influenced by the words yes or no, as indicated by an interaction
between word and target location. However, contrary to our
hypothesis, an interference showed (see Fig. 1): Target detection
occurred faster on the left after yes, and faster on the right after no,
F(1,21) = 6.80, p = .016.
One explanation for this unexpected pattern might be inhibition of
return (see Posner, Cohen 1984). Upon perceiving the word yes or no,
attention might move immediately to the right or to the left, but after
it is withdrawn, participants might be slower to detect a stimulus
displayed in this location. Using variable delays between word and
target presentation should clarify this issue. Another possibility is that
the observed pattern does not result from an association between yes/
no and right/left stemming from handedness, but rather corresponds to
the order in which the words yes and no are usually encountered.
When used together in a phrase, yes is usually used before no (e.g.,
Whats your answeryes or no?); as a result, in left-to-right
writing cultures, yes might become associated with the left side, no
with the right side. We are planning to investigate this possibility, as
well as the question under which conditions an association between
yes and the left side vs. yes and the right hand becomes activated, in
future studies.
References
Casasanto D (2009) Embodiment of abstract concepts: good and bad
in right- and left-handers. J Exp Psychol Gen 138:351367
Dehaene S, Bossini S, Giraux P (1993) The mental representation of
parity and number magnitude. J Exp Psychol Gen 122:371396
de la Vega I, De Filippis M, Lachmair M, Dudschig C., Kaup B
(2012) Emotional valence and physical space: limits of interaction. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 38:375385
de la Vega I, Dudschig C, De Filippis M, Lachmair M, Kaup B (2013)
Keep your hands crossed: the valence-by-left/right interaction is
related to hand, not side, in an incongruent hand-response key
assignment. Acta Psychol 142:273277
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remained unclear. For example, Dreisbach and Goschke (2004) could
only speculate whether the LI-effect was driven by difficulties to
activate a goal that had been ignored beforehand or by a novelty boost
that draws attention towards the distracting color.
Addressing these open questions, we created a DNF- model of the
task. Instead of including additional mechanisms to incorporate processes like attentional capture or goal-specific inhibition, we built the
most parsimonious model that relies exclusively on continuously
changing levels of goal activation. In this respect, DNFs are suited
exceptionally well to model dynamic goal-directed behavior as they
embrace cognition as a deeply continuous phenomenon that is tightly
coupled to our sensorimotor systems (Sandamirskaya, Zibner, Schneegans, Schoner 2013). Our model consists of three layers, similarly
to previous models of goal-driven behavior and goal-switching (c.f.
Gilbert, Shallice 2002; Scherbaum et al. 2012). A goal layer represents
the cued target color by forming a peak of activation at a specific site.
When activation reaches a threshold, it feeds into an associations-layer
representing colors and magnitudes of the current stimuli. The
emerging pattern of activation is then projected into a response layer,
resulting in a tendency to move to the left or right. Notably, as is
typical for DNF-models, all layers are continuous in representational
space. This allowed us to study the models behavior continuously
over time instead of obtaining discrete threshold responses. Crucially,
the inert activation dynamics inherent to DNFs provide a simple
mechanism for the time-consuming processes of goal-setting and shifting observed in behavioral data.
A simulation study of the original paradigm indicated similar costs
in response times for PS- and LI-switches as observed by Dreisbach
and Goschke (2004). However, continuous response trajectories
provided differential patterns for PS- and LI- trials: PS-switches
yielded response trajectories that were deflected towards the previously relevant information, while LI-switches yielded a tendency to
keep the response neutral for a longer time before deciding for one
alternative. We validated these predictions in a set-switching experiment that was similar to the one conducted by Dreisbach and
Goschke (2004). However, instead of responding with left or right key
presses, participants moved a computer mouse into the upper left or
right corner of the screen. As expected, goal switches induced switch
costs in response times. More intriguingly, mouse movements replicated the models dynamic predictions: PS-switches yielded
movements strongly deflected to the alternative response, whereas LIswitches yielded indifferent movements for a longer time than in
repetition trials.
In summary, our DNF-model and mouse-tracking data suggest that
continuously changing levels of goal activation constitute the core
mechanism underlying goal-setting and shifting. Therefore, we
advocate the combination of continuous modelling with continuous
behavioral measures, as this approach offers new and deeper insights
into the dynamics of goals and goal-directed action.
References
Dreisbach G, Goschke T (2004) How positive affect modulates cognitive control: reduced perseveration at the cost of increased
distractibility. J Exp Psychol Learn Memory Cogn 30(2):343353.
doi:10.1037/0278-7393.30.2.343
Gilbert SJ, Shallice T (2002) Task switching: A PDP model. Cogn
Psychol 44(3):297337. doi:10.1006/cogp.2001.0770
Monsell S (2003) Task switching. Trend Cogn Sci 7(3):134140. doi:
10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00028-7
Sandamirskaya Y, Zibner SKU, Schneegans S, Schoner G (2013)
Using dynamic field theory to extend the embodiment stance
toward higher cognition. New Ideas Psychol 31(3):322339. doi:
10.1016/j.newideapsych.2013.01.002
Scherbaum S, Dshemuchadse M, Ruge H, Goschke T (2012)
Dynamic goal states: adjusting cognitive control without
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Looming auditory warnings initiate earlier eventrelated potentials in a manual steering task
Christiane Glatz, Heinrich H. Bulthoff, Lewis L.Chuang
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany
Automated collision avoidance systems promise to reduce accidents
and relieve the driver from the demands of constant vigilance. Such
systems direct the operators attention to potentially critical regions of
the environment without compromising steering performance. This
raises the question: What is an effective warning cue?
Sounds with rising intensities are claimed to be especially salient.
By evoking the percept of an approaching object, they engage a
neural network that supports auditory space perception and attention
(Bach et al. 2008). Indeed, we are aroused by and faster to respond to
looming auditory tones, which increase heart rate and skin conductance activity (Bach et al. 2009).
Looming sounds can differ in terms of their rising intensity profiles. While it can be approximated by a sound whose amplitude
increases linearly with time, an approaching object that emits a
constant tone is better described as having an amplitude that increases
exponentially with time. In a driving simulator study, warning cues
that had a veridical looming profile induced earlier braking responses
than ramped profiles with linearly increasing loudness (Gray 2011).
In the current work, we investigated how looming sounds might
serve, during a primary steering task, to alert participants to the
appearance of visual targets. Nine volunteers performed a primary
steering task whilst occasionally discriminating visual targets. Their
primary task was to minimize the vertical distance between an
erratically moving cursor and the horizontal mid-line, by steering a
joystick towards the latter. Occasionally, diagonally oriented Gabor
patches (108 tilt; 18 diameter; 3.1 cycles/deg; 70 ms duration) would
appear on either the left or right of the cursor. Participants were
instructed to respond with a button-press whenever a pre-defined
target appeared. Seventy percent of the time, these visual stimuli were
preceded by a 1,500 ms warning tone, 1,000 ms before they appeared.
Overall, warning cues resulted in significantly faster and more sensitive detections of the visual target stimuli (F1,8 = 7.72, p \ 0.05;
F1,8 = 9.63, p \ 0.05).
Each trial would present one of three possible warning cues. Thus,
a warning cue (2,000 Hz) could either have a constant intensity of
65 dB, a ramped tone with linearly increasing intensity from 60 dB to
approximately 75 dB or a comparable looming tone with an exponentially increasing intensity profile. The different warning cues did
not vary in their influence of the response times to the visual targets
and recognition sensitivity (F2,16 = 3.32, p = 0.06; F2,16 = 0.10,
p = 0.90). However, this might be due to our small sample size. It is
noteworthy that the different warning tones did not adversely affect
steering performance (F2,16 = 1.65, p \ 0.22). Nonetheless, electroencephalographic potentials to the offset of the warning cues were
significantly earlier for the looming tone, compared to both the
constant and ramped tone. More specifically, the positive component
of the event- related potential was significantly earlier for the looming
tone by about 200 ms, relative to the constant and ramped tone, and
sustained for a longer duration (see Fig. 1).
The current findings highlight the behavioral benefits of auditory
warning cues. More importantly, we find that a veridical looming tone
induces earlier event-related potentials than one with a linearly
123
Fig. 1 The topographical plot shows the 500 ms after sound offset,
with scalp maps plotted every 50 ms, for the constant (row 1), the
ramped (row 2), and the looming tone (row 3). The looming cues
evoked a strong positive deflection about 200 ms earlier than the
other sounds. The black bar at the bottom of the figure indicates
where the significance level of 0.01 was exceeded using a parametric
test on the combined Fz, FCz, Cz, and Pz activity
increasing intensity. Future work will investigate how this benefit
might diminish with increasing time between the warning tone and
the event that is cued for.
References
Bach DR, Schchinger H, Neuhoff JG, Esposito F, Salle FD, Lehmann
C, Herdener M, Scheffler K, Seifritz E (2008) Rising sound
intensity: an intrinsic warning cue activating the amygdala.
Cerebral Cortex 18(1):145150
Bach DR, Neuhoff JG, Perrig W, Seifritz E (2009) Looming sounds
as warning signals: the function of motion cues. Int J Psychophysiol 74(1):2833
Gray R (2011) Looming auditory collision warnings for driving.
Human Factors 53(1):6374
S39
approach when studying creativity. The findings also broaden a narrow cognitive view on creativity, highlighting also the role of
motivational and socio-cultural factors during the creative process
(for the role of societal context in creativity see also Nouri et al.
2014).
Whereas most artists experience similar creative processes, we
also found themes highlighting the influence of the artists cultural
background. Results are beneficial for further developing a comprehensive theory of the creative process taking cultural differences into
consideration and perhaps integrating them in computational creativity models (e.g., Colton and Wiggins 2012).
Acknowledgments
This research was supported through a Marie-Curie IIF Fellowship to
the second author and to a Fellowship of the Studienstiftung des
deutschen Volkes to the first author. We would like to thank the artists
for participating and allowing us a glimpse into their world that we
may learn from their experiences.
References
Batey M, Furnham A (2006) Creativity, intelligence, and personality:
a critical review of the scattered literature. Genetic Soc Gen
Psych Monogr 132:355429
Colton S, Wiggins GA (2012) Computational creativity: the final
frontier? In: Proceedings of 20th European conference on artificial intelligence (ECAI). Montpellier, France, pp 2126
Csikszentmihalyi M (1988) Society, culture and person: a systems
view of creativity. In: Sternberg RJ (ed) The nature of creativity:
contemporary psychological perspectives. Cambridge University
Press, New York, pp 325339
Funke J (2008) Zur Psychologie der Kreativitat. In Dresler M,
Baudson TG (eds) Kreativitat. Beitrage aus den Natur- und
Geisteswissenschaften [Creativity: Contributions from natural
sciences and humanities] (pp 3136). Hirzel, Stuttgart
Guss CD, Tuason MT, Gerhard C (2010) Cross-national comparisons
of complex problem-solving strategies in two microworlds. Cogn
Sci 34:489520
Hill CE, Knox S, Thompson BJ, Williams EN, Hess SA, Ladany N
(2005) Consensual qualitative research. J Counslg Psych
52:196205. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.52.2.196
Lubart TI (1990) Creativity and cross-cultural variation. Int J Psych
25:3959
Nouri R, Erez M, Lee C, Liang J, Bannister BD, Chiu W (2014)
Social context: key to understanding cultures effects on creativity. J Org Behav. doi:10.1002/job.1923
Russia
Germany
Variant
Typical
General
Being an artist means to deal with the necessary evil of marketing and selling the work
Rare
Rare
Typical
Variant
Typical
Variant
Variant
General
General
Rare
Variant
Typical
Variant
Typical
Creativity is universal, but culture provides specific expressions (forms and circumstances) Typical
for creativity
General * [90 %
Typical * 5089 %
Typical = 58
Variant * 1149 %
Variant = 34
Variant = 23 Variant = 34
Rare * \10 %
Rare = 12
Rare = 1
General = 89
Typical = 45 Typical = 57
Rare = 12
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Simonton DK (1975) Sociocultural context of individual creativity: a
trans-historical time-series analysis. J Pers Soc Psych 32:11191133
Westwood R, Low DR (2003) The multicultural muse: culture, creativity and innovation. Int J Cross Cult Manag 3:235259
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for older adults only. In particular, the advantage was larger when
their dominant hand was near the display. These results further suggest that visual processing is differentially affected by hand proximity
in younger and older adults. In contrast to younger adults, which
showed an effect of hand proximity on the involuntary shifting of
attention, hand position seems to only affect the attentional prioritization of space in older adults (Reed et al. 2006).
References
Abrams RA, Davoli CC, Du F et al. (2008) Altered vision near the
hands. Cognition 107:10351047
Bloesch EK, Davoli CC, Abrams RA (2013) Age-related changes in
attentional reference frames for peripersonal space. Psychol Sci
24:557561
Brockmole JR, Davoli CC, Abrams RA, Witt JK (2013) The world
within reach: effects of hand posture and tool-use on visual
cognition. Curr Direction Psychol Sci 22:3844
Dufour A, Touzalin P (2008) Improved visual sensitivity in the
perihand space. Exp Brain Res 190:9198
Geffen G, Bradshaw JL, Wallace G (1971) Interhemispheric effects
on reaction time to verbal and nonverbal visual stimuli. J Exp
Psychol 87:415422
Ghafouri M, Lestienne FG (2000) Altered representation of peripersonal space in the elderly human subject: a sensorimotor
approach. Neurosci Lett 289:193196
Le Bigot N, Grosjean M (2012) Effects of handedness on visual
sensitivity in perihand space. PLoS ONE 7(8): e43150
Llyod DM, Azanon E, Poliakoff E (2010) Right hand presence
modulates shifts of exogenous visuospatial attention in near
perihand space. Brain Cogn 73:102109
Posner MI (1980) Orienting of attention. Quart J Exp Psychol
32:325
Ranganath VK, Siemionow V, Sahgal VS, Yue GH (2001) Effects of
aging on hand function. J Am Geriatrics Soc 49:14781484
Reed CL, Betz R, Garza JP, Roberts RJ Jr (2010) Grab it! Biased
attention in functional hand and tool space. Attention Perception
Psychophys 72:236245
Reed CL, Grubb JD, Steele C (2006) Hands up: attentional prioritization of space near the hand. J Exp Psychol Human Percept
Performance 32:166177
Tseng P, Bridgeman B (2011) Improved change detection with nearby
hands. Exp Brain Res 209:257269
Verhaegen P, Salthouse TA (1997) Meta-analyzes of age-cognition
relations in adulthood: estimates of linear and nonlinear age
effects and structural models. Psychol Bull 122:231249
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working memory with an updating task where participants count the
number of occurrences of (three) different sequentially presented
geometric objects (e.g., Garavan 1998; see also Janczyk, Grabowski
2011). In particular, they employed the logic typically used to show
n - 2 repetition costs in task-switching experiments and found
slower updating in ABA than in CBA sequences, i.e., evidence for
an active inhibition of de-selected items (but see Janczyk, Wienrich,
Kunde 2008, for no signs of inhibition with a different paradigm).
Rerko and Oberauer (2013) investigated visual working memory
with the retro-cue paradigm. Participants first learned an array of
briefly presented colored items. Long after encoding, one, two, or
three retro-cues (arrows) were presented one after another, with
always the last one pointing to the particular location that is subsequently tested with a change detection task. (The retro-cue effect
refers to the finding of improved performance after valid compared
with neutral cues.) In the critical condition, Rerko and Oberauer
presented three retro-cues to employ the n - 2 repetition logic and
found evidence for passive decay of de-selected items. These
diverging results obviously come with many differences between
experiments: verbal vs. visual working memory, three working items
vs. six working items, two different groups of participants, and so
on. Here we present ongoing work aiming at identifying the critical
factor(s).
As a first step, we attempted to replicate the results of Bao et al.
(2006) and Rerko and Oberauer (2013) within one sample of participants. A group of n = 24 students took part in two experiments
(we excluded participants with less than 65 % correct trials; 10 in
Exp 1/3 in Exp 2). In Experiment 1, participants performed in a
three-objects updating task and we compared performance in ABA
and CBA trials. ABA trials yielded longer RTs (see Fig. 1, left
panel), thus pointing to inhibitory mechanisms just as Bao et al.
(2006) reported. In Experiment 2, participants performed in a retrocue task with 1, 2, or 3 retro-cues presented one after another. Most
importantly, in the 3 retro-cue condition the cues either pointed to
three different locations (CBA) or the first and the third cue pointed
to the same location (ABA). We did not observe a difference in
accuracy in this case, but RTs were longer in CBA than in ABA
trials (see Fig. 1, right panel), thus pointing to passive decay but not
to inhibitory mechanisms.
After all, with one single sample of participants we were able to
largely replicate the diverging results from two tasks that were
designed to answer the same research question. Given this, it appears
worthwhile to us to continue this work and to isolate critical factors.
This work is currently in progress.
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Fig. 1 Original (left): city scenes of Berlin with the TV Tower (Alex) and Paris with the Eiffel Tower; Modified (center and right): without
TV and Eiffel Tower, and (right) Berlin with the Eiffel Tower of Paris and vice versa
combinations of (isolated/interchanged) landmarks and their corresponding cities. Each city scene/landmark only occurred once (betweensubject factor). Participants were assigned to the different combinations
randomly. An example is given in Fig. 1, while Table 1 presents the
questions raised with all further experimental details and results.
Results
To summarize the results: 1. In general, many city scenes (46 %)
could be identified correctly if landmark and surrounding were a
match (original city scene); 2. Participants had severe difficulties
recognizing some of the given cities when the characteristic landmark
was missing (e.g., Berlin without the TV Tower, Paris without the
Eiffel Tower, Sydney without the opera); 3. Some cities could still be
recognized very well without the characteristic landmark (London,
Venice); and 4. Most participants were totally fooled when other
(deceptive) landmarks were shown instead of the original ones.
Discussion
We demonstrate that a city scene without a characteristic global landmark may be recognized correctly in some cases and wrongly in others;
while an object presented in a new context may lead to incorrect or
inappropriate information retrieval from memory (semantic network).
Example
Questions
Cities and
landmarks
64 % 2,386 ms
46 % 1,887 ms
2.10
35 % 2,801 ms
19 % 2,037 ms
2.83
50 % 3,268 ms
8%
1,982 ms
3.05
2,864 ms
31 %
Cities without
landmarks
Cities with
deceptive
landmarks
2,024 ms
2,744 ms
Participants answered three questions in the three conditions. N = 31 (students of the University of Giessen) 18f:13 m, mean age: 25 years
(SD = 4.4)
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processing), decisions (here: what city is represented?) could be made
consciously and unconsciously (e.g., Markic 2009). One key aspect of the
unconscious, automatic process is associative learning (Evans 2003),
which might explain that a single landmark stores all of the relevant
information for the context (object = city = explicit knowledge). This
experiment shows some important connections between perception and
recognition of spatial information on one side and theories of attention
and decision making on the other. This could serve as a valuable basis for
future research on visuo-spatial information processing.
References
Caduff D, Timpf S (2008) On the assessment of landmark salience for
human wayfinding. Cogn Process 9(4):249267
Clerici A, Mironowicz I (2009) Are landmarks essential to the city
its development? In: Schrenk M, Popovich V V, Engelke D,
Elisei P (eds) REAL CORP 2009: Cities 3.0Smart, sustainable,
integrative: strategies, concepts and technologies for planning the
urban future. Eigenverlag des Vereins CORPCompetence
Center of Urban and Regional Planning, pp 2332
Evans J St B (2003) In two minds: dual-process accounts of reasoning
Cogn Sci 7(10): 454458
Evans G W, Skorpanich M A, Garling T, Bryant K J, Bresolin B (1984)
The effects of pathway configuration, landmarks and stress on
environmental cognition. J Exp Psychol 4:323335
Markic O (2009) Rationality and emotions in decision making. Interdiscip Descrip Complex Syst 7(2):5464
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the persons in the videos were to get mugged. The study found a
robust, positive correlation between primary (low-anxious) psychopathic traits and accuracy in naming the persons, who had been
victims in their past, to be the ones most likely to get mugged. Secondary (high-anxious) psychopaths did not demonstrate such a skill
(Wheeler et al. 2009).
In a similar study five students had to walk through a lecture hall,
in front of other students with many and few psychopathic traits. One
of the walking students carried a hidden handkerchief. The students
with many and few psychopathic traits had to guess who hid the
handkerchief. Seventy percent of the students with many psychopathic traits named the right student; of the students with few
psychopathic traits just thirty percent named the student with the
handkerchief (Dutton 2013).
In another study, people with many psychopathic traits, showed a
decreased amygdala activity during emotion-recognizing tasks. The
people with primary psychopathic traits showed also an increased
activity in the visual and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. So primary psychopaths use much more brain areas, which are associated
with cognition and perception, when they solve emotion-recognizing
tasks (Gordon et al. 2004).
Conclusions
Primary psychopaths use primarily cognitive elaborations to understand others emotions and (almost) do not have the emotion of fear.
Thus according to mirror neuron theorists, psychopaths should have
a pale, detached account of fear in others (see end of first
paragraph).
Psychopaths are surely not able to have a first person as if
understanding of others fear: They cannot feel fear with others. In
this way it is possible to say that psychopaths have a pale, detached
account of others emotions.
However, it cannot be said that the outcome of their understanding
of others fear is pale and detached. In fact, they recognize others
fear often more accurately than people, who are able to have fear.
Also we can conclude that (at least for psychopaths) having an
emotion is not important for understanding this emotion in others
accurately.
References
Book AS, Quinsey VL, Langford D (2007) Psychopathy and the
perception of affect and vulnerability. Crim Justice Behav
34(4):531544. doi:10.1177/0093854806293554
Del Gaizo AL, Falkenbach DM (2008) Primary and secondary psychopathic-traits and their relationship to perception and
experience of emotion. Pers Indiv Differ 45:206212. doi:
10.1016/j.paid.2008.03.019
Dutton K (2013) The wisdom of psychopaths. Arrow, London
Gordon HL, Baird AA, End A (2004) Functional differences among
those high and low on a trait measure of psychopathy. Biol
Psychiatry 56(7):516521. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2004.06.030
Herpertz SC, Werth U et al. (2001) Emotion in criminal offenders
with psychopathy and borderline personality disorder. Arch Gen
Psychiatry 58:737745. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.58.8.737
Rizzolatti G, Sinigaglia C (2008) Mirrors in the brain. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Wheeler S, Book AS, Costello K (2009) Psychopathic traits and
perceptions of victim vulnerability. Crim Justice Behav
36:635648. doi:10.1177/0093854809333958
Rizzolatti G, Gallese V, Keysers C (2004) A unifying view of the
basis of social cognition. Trends Cogn Sci 8(9):396403. doi:
10.1016/j.tics.2004.07.002
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yet are set apart with respect to possible occurrence in predicative
position. The latter twos relation shows the reverse characteristics
(both +predicative use, yet differ in gradability). Adjective order at
the right prenominal edge of Germanic NPs tends to follow the
sequence: QR QA CLAS N. At the same time, classifying
adjectives (either inherent classifiers such as relational adjectives or
other adjectives functioning as classifiers in established names) typically function as modifiers of complex namesjust as in, e.g., NNcompounds, where the modifying N is non-referential, CLAS-adjectives do not locate the NP-referent spatio-temporally but classify it as
a member of a certain kind. Therefore, the IL-interpretation of A2 in
e.g. (2) is an epiphenomenon of more global constraints on modifier
orderin doublets they are interpreted as CLAS, a layer for which
SL-interpretations are not available.
To test our hypothesis, we conducted two questionnaire studies on
German adjective order. Study 1 was a 100-split task designed to test
subjects order preferences when confronted with polysemous
adjectives in combination with another adjective (i.e. either a timestable (e.g. wild & [not domesticated]) or a temporary reading
(wild & [furious]) in combination with a time-stable adjective, e.g.
big). Introductory context paragraphs promoted both adjectives
readings within an item. Subjects had to distribute 100 points over
two possible follow-up sentences, with alternating A1-A2-orders,
according to which sentence was more natural given the context.
Crucially, time-stable AN-syntagms did not denote established kinds,
i.e. the task tried to elicit order preferences based on a potential ILSL-distinction only. While control group items following clear-cut
order regularities described in the literature irrespective of temporality, e.g. small French car, score significantly better than either of
the above test categories, differences between IL- and SL-categories
are clearly insignificant.
In a follow-up study conducted currently, subjects are presented
with introductory sentences containing AAN-clusters not further
specified as regards interpretation. Again, alternating adjectival
senses are utilized. In each test sentence one A is a deverbal ending
in bar (the rough German equivalent of English ible/able; e.g.
ausziehbar extendable), which displays a systematic ambiguity
between an occasion and a habitual reading (Motsch 2004). Combined with respective nouns, these adjectives in one reading encode
established kinds (e.g. ausziehbarer Tisch pull-out table; CLAS
modification), while the respective second adjective encodes a timestable property that does not exhibit a kind reading in an ANsyntagm (e.g. blauer ausziehbarer Tisch blue pull-out table).
Subjects are then asked to rate follow-up sentences according to
their naturalness as discourse continuationsthese systematically violate the occasion reading and we hypothesize that
continuations will score higher for [A=KIND AKIND N] than for
[AOCCASION(POTENTIAL KIND) A=KIND N] expressions. Should this
hypothesis be confirmed, we take the resultstogether with the
findings from study 1as support for the above reasoning that
observed adjective interpretations as in (2) do not derive primarily
from a grammatical distinction between IL- and SL-predicates, but
need to be understood as an epiphenomenon of more general constraints on adjective order and kind reference.
References
Bolinger D (1967) Adjectives in English: attribution and predication.
Lingua 18:134
Cinque G (2010) The syntax of adjectives. A comparative study. MIT
Press, Cambridge, MA
Fernald T (2000) Predicates and temporal arguments. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kratzer A (1995) Stage-level and Individual-level Predicates. In:
Carlson GN, Pelletier FJ (eds) The generic book. The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 125175
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Krifka M, Pelletier FJ, Carlson GN; ter Meulen A, Chierchia G, Link
G (1995) Genericity: an introduction. In: Carlson GN, Pelletier FJ
(eds) The generic book. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 1124
Larson R (1998) Events and modification in nominals. In: Strolovitch
D, Lawson A (eds) Proceedings from semantics and linguistic
theory (Salt) VIII, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, pp 145168
Motsch W (2004) Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzugen. Walter de
Gruyter, Berlin
A0: Der Vogel ist braun, er wscht den Frosch, und er weint.
B0: Der Vogel ist braun, ihn wscht der Frosch, und er weint.
A1: Der Vogel, der braun ist, und der den Frosch wscht, weint
B1: Der Vogel, der braun ist, und den der Frosch wscht, weint
A2: Der Vogel, der den Frosch, der braun ist, wscht, weint.
B2: Der Vogel, den der Frosch, der braun ist, wscht, weint.
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object correspondence in the Ternus display could be determined by
top-down spatial binding of the discs within particular frames.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by a grant from the BMBF (FKZ 01GQ1002
to A.L.).
References
He ZJ, Ooi TL (1999) Perceptual organization of apparent motion in
the ternus display. Percept Lond 28:877892
Kramer P, Yantis S (1997) Perceptual grouping in space and time:
evidence from the Ternus display. Percept Psychophys 59:8799
Petersik JT, Pantle A (1979) Factors controlling the competing sensations produced by a bistable stroboscopic motion display.
Vision Res 19(2):143154
Sterzer P, Kleinschmidt A, Rees G (2009) The neural bases of multistable perception. Trends Cogn Sci 13:310318
Sunaert S, Van Hecke P, Marchal G, Orban GA (1999) Motion-responsive regions of the human brain. Exp Brain Res 127:355370
Ternus J (1926) Experimentelle Untersuchungen uber phanomenale
Identitat [Experimental investigations of phenomenal identity].
Psychologische Forschung 7:81136
Zaretskaya N, Anstis S, Bartels A (2013) Parietal cortex mediates
conscious perception of illusory gestalt. J Neurosci 33:523531
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Fig. 1 Schematic illustration of the learning phase and the test phase.
After the learning phase the lettering test phase was presented on
the display for three seconds. ERPs were triggered with the onset of
the test scene
each hallway the participants had to choose one door which they
wanted to pass. This decision had no impact on the further presentation but was included to focus attention on the subsequent scene.
After this decision two pictures of indoor scenes were presented each
for 600 ms. The first was the target scene which the participants had
to detect in the test phase. This picture was marked with a green
frame. The second picture showed the distractor scene and was
marked with a red frame. The test phase followed immediately after
all eight hallways had been presented. During the test phase, all
hallways were tested. The number of the current hallway was presented as a cue followed by a test scene. In a Yes/No task, participants
were asked to hit the corresponding mouse button if the presented
scene was the target scene they encountered in the corresponding
hallway during the learning phase. Fifty percent of presented test
scenes were sequence matching target scenes known from the
learning phase (correct identity and position) and the other 50 percent
were homogenously distributed into distractor scenes of the same
hallway (false identity, correct position), new scenes which were not
presented in the learning phase (false identity and position) and target
scenes which did not match the corresponding hallway (correct
identity, false position). In addition to the psychophysical measurements, ERPs were measured by EEG and were triggered with the test
scene presentation.
Behaviorally, the hit rate (correct recognition of scene identity and
position) was about 80 %. Overall correct rejection (either identity or
position incorrect) was about 85 %. Correct target scenes appearing at
incorrect positions were rejected at a rate of about 60 %. Target
scenes appearing at a false position were more likely to be rejected as
the distance between their presentation in the learning and test
sequences increased. ERPs depend on the combination of decision
and task condition. The hit condition differs from all other task/
response combinations in a relatively weak N300. Especially at the
frontal sites the non-hit combinations lacked a P300 wave except for
the false alarms of non-sequence matching target scenes where the
ERP approached the level of the P300 of the hit condition abruptly
after the peak of the N300. Note that in both conditions, scene identity
was correctly judged whereas position is ignored. They also differ
from the other task/response combinations also in the N400 which is
relatively weak. The parietal P600 wave of the hits differed only from
the correct rejections of distractor scenes, the novel scenes and the
missed target scenes. Between 650 and 800 ms, the parietal electrodes
recorded a positive voltage shift for the correct rejections of the nonsequence matching scenes and a negative voltage shift for the false
alarms of the non-sequence matching scenes. No such potentials were
found for the other task/response combinations.
The mid-frontal old/new effect of Rugg et al. (1998) seems to be
comparable to the N400 effect of our preliminary data. In addition our
123
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Dissociable neural correlates for familiarity and recollection
during the encoding and retrieval of pictures. Cogn Brain Res
18:255272
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S51
agents in our environment or controlling technology via voice interfaces. Here we investigate SoA during verbal control of the external
environment using the intentional binding paradigm.
Intentional binding is a phenomenon where the perceived actionoutcome interval for voluntary actions is shorter than for equivalent
passive movements (Haggard, Clark, Kalogeras 2002). In this
experimental paradigm participants report the perceived time of
voluntary action initiation and the consequent effects using the socalled Libet clock. Haggard, Clark, Kalogeras (2002) found that when
participants caused an action, their perceived time of initiation and the
perceived time of the outcome where brought closer together, i.e. the
perceived interval between voluntary actions and outcomes was
smaller than the actual interval. In the case of involuntary actions the
perceived interval was found to be longer than the actual interval.
Importantly, intentional binding is thought to offer a reliable implicit
measure of SoA (Moore, Obhi 2012).
In this study we developed a novel adaptation of the intentional
binding paradigm where participants performed both verbal commands
(saying the word go) and limb movements (key-presses) that were
followed by an outcome (auditory tone) after a fixed 500 ms interval.
Participants sat at a desk in front of a 24 monitor, which displayed the
Libet clock. The experimental design was a within-subjects design with
one independent variable: input modalityspeech input or keyboard
input. A keyboard and microphone were used to register their actions.
The trials were separated into individual blocksoperant blocks require
the participant to act (either via button press or verbal command) to cause
a beep During the operant trials, participants reported the time of the
critical event (either the action or outcome). Baseline trials had either an
action from the participant (with no outcome) or the beep occurring in
isolation. During baseline conditions, the participant is required to report
the time of the critical eventaction or outcome.
We investigated:
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mechanisms of joint action. Exp Brain Res 211(34):329336
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communication: a theory of signaling in online social interactions. PloS ONE 8(11):e79876
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Firstly, we found that the average perceived time of action corresponded to the beginning of the utterance. This offers an intriguing
insight concerning the cognitive processes underlying action perception for speech. One possible explanation for the action being
perceived as occurring at the beginning of the utterance is that once
people receive sensory information about their verbal command,
perception of action arises. Theoretically, this possible explanation is
in line with the cue integration theory of agency. Cue integration
holds that both internal motor cues and external situational information contribute to the SoA (Wegner, Sparrow 2004; Moore et al. 2009;
Moore, Fletcher 2012). It has been suggested that the influence of
these cues upon our SoA depends on their reliability (Moore, Fletcher
2012). According to the cue integration concept, multiple agency cues
are weighted by their relative reliability and then optimally integrated
to reduce the variability of the estimated origins of an action. For
speech, it may be the case that hearing ones voice is a highly reliable
agency cue and enough to label the action as initiated. Of course,
further investigation is required, a larger sample size and other
measurements for action perception (such as EEG) will be vital in
determining the perception of action perception for verbal commands.
These insights will be valuable, particularly for designers of speech
recognition software and voice based interfaces.
To address number 2) above, we tested whether binding was
occurring within each input modality. We conducted a 2x2 repeated
measures analysis of variance comparing event type (action/outcome)
and context (operant/baseline). The key-press condition resulted in a
significant interaction between context and event. Follow up t-tests
comparing action operant and action baseline have a significant difference t(13) = - 5.103, p \ .001. This shows that operant actions
1)
2)
123
S52
were perceived later than the baseline. T test comparing the perceived
times of the operant tone condition and the baseline tone condition have
a significant difference t(13) = 2.374, p \ .05 and therefore operant
tones were perceived earlier than the baseline. The same analysis was
repeated for the speech condition which resulted in a trend towards
significance between context and event (F1,13 = 3,112, p = .101).
Because this was a preliminary investigation, we performed exploratory
analysis and performed follow up paired t-tests comparing action
operant and action baseline and found a significant difference
t(12) = - 2.257, p \ .05 indicating that operant actions are perceived
later than the baseline and thus action binding is occurring. A t-test
comparing outcome operant and outcome baseline gave a non-significant difference t(13) = .532, p = .604). Therefore the outcome operant
condition was not perceived as significantly earlier than the baseline and
the outcome binding component of intentional binding was not present.
Although intentional binding was present for limb movements
(consistent with the existing literature), it was absent for verbal
commands. There are several possible explanations for this. One
possible explanation is that intentional binding is a phenomenon that
does not occur for verbal commands. It is also possible that intentional binding is present at different scales across different
sensorimotor modalities. Another explanation, in line the cue integration approach for SoA (described above) is that there are
differences in the amount of sensory cues provided to the participant
to confirm that the action has occurred. Key-presses involve proprioceptive, visual, haptic and auditory cues, which are all integrated to
influence the SoA for an action. For verbal commands, there are less
sensory cuesproprioceptive and auditory. Less agency cues
involved in verbal commands may result in no intentional binding
effect. Therefore, further investigation would determine whether
different factors within the experimental set up has an impact on
intentional binding for verbal commands. Alterations such as longer
of shorter timescales, perhaps different forms of outcome (e.g. non
auditory) or additional agency cues may alter intentional binding.
There may also be experimental factors that lead to no intentional
binding being present for the verbal condition. Typically a speech
recognizer would need to process the entire utterance and perform
recognition before deeming it as an action. However, as we discussed
above, the user typically considered their utterance as an action
roughly at the beginning of the utterance, thus giving a variable delay
between action-outcome. Intentional binding studies have found that
the binding phenomenon breaks down beyond 650 ms (Haggard,
Clark, Kalogerous 2002). This may also explain the lack of tone
binding found here. Interestingly, further exploratory analyzes of the
speech data suggest that the action component of intentional binding
was present but the outcome component was absent (hence the
apparent lack of overall binding). This suggests that an element of
binding is occurring here.
References
Haggard P, Clark S, Kalogeras J (2002) Voluntary action and conscious
awareness. Nature Neurosci 5(4):382385. doi:10.1038/nn827
Moore J, Fletcher P (2012) Sense of agency in health and disease: a
review of cue integration approaches. Conscious Cogn 21(1):
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Moore J, Obhi S (2012) Intentional binding and the sense of agency: a
review. Conscious Cogn 21(1):546561. doi:10.1016/j.concog.
2011.12.002
Moore JW, Wegner DM, Haggard P (2009) Modulating the sense of
agency with external cues. Conscious Cogn 18(4):10561064.
doi:10.1016/j.concog.2009.05.004
Wegner DM, Sparrow B (2004) Authorship processing. In: Gazzaniga
M (ed) The cognitive neurosciences III. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, pp 12011209
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can be predictive for the performance of higher cognitive functions
like VWM state and retrieval.
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knowledge is used for pointing to distant locations or finding novel
shortcuts. We show that within ones city of residency route and
survey knowledge root in separate memories of the same environment
and are represented within different reference frames.
Twenty-six Tubingen residents who lived there for seven years in
average faced a photo- realistic virtual model of Tubingen and
completed a survey task in which they pointed to familiar target
locations from various locations and orientations. Each participants
performance was most accurate when facing north, and errors
increased as participants deviation from a north-facing orientation
increased. This suggests that participants survey knowledge was
organized within a single, north-oriented reference frame.
One week later, 23 of the same participants conducted route
knowledge tasks comprising of the very same start and goal
locations used in the survey task before. Now participants did not
point to a goal location, but used arrow keys of a keyboard to enter
route decisions along an imagined route leading to the goal.
Deviations from the correct number of left, straight, etc. decisions
and response latencies were completely uncorrelated to errors and
latencies in pointing. This suggests that participants employed
different and independent representations for the matched route
and survey tasks.
Furthermore, participants made fewer route errors when asked to
respond from an imagined horizontal walking perspective rather than
from an imagined constant aerial perspective which replaced left,
straight, right decisions by up, left, right, down as in a map with the
order tasks balanced. This performance advantage suggests that participants did not rely on the single, north-up reference used for
pointing. Route and survey knowledge were organized along different
reference frames.
We conclude that our participants route knowledge employed
multiple local reference frames acquired from navigation whereas
their survey knowledge relied on a single north-oriented reference
frame learned from maps. Within their everyday environment, people
seem to use map or navigation-based knowledge according to which
best suits the task.
Reference
Golledge RG (1999) Wayfinding behavior. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore
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philosophical accounts of mental agency. (III) Finally, we will highlight aspects of mental agency that need to be explained by predictive
processing accounts and, more specifically, suggest possible conceptual connections between mental actions and active inference.
(I) What is active inference? Two aspects of agency explanations
have been emphasized in the predictive processing literature:
1. The initiation of action: According to the framework provided
by Karl Fristons free-energy principle, agency emerges from active
inference. In active inference, changes in the external world that can
be brought about by action are predicted. In order to cause these
changes (instead of adjusting the internal model to the sensory input),
the organism has to move. In beings like us, this involves changing
the states of our muscles. Therefore, changes in proprioceptive sensors are predicted. These evoke proprioceptive prediction errors
(PPE). If these errors are just used to adjust proprioceptive predictions, no action occurs. Therefore, PPEs that are sent up the
processing hierarchy have to be attenuated by top-down modulation,
in other words: their expected precision must be lowered (Brown et al.
2013). Overly precise PPEs just lead to a change of the hypothesis,
while imprecise PPEs lead to action. The initiation of action therefore
crucially depends on precision optimization at the lower end of the
processing hierarchy (the expected precision of bottom-up sensory
signals has to be low, relative to the precision of top-down proprioceptive predictions).
2. The choice and conductance of action: Agency (a goal-directed
kind of behavior) has been explained as active inference (e.g., Friston
et al. 2013; Moutoussis et al. 2014). Agents possess a representation
of a policy which is a sequence of control states (where control states
are beliefs about future action, cf. Friston et al. 2013, p 3): [A]ction
is selected from posterior beliefs about control states. [] these
posterior beliefs depend crucially upon prior beliefs about states that
will be occupied in the future. (Friston et al. 2013, p 4). In this
process, precision is argued to play a dual biasing role: biasing perception toward goal states and enhancing confidence in action choices
(cf. 2013, p 11). The latter fact may influence the phenomenology of
the agent (cf. Mathys et al. 2011, p 17).
From the point of view of predictive processing, two aspects are
central to the explanation of agency: precision and the fact that
possible, attainable counterfactual states are represented. Determining
which counterfactual states minimize conditional uncertainty about
hidden states corresponds to action selection (cf. Friston et al. 2012,
p 4). Optimizing precision expectations enables action, which is
ultimately realized by attenuating proprioceptive prediction error
through classical reflex arcs (Brown et al. 2013, p 415).
Anil Seth (2014) also emphasizes the importance of counterfactually-rich generative models: models that [] encode not only the
likely causes of current sensory inputs, but also the likely causes of
those sensory inputs predicted to occur given a large repertoire of
possible (but not necessarily executed) actions []. (p 2). Seth
(2014) argues that counterfactually-rich generative models lead to the
experience of perceptual presence (subjective veridicality). This
suggests that counterfactual richness could possibly also play a role in
explaining the phenomenal sense of mental agency.
(II) What is a mental action? Here, we briefly review accounts
proposed by Joelle Proust (2013) and Wayne Wu (2013), respectively.
According to Proust, mental actions depend on two factors: an
informational need and a specific epistemic norm (cf. 2013, p 161).
As an example of an informational need, Proust gives remembering
the name of a play. Crucially, the agent should not be satisfied with
any possible name that may pop into her mind. Rather, the agent must
be motivated by epistemic norms like accuracy or coherence. Agents
who are motivated by epistemic norms have epistemic feelings
reflecting the extent to which fulfilling the informational need is a
feasible task: These feelings predict the probability for a presently
activated disposition to fulfill the constraints associated with a given
norm []. (2013, p 162). Wu (2013) defines mental action as
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selecting a path in behavioral space with multiple inputs (memory
contents) and outputs (possible kinds of behavior). The space of
possible paths is constrained by intentions (cf. 2013, p 257). This is
why it constitutes a kind of agency, according to Wu.
(III) In what follows, we provide a list of possible conceptual
connections between active inference and mental agency, as well as
targets for future research.
1. Mental and bodily actions have similar causal enabling conditions.
The initiation of mental as well as bodily action depends on the
right kind of precision expectations. This renders mental and bodily
actions structurally similar. Mental actions can be initiated at every
level of the processing hierarchy. At each level, the magnitude of
expected precisions may vary. As in bodily active inference, the
precisions of prior beliefs about desired events must be high
enough; otherwise, the informational need will simply be ignored.
Furthermore, allocating attention may be a factor contributing to
the success of mental actions (e.g., attending away from ones
surroundings if one wants to remember something).
2. The contents of a mental action cannot typically be determined at
will prior to performing the action (cf. Proust 2013, p 151).
Example: I cannot try to remember the name John Wayne. (But I
can try to remember the name of the famous American western
movie actor.) Similarly, in active inference, actions themselves
need not be represented, only hidden states that are affected by
action (cf. Friston et al. 2012, p 4). The system possesses
counterfactual representations whose content is [] what we
would infer about the world, if we sample it in particular way.
(Friston et al. 2012, p 2) In the case of perception, it could be the
[] visual consequences of looking at a bird. (p 4) In the case
of remembering, it could be the consequences that the remembered content would produce in the generative model. A central
question that remains to be answered here is to what extent this
would call for an extension of the predictive processing
framework, in the sense that counterfactuals about internal
consequences would also have to be modeled. Interestingly,
conducting mental actions may often be facilitated by refraining
from certain bodily actions. Imagining, for instance, may be
easier with ones eyes closed. In terms of predictive processing,
this means that visual input is predicted to be absent, and bodily
action ensues in order to make the world conform to this
prediction (i.e., one closes ones eyes).
3. Both bodily and mental actions can be accompanied by a
phenomenal sense of agency. For the sense of bodily agency,
comparator models have been proposed (cf. Frith 2012; Seth
2013). For the sense of mental agency (cf. Metzinger 2013), at
least the following questions need to be answered: (1) Is it
possible to explain the sense of mental agency with reference to a
comparison process? (2) If yes, what kinds of content are
compared in this process? A possible mechanism could compare
the predicted internal consequences with the actual changes in the
generative model after the mental action has been performed.
4. Proust (2013) argues that mental agency is preceded and followed
by epistemic feelings. The latter reflect the uncertainty that the
right criteria for the conductance of a mental action have been
chosen and that it has been performed in accordance with the
chosen criteria. We speculate that the phenomenal certainty that a
mental action will be successful depends both on the prior
probability of future states, and on the conditional probabilities of
those states given (internal) control states (thereby, it indirectly
depends on counterfactual richness: the more possibilities to
realize a future state, the higher the probability that the state will
be obtained).
5. A possible problem for predictive processing accounts of mental
agency arises from the role of attention. Predictive processing
accounts define attention as the optimization of precision estimates
123
Acknowledgment
The authors are funded by the Barbara Wengeler foundation.
References
Brown H, Adams RA, Parees I, Edwards M, Friston K (2013) Active
inference, sensory attenuation and illusions. Cogn Process
14(4):411427
Feldman H, Friston KJ (2010) Attention, uncertainty, and free-energy.
Front Human Neurosci 4:215
Friston K (2009) The free-energy principle: a rough guide to the
brain? Trends Cogn Sci 13(7):293301
Friston K, Adams RA, Perrinet L, Breakspear M (2012) Perceptions
as hypotheses: saccades as experiments. Front Psychol 3:151
Friston K, Schwartenbeck P, FitzGerald T, Moutoussis M, Behrens T,
Dolan RJ (2013) The anatomy of choice: active inference and
agency. Front Human Neurosci 7
Frith C (2012) Explaining delusions of control: the comparator model
20 years on. Conscious Cogn 21(1):5254
Hohwy J (2012) Attention and conscious perception in the hypothesis
testing brain. Front Psychol 3:96
Hohwy J (2013) The predictive mind. Oxford University Press,
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Mathys C, Daunizeau J, Friston KJ, Stephan KE (2011) A Bayesian
foundation for individual learning under uncertainty. Front
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Metzinger T (2013) The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal
thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy. Front
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Moutoussis M, Fearon P, El-Deredy W, Dolan RJ, Friston KJ (2014)
Bayesian inferences about the self (and others): a review.
Conscious Cogn 25:6776
Proust J (2013) Philosophy of metacognition: mental agency and selfawareness. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Seth AK (2013) Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied
self. Trends Cogn Sci 17(11):565573
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contingencies: explaining the puzzle of perceptual presence and
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S57
Green et al. 2007; Moeller et al. 2011a; Moeller et al. 2011b).
However, so far, there are only few studies using this methodology to
better understand the processes involved in mental arithmetic with a
specific focus on addition (Green et al. 2007; Moeller et al. 2011a;
Moeller et al. 2011b). In this context, Moeller and colleagues (2011b)
suggested that successful application of the carry-over procedure in
addition (e.g., 23 + 41 = 64 vs. 28 + 36 = 64) involves at least three
underlying processes. First, the sum of the unit digits is computed
already in first pass encoding (i.e., 3 + 1 = 4 vs. 8 + 6 = 14 in above
examples). Second, based on this unit sum the need for a carry-over
procedure is evaluated (with the need for a carry-over indicated by a
unit sum of C 10). Third, the carry-over procedure has to be executed
by finally adding the decade digit of the unit sum to the sum of the
tens digits of the summands to derive the correct result (i.e.,
2 + 4 + 0 = 6 vs. 2 + 3 + 1 = 6). Interestingly, the authors found
that the first two processes were specifically associated with the
processing of the unit digits of the summands reflecting increased
processing demands when the sum of the unit digits becomes B 10
and it is recognized that a carry is needed. In particular, it was found
that already during the initial encoding of the problem first fixation
durations (FFD) on the second summand increased continuously with
the sum of the unit digits indicating that unit sum indeed provides the
basis for the decision whether a carry is needed or not. Additionally,
after the need for a carry procedure was detected carry addition
problems were associated with particular processing of the unit digits
of both summands as indicated by an increase in refixations.
In the current study, we aimed at valuation of how far these results
of the specific processing of unit digits associated with the carry-over
procedure in addition can be generalized to the borrowing procedure
in subtraction. Similar to the case of the carry-over procedure, the
necessity of a borrowing procedure can also be evaluated when
processing the unit digit of the subtrahend during first pass encoding
(i.e., by checking whether the difference of the unit digits of minuend
and subtrahend is B 0) (Geary et al. 1993; Imbo et al. 2007). Furthermore, after the need for a borrowing procedure was detected, later
processing stages may well involve particular processing of the unit
digits of minuend and subtrahend. Therefore, we expected the influence of the necessity of a borrowing procedure in subtraction
problems on participants eye fixation behavior to mirror the influence
of the carry-over procedure in addition.
Forty-five students [9 males, mean age: 23.9 years;
SD = 7.2 years] solved both 48 addition and 48 subtraction problems
in a choice reaction time paradigm. Their fixation behavior was
recorded using an EyeLink 1000 eye-tracking device (SR-Research,
Kanata, Canada) providing a spatial resolution of less than 0.5
degrees of visual angle at a sampling rate of 500 Hz. In a 2 x 2 design
arithmetic procedure (addition vs. subtraction) and the necessity of a
carry-over or borrowing procedure was manipulated orthogonally
with problem size being matched. Problems were displayed in white
against a black background in non-proportional font Courier New
(style bold, size 50). Each problem was presented together with two
solution probes of which participants had to indicate the correct one
by pressing a corresponding button. The order, in which participants
completed the addition and subtraction task, was counterbalanced
across participants. For the analysis of the eye-tracking data, areas of
interest were centered around each digit (height: 200 pixels, width: 59
pixel). All fixations falling within a respective area of interest were
considered fixations upon the corresponding digit.
Generally, additions were solved faster than subtractions
(3,766 ms vs. 4,581 ms) and carry/borrow problems were associated
with longer reaction times (4,783 ms vs. 3,564 ms). Importantly,
however, effects of carry-over and borrowing were also observed in
participants eye fixation behavior. Replicating previous results the
necessity of a carry-over led to a specific increase of FFD on the unit
digit of the second summand (323 ms vs. 265 ms) during first pass
encoding. Interestingly, this was also observed for a required
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borrowing procedure. FFD were specifically elevated on the unit
digits of the subtrahend (415 ms vs. 268 ms). However, in contrast to
our hypothesis we did not observe such a congruity between the
influences of carry in addition and borrowing in subtraction on later
processing stages. While the need for a carry procedure led to a
specific increase of the processing of the unit digits of both summands
(as indicated by an increase of fixations on these digits, 2.04 vs. 1.55
fixations), this specificity was not found for borrowing subtraction
problems, for which the number of fixations increased evenly on tens
(2.15 vs. 1.74 fixations) and units (2.33 vs. 1.84 fixations) due to the
need for a borrowing procedure.
Taken together, these partly consistent but also differing results for the
carry-over procedure in addition and the borrowing procedure in subtraction indicate that evaluating the need for both is associated with
specific processing of the unit digit of the second operand (i.e., the second
summand or the subtrahend). This is plausible, as in both addition and
subtraction the sum or the difference between the unit digits is indicative
of whether a carry-over or borrowing procedure is necessary. Importantly, both the sum of the unit digits as well as their difference can only
be evaluated after having considered the unit digit of the second operand.
However, later processes underlying the carry-over and borrowing procedure seem to differ. While the need for a carry procedure is associated
with specific reprocessing of the unit digits of both summands this was
not the case for a required borrowing procedure. Thereby, these data
provide first direct evidence, suggesting that similar cognitive processes
underlie the recognition whether a carry or borrowing procedure is
needed to solve the problem at hand. On the other hand, further processing steps may differ between addition and subtraction. Future studies
are needed to investigate the processes underlying the execution of the
borrowing procedure in subtraction more closely.
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subtraction: strategy choice and speed-of-processing differences
in younger and older adults. Psychol Aging 8(2):242256
Green HJ, Lemaire P, Dufau S (2007) Eye movements correlates of
younger and older adults strategies for complex addition. Acta
Psychol 125:257278. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2006.08.001
Imbo I, Vandierendonck A, Vergauwe E (2007) The role of working
memory in carrying and borrowing. Psychol Res 71:467483.
doi:10.1007/s00426-006-0044-8
Moeller K, Klein E, Nuerk HC (2011a) (No) Small adults: childrens
processing of carry addition problems. Dev Neuropsychol
36(6):702720
Moeller K, Klein E, Nuerk HC (2011b) Three processes underlying
the carry effect in additionevidence from eye tracking. Br J
Psychol 102:623645. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02034.x
Rakoczi G (2012) Eye Tracking in Forschung und Lehre.
Moglichkeiten und Grenzen eines vielversprechenden Erkenntnismittels. In Gottfried C, Reichl F, Steiner A (Hrsg.),
Digitale Medien: Werkzeuge fur exzellente Forschung und Lehre (S. 8798). Munster: Waxmann
Rayner K (1998) Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychol Bull 124:372422
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Shared-space interaction study
Identifying corresponding human communication strategies requires
studying humans in free interaction. Therefore, we investigate faceto-face, goal-oriented interactions in a natural setting which comprises spatial references with gaze and pointing gestures. In a route
planning scenario, participants are to plan paths to rooms on three
floors of a university building. The three corresponding floor plans are
located on a table between them. The scale of the 32x32 cm plans is
approximately 1:180, each floor having about 60 rooms. The floor
plans are printed on a DIN A0 format poster. This way, each participant has one floor plan directly in front of him or her, one is shared
with the interaction partner, and one plan is not reachable. The difficulty of the task is increased by introducing blocked areas in the
hallways: Detours have to be planned (forcing participants to
repeatedly change the floor), which lead to more complex interactions
ensuring a lively interaction and not a rigid experimental design with
artificial stimuli.
Recorded data
In the experiments, multimodal data were recorded: Two video
cameras observed the participants during the interactions. One participant was equipped with mobile eye-tracking glasses. Pointing
directions and head positions of both participants were recorded by
an external tracking system. As analyzing eye-tracking data usually
requires time-consuming manual annotation, an automatic approach
was developed combining fiducial marker tracking and 3D-modeling
of stimuli in virtual reality as proxies for intersection testing
between the calculated line of sight and the real objects Pfeiffer and
Renner (2014). The occurrence of pointing gestures to rooms, stairs,
elevators and markers for blocked areas were annotated semiautomatically.
Results
The results of our experiments show that at the time of a pointing
gestures onset, it is indeed possible to predict its target area when
taking into consideration fixations which occurred in the last 200 ms
before the onset. When allowing a maximum deviation of 20 cm the
target area was predicted for 75 % of the cases and with a maximum
deviation of 10 cm for 50 % of the cases. Figure 1 shows an example
of a fixation on the target of a pointing gesture, preceding the hand
movement. In the same study, we also analyzed body movements, in
Fig. 1 An example for a fixation (highlighted by the ring) anticipating the pointing target. The three floor plans can be seen. The black
tokens serve for marking blocked areas
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particular leaning forward: Participants almost exclusively used
leaning forward to point to targets more distant than 65 cm (from the
edge of the table).
Conclusion
Altogether, our findings provide quantitative data to develop a prediction
model considering both eye-hand coordination and leaning forward. This
could enable the robot to have a detailed concept of an upcoming human
pointing movement. For example, based on current gaze information of
its interlocutor, a robot could predict that a starting pointing gesture
would end within a 20 cm radius around the currently fixated point (with
a 75 % chance). This will allow the robot to decide whether the predicated target space is in conflict with its own planned actions and it might
react accordingly, e.g. by avoiding the area or pausing.
Acknowledgments
This work has been partly funded by the DFG in the SFB 673
Alignment in Communication.
References
Breazeal C, Kidd CD, Thomaz AL, Hoffman G, Berlin M (2005)
Effects of nonverbal communication on efficiency and robustness
in human-robot teamwork. In: Intelligent Robots and Systems
2005. (IROS 2005). 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on,
IEEE, pp 708713
Holthaus P, Wachsmuth S (2012) Active Peripersonal Space for More
Intuitive HRI. In: International Conference on Humanoid Robots,
IEEE RAS, Osaka, Japan, pp 508513
Nguyen N, Wachsmuth I (2011) From body space to interaction
space-modeling spatial cooperation for virtual humans. In: 10th
International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, International Foundation for Autonomous
Agents and Multiagent Systems, Taipei, Taiwan, pp 10471054
Pfeiffer T, Renner P (2014) EyeSee3D: A Low-cost Approach for Analyzing Mobile 3D Eye Tracking Data Using Computer Vision and
Augmented Reality Technology. In: Proceedings of the Symposium
on Eye Tracking Research and Applications, ACM, pp 195202
Prablanc C, Echallier J, Komilis E, Jeannerod M (1979) Optimal
response of eye and hand motor systems in pointing at a visual
target. Biological cybernetics 124 pp 113124
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N, Wachsmuth I (eds) Proceedings of the 35th annual conference
of the cognitive science society cognitive science society, Austin, TX, pp 33153320
Sorrows ME, Hirtle SC (1999) The nature of landmarks for real and
electronic spaces. In: Freksa C, Mark DM (eds) Spatial information theory: cognitive and computational foundations of
geographic information science, international conference COSIT.
Springer, Stade, pp 3750
Velhagen K, Broschmann D (2003) Tafeln zur Prufung des Farbsinns.
33., unveranderte Auflage. Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart
Fig. 1 Left (top and bottom) the used colors of the objects and the
color gradient. Top (middle and right) examples of the intersections
with and without an arrow. Bottom (right) results. The x-axis
represents the single experimental variation (low difference on the left
and high on the right). The y-axis represents the participants relative
object selection of the single object (percentage number)
was about to happen (Fig. 1); the task still remained the same as in the
first condition. In the third condition the intersections looked the same
as in the second one, but now the task was to choose the object, which
the participant would use in order to give a route description. All
experiments were run on the same computer (19 inches).
Results
Figure 1 (bottom right) depicts the frequency for choosing the single
object. In the condition intersection it can be seen that the single
object is clearly identifiable by a color difference of 11 on
(*100 %). 0 and 3 are on chance level and 6 something between.
A similar result is observable for the condition intersection and
arrow. The remaining condition, in which the participants had to
decide which object they would prefer to give a route description,
shows a different curve. First of all, it increases slower and secondly,
it reaches its top at around 60 %. On the other hand participants chose
the ideal position in 60 % of the cases This differs significantly from
chance level (t(9) = 4.576, p = .001).
Discussion
Participants are capable to identify the single object, if the color
difference exceeds 6. The instruction which one would you choose
to give a route description led to different landmark selections. Here
the position seems to play a major role. Thus, we may conclude that
the perception of the color distribution at the intersection is moderated
by the task at hand.
One interpretation could be that the contrast to the surrounding of
landmarks at an intersection is strongly moderated by the participants
task. This will be examined in more detail in further experiments.
Acknowledgments
We thank Anna Bosch and Sarah Jane Abbott for help within data
recording.
References
Caduff D, Timpf S (2008) On the assessment of landmark salience for
human navigation Cog Pro 9:249267
Klippel A, Winter S (2005) Structural salience of landmarks for route
directions. In: AG Cohn, DM Mark (Eds) Spatial information theory.
International Conference COSIT, Springer, Berlin pp 346362
Roser F, Hamburger K, Krumnack A, Knauff M (2012) The structural
salience of landmarks: Results from an online study and a virtual
environment experiment. J of Spatial Science 5, 3750
Roser F, Krumnack A, Hamburger K (2013) The influence of perceptual and structural salience. In: Knauff M, Pauen M, Sebanz
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for the next task. On the other hand, no specific preparation for the
next task is possible during the response-cue interval (RCI), in which
usually a fixation mark is presented that contains no information
about the next task. Therefore, effects of the RCI cover passive
processes, like decaying inhibition or activation.
The present study aimed at investigating the time course of inhibition in a fine-grained manner. For this purpose, the length of the
RCI (the time between the response of trial n - 1 and the cue of trial
n) was manipulated in five steps separated by 125 ms each. This
allowed us to capture also non-linear trends of the size of n - 2
repetition costs that could be overlooked in designs using only two
distinct RCIs.
Method
In two experiments, subjects (Exp I: 10 men, 21 women, mean age
23.8 years; Exp II: 6 men, 15 women, mean age 22.7 years) switched
between three tasks in an explicitly cued task switching experiment.
In Exp I, participants had to indicate via keypress whether the digit
serving as imperative stimulus is smaller or larger than five, odd or
even, or regarding its position along the number line relative to the
digit five (central or peripheral). In Exp II, participants had to judge
shapes regarding their size (big or small), color (yellow or blue), or
shape (x or +). Stimuli were presented centrally on a 17 monitor on
light-grey background. Viewing distance approximated 60 cm. The
experimental design resulted from a factorial combination of the
within-subjects factors RCI, varied in five steps (50, 175, 300, 425,
and 550 ms), and Task Sequence (ABA vs. CBA).
Results
Both experiments revealed significant n - 2 repetition costs that were
modulated by the RCI. Costs were highest for RCIs of 300 ms and
differed significantly from those of RCIs of length 50 and 175 ms
(Experiment I and II), 425 ms (Experiment I), and 550 ms (Experiment II, cf. Fig. 1).
Discussion
In both experiments, the size of n - 2 repetition costs was modulated by the length of the RCI. Highest n - 2 repetition costs could
be observed for the RCI of 300 ms, while they were smaller for
shorter RCIs (50 ms or 175 ms). Furthermore, the size of n - 2
repetition costs declined again when the RCI exceeded 300 ms, that
is, with a RCI of 425 and 550 ms. This pattern can be interpreted in
terms of an overlap of two different time courses involved in
inhibition.
On the one hand, inhibition seems to need about 200300 ms
to reach its full extent, reflecting a process of building up a sufficient amount of inhibition in order to cope with interference of
recently established task sets. Importantly, while there have been
Experiment I
Experiment II
*
*
100
**
80
**
*
60
40
20
0
50
175
300
425
550
50
175
300
425
550
RCI [ms]
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the experimental environment. We also measured the navigational
errors.
Results
The results of the landmark-condition confirmed the findings by
Wiener, Mallot (2003). For the linguistic conditions, higher error rates
as well as strong differences in the prevalence of region-consistent
route choices were found. A significant preference was found only for
the holonym-meronym condition. We therefore suggest that language-based induction of hierarchies must be in itself of spatial nature
to induce a regionalized representation of space.
Reference
Wiener JM, Mallot HA (2003) Fine-to-Coarse route planning and
navigation in regionalized environments. Spatial Cogn Comput
3(4):331358
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S65
PLACE x Condition
800
RT [ms]
750
700
650
600
words
pseudowords
550
0
Match
Variation
Control
coronal
non-coronal
Match
Variation
Control
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as the attentional focus on the central product would implicate
following the inhibition accountthat in both conditions the lateral
products would be inhibited and thus devaluated. Preliminary analyzes of the eyetracking data of 40 participants revealed the expected
gaze pattern: participants in both conditions focused on the central
product. Implications for the two competing explanation accounts as
well as for the transfer of the lateral devaluation effect to consumer
psychology will be discussed.
References
Attali Y, Bar-Hillel M (2003) Guess where: the position of correct
answers in multiple-choice test items as a psychometric variable.
J Educ Meas 40(2):109128
Christenfeld N (1995) Choices from identical options. Psychol Sci
6(1):5055
Dittrich K, Klauer KC (2012) Does ignoring lead to worse evaluations? A new explanation of the stimulus devaluation effect. Cogn
Emot 26:193208
Meier B, Robinson M (2004) Why the sunny side is up. Psychol Sci
15:243247
Raymond J E, Fenske M J, Tavassoli N T (2003) Selective attention
determines emotional responses to novel visual stimuli. Psychol
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Rodway P, Schepman A, Lambert J (2012) Preferring the one in the
middle: Further evidence for the centre-stage effect. Appl Cogn
Psychol 26:215222
Tatler B (2007) The central fixation bias in scene viewing: Selecting
an optimal viewing position independently of motor biases and
image feature distributions. J Vis 7(14):117
Valenzuela A, Raghubir P (2009) Position-based beliefs: the centerstage effect. J Consum Psychol 19(2):185196
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City University, Marketing Department
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incorrect and correct response activation we included a constant
flanker-to-target delay of 100 ms (see Kopp et al. 1996). A blocked
foreperiod (FP) paradigm (FPs of 800 and 2,400 ms) served as
manipulation of temporal preparation, whereby the short FP leads to
good temporal preparation.
The LRP was derived at electrode sites C4/C3 in the digitally
filtered (0.0510 Hz), artifact-free (horizontal EOG \ 30 lV; all
other electrodes \ 80 lV) ERP as the average of contra minus
ipsilateral activity for left- and right-hand responses. The 100 ms preflanker interval served as baseline. Jackknife-based onset latency
(50 % relative amplitude criterion) was calculated for positive and
negative LRPs (time windows: 140240 ms and 150400 ms).
Results
Statistical analysis was performed via repeated-measures analysis of
variance (rmANOVA) and pairwise t-tests for post hoc comparisons
(with Bonferroni corrected p-values). Mean RT in correct trials, mean
percentage error (PE), and negative LRP onsets were submitted to
separate rmANOVAs with factors foreperiod (short, long) and compatibility (compatible, neutral, incompatible). Positive LRP onset was
analyzed via an rmANOVA with factor foreperiod (short, long).
Analysis of mean RT revealed a compatibility main effect,
F(2,22) = 75.8, p \ .001 (RTcompatible \ RTneutral \ RTincompatible;
both ps \ .001; Fig. 1). Furthermore, FP had a main effect on RT,
F(1,11) = 37.1, p \ .001, which was further qualified by a FP x
Compatibility interaction, F(2,22) = 4.6, p = .02. RTs were shorter
after the short FP, but only in compatible and neutral trials (both
ps \ .001), not in incompatible trials (p = .16). PE was affected by
compatibility, F(2,22) = 9.1, p = .01, and FP, F(1,11) = 10.6,
p = .008, as well as the interaction, F(2,22) = 10.4, p = .006. PE
was selectively higher in incompatible trials, t(11) = 3.0, p = .02,
specifically after the short FP, t(11) = 3.4, p = .02.
Negative LRP onset (Fig. 2a) was affected by compatibility,
FC(2,22) = 28.0, p \ .001, with increasing latency from compatible
to neutral to incompatible trials (both ps \ .001). The FP main effect
was not significant, FC(1,11) = 2.64, p = .13, nor the FP x Compatibility interaction (FC \ 1). The positive LRP in incompatible
trials was clearly affected by FP, FC(1,11) = 18.8, p = .001, with
shorter latency after the short FP (Fig. 2b).
Discussion
By means of ERPs, we examined how temporal preparation affects
response activation in conflict tasks. Replicating previous studies
(Kopp et al. 1996), we observed clear compatibility effects, as RT and
(negative) LRP latency increased from compatible to incompatible
trials. Furthermore, temporal preparation increased the size of the
behavioral response conflict. Most importantly, temporal preparation
reduced the latency of the positive LRP in incompatible trials
indexing direct response activation, but it did not affect negative LRP
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123
Acknowledgments
This research is supported by DFG grant FI 1915/2-1 Manumerical
cognition.
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Di Luca S, Pesenti M (2007) Masked priming effect with canonical
finger numeral configurations. Exp Brain Res 185(1): 2739. doi:
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Domahs F, Moeller K, Huber S, Willmes K, Nuerk HC (2010)
Embodied numerosity: implicit hand-based representations
influence symbolic number processing across cultures. Cognition
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Glenberg AM, Witt JK, Metcalfe J (2013) From the revolution to
embodiment: 25 years of cognitive psychology. Perspect Psychol
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Fischer MH (2008) Finger counting habits modulate spatial-numerical
associations. Cortex 44(4): 38692. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2007.
08.004
Walsh V (2003) A theory of magnitude: common cortical metrics of
time, space and quantity. Trends Cogn Sci 7(11):483488. doi:
10.1016/j.tics.2003.09.002
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3D point cloud data and the corresponding RBG image, have been
analyzed. Scenes were recorded by RGB-D sensors (Kinect), which
provide 3D point cloud data and matched 2D RGB images. Scenes
were taken from openly available machine vision data bases (Richtsfeld et al. 2012, Silberman et al. 2012). We segmented the scenes
into 3D entities using convex-concave transitions in the point cloud
by a model-free machine vision algorithm, the details of which are
described elsewhere (LCCP Algorithm, Stein et al. 2014). This is a
purely data-driven segmentation algorithm, which does not use any
additional features for segmentation and works reliably for in-door
RGB-D scenes with a depth range of approx. 0.5 to 5 meters using
only 2 parameters to set the resolution. Note, due to the limited spatial
resolution of the RGB-D sensors, small objects cannot be consistently
labeled. Thus, segments smaller than 3 % of the image size were
manually blackened out by us as they most often represent sensor
noise. We received a total of 247 segments (i.e. about 2030 per
image). Segments are labeled on the 2D RGB image with different
colors to make them distinguishable for the observer. To control for
errors introduced by image acquisition and/or by the computer vision
algorithm, we use the known distance error function of the Kinect
sensor (Smisek et al. 2011) to calculate a reliability score for every
segment.
We asked 20 subjects to compare the obtained 247 color-labeled
segments with the corresponding original RGB image, asking: How
precisely can you name it?; and recorded their utterances obtaining
4,940 data points. Subsequently we analyzed the utterances and
divided them into three groups: 1) precise naming of a segment (e.g.
table leg), where it does not play a role whether or not subjects
would use unique names (e.g. table leg, leg, and table support
are equally valid), 2) definite failure/impossibility to name a segment
and 3) unclear cases, where subjects stated that they are not sure about
the identification.
One example scene is shown in Fig. 1a. Using color-based segmentation (BenSalah et al. 2011) the resulting image segments rarely
correspond to objects in the scene (Fig. 1b) and this is also extremely
dependent on illumination. Unwanted merging or splitting of objects
will, regardless of the chosen segmentation parameters, generically
happen (e.g. throat + face, fridge-fragments, etc. Figure 1b).
Instead of using 2D color information, here point clouds were 3Dsegmented along concave/convex transitions. We observed (Fig. 1b)
that subjects many times used different names (e.g. face or head)
to identify a segment, which are equally valid as both describe a valid
conceptional entity (an object). There are however several cases
where segments could not be identified. We find that on average 64 %
of the segments could be identified, 30 % not, and there were 6 %
unclear cases. Are these 30 % non-identified segments possibly
(partially) due to machine vision errors? To assess this, we additionally considered the reliability of the individual segments. Due to
the discretization error of the Kinect (stripy patterns in Fig. 1c), data
at larger distances become quadratically more unreliable (Smisek
et al. 2011) leading to merging of segments. When considering this
error source, we find that subjects could more often identify reliable
segments (Fig. 1e, red) and unrecognized cases dropped accordingly
(green). The red lettering in Fig. 1d marks less reliable segments and,
indeed, identification is lower or more ambivalent for those segments
as compared to the more reliable ones.
The here performed segmentation generically renders identifiable
object parts (e.g. head, arm, handle of fridge, etc.). Clearly,
no purely data-driven method exists, which would allow detecting
complex, compound objects (e.g. woman) as this requires additional conceptual knowledge. Furthermore, we note that we are here
not concerned with higher cognitive aspects, relating to context
analysis, hierarchization, categorization, and other complex processes. Our main observation is that the purely geometrical (lowlevel) breaking up of a 3D scene, most often leads to entities for
which we have an internal object or object-part concept which may
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Fig. 1 Humans can with high reliability identify image segments that result from splitting images along concave-convex surface transitions.
a One example scene used for analysis. b Color-based segmentation of the scene. c Point cloud image of parts of the scene. d 3D-segmented
scene and segment names used by our subjects to identify objects. Missing percentages are the non-named cases. Red lettering indicates segments
with reliability less than 50. e Fraction of identified (red), not-identified (green) and unclear (blue) segments for the complete data set plotted
against their reliability. Fat dots represent averages across reliability intervals [0,10]; [10,20]; ; [150,160]. The ability to identify a segment
increases with reliability. Grand averages (red 0.64, green 0.30, blue 0.06) for all data are shown, too
References
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S71
of overall performance to estimated DHF performance without human
input. Figure 1b shows that the subjects contribution in both groups
de- creased with increasing DHF up to the 50 % condition. The
contribution of experienced subjects plateaued between the 50 and
100 % DHF levels. Thus, the increase in performance for the 100 %
condition can mainly be attributed to the higher DHF forces alone. In
contrast, the inexperienced subjects seemed to completely rely on the
DHF during the 50 % condition, since the operators contribution
approximated 1. However, this changed for the 100 % DHF level.
Here, the participants started to actively contribute to the task
(operators contribution [1). This change in behavior resulted in
performance values similar to those of the experienced group Our
findings suggest that the increase of haptic support with our DHF
system does not necessarily result in over-reliance and can improve
performance for both experienced and inexperienced subjects.
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Forsyth BAC, MacLean KE (2006) Predictive haptic guidance:
intelligent user assistance for the control of dynamic tasks. IEEE
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Olivari M, Nieuwenhuizen FM, Bulthoff HH, Pollini L (2014) An
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Negation,
Mental
simulation,
Sentence
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framework. To obtain manipulation of a sentence context that would
target mental simulations we made use of materials from De Vega
et al. (2004). These researchers created sentences by manipulating
whether or not two actions described in a sentence were competing
for the cognitive resources. They showed that sentences with two
actions being performed at the same time were easier to process
when they aimed at different sensorimotor systems (whistling and
painting a fence), than when described actions involved the same
sensorimotor system (chopping a wood and painting a fence). We
hypothesized that given two competing actions negation could
provide suppression for one of them and, thus, change the global
simulation time course.
Experiment 1 was a modified replication of De Vega et al.
(2004) study in Serbian. We constructed sentences by manipulating
whether or not two actions described in a sentence were performed
using the same or different sensorimotor systems. We also manipulated temporal ratio of the two actions (simultaneous vs.
successive). Finally, actions within a sentence could be physically
executed or mentally planned (reading a book vs. imagining reading
a book). This way we included both descriptions of real actions
as well as the descriptions of mental states. Introduction of this
factor aimed at testing whether linguistic marker for mentally
planned actions would induce second order simulation, similar to
the two-step processing, or suppress the mental simulation, which
than would match the one-step processing. The participants task in
this experiment was to read the sentences and to press a button
when they finished. To ensure comprehension, in 25 % randomly
chosen trials participants were instructed to repeat the meaning of a
sentence to the experimenter.
In the following two experiments, we focused on the mechanism
of negation, using similar sentences as in Experiment 1. Here, we
manipulated the form of the two parts (affirmative vs. negative). The
task used Experiment 2 and 3 was a modified self-paced reading task,
allowing a by-clause reading rather than a by-word or by-sentence
reading. This way we obtained response times for each of the two
parts (clauses). We were also interested in measuring the time (and
accuracy) required for judging sensibility of the whole sentence.
Therefore, we included the equal number of nonsensible filler
sentences.
The linear mixed-effect modeling was applied to the response
times and logistic mixed-effect modeling to the accuracy rates. We
controlled for trial order, clause and sentence length and sensibility of
a sentence (the sensibility ratings were obtained in separate study
using different participants). Results from Experiment 1 confirmed
the findings of De Vega et al. (2004): the sentences with two actions
from the same sensorimotor system were comprehended slower
(t(489.90) = 4.21, p \ .001). In addition, we observed a stronger
inhibitory effect from a length in case of sentences with simultaneously executed actions, which indicates additional comprehension
load for this type of sentences (t(499.40) = - 2.00, p \ .05). Finally,
processing time was longer when sentences described mentally
planned actions as opposed to real ones (t(489.70) = 3.21,
p \ .01).
The analyzes of Experiment 2 and 3 showed consistent results
between the clause (local) and sentence (global) response times. The
interaction between sensorimotor systems (same vs. different) and a
form of a clause (affirmative vs. negative) was significant
(t(303.70) = 2.95, p \ .01): different sensorimotor actions/systems
combined with negation lead to slower processing time and lower
accuracy; when the sensorimotor system was the same, affirmative
and negated markers did not induce significant differences. However,
in cases when actions addressed the same sensorimotor system, the
accuracy of the sensibility judgments was higher if the second action
was negated (z(303.70) = 4.36, p \ .001). Taken together, this pattern of results suggest that in case of competing actions negation
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tactile signals in expected sensory areas such as the primary
sensory cortex, supramarginal gyri, and Rolandic opercula. In
second-level analyses significant 2-way interactions between the
belt on/off and pre/post training condition indicates an involvement
of Rolandic opercula, Insula, MST and PPC. Inspection of the
activation intensities shows a significant difference belt on [ off
only in the first measurement before the training period, but not
after the training period.
In summary, in fMRI we observe differential activations in areas
expected for path integration tasks and tactile stimulation. Additionally,
we also found activation differences for the belt signals well beyond the
somatosensory system, indicating that processing is not limited to sensory areas but includes also higher level and motor regions as predicted by
the theory of sensorimotor contingencies. It is demonstrated that the
belts signal is processed differently after the training period. Our fMRI
results are also in line with subjective reports indicating a qualitative
change in the perception of the belt signals.
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B
C
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control mechanism, the knowledge network (KN) identifies the content of the FOA in comparison with the template it entails. Moreover,
the location map complements the matching task by imposing another
top-down control that supervises the selection of the input image.
In the FR-SAIM, every network is associated with a free energy
function in a hierarchical fashion. Each lower-level network makes a
prediction and sends it up to the level above and in turn, each higherlevel network calculates the top-down prediction error signal and
returns to the level below.
The Generative Model: To model sensory information in a hierarchical structure, we define a nonlinear function, say f, to represent our
state-space in terms of the sensory states (input data), in the way the
following equation suggests:
1
si f xi w : w N0; Rm x; m; c
where the causal states m are mediated by hidden states x and thereby
the hierarchical states link together and bring about a memory for the
model and establish the local dynamics xi :xm ; xx are both random
fluctuations produced through observation.
Concerning equation (1), the model dynamics can be written in a
hierarchical fashion as follows:
2
x0 f x1
x1 f x2 Ui
3
x2 f x1 bottomup
4
x2 f x3 topdown prediction
5
where U(i) is the action the networks takes to modify the selection
process of sen-sory data and is denoted by Ui maxx2 ; x3 .
The Energy Functions: The energy functions of the neural networks
in the FR-SAIM are derived by combining the original SAIM network
energy functions and the prediction errors computed using free energy
principle. The details of mathematical derivation of these functions
are discussed in Yahya (2013). These energy functions can be written
as follows:
SCN
SN
xCN
ij ; xkl
X
bCN X X CN
SN
xij ySN
xVF
kl
kl yki;lj
2 ij
kl
kl
X
2
ykl
SN 1
!2
kl
a X
2
KN
CN
EKN yKN
yKN
1 bKN
m ; xij
l
2 l
0
!2 1
X
X
KN
@yl
xCN
wlij A
KN
ij yl
l
ij
X
2
aLM X LM
SN
SN
LM
ELM yLM
yLM
l ykl 1 bLM
kl ; xkl
kl xkl ykl
2
l
Top-down
Modulation
Focus of
Attention
8
D
Top-down
Modulation
oExi
oxi
Simulation Results
Simulation results are shown in Fig. 1bd. Here, the model starts
processing visual input and will put the result into the FOA. These
results illustrate how the target template 2, won the competition
over the distractor template +, by dominating the activation of the
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content network, as time passes. Furthermore, the time plot of the
content network shows how the obtained network energy functions
are minimized with regards to free energy principle.
References
Friston KJ (2009) The free-energy principle: a rough guide to the
brain? Trend Cogn Sci 13(7):293301
Heinke D, Humphreys GW (2003) Attention, spatial representation,
and visual neglect: simulating emergent attention and spatial
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Oral Presentations
Analyzing psychological theories with F-ACT-R:
an example F-ACT-R application
Rebecca Albrecht, Bernd Westphal
Informatik, Universitat Freiburg, Germany
Abstract
The problem to decide whether an ACT-R model predicts experimental data is, today, solved by simulation. This, of course, needs a
complete ACT-R model and fixed global parameter settings. Such an
ACT-R model may include implementation details, e.g. the use of
control variables as part of declarative knowledge, in order to yield
expected results in simulation. Some of these implementation details
are not part of a psychological theory but, nevertheless, may change
the models behavior. On the other hand, the crucial parts of a psychological theory modelled in ACT-R may only depend on very few
rules. Based on a formal semantics for the ACT-R architecture we
present preliminary results on a method to formally analyze whether a
partial ACT-R model predicts experimental data, without the need for
simulation.
Keywords
ACT-R, Formal Methods, Model Analysis, SMT, Model Checking
Introduction
In cognitive modelling, computer models are used to describe human
cognitive processes wrt. psychological assumptions. Unified theories
of cognition and their implementations (called cognitive architectures) provide means for cognitive modelling. A widely used unified
theory of cognition and cognitive architecture is ACT- R (Anderson
1983, 2007). ACT-R is a so-called hybrid architecture which consist
of a symbolic and a subsymbolic layer. As part of the symbolic layer
declarative knowledge (chunks) and procedural knowledge (production rules) is defined. The interface between the symbolic and the
subsymbolic layer in ACT-R is given by so- called modules. Modules
are requested by production rules to process declarative information
and make them accessible through associated buffers. The subsymbolic layer is defined by the behavior of modules, i.e. the responses of
modules for given requests. For some modules, these responses
depend on numerical parameters, e.g. the decay rate for the implementation of base-level learning as part of the declarative module.
The process of cognitive modelling in ACT-R can be described as
defining a model which adequately predicts average human data
collected in experiments. Today this process is typically performed as
follows. There is a psychological theory, i.e., a hypothesis on how a
given task is principally solved by humans. In order to validate the
psychological theory, an ACT-R model which implements the theory
is constructed and evaluated wrt. experimental data. Practically, figures like average error rates or response times are derived from
several executions of the ACT-R model and compared to average
human data collected in experiments. If the figures obtained from
executions of the ACT-R model deviate too far from experimental
data, there are two possible ways to adjust the models behavior. On
the one hand, numerical parameters can be adjusted, on the other
hand, a different implementation of the psychological theory can be
provided. If there is no implementation and parameter setting with
which the cognitive architecture yields adequate predictions, the
psychological theory needs to be rejected.
Today, the only available method for ACT-R model validation is
simulation, i.e. repeated model execution. Using this method for the
validation of psychological theories requires an ACT-R model which
is suitable for simulation. Creating such a sufficiently complete ACTR model may take a significant effort even if issues of a theory may
depend on only few production rules of a model. For example, a
psychological theory may be invalid because according to the theory a
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certain number of rules must be executed whose sequential execution
takes more time than it takes humans to solve corresponding (sub-)
tasks in the experiments.
In this work we propose a new method to investigate the validity
of a psycho- logical theory with ACT-R models. Based on a formal
semantics (Albrecht 2013; Albrecht and Westphal 2014) of ACT-R,
we reduce the question whether global parameter settings exist such
that, e.g., a timely execution of a set of ACT-R rules is possible, to a
satisfiability problem, i.e. a formula in first order logic. In order to
analyze the resulting satisfiability problem we use a satisfiability
modulo theories (SMT) (De Moura and Bjrner 2011) solver to
analyze it. If the SMT solver proves the given formula unsatisfiable,
we can conclude that there are no appropriate global parameter settings, thus there is an issue with the given implementation of the
psychological theory. If the SMT solver proves the given formula
satisfiable, we obtain valuable hints on global parameter settings and
can check them for plausibility. As our approach is not based on
actual executions of an ACT-R model, it in particular applies to
partial ACT-R models, i.e., to small sets of rules essential for the
psychological theory. This may save significant modelling effort.
Motivating Example
Experimental Setting. A typical task in the domain of relational
spatial reasoning with mental models is the following. Objects are
visually presented to participants either on the left or on the right of a
computer screen (cf. Fig. 1). The position of objects on two subsequently shown screens implicitly encodes a relation between two
objects. For example, the two leftmost screens in Fig. 1 together
encode the relation A is to the left of B.
The psychological experiment consists of n different tasks, where task
i consists of showing six screens at times t0i ,,t5i . The two relations
encoded by the first four screens are called premises, the relation
encoded by the last two screens shown at t4i and t5i is called conclusion. After the sixth screen of a task has been shown, participants
should state whether the two premises and the conclusion are contradictory. In the example shown in Fig. 1, they are not contradictory
because objects A, B, and C can be arranged in an order which
satisfies both premises and the conclusion.
The Theory of Preferred Mental Models
In the preferred mental model theory (Ragni, Knauff and Nebel
2005), it is assumed that participants construct a mental spatial array
of dynamic size which integrates information given by the premises.
Whether a conclusion contradicts the given premises is checked by
inspecting the spatial array. Furthermore, it is assumed that only one
preferred mental model is constructed immediately when the premises
are presented. Only if the given conclusion does not hold in the
preferred mental model an alternative mental model is constructed.
For example, a possible model of the premises shown in Fig. 1 is to
order the objects as A, C, B. This model does not imply the
conclusion.
Modelling the Theory of Preferred Mental Models. When modelling
the theory of preferred mental models in ACT-R, a crucial aspect is
the use of the declarative memory. In the ACT-R theory, the time and
probability for retrieving a chunk from declarative memory depend on
the activation of chunks. Activation in turn depends on different
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assumptions on human memory processing, e.g. spreading activation,
where the content of the declarative memory is considered and base
level learning, where the history is considered. In an ACT-R cognitive
architecture where only base level learning is considered, the activation is calculated based on two global parameters: the decay rate d
which determines how fast the activation of a chunk decays over time
and the threshold s which defines a lower bound on activation values
for successful chunk retrieval.
A fundamental assumption of the theory of preferred mental models is
that the preferred mental model for the two premises is constructed
before the conclusion is presented. That is, the behavior of the
environment imposes hard deadlines on the timing of the model: any
valid ACT-R model for the theory of preferred mental models must
complete the processing of all rules needed to construct the preferred
mental model before the next stimulus is presented.
Consider the top row of Fig. 2 for a more formal discussion.
During a task, stimuli are presented to the participants at fixed points
in time. For example, let E1 denote the third screen (i.e. the onset of
the first element of premise 2) and E2 denote the fifth screen (i.e. the
onset of the first element of the conclusion) shown at times ti2 and ti4,
respectively, in the i-th task. This is the interval where the second
premise has to be processed. Then, according to the assumption stated
above, processing of premise 2 has to be completed within tb := t2i
t4i time units. An ACT-R model for this task in particular needs to
model successful solutions of the task. That is, in an ACT-R model
which is valid given experimental data, the execution of all rules
which are involved in constructing the mental model must complete
in at most tb time units.
In Fig. 2, we illustrate cognitive states by the circular nodes,
arrows indicate the execution of one rule which transforms one
cognitive state into another. In addition to rules which request the
declarative module, an ACT-R model of the theory of preferred
mental models may comprise rules with deterministic timing and
outcome, e.g., when modifying buffers of the imaginal module. In
Fig. 2, we assume that there is only one request to the declarative
module by rule r, i.e. a request for the already constructed mental
model comprising premise 1, which has two qualitatively different
outcomes: a correct reply, and a wrong reply or no reply at all. Now
given corresponding rules, if it is impossible to choose the decay rate
d and the threshold s such that ti2 - ti4 B tb, then the considered rules
definitely do not constitute a valid (partial) ACT-R model for the
preferred mental model theory.
A Valid ACT-R Model for the Theory of Preferred Mental Models.
The preferred mental model theory has been implemented in ACT-R
(Ragni, Fangmeier and Brussow 2010). In this model, each premise is
represented by a mental model chunk which is constructed in the
imaginal buffer. A mental model chunk specifies a number of positions pos1, pos2, and assigns objects presented on the computer
screen accordingly. When premise 2 is presented, the mental model
chunk representing the first premise has to be retrieved from declarative memory in order to construct a new mental model chunk which
integrates both premises. In the ACT-R model for the preferred
mental model theory, only base-level learning is considered.
In the following, we use a part of this ACT-R model to illustrate our
approach. As the ACT-R model predicts the experimental data
appropriately for a certain choice of parameters, we expect our
approach to confirm this result.
Formal Analysis of ACT-R Models
Formally, an ACT-R production rule is a pair r = (p, a) which
comprises a precondition p and an action a. An ACT-R model is a set
of production rules. A cognitive state c = (s, t) consists of a mapping
s from buffers to chunks or to the symbol nil, and a time-stamp
t 2 R
0.
The F-ACT-R formal semantics (Albrecht, Westphal 2014)
explains how a set of production rules induces a timed transition
system on cognitive states given a set of global parameters, including
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r2
rn
co ; t0 !c1 ; t1 ! . . . !cn ; tn
with c0 = c and cn = c0 .
For an example, consider the phase of the preferred mental model
theory shown in Fig. 2 as discussed in Section 2. More specifically,
consider a rule r which requests the declarative module for a mental
model representing premise 1 when the first screen of the second
premise is presented at time ti2.
In the following, we consider for simplicity a model where r is the
only nondeterministic rule which is ever enabled between ti2 and ti4
and that the sequence of rules executed before and after rule r is
deterministic. Then the time to execute the model only varies wrt. the
time for executing r. The model is definitely not valid if there are no
choices for decay d and threshold s such that there is a transition
c ? rc0 where c = (s, t) is a cognitive state associated with a realistic
history and c0 = (s0 , t0 ) is a cognitive state where the mental model
chunk representing premise 1 has correctly been recalled.
This can be encoded as a satisfiability problem as follows. A
cognitive state can be characterized by a formula over variables V
which model buffer contents, i.e. cognitive states. We can assume
formula us0 over variables V0 to encode cognitive state s and us0 . over
variables V0 to encode cognitive state s0 . The precondition p of rule
r can be seen as a formula over V, the action a relates s and s0 , so it is
a formula over V and V0 .
Furthermore, we use A(c, t) to denote the activation of chunk c at
time t. We use optimized base-level learning to calculate activation
values: A(c, t) = ln (2) - ln (1 - d) - d(t - tc) where tc is the first
time chunk c was presented. For our experiments, we consider two
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chunks c1, which correctly represents premise 1, and c2, which does
not.
The formula to be checked for satisfiability, then, is
9d; s : us ^ p ^ Ac1 ; t [ s ^ Ac2 ; t\Ac1 ; t ^ a ^ u0s
^ t0 t\tb :
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is accomplished by the execution of production rules. A production
rule consists of a precondition, which characterizes cognitive states
where the production rule is executable, and an action which
describes changes to cognitive states when the production rule is
executed. Basically, actions request modules to process certain
chunks. Which chunk is processed and how long this processing takes
depends on the implementation of psychological assumptions within
the modules and may be controlled by global parameters.
Formalization of Symbolic Cognitive Architectures. To the best of our
knowledge, there is no formal abstract description of ACT-R. Other
works try to make cognitive modelling more accessible by utilizing
other modelling formalisms, like GOMS (Card, Moran and Newell
1983) as high level languages for ACT-R (Salvucci, Lee 2003; St.
Amant, Freed and Ritter 2005; St. Amant, McBride and Ritter 2006).
In other approaches the authors propose high-level languages which
can be compiled into different cognitive architectures, e.g. ACT-R
and SOAR (Laird, Newell and Rosenbloom 1987). This includes
HERBAL (Cohen, Ritter and Haynes 2005; Morgan, Haynes, Ritter
and Cohen 2005) and HLSR (Jones, Crossman, Lebiere and Best
2006). All these approaches do not report a formal description for
ACT-R but only describe the high-level language and compilation
principles.
In Schultheis (2009), the author introduces a formal description for
ACT-R in order to prove Turing completeness. However, this formal
description is too abstract to be used as a complete formal semantics
for ACT-R. In Stewart and West (2007) the authors analyze the
architectural space of ACT-R. In general, this idea is similar to the
idea presented in this work. However, the result of their analysis is a
new implementation of ACT-R in the Python programming language.
Therefore, it is not abstract and, e.g., not suitable for applying formal
methods from software engineering.
A Formal Definition of ACT-R
In this section, we describe the basic building blocks of our formalization of ACTR. The formalization complies to the ACT-R theory as
defined by the ACT-R interpreter. Firstly, we provide an abstract
syntax for ACT-R models which includes chunk instantiations, abstract
modules, and production rules. In our sense, an ACT-R model is simply
a syntactic representation of a cognitive process. Secondly, we formally
introduce the notion of architecture as an interpretation of syntactic
entities of an ACT-R model with respect to psychological assumptions,
i.e. subsymbolic mechanisms. This yields a representation of cognitive
states and finite sequences thereof. Thirdly, for a given model we
introduce an infinite state, timed transition system over cognitive states
which is induced by an architecture.
Abstract Syntax. We consider a set of abstract modules as a generalization of the particular modules provided by the ACT-R tool. A
module M consists of a finite set of buffers B, a finite set of module
queries Q, and a finite set of action symbols A. Buffers are represented as variables which can be assigned to chunks. Module queries
are represented as Boolean variables. As action symbols we consider
the standard ACT-R action symbols + , = , and -.
In order to describe the ACT-R syntax we define the signature of
ACT-R models which is basically a set of syntactic elements of a
model. The signature of an ACT-R model consists of a set of modules, a set of chunk types, a set of ACT-R variables, and a set of
relation symbols. A chunk type consists of a type name and a finite set
of slot names (or slots for short).
An abstract production rule consists of a precondition and an
action. A precondition is basically a set of expressions over a models
signature, i.e. over the content of buffers of a module parameterized
by ACT-R variables and module queries. An action is also an
expression over the models signature which uses action symbols of
modules.
An abstract ACT-R model consists of a finite set of production
rules R, a finite set of initial buffer actions A0 in order to define the
initial state, and a finite set of chunk type instantiations C0.
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c; tp! c0 ; t0 ;
if and only if production rule r is executable in cognitive state wrt. the
finite trace p, i.e. if r 2 S(p, c), if the effect of the actions in
r according to the interpretation functions of the action symbols yields
c0 , and if time-stamp t0 is t + s.
The introduced transition relation corresponds to a cognitive
processing step in ACT-R, i.e. the execution of one production rule.
The transition relation ? induces an (infinite state) timed transition
system with the initial state defined by the cognitive state given by
initial buffer actions A0. Given an ACT-R model, there is a one-to-one
correspondence between the set of simulation runs obtainable from
the ACT-R tool (for a given set of parameters) and computation paths
in the timed transition system induced by the architecture corresponding to the chosen parameters. We validated the formal
description by comparing a prototype implementation to the ACT-R
interpreter for several models described in the ACT-R tutorial.
Conclusion
In this work, we presented the first comprehensive, high-level formal
semantics for the ACT-R programming language as defined by the
ACT-R interpreter. By our notion of ACT-R architectures, we have
precisely captured the architectural space of ACT-R.
Our formalization lays the ground to approach a number of known
issues with the ACT-R modelling language. Firstly, our notion of
architecture can be used to explicitly state all assumptions under which
cognitive models are created and evaluated. Then the architectures used
for different cognitive models can be compared precisely due to the
formal nature of our definition. We expect such comparisons to provide
deeper insights into human cognition as such. Today, mechanisms and
parameter settings employed for modelling and evaluation are often
neither reported nor discussed, mainly due to the intransparent integration of these principles in the ACT-R interpreter.
Secondly, our formal semantics allow to compare different ACT-R
models. Whether two models with (syntactically) different rule sets
describe the same behavior now amounts to proving that the induced
timed transition systems are equivalent.
Thirdly, our formal view on ACT-R models allows to go beyond
todays quantitative evaluation of ACT-R models with the ACT-R
interpreter towards a qualitative evaluation. Today, the ACT-R interpreter is typically used to compute abstract quantitative figures like the
average time needed by the model to solve a certain task. Our formalization provides a stepping stone to, e.g., formal analysis
techniques. With these techniques we can, for instance, analyze whether and under what conditions certain aspects of psychological
theories (Albrecht, Westphal 2014) can possibly predict empirical data,
or check whether and under what conditions a certain cognitive state
which is crucial for a modelled psychological theory is reachable.
Last but not least, formal techniques can be applied to improve the
software engineering aspect of ACT-R modelling which is often
perceived to be rather inefficient and error prone (Morgan et al. 2005;
Jones et al. 2006) in the literature.
Furthermore, the scope of our work is not limited to ACT-R but
has a clear potential to affect the whole domain of rule-based cognitive architectures. Firstly, efforts to provide alternative ACT-R
interpreters like (Stewart, West 2007) can refer to a common reference semantics. Secondly, we are able to formally establish
connections between different cognitive architectures ranging from
general purpose architectures like SOAR to special purpose architectures like CasCas (Ludtke et al. 2006).
In future work, our formalization needs to be extended to cover
probabilistic aspects. Furthermore, we plan to extend the prototype
implementation of our formal description (Albrecht, Giewein and
Westphal 2014) to support more ACTR models before we investigate
options for improved high level model description languages that are
explicitly suitable for the ACT-R theory.
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References
Albrecht R, Giewein M, Westphal B (2014) Towards formally
founded ACT-R simulation and analysis. In: Proceedings of
KogWis 2014, to appear
Albrecht R, Westphal B (2014) Analyzing psychological theories
with F-ACT-R. In: Proceedings of KogWis 2014, to appear
Anderson JR (1983) The architecture of cognition, vol 5. Psychology
Press.
Anderson JR (2007) How can the human mind occur in the physical
universe? Oxford U Press
Card SK, Moran TP, Newell A (1983) The psychology of human
computer interaction. CRC.
Cohen MA, Ritter FE, Haynes SR (2005) Herbal: a high-level language and development environment for developing cognitive
models in soar. In: Proceedings of 14th conference on behavior
representation in modeling and simulation, pp 177182
Jones RM, Crossman JA, Lebiere C, Best BJ (2006) An abstract language for cognitive modeling. In: Proceedings of 7th international
conference on cognitive modeling. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah
Laird JE, Newell A, Rosenbloom PS (1987) Soar: an architecture for
general intelligence. Artif Intell 33(1):164
Ludtke A, Cavallo A, Christophe L, Cifaldi M, Fabbri M, Javaux D
(2006) Human error analysis based on cognitive architecture. In
HCI-Aero, pp 4047
Morgan GP, Haynes SR, Ritter FE, Cohen MA (2005) Increasing
Efficiency of the Development of User ModelsIn SIEDS, pp 8289
Salvucci DD, Lee FJ (2003) Simple cognitive modeling in a complex
cognitive architecture. In: CHI pp 265272
Schultheis H (2009) Computational and explanatory power of cognitive architectures: the Case of ACT-R. In: Proceedings of 9th
international conference cognitive modeling, pp 384389
St. Amant R, Freed AR, Ritter FE (2005) Specifying ACT-R models of
user interaction with a GOMS language. Cogn Syst Res 6(1):7188
St. Amant R, McBride SP, Ritter FE (2006) An AI planning perspective on abstraction in ACT-R Modeling: toward an HLBR
language manifesto. In: Proceedings of ACT-R Workshop
Stewart TC, West RL (2007) Deconstructing and reconstructing ACTR: exploring the architectural space. Cogn Syst Res 8(3):227236
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length of syntactic dependencies, like the dependencies between verbs
and their arguments (e.g., Hawkins 2004; Gildea, Temperley 2010).
This raises the question of how dependency length is to be measured.
The syntactic alternation considered in this paper concerns the
position of relative clauses in German. As shown in (1), a relative
clause in German can appear either adjacent to its head noun (1-a) or
extraposed behind the clause final verb (1-b).
When the relative clause is adjacent to the head noun, the head
nounrelative clause dependency (solid arrow) is optimal whereas
the head nounverb dependency (dashed arrow) is not because the
relative clause intervenes between head noun and verb. Extraposition
of the relative clause shortens the head nounverb dependency but
lengthens the head-noun relative clause dependency, that is, while
the former dependency improves the latter one becomes worse.
Corpus studies (Hawkins 1994; Uszkoreit et al. 1998) show that
the decision to extrapose depends on both dependencies. First, the rate
of extraposition increases with increasing length of the relative clause.
Second, the rate of extraposition declines with increasing extraposition distance, that is, with an increasing amount of material that
intervenes between head noun and relative clause in the extraposed
variant. In (3), for example, extraposition has to cross two words
(Geschenke geben).
In studies of language production (Stallings, MacDonald 2011)
and corpus research (Gildea, Temperley 2010), distance is measured
as number of words. The same is true for the efficiency theory proposed in (Hawkins 2004) which is neutral with regard to language
production or language comprehension. This contrasts with the
Dependency Locality Theory (DLT) of (Gibson 2000), which is a
theory of processing load during language comprehension. According
to the DLT, dependency length is not measured in number of words
but in number of new discourse referents.
The aim of the present work is to test the hypothesis that dependency length for purposes of language production is defined in the
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Both the indefinite pronoun and a bare noun introduce a new
discourse referent and should thus block extraposition in the same
way. However, because the indefinite pronoun lacks lexical content, it
causes less semantic processing costs. Since the cost of semantic
processing is the underlying reason of why distance is measured in
terms of new discourse referents in the DLT, it could be expected that
it is easier to extrapose across an indefinite pronoun than across a bare
noun.
27 students participated in Experiment 2. The results, which are
also shown in Table 1, reveal a 14 % drop in extraposition rate in the
presence of a one-word object and a further 9 % drop when going
from one- to two-word objects. The results were analyzed as described for Experiment 1. The results of the logistic mixed effect
regression are shown in Table 3. The difference between 0 words and
1 word was significant but the difference between 1 word and 2 words
failed to reach significance.
Discussion
The experimental results presented in this paper show that the decision between keeping a relative clause adjacent to its head noun and
extraposing the relative clause behind the clause-final verb is strongly
affected by the amount of material that intervenes between head noun
(including the relative clause) and the clause final verb. When a new
discourse referent intervenes, the rate of extraposition is substantially
reduced. Whether the new discourse referent was introduced by a oneword NP or a two-word NP had no significant effect, although
numerically there were some differences in the expected direction.
The results thus suggest that dependency length is defined in the
same way for language production and language comprehension,
namely in terms of new discourse referents. This in turn argues that
the DLT has a broader coverage than just processing load during
language comprehension.
An alternative to defining weight in terms of new discourse
referents is the prosodic theory proposed by (Anttila, Adams and
Speriosu 2010) in their analysis of the English dative alternation. In
a nutshell, (Anttila et al. 2010) propose that dependency length
should be measured as number of intervening phonological phrases,
where a phonological phrase consists of an accented lexical word
possibly preceded by unaccented function words. According to this
% Extraposed in Exp 1
% Extraposed in Exp 2
38
54
15
40
Det + N
11
31
Estimate
Std. Error
z value
Pr([|z|)
vs. N
2.3233
0.6387
3.638
0.0002
N vs. Det + N
0.5776
0.8060
0.717
0.4735
Estimate
Std. Error
z value
Pr([|z|)
vs. N
1.0587
0.3855
2.747
0.0060
N vs. Det + N
0.5054
0.3313
1.526
0.1271
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definition, an NP consisting of a bare noun like Gedichte (poems)
and an NP consisting of a determiner and a noun like einige Gedichte (some poems) both constitute a single phonological phrase.
This would be compatible with the finding of Experiment 1 that the
rate of extraposition did not differ significantly between these two
types of NPs.
In contrast to a bare noun like Gedichte, an indefinite pronoun like
etwas something does not form a phonological phrase because etwas
is an unaccented function word. This predicts that the intervening
indefinite pronoun etwas should be invisible with regard to extraposition. However, as shown by the results for Experiment 2, the rate of
extraposition decreased significantly when etwas was present. The
rate of extraposition decreased even further when an NP consisting of
a determiner and a noun intervened, but this further decrease was not
significant. The results of Experiment 2 do thus not support the
prosodic definition of distance proposed by (Anttila et al. 2010).
In sum, the results of the two experiments reported in this
paper favor a definition of dependency length in terms of intervening new discourse referents. The two alternatives that were
considereddistance measured as number of words or number of
phonological phrasescould not account for the complete pattern
of results.
References
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Hawkins JA (1994) A performance theory of order and constituency.
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Uszkoreit H, Brants T, Duchier D, Krenn B, Konieczny L, Oepen S,
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to finally execute the behaviors. Motor control, articulation, and
formulation have been subject of earlier work (Bergmann, Kopp
2009). In the following we provide a sketch of the model, details can
be found in (Kopp, Bergmann and Kahl 2013; Bergmann, Kahl and
Kopp 2013).
Multimodal Memory
The central component in our model is a multimodal memory which
is accessible by modules of all processing stages. We assume that
language production requires a preverbal message to be formulated in
a symbolic-propositional representation that is linguistically shaped
(Levelt 1989) (SPR, henceforth). During conceptualization the SPR,
e.g., a function-argument structure denoting a spatial property of an
object, needs to be extracted from visuo-spatial representations
(VSR), i.e., the mental image of this object. We assume this process
to involve the invocation and instantiation of memorized supramodal
concepts (SMC, henceforth), e.g. the concept round which links the
corresponding visuo-spatial properties to a corresponding propositional denotation. Figure 1 illustrates the overall relation of these
tripartite multimodal memory structures.
To realize the VSR and part of the SMC, we employ a model of
visuo-spatial imagery called Imagistic Description Trees (IDT)
(Sowa, Kopp 2003). The IDT model unifies models from (Marr,
Nishihara 1978; Biederman 1987; Lang 1989) and was designed,
based on empirical data, to cover the meaningful visuo-spatial features in shape-depicting iconic gestures. Each node in an IDT contains
an imagistic description which holds a schema representing the shape
of an object or object part. Important aspects include (1) a tree
structure for shape decomposition, with abstracted object schemas as
nodes, (2) extents in different dimensions as an approximation of
shape, and (3) the possibility of dimensional information to be underspecified. The latter occurs, e.g., when the axes of an object
schema cover less than the three dimensions of space or when an
exact dimensional extent is left open but only a coarse relation
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between axes like dominates is given. This allows to represent the
visuo-spatial properties of SMCs such as round, left-of or longish. Applying SMC to VSR is realized through graph unification and
similarity matching between object schemas, yielding similarity values that assess how well a certain SMC applies to a particular visuospatially represented entity (cf. Fig. 1). SPR are implemented straight
forward as predicate-argument sentences.
Overall production process
Figure 1 shows an outline of the overall production architecture.
Conceptualization consists of cognitive processes that operate upon
the abovementioned memory structures to create a, more or less
coherent, multimodal message. These processes are constrained by
principles of memory retrieval, which we assume can be modeled by
principles of activation spreading (Collins, Loftus 1975). As in cognitive architectures like ACT-R (Anderson et al. 2004), activations
oat dynamically, spread across linked entities (in particular via
SMCs), and decay over time. Activation of more complex SMCs are
assumed to decay more slowly than activation in lower VSR or SPR.
Production starts with the message generator and image generator
inducing local activations of modal entries, evoked by a communicative goal. VSRs that are sufficiently activated invoke matching
SMCs, leading to an instantiation of SPRs representing the corresponding visuo-spatial knowledge in linguistically shaped ways. The
generators independently select modal entries and pass them on to the
formulators. As in ACT-R, highly activated features or concepts are
more likely to be retrieved and thus to be encoded. Note that, as
activation is dynamic, feature selection depends on the time of
retrieval and thus available resources. The message generator has to
map activated concepts in SPR onto grammatically determined categorical structures, anticipating what the speech formulator is able to
process (cf. Levelt 1989). Importantly, interaction between generators
and formulators in each modality can run top-down and bottom-up
For example, a proposition being encoded by the speech formulator
results in reinforced activation of the concept in SPR, and thus
increased activation of associated concepts in VSR.
In result, semantic coordination emerges from the local choices
generators and formulators take, based on the activation dynamics in
multimodally linked memory representations. Redundant speech and
gesture result from focused activation of supramodally linked mental
representations, whereas non-redundant speech and gesture arise
when activations scatter over entries not connected via SMCs.
Results and outlook
To quantify our modeling results we ran simulation experiments in
which we manipulated the available time (in terms of memory update
cycles) before the model had to come up with a sentence and a gesture
(Kopp et al. 2013; Bergmann et al. 2013). We analyzed the resulting
multimodal utterances with respect to semantic coordination: Supplementary (i.e., non-redundant) gestures were dominant in those runs
with stricter temporal limitations, while redundant ones become more
likely when time available is increased. The model, thus, offers a
natural account for the empirical finding that non-redundant gestures
are more likely when conceptualization load is high, based on the
assumption that memory-based cross-modal coordination consumes
resources (memory, time), and is reduced or compromised when such
resources are limited.
To enable a direct evaluation of our simulation results in comparison with empirical data, we currently conduct experiments to set
up a reference data corpus. In this study, participants are engaged in a
dyadic description task and we manipulate the preparation time
available for utterance planning. The verbal output will subsequently
be analyzed with respect to semantic coordination of speech and
gestures based on a semantic feature coding approach as already
applied in (Bergmann, Kopp 2006).
In ongoing work we extend the model to also account for complementary speech-gesture ensembles in which deictic expressions in
speech refer to their cospeech gesture as in the window looks like
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semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for
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Whilst this type of work clearly has lost some of its popularity over
the years, and has been replaced with efforts invested in finding
answers to questions where an optimal solution can provably be
achieved (although under possibly unrealistic or impractical time and/
or space requirements), the study of heuristics-based approaches and
techniques still are a lively field of active research, see, for example,
((Bridewell & Langley, 2011; MacLellan, 2011)).
S87
equivalent) one, or the problem instance stays untouched butinstead of
being perfectly (i.e., precisely) solvedis dealt with in a good enough
(i.e., approximate) way. Against this background, two crucial question
arise: Which problems can actually be solved by applying heuristics?
And how can the notion of heuristics be theoretically modeled on a
sufficiently high level so as to allow for a general description?
In what follows we want to provide a sketch of work towards an
approach to answering these questions using techniques originating
from complexity theory and hardness of approximation analysis. This
choice of formal methods is justified by the observation that, although
computational in nature, systems as developed in cognitive AI and
cognitive systems research can be considered as physical systems
which need to perform their tasks in limited time and with a limited
amount of space at their disposal and thus formal computational
properties (and restrictions on these) are relevant parameters.
Two and a Half Formal Perspectives on Heuristics in Cognitive
Systems
Returning to the two different types of heuristics identified above and
having a look at recent work in complexity and approximation theory,
we find a natural correspondence between the outlined conceptual
approaches and well-known concepts from the respective fields.
The Reduction Perspective:
Over the last years, complexity theory has turned its attention more
and more towards examples of problems which have algorithms that
have worst-case exponential behavior, but tend to work quite well in
practice if certain parameters of the problem are restricted. This has
led to the introduction of the class of fixed-parameter tractable
problems FPT (see, e.g., (Downey, Fellows 1999)):
Definition 1 (FPT) A problem P is in FPT if P admits an O(f(j)nc)
algorithm, where n is the input size, j is a parameter of the input
constrained to be small, c is an independent constant, and f is some
computable function.
A non-trivial corollary can be derived from FPT-membership: Any
instance of a problem in FPT can be reduced to a problem kernel.
Definition 2 (Kernelization) Let P be a parameterized problem. A
kernelization of P is an algorithm which takes an instance x of P with
parameter j and maps it in polynomial time to an instance y such that
x 2 P, if and only if y 2 P, and the size of y is bounded by f(j) (f a
computable function).
Theorem 1 (Kernelizability (Downey, Fellows 1999)) A problem P
is in FPT if and only if it is kernelizable.
This essentially entails that, if a positive FPT result can be obtained,
then (and only then) there is a downward reduction for the underlying
problem to some sort of smaller or less-complex instance of the same
problem, which can then be solved. Returning to the initial quest for
finding a formal characterization of reduction-based heuristics, we
notice that, by categorizing problems according to kernelizability we
can establish a distinction between problem classes which are solvable
by the presented type of reduction and those which are notand can
thus already a priori decide whether a system implementing a mechanism based on a kernelization account generally is (un)able to solve a
certain class. What remains to be shown is the connection between
kernelization and the notion of reduction-based heuristics (or rather the
suitability of kernelization as conceptual characterization of the notion
of reduction in the examined type of heuristics).
The connection is explicated by the correspondence between FPTmembership and kernelizability of a problem: If heuristics are to be as
fast and frugal as commonly claimed, considering them anything but (at
worst) polynomial-time bounded processes seems questionable. But
now, if the reduced problem shall be solvable under resource-critical
conditions, using the line of argument introduced above, we can just
hope for it to be in FPT. Finally, combining the FPT-membership of the
reduced problem with the polynomial-time complexity of the reduction
process (i.e., the presumed heuristics), already the original problem had
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to be fixed-parameter tractable. This should not come as a surprise, as the
contrary (i.e., a heuristics reducing the overall complexity of solving a
superpolynomial problem to polynomial-time computation by means of
a reduction of the original problem within the same class) would contradict the class membership of the original problem and thus break the
class hierarchy (assuming P = NP). Still, kernelization-based heuristics
are not trivialized by these considerations: Although original and reduced
problem are in FPT, the respective size of the parameters may still differ
between instances (making an important difference in application scenarios for implemented systems).
The Approximation Perspective:
The second perspective on heuristics uses approximation algorithms:
Instead of precisely solving a kernel as proposed by reduction-based
heuristics, we try to compute an approximate solution to the original
problem (i.e., the solution to a relaxed problem). The idea is not any more
to perfectly solve the problem (or an equivalent instance of the same
class), but to instead solve the problem to some satisfactory degree.
A possible analog to FPT in the Tractable AGI thesis is APX, the
class of problems allowing polynomial-time approximation
algorithms:
Definition 3 (APX) An optimization problem P is in APX if P admits
a constant factor approximation algorithm, i.e., there is a constant
factor e [ 0 and an algorithm which takes an instance of P of size
n and, in time polynomial in n, produces a solution that is within a
factor 1 e of being optimal (or 1 e for maximization problems).
This notion in practice crucially depends on the bounding constant for
the approximation ratio: If the former is meaningfully chosen with
respect to the problem, constant-factor approximation allows for
quantifying the good enough aspect of the solution and, thus, might
even offer a way of modeling the notion of satisficing introduced
by (Simon 1956) (which in turn is central to many heuristics considered in cognitive science and psychology, providing additional
empirical grounding for the computational systems in cognitive AI).
Joining Perspectives:
What if the system architect, instead of deciding whether to solve a
certain type of task applying one of the two types of heuristic and then
conducting the respective analysis, just wants to directly check whether
the problem at hand might be solvable by any of the two paradigms?
Luckily, FPT and APX can be integrated via the concept of fixedparameter approximability and the corresponding problem class FPA:
Definition 4 (FPA) The fixed-parameter version P of a minimization
problem is in FPA iffor a recursive function f, a constant k, and
some fixed recursive function gthere exists an algorithm such that
for any given problem instance I with parameter k, and question
OPT(I) B k, the algorithm which runs in O(f(k)nc) (where n = |I|)
either outputs no or produces a solution of cost at most g(k).
As shown by (Cai, Huang 2006), both polynomial-time approximability and fixed-parameter tractability with witness (Cai, Chen 1997)
independently imply the more general fixed-parameter approximability. And also on interpretation level FPA artlessly combines both
views of heuristics, at a time in its approximability character
accommodating for the notion of satisficing and in its fixed-parameter
character accounting for the possibility of complexity reduction by
kernelizing whilst keeping key parameters of the problem fixed.
The Wrong Type of Approximation?
Approximation-based heuristics have been introduced as solution
procedures for a problem producing solutions which are not optimal
but (at least when using a standard like the proposed APX) fall within
a certain defined neighborhood of the optimal one. Here, the degree of
optimality of a solution is measured in terms of proximity of the
solutions value to the optimal value for the optimization problem at
hand. But this is not the only possible way of conceptualizing
approximation: What if emphasis would be put on finding a solution
which is structurally as similar as possible to the original oneso
what if the quality of approximation would be measured in similarity
of structure instead of proximity of values?
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musical sequence (i.e. the musical goal). In line with models of
incremental planning of serial actions (Palmer, Pfordresher 2003),
these findings suggest that the notion of syntax translates to a
grammar of musical action in expert pianists.
According to the notion of goal priority over the means in action
hierarchy (Bekkering et al. 2000; Grafton 2009; Wohlschlager et al.
2003), in musical motor acts the musical goal determined by the
context (Syntax) should take priority over the specific movement
selection adopted for the execution (Manner), especially at advanced
skill levels (Novembre, Keller 2011; Palmer, Meyer 2000). However,
through intensive musical training, frequently occurring musical
patterns (i.e., scales, chord progressions) may have codified for some
fixed matching fingering configuration (Gellrich, Parncutt 2008;
Sloboda et al. 1998). Thus, from this perspective, it may also be that
motor pattern familiarity has a role in motor predictions during the
execution of common chord progressions. To what extent motor
predictive mechanisms operate at the level of musical syntax or arise
due to motor pattern familiarity will be addressed here. Whether a
progressively more syntax-based motor control independent of the
manner correlates with expertise will be also discussed.
To this end, we asked pianists to watch and simultaneously execute on a mute piano chord progressions played by a performing
pianists hand presented in a series of pictures on a screen. To negate
exogenously driven auditory predictive processes, no sound was used.
To explore the effect of expertise on syntax-based predictions, pianists ranging from 12 to 27 years of experience were tested
behaviorally and with electroencephalography (EEG). To induce
different strengths of predictions, we used 5-chord or 2-chord
sequences (long/short Context) presenting the target chord in the last
position. In a 2 x 2 factorial design, we manipulated the target chord
of the sequences in terms of keys (Syntax congruent/incongruent), to
violate the syntactic structure of the sequence, and in terms of fingering (Manner correct/incorrect), to violate the motor familiarity.
Crucially, the manipulation of the manner, while keeping the syntax
congruent, allowed us to dissociate behavioral and neural patterns
elicited by the execution of either the violation of the syntactic
structure of the sequence (Syntax) or of a general violation of familiar
movements (Manner). Additionally, the 2 x 2 factorial design permitted us to investigate syntax-related mechanisms on top of the
concurrent manner violation in order to test whether in motor programming high levels of syntactic operations are prioritized over
mechanisms of movement parameter specification.
We hypothesized that, if motor predictions, during execution of
musical chords sequences, are driven by musical syntax rather than
motor pattern familiarity, then the violation of the Syntax should
evoke specific behavioral and electrophysiological patterns, different
from those related to the Manner. Also, we expected to observe
syntax-based prediction effects irrespectively of the fingering used to
play, thus even in presence of the concurrent manner violation.
Finally, if at advanced skill levels the more abstract musical motor
goals increase weighting in motor programming, we expected to
observe a positive dependency between the strength of syntax-based
prediction and expertise levels.
We found that the production of syntactically incongruent
compared to the congruent chords showed a response delay that was
larger in the long compared to the short context and that was
accompanied by the presence of a central posterior negativity
(520800 ms) in the long and not in the short context. Conversely,
the execution of the unconventional manner was not delayed as a
function of Context, and elicited an opposite electrophysiological
pattern (a posterior positivity between 520 and 800 ms). Hence,
while the effects associated to the Syntax might reflect a signal of
movement reprogramming of a prepotent response in face of the
incongruity to be executed (Leuthold, Jentzsch 2002; Sammler et al.
2013), the effects associated with the Manner were stimulus- rather
than response-related and might reflect the perceptual surprise
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(Polich 2007) of the salient fingering manipulation, recognized by
the pianists as obvious target manipulation. Finally, syntax-related
effects held when only considering the manner incorrect trials, and
their context dependency was sharper with increasing expertise level
(computed as cumulated training hours across all years of piano
playing). This suggests that syntactic mechanisms take priority over
movements specifications, especially in more expert pianists being
more affected by the priming effect of the contextual syntactic
structure.
Taken together, these findings indicate that, given a contextual
musical structure, motor plans for distal musical goal are generated
coherently with the context and forehead those ones underlying
specific, immediate movement selection. Moreover, the increase of
syntax-based motor control with expertise might hint at the action
planning based on musical syntax as a slowly acquired skill built on
top of the acquisition of motor flexibility. More generally, this finding
indicates that, similarly to music perception, music production too
relies on generative syntactic rules.
References
Bekkering H, Wohlschlager A, Gattis M (2000) Imitation of gestures
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Fitch WT, Martins MD (2014) Hierarchical processing in music,
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Gellrich M, Parncutt R (2008) Piano technique and fingering in the
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Grafton ST, Hamilton AFDC (2007) Evidence for a distributed
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the remaining learning mode (verbal or visual) in the Step 1, complemented by the other mode in the Step 2. The order of the dance
phrases (Phrase 1, Phrase 2) and of the initial leaning modes (visual,
verbal) was balanced between the participants (the experimental
design of the study is illustrated in Table 1). The experimental procedure took place in a biomechanics laboratory and lasted
approximately one hour for each participant. Additional to the evaluation of the recorded performances, questionnaires and psychometric
tests were applied to investigate the students learning success and
their personal impressions of the different learning processes.
Expert ratings of the reproduced material: Two independent experts
rated the recorded performance trials from the recorded and cut
video clips, one of each demonstration condition (visual,
visual + verbal, verbal, verbal + visual). The experts rated each of
the recorded performances by filling out a questionnaire consisting
of six-point Likert-scale type questions assigned to two categories,
accordance with the model (AM; 10 questions) and artistic performance quality (PQ, 5 questions). For each category of questions,
ratings of the questions were averaged to achieve general measures
for the main criteria AM and PQ. Each expert independently watched the recordings from the students performances and marked
one answer for each question, without knowing about the learning
condition of the recorded performance. Non-parametric tests (Wilcoxon signed-rank, MannWhitney U) were used to compare the
averaged ratings of the two experts for the different conditions
(visual, visual + verbal, verbal, verbal + visual) within each criterion (AM, PQ) and for the two criteria within each demonstration
condition.
Retention test: Thirteen of the dance students (8 female) participated
in a retention test that was carried out 1013 days after the experimental learning task. The retention test included the video-recorded
performance of the remembered movement material, psychometric
tests and questionnaires. In the performance part of the test, each
student was asked to perform both dance phrases as completely as
possible. Students were allowed to practice for several minutes before
being recorded, but were not given any assistance in reproducing the
phrases. Each student was recorded individually and on his/her own in
a separate dance studio. The video recordings of the students performance in the retention test were annotated for the completeness of
the phrases by two annotators. Each phrase was segmented into eleven partial phrase, or elements, of similar content (note that the
phrases had been choreographed to resemble each other in complexity, duration and structure). The annotators independently
watched the recordings and marked the completeness of each of the
eleven elements as value between 0 and 1 (0: the element was not
danced at all, or was not recognizable; 1: the element was clearly
recognizable and was performed without error); ratings of the two
annotators were then averaged. Each student thereby received for
each of the two phrases a value between 0 (no partial phrase was
reproduced at all) and 11 (all partial phrases were reproduced perfectly). Non-parametric tests (Wilcoxon signed-rank, MannWhitney
U) were used to compare averaged completeness scores between
dance phrases (Phrase 1, Phrase 2) and learning modes (visual first,
verbal first).
Results
Expert ratings: Ratings of the two experts were positively correlated for
both criteria, AM (r = 0.528; p \ .001) and PQ (r = 0.513; p \ .001).
After Step 1, ratings of PQ were significantly better than ratings for AM
(visual: 3.82, 3.33; Z = -2.987, p = .003; verbal: 3.73, 2.69; Z =
-3.529, p \ .001), whereas ratings did not differ after Step 2. AM ratings
after learning only from verbal description was lower (2.69) than after all
other conditions (verbal + visual: 3.48, Z = -3.724, p \ .001; visual:
3.33, Z = -3.624, p \ .001; visual + verbal: 3.65, Z = -3.682,
p \ .001), and AM ratings after visual + verbal learning were higher
than after visual learning (Z = -2.573, p = .01). PQ ratings did not
differ for any of the learning conditions.
123
S92
Group 1a N = 4
Group 2a N = 4
Group 2b N = 5
Group 1b N = 5
Pre-test questionnaires
Step 1
Phrase 1
Verbal (5x)
Visual (5x)
+Visual (2x)
+Verbal (2x)
Record 13x
Record 13x
Visual (5x)
Verbal (5x)
Step 2
+Verbal (2x)
Performance
Record 13x
Step 2
Performance
Step 1
Phrase 2
Phrase 2
Phrase 1
Verbal (5x)
Visual (5x)
+Visual (2x)
+Verbal (2x)
Record 13x
Record 13x
Visual (5x)
Verbal (5x)
+Visual (2x)
+Verbal (2x)
+Visual (2x)
Record 13x
Record 13x
Record 13x
N=3
N=4
N=4
N=2
Record 1x
Record 1x
Record 1x
Record 1x
Phrases 1, 2
Phrases 1, 2
123
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123
References
Halko M-L, Hlushchuk Y, Hari R, Schurmann M (2009) Competing with
peers: mentalizing-related brain activity reflects what is at stake.
NeuroImage 46:542548. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.01.063
Kincade JM, Abrams RA, Astafiev SV, Shulman GL, Corbetta M (2005)
An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study of
voluntary and stimulus-driven orienting of attention. J Neurosci
25:45934604. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0236-05.2005
Morris JP, Pelphrey KA, McCarthy G (2008) Perceived causality
influences brain activity evoked by biological motion. Soc
Neurosci 3:1625. doi:10.1080/17470910701476686
Mundy P, Newell L (2007) Attention, joint attention and social
cognition. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 16:269274
Redcay E, Dodell-Feder D, Pearrow MJ, Mavros PL, Kleiner M,
Gabrieli JDE, Saxe R (2010) Live face-to-face interaction during
fMRI: a new tool for social cognitive neuroscience. NeuroImage
50:16391647. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.01.052
Samson D, Apperly IA, Chiavarino C, Humphreys GW (2004) Left
temporoparietal junction is necessary for representing someone
elses belief. Nat Neurosci 7:499500. doi:10.1038/nn1223
Schilbach L, Wilms M, Eickhoff SB, Romanzetti S, Tepest R, Bente
G, Vogeley K (2010) Minds made for sharing: initiating joint
attention recruits reward-related neurocircuitry. J Cogn Neurosci
22:27022715. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21401
Vogeley K, May M, Ritzl A, Falkai P, Zilles K, Fink GR (2004)
Neural correlates of first-person perspective as one constituent of
human self-consciousness. J Cogn Neurosci 16:817827. doi:
10.1162/089892904970799
S95
stimulus (e.g. if the adaptor was the same action as in one of the test
stimuli) a significant shift of the point of subjective equality (PSE) was
consistently observed in the psychometric curve judging the difference
between two different actions (de la Rosa et al. 2014). This shift of PSE
is representing a specific perceptual bias for each recognized action
because it is assumed that this shift (adaptation aftereffect) would not be
found if there would be no specific adaptation of the underlying neuronal populations recognizing each action (Clifford et al. 2007; Webster
2011). Using this paradigm we showed for the first time that perceived
differences between distinct social actions might be rather encoded in
terms of their semantic meaning than kinematic motion in the brain.
Future studies should confirm the neuroanatomical correlates to this
action adaptation aftereffect. The current experimental paradigm also
serves as a useful method for further mapping the relationship between
different social actions in the human brain.
References
Blake R, Shiffrar M (2007) Perception of human motion. Ann Rev
Psychol 58:4773. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190152
Casile A, Giese MA (2005) Critical features for the recognition of
biological motion. 348360. doi:10.1167/5.4.6
Clifford CWG, Webster M a, Stanley GB, et al. (2007) Visual
adaptation: neural, psychological and computational aspects.
Vision Res 47:31253131. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2007.08.023
De la Rosa S, Streuber S, Giese M et al. (2014) Putting actions in
context: visual action adaptation aftereffects are modulated by
social contexts. PloS ONE 9:e86502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.
0086502
Jellema T, Perrett DI (2006) Neural representations of perceived bodily
actions using a categorical frame of reference. Neuropsychologia
44:15351546. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.01.020
Prinz W (2013) Action representation: Crosstalk between semantics
and pragmatics. Neuropsychologia 16. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsych
ologia.2013.08.015
Webster MA (2011) Adaptation and visual coding. 11:123. doi:
10.1167/11.5.3.Introduction
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beliefs until they are 4-years old, a full 33 months later? The DP teaches
us that visual perception plays a crucial role in processing the implicit
false-belief condition as opposed to the explicit/verbal-report condition.
But why is perception, in some cases, smarter than explicit and
verbalized thinking? In this paper I briefly sketch the solution proposed
by De Bruin, Kastner (2012), the Dynamic Embodied Cognition and I
raise an objection regarding their use of the term metarepresentation
in explaining the puzzle.
Recently, evidence has been mounting to suggest that infants have
much more sophisticated social-cognitive skills than previously suspected. The issue at stake is crucial since as Sommerville, Woodward
(2010:84) pointed out, assessing infants understanding of others
behavior provides not only a snapshot of the developing mind of the
child, but also a panorama of the very nature of cognition itself.
Consider this challenge:
P1. Empirical evidence strongly suggests that basic cognition is
smart (since 15-month olds understand false-beliefs).
P2. Smart cognition necessarily involves computations and representations (of false beliefs).
P3. Hence, basic cognition necessarily involves computations and
representations (of false beliefs).
De Bruin, Kastner (2012) recently proposed a reconciliatory
middle-ground solution between representationalist and enactivist
accounts, i.e. Dynamic Embodied Cognition (DEC). They claim that
the Developmental Puzzle is best addressed in terms of the relation
between coupled (online) and decoupled (offline) processes for basic
and advanced forms of (social) cognition as opposed to merely representing/not representing false beliefs. They argue that rephrasing the
issue in terms of online/offline processing provides us with an explanation of the Developmental Puzzle. How exactly does this work? First,
the authors take for granted the premise that infants are equipped with
implicit abilities that start out as grounded in basic online processes,
albeit partly decoupled. It is crucial for their project that these basic
implicit abilities already involve decoupling. This is in line with the
cognitivist distinction between (a) sub-doxastic mental states that do
not possess truth-evaluable propositional content and (b) robust mental
states (Spaulding 2010:123). In a second step, they hold that infants
implicit abilities develop gradually into more sophisticated explicit
abilities that rely on offline processes to a much larger extent. The
coupling and decoupling relations between agent and environment
advocated by DEC are dynamic in the sense that they are a matter of
degree and never an end in itself. () The dynamic interplay of
decoupled and coupled processes may be used for optimization of
cognitive processing. (De Bruin and Kastner 2012: 552 emphasis
added). There is definitely much more to be said about DEC, but this
gives us the basic flavor. Clearly, DEC borrows from the weak-strategy
theorists such as Apperly and Butterfill (2009) the idea that early
mechanisms are cheap and efficient, while the late-emerging
mechanisms are costly but flexible. But they also borrow from
rich theorists (Baillargeon et al. 2010) the idea that preverbal human
infants are already capable of decoupling, i.e. taking their own realitycongruent perspective offline, albeit in a very limited way.
An important concern regards the use of the term metarepresentation. As S. Scott (2001) pointed out, there is danger of
confusionwith serious consequences for the debate about the nature
of higher-level cognitionbetween two distinct notions of metarepresentation, as defined by philosophers (Dennett 1998) and by
psychologists dealing with the question of autistic disorders (Leslie
1991). According to Dennett (1998), representations are themselves
objects in the world, and therefore potential objects of (second-order
or meta-) representations. Call this metarepresentation1. For example,
drawing a cat on a piece of paper is a type of non-mental representation, which is represented in the mind of the person viewing it. The
mental representation is of the drawing, but since the drawing is itself
a representation, the viewer has a (mental) metarepresentation of
whatever it is that the drawing represents, namely a cat. By contrast,
123
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References
Apperly I, Butterfill S (2009) Do humans have two systems to track
beliefs and belief-like states? Psychol Rev 116:953970
Baillargeon R, Scott RM, Zijing H (2010) False-belief understanding
in infants. Trend Cogn Sci 14(3):110118
Ciaunica A (2014) (in press) Under pressure- processing representational decoupling in false-belief tasks. Rev Philos Psychol. doi:
10.1007/s13164-014-0195-2
De Bruin LC, Kastner L (2012) Dynamic embodied cognition. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 11(4):541563
Dennett D (1998) Making tools for thinking. In: Sperber D (ed)
(2000) Metarepresentation. Oxford University Press, New York
Leslie AM (1991) Precursors to a theory of mind. In: Andrew W (ed),
Natural theories of mind: evolution, development, and simulation
of everyday mindreading. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 6378
Moll H, Tomasello M (2007) How 14- and 18-month-olds know what
others have experienced. Dev Psychol 43(2):309317
Onishi KH, Baillargeon R (2005) Do 15-month-old infants understand
false beliefs? Science 308(8):255258
Scott S (2001) Metarepresentations in philosophy and psychology. In:
Moore J, Stenning K (eds) Proceedings of the twenty-third annual
conference of the cognitive science society, University of Edinburgh. LEA Publishers, London
Sommerville JA, Woodward A (2010) In: Grammont et al. (eds)
Naturalizing intention in action. MIT Press, Cambridge
Wilby M (2012) Embodying the false-belief tasks, phenomenology
and the cognitive sciences, Special Issue on Debates on
Embodied Mindreading (ed. S. Spaulding) December 2012,
Volume 11, pp 519540
123
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123
forward
perspective change
inverse
eye or observer
shoulder eye
relative
position
proximal
limb axis
distal
actor
shoulder
actor
elbow
actor
wrist
actor
fingertips
actor torso
upper arm
forearm
hand
actor
shoulder
actor
elbow
actor
wrist
observer
head or
head
torso
relative
orientation
limb
relative
orientation
limb
relative
angles
S99
0.3
0.2
0.1
10
20
time step
Fig. 3 The estimate of the actors torso in the observers FoR is used
to project an object from the observers FoR to the actors FoR. As
the torso estimate improves (cf. Fig. 2), the object projection
improves as well. The vertical axis is in units of limb lengths, error
bars are SEM
estimate inferred from the relative relations. The error of this fused
estimate is shown in Fig. 4, green. The improvement of the green
performance over the red performance is only possible, because the
torso estimate is filtered over time. The results show how continuous
filtering and information fusion can improve the body state estimate.
Conclusion
Recently, we applied MMF to multimodal sensor fusion, Bayesian
filtering, and sensor error detection and isolation. As shown in Butz
et al. (2014), MMF is also well-suited to model the Rubber Hand
Illusion. Two important characteristics of MMF are its modularly
distributed state representation and its rigorous multimodal Bayesian
fusion, making it highly suitable to model PT in an embodied way.
Our results show that MMF is able to infer position and orientation
estimates of an actors body and objects in the environment from the
actors egocentric perspective. We showed that this is even possible
when the actors head and torso are occluded. Moreover, we showed
that Bayesian filtering is able to improve the process. All results are
obtained by exclusively using the observers own body model, i.e. no
new abilities are required. Thus, the proposed PT approach is fully
embodied.
The resulting PT capability sets the stage for many skills that at
least partially rely on PT. As an estimate of the actors whole body
position
orientation
0.3
0.2
0.1
position
orientation
0.4
10
20
time step
Fig. 2 Error of the estimation of an actors shoulder position and
torso orientation in an observers egocentric FoR. The shoulder and
torso themselves are occluded and are inferred via the body model.
The vertical axis is in units of limb lengths, and error bars are SEM
estimation error
0.4
0.5
estimation error
focused on the hand). In the following, we show how MMF can use
cues from the actors hand state and relative relations between adjacent limbs to build a probabilistic estimate of the actors torso
orientation and shoulder position.
In the following simulations, we assume that the actors torso is
static and its hand moves along an unknown trajectory. To this end,
we model the hands movement as Gaussian noise with mean zero
and a standard deviation of 0.2 rad per angle. The arm has nine
degrees of freedom (three on each joint). In each time step, noisy
sensory input arrives in all modules depicted in Fig. 1 with a crossedout rectangle (standard deviation of 0.02 per dimension in units of
limb length) or a non-crossed-out rectangle (standard deviation of
0.2). Thus, while the fingertip-position and hand-orientation are perceived rather accurately in the observers egocentric perspective,
relations between adjacent limbs are perceived rather inaccurately. In
each time step, MMF projects the sensory information along the solid
red arrows to the torsos position and orientation (filled circles),
where Bayesian filtering reduces the sensor noise. The Euclidean
distance of the resulting torso estimate from the real torso state is
shown in Fig. 2. The results show that despite the high sensory noise
in the relative FoRs and the high movement noise, the orientation of
the actors torso can be inferred with a lower estimation error than the
one inherent in most of the FoRs perceived. Results are averaged over
100 individual runs, where each run samples a different shoulder
position, torso orientation, and arm trajectory.
To infer the actor-relative orientation of objects, the second projection method is evaluated. For this purpose, in each run a new object
with random positions and orientations is created in a sphere of one
limb length around the actors torso. The error of the objects projection into the actors egocentric FoR is shown in Fig. 3. It depends
on both the shoulder position and torso orientation estimates (cf.
Fig. 2). In accordance to the improvement of those estimates, the
objects projection into the actors FoR improves.
Last, we evaluate the effects of multimodal sensor fusion and
Bayesian filtering on the representation of the actors fingertip position in the actors egocentric perspective. At first glance, sensory
input of the relative relations between adjacent limbs (non-crossedout rectangles in Fig. 1) are sufficient to infer the finger- tip position.
The resulting estimation error is shown in Fig. 4, red. It is however
advantageous to also include the eye-relative measurements (crossedout rectangles in Fig. 1). They are projected into the actors egocentric perspective in the same way environmental objects are
projected. However this time the result is fused with the fingertip
1.5
0.5
10
20
time step
Fig. 4 The vertical axis is in units of limb lengths, and error bars are
SEM
123
S100
123
S101
0.2
SO
OS
predicted
OS
-0.6
-0.2
-0.2
0.2
Agree
noAgree
predicted
noAgree
-0.6
Method
The procedure was the same as in Experiment 1. 32 sentences were
created, all appearing in four versions according to the two violation
types introduced above (4). The experimental sentences were distributed onto four lists according to a Latin square design and combined
with 62 filler sentences. 36 students took part in the study.
Results
Similar to Experiment 1, a repeated measures ANOVA yielded two
main effects of AuxFirst and S [ O as well as an interaction
(F(35,1) = 20.32, p [ .001). As can be seen on the right hand side of
Aux first
Aux last
Aux first
Aux last
0.5
a.
0.0
-0.5
tanh(x)*0.75
(adjusted harmony)
-2
-1
x (harmony)
Fig. 2 A linking function between harmony and adjusted harmony
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Constraint
Coefficient
Weight
AuxFirst
0.46
0.72
Agree
0.40
0.59
(5)
-0.5
-0.75
(transformed) harmony
-0.25
0.2
-0.2
Acceptability
Agree
noAgree
Predicted harmony
noAgree sigmoid
noAgree linear
-0.6
Aux first
Aux last
Acceptability
-0.5
-0.75
Aux first
(transformed) harmony
0
-0.25
0.2
-0.2
-0.6
SO
OS
Predicted harmony
Aux last
123
OS sigmoid
OS linear
S103
activities involved in cognitive processing [Wintermute and Laird,
2008]. Alternative ways would be (1) to maintain some of the spatial
relations in their original form or (2) to use only mild abstraction for
their representation. Maintaining relations in their original form
corresponds to what Norman [1980] named knowledge in the world.
Use of knowledge in the world requires perception of the world to
solve a problem. The best-known example of mild abstraction is
geographic paper maps; here certain spatial relations can be represented by identical spatial relations (e.g. orientation relations); others
could be transformed (e.g. absolute distances could be scaled). As a
result, physical operations such as perception, route-following with a
finger, and manipulation may remain enabled similarly as in the
original domain. Again, perception is required to use these mildly
abstracted representationsbut the perception task can be easier than
the same task under real-world conditions, for example due to the
modified scale.
A main research hypothesis for studying physical operations and
processes in spatial and temporal form in comparison to formal or
computational structures is that spatial and temporal structures in the
body and the environment can substantially support reasoning effort
in computational processes. One major observation we can make
when comparing the use of such different forms of representation
(formal, mild abstraction, original) is that the processing structures of
problem solving processes differ [Marr 1982]. Different processing
structures facilitate different ease of processing [Sloman 1985].
Our hypothesis can be plainly formulated as:
manipulation + perception simplify computation
While the principle underlying this hypothesis is well knownfor
example, it is applied in descriptive geometry for geometric problem
solvingit has not been investigated as a principle of cognitive
processing.
Reasoning about the world can be considered the most advanced
level of cognitive ability; this ability requires a comprehensive
understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the behavior of
bodies and environments. But many natural cognitive agents
(including adults, children, and animals) lack a detailed understanding
of their environments and still are able to interact with them rather
intelligently. For example, they may be able to open and close doors
in a goal-directed fashion without understanding the mechanisms of
the doors or locks on a functional level. This suggests that knowledgebased reasoning may not be the only way to implementing problem
solving in cognitive systems.
In fact, alternative models of perceiving and moving goal-oriented
autonomous systems have been proposed in biocybernetics and AI
research to model aspects of cognitive agents [e.g. Braitenberg 1984;
Brooks 1991; Pfeifer and Scheier, 2001]. These models physically
implement perceptual and cognitive mechanisms rather than
describing them formally and coding them in software. Such systems
are capable of intelligently dealing with their environments without
encoding knowledge about the mechanisms behind the actions.
The background of the present work has been discussed in detail in
[Freksa 2013; Freksa and Schultheis, in press].
Approach
With our present work, we go an important step beyond previous
embodied cognition approaches to spatial problem solving. We
introduce a paradigm shift which not only aims at preserving spatial
structure, but also will make use of identity preservation; in other
words, we will represent spatial objects and configurations by themselves or by physical spatial models of themselves, rather than by
abstract representations. This has a number of advantages: we can
avoid loss of information due to early representational commitments:
we do not have to decide prematurely which aspects of the world to
represent and which aspects to abstract from. This can be decided
partly during the problem solving procedure. At this stage, additional
contextual information may become available that can guide the
choice of the specific representation to be used.
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Perhaps more importantly, objects and configurations frequently
are aggregated in a natural and meaningful way; for example, a
chair may consist of a seat, several legs, and a back; if I move one
component of a chair, I automatically (and simultaneously!) move
the other components and the entire chair, and vice versa. This
property is not intrinsically given in abstract representations of
physical objects; but it may be a very useful property from a cognitive point of view, as no computational processing cycles are
required for simulating the physical effects or for reasoning about
them. Thus, manipulability of physical structures may become an
important feature of cognitive processing, and not merely a property
of physical objects.
Similarly, we aim at dealing with perception dynamically, for
example allowing for on-the-fly creation of suitable spatial reference frames: by making direct use of spatial configurations, we can
avoid deciding a priori for a specific spatial reference system in which
to perceive a configuration. As we know from problem solving in
geometry and from spatial cognition, certain reference frames may
allow a spatial problem to collapse in dimensionality and difficulty.
For example, determining the shortest route between two points on a
map boils down to a 1-dimensional problem [Dewdney 1988].
However, it may be difficult or impossible to algorithmically determine a reference frame that reduces the task given on a 2- or
3-dimensional map to a 1-dimensional problem. A spatial reconfiguration approach that makes use of the physical affordance shortcut,
easily reduces the problem from 3D or 2D to 1D. In other cases, it
may be easier to identify suitable spatial perspectives empirically in
the field than analytically by computation. Therefore we may be better
off by allowing certain operations to be carried out situation-based in
the physical spatial configuration as part of the overall problem
solving process.
In other words, our project investigates an alternative architecture
of artificial cognitive systems that may be more closely based on role
models of natural cognitive systems than our purely knowledgebased AI approaches to cognitive processing. We focus on solving
spatial and spatio-temporal tasks, i.e. tasks having physical aspects
that are directly accessible by perception and can be manipulated by
physical action. This will permit outsourcing some of the intelligence for problem solving into spatial configurations.
Our approach is to first isolate and simplify the specific spatial
problem to be solved, for example by identifying an appropriate taskspecific spatial reference system, by removing task-irrelevant entities
from the spatial configuration, or by reconstructing the essence of the
spatial configuration by minimal abstraction. In general, it may be
difficult to prescribe the precise steps to preprocess the task; for the
special case of spatial tasks it will be possible to provide rules or
heuristics for useful preprocessing steps; these can serve as metaknowledge necessary to control actions on the physical level. After
successful preprocessing, it may be possible in some cases to read
an answer to the problem through perception directly off the resulting
configuration; in other cases the resulting spatial configuration may be
a more suitable starting point for a knowledge-based approach to
solving the problem.
Discussion
The main hypothesis of our approach is that the intelligence of
cognitive systems is located not only in specific abstract problemsolving approaches, but alsoand perhaps more importantlyin the
capability of recognizing characteristic problem structures and of
selecting particularly suitable problem-solving approaches for given
tasks. Formal representations may not facilitate the recognition of
such structures, due to a bias inherent in the abstraction. This is,
where mild abstraction can help: mild abstraction may abstract only
from few aspects while preserving important structural properties.
The insight that spatial relations and physical operations are
strongly connected to cognitive processing may lead to a different
division of labor between the perceptual, the representational, the
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basic information to infer shape from texture that need to be integrated
along characteristic intrinsic surface lines (Li and Zaidi, 2000). Previous computational models try to estimate surface orientation from
distortions of the apparent optical texture in the image. The approaches
can be subdivided according to their task specificity and the computational strategies involved. Geometric approaches are suggested to
reconstruct the structure of the metric surface geometry (e.g., Aloimonos and Swain (1985); Bajcsy and Lieberman (1976); Super and
Bovik (1995)). Neural models, on the other hand, infer the relative or
even ordinal structure from initial spatial frequency selective filtering,
subsequent grouping of the resulting output responses and a depth
mapping step (Grossberg et al. 2007; Sakai and Finkel, 1997). The
LIGHTSHAFT model of Grossberg et al. (2007) utilizes scale-selective initial orientation filtering and subsequent long-range grouping.
Relative depth in this model is inferred by depth-to-scale mapping
associating coarse-to-fine filter scales to depth using orientation sensitive grouping cells which define scale- sensitive spatial
compartments to fill-in qualitative depth. Grouping mechanisms can
be utilized to generate a raw surface sketch to establish lines of minimal surface curvature as a ridge-based qualitative geometry
representation (Weidenbacher et al. 2006). Texture gradients can be
integrated to derive local maps of relative surface orientation (as
suggested in Li and Zaidi (2000); Sakai and Finkel (1997)). Such
responses may be integrated to generate globally consistent relative
depth maps from such local gradient responses (Liu et al. 2004).
The above mentioned models are limited to simple objects most
dealing only with regular textures and do not give an explanation as to
how the visual system mechanistically produces a multiple depth
order representation of complex objects.
Model description
Our model architecture consists of a multi-stage network of interacting areas that are coupled bidirectionally (extension of
(Weidenbacher et al. 2006); Fig. 1). The architecture is composed of
four functional building blocks or modules, each one consists of three
stages corresponding to the compartment structure of cortical areas:
feedforward input is initially filtered by a mechanism specific to the
model area, then resulting activity is modulated by multiplicative
feedback signals to enhance their gain, and finally a normalization via
surround competition utilizes a pool of cells in the space-feature
domain.
The different stages can be formally denoted by the following
steady-state equations (with the filter output modulated by feedback
and inhibition by activities from a pool of cells (Eq. 1) and the
inhibitory pool integration (Eq. 2)):
I;FB
I;in
n qi;feat
b f F r 0 1 neti;feat
g
I
1
ri;feat
I;FB
qI;in
a c f F r 0 1 neti;feat
i;feat
!
X
X
pool
I;in
I
I
ri;feat e
max ri;feat Kij
qi;feat d
2
feat
feat
I,FB
where the
P feedbackII signal I isII defined by neti,feat = [kFB II
ri,feat] +
z2{feat,loc}rz . Here r , r denote output activation of the
generic modules (I, II: two subsequent modules in the hierarchy). The
different three-stage modules roughly correspond to different cortical
areas with different feature dimensions represented neurally (compare
Fig. 1): Cortical area V1 computes orientation selective responses
using a spatial frequency decomposition of the input; area V2
accomplishes orientation sensitive grouping of initial items into
boundaries in different frequency channels to generate representations
of surface curvature properties. Different sub-populations of cells in
V4/IT are proposed to detect different surface features from distributed responses: One is used to extract discontinuities in the
orientation fields (indicative for self-occlusions), another extracts and
analyzes anisotropies in the orientation fields of grouping responses to
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Fig. 1 General overview of models schematics. Texture inputs are decomposed into a space-orientation-frequency domain representation. The
cascaded processing utilizes computational stages with cascades of filtering, top-down modulation via feedback, and competition with activity
normalization
123
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selectively integrated for different orientations to generate qualitative
surface depth.
Acknowledgments
O.G. is supported by a scholarship of the German DAAD, ref.no.
A/10/90029.
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Gibson JJ (1950) The perception of the visual world. Houghton,
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Grossberg S, Kuhlmann L, Mingolla E (2007) A neural model of 3d
shape-from-texture: multiple-scale filtering, boundary grouping,
and surface filling-in. Vision Res 47(5):634672
Li A, Zaidi Q (2000) Perception of three-dimensional shape from
texture is based on patterns of oriented energy. Vision Res
40(2):217242
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can explain this effect using cognitive modeling. Finally, a necessity
and sensitivity analysis provides more insights into the relationship
between goal activation and device-orientation effects.
Keywords
Cognitive Modeling, HumanComputer Interaction, ACT-R,
Memory, Human Error
Introduction and related work
While the research on task completion times in human- computer
interaction (HCI) has brought many results of both theoretical and
practical nature during the last decades (see John and Kieras 1996, for
an overview), the relationship between interface design and user error is
still unclear in many parts. Notable exceptions are post-completion
errors, when users fail to perform an additional step in a procedure after
they have already reached their main goal (Byrne and Davis 2006). This
concept can be extended to any step that does not directly support the
users goals, independently of the position in the action sequence, and
has been termed device-orientation in this context (Ament et al. 2009).
The opposite (i.e. steps that do contribute to the goal) is analogously
called task-orientation. Device-oriented steps take longer and are more
prone to omission than task-oriented ones (Ament 2011).
A promising theoretical explanation for the effects of device-orientation is provided by the memory for goals model (MFG; Altmann
and Trafton 2002). The main assumption of the MFG is that goals
underlie effects that are usually connected to memory traces, namely
time- dependent activation and associative priming. Within the theoretical framework of the MFG, post-completion errors and increased
execution times for post-completion steps are caused by lack of
activation of the respective sub-goal. A computational implementation of the MFG that can be used to predict sequence errors has been
created by Trafton et al. (2009).
This paper aims at investigating the concept of device- orientation
on the background of the MFG using cognitive modeling with ACT-R
(Anderson et al. 2004). The basic research question is whether human
memory constructs as formalized within ACT-R can explain the
completion time differences between task- and device-oriented steps
found in empirical data.
Experiment
As the empirical basis for our investigation, we decided not to rely on
synthetic laboratory tasks like the Tower of Hanoi game, but instead
use an application that could be used by everyone in an everyday
environment. Our choice fell on a HTML-based kitchen assistant that
had been created for research on ambient assisted living. Besides
other things, the kitchen assistant allows to search for recipes
depending on regional cuisine (French, Italien, German, Chinese) and
type of dish (main dish, appetizer, dessert, pastry). Our experiment
was built around this search feature.
12 subjects (17 % female, Mage = 28.8, SDage = 2.4) were invited
into the lab kitchen and performed 34 individual search tasks of varying
difficulty in five blocks. The user interface (UI) of the kitchen assistant
was presented on a personal computer with integrated touch screen.
Task instructions were given verbally and all user clicks were recorded
by the computer system.7 Individual trials consisted of five phases:
1. Listening to and memorizing the instructions for the given trial.
2. Entering the search criteria (e.g. German and Main dish) by
clicking on respective buttons on the screen. This could also
contain deselecting criteria from previous trials.
3. Initiating the search using a dedicated Search button. This also
initiated switching to a new screen containing the search results
list if this list was not present, yet.
7
123
Coef.
95 % CI of coef.
F1,802
p
\.001
Fitts ID
165 ms
126 to 204 ms
111.1
trial block
-55 ms
-71 to -39 ms
45.9
\.001
Device-orient.
104 ms
53 to 154 ms
16.4
\.001
S109
Table 2 Average click time (Mtime), average memory retrieval time (Mmem), determination coefficient (R2), root mean squared error (RMSE),
maximum likely scaled difference (MLSD), and maximum relative difference (%diff) for different amounts of activation spreading (mas)
mas
Mtime
Mmem
R2
RMSE
MLSD
%diff
1785 ms
591 ms
.759
982 ms
16.5
66 %
1509 ms
315 ms
.738
687 ms
12.1
58 %
1291 ms
99 ms
.881
477 ms
8.5
50 %
1231 ms
37 ms
.912
422 ms
7.9
48 %
10
1210 ms
15 ms
.893
406 ms
7.8
48 %
Results
We evaluated the overall fit of the model by dividing the clicks into
eight groups by the screen areas of the origin and target click position
(e.g. from type of dish to search; from search to recipe selection) and
compared the average click times per group between our human
sample and the model. Besides the traditional goodness of fit measures R2 and root mean squared error (RMSE), we applied the
maximum likely scaled difference (MLSD; Stewart and West 2010)
which also takes the uncertainty in the human data into account. The
relative difference between the empirical means and the model predictions is given in percent (%diff). The results for five different
amounts of activation spreading are given in Table 2.
The model is overall slower than the human participants, resulting in
moderately high values for RMSE, MLSD, and relative difference. The
explained variance (R2) on the other hand is very promising and hints at
the model capturing the differences between different clicks quite well.
Sensitivity and necessity analysis
In order to test whether our model also displays the device- orientation effect, we conducted a statistical analysis identical to the one
used on the human data and compared the resulting regression
coefficients. While an acceptable fit of the model is necessary to
support the activation spreading hypothesis, it is not sufficient to
prove it. By manipulating the amount of activation spreading, we can
perform a sensitivity and necessity analysis that provides additional
insight about the consequences of our theoretical assumptions (Gluck
et al. 2010). Average coefficients from a total of 400 model runs are
displayed in Fig. 1. It shows an inverted U-shaped relationship
between spreading activation and the device-orientation effect. For
intermediate spreading activation values, the time delay predicted by
the model falls within the confidence interval of the empirical coefficient, meaning perfect fit given the uncertainty in the data.
150
100
50
0
2
10
Fig. 1 Device orientation effect size depending on spreading activation amount. The shaded area between the dotted lines demarks the
95 % confidence interval of the effect in the human sample
123
S110
Discussion
The MFG model is able to replicate the effects that we found in our
initial experiment. The model being overall slower than the human
participants could be caused by the rather low Fitts law parameter
used within ACT-R (100 ms/bit) compared to the 165 ms/bit that we
observed.
Spreading activation is not only necessary for the model to be able
to complete the tasks, but also to display the device-orientation effect
(Fig. 1). We can infer that the activation assumption is a sound
explanation of the disadvantage of device-oriented steps. Too much
spreading activation reduces the effect again, though. This can be
explained by a ceiling effect: The average retrieval time gets close to
zero for high values of mas (Mmem in Table 2), thereby diminishing
the possibility for timing differences.
How relevant is a 100 ms difference in real life? Probably not too
much by itself. What makes it important is its connection to user
errors. Errors itself are hard to provoke in the lab without adding
secondary tasks that interrupt the user or create strong working
memory strain, thereby substantially lowering external validity.
Conclusions
The concept of device-orientation versus task-orientation is an
important aspect of humancomputer interaction. We could replicate
that the device-oriented parts of simple goal- directed action
sequences take approximately 100 ms longer than their task-oriented
counterparts. With the help of cognitive modeling, associative priming could be identified as a possible explanation for this effect.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledges financial support from the
German Research Foundation (DFG) for the project Automatische
Usability-Evaluierung modellbasierter Interaktionssysteme fur
Ambient Assisted Living (AL-561/13-1).
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was that pressing a response key with the right hand briefly flashed a
left or right light (i.e., an environment-related action effect), and this
was the participants goal. One group of participants (the R2-E2
compatible group; see Fig. 2, left part) flashed the left light with a left
key press (of the right hand) and the right light with a right key press
(of the right hand). This group produced a BCE, that is, better Task 1
performance was observed with compatible R1-R2 relations (see
Fig. 2, middle part). Again though, relative locations of motor output
and action effects were confounded. Therefore, another group of
participants (the R2-E2 incompatible group; see Fig. 2, right part)
flashed the left light with a right key press (of the right hand) and the
right light with a left key press (of the right hand). Now Task 1
performance was better with incompatible R1-R2 relations (see
Fig. 2, middle part). This, however, means that the relative locations
of (body-related) action effects of the Task 1 response and the
environment-related action effects of Task 2 were compatible. This
basic outcome was replicated with continuous movements and action
effects (Exp 2) and also when both tasks resulted in environmentrelated action effects (Exp 3).
The generative role of anticipated action effects for action
selection, a pillar of IT, has been investigated in single task settings
in numerous studies. The studies summarized in this paper extend
this basic idea to dual-task situations and tested our assertion that
mainly the (anticipated) action effects determine the size and
direction of specific interference phenomena. In sum, the results
presented here provide evidence for this (see also Janczyk, Skirde,
Weigelt, Kunde, 2009, for converging evidence). In broader terms,
action effects can be construed as action goals. Thus, it is not so
much the compatibility of motor outputs and effectors but rather the
compatibility/similarity of action goals that induces performance
costs or facilitation. Such an interpretation also bears potential for
improving dual-task performance and ergonomic aspects in, for
example, working environments.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the German Research Foundation
(Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG; projects KU 1964/2-1, 2).
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relation group (see also Janczyk et al. 2014)
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Janczyk M, Pfister R, Hommel B, Kunde W (2014) Who is talking in
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numerous blocks. Also, the last two experimental blocks were
excluded from data analysis because fatigue interfered with the
training effects. Generally, the expected training and object familiarity effects occurred, as reported in Joeres and Russwinkel
(accepted).
The effects that were found in the experiment (Ex) and predicted
by the model (M) are displayed in Fig. 1. It can be seen that the
predicted rotation rates are considerably lower than the experimentally found. A possible explanation for this disparity can be found in
the abovementioned reactivation process that includes re-encoding of
the stimuli. The model, however, does not claim to address stimulus
encoding validly. Therefore, duration differences in this process can
cause the data deviation. Nevertheless, the trends, i.e. the shape of the
learning curves, are validly predicted by the model. This is the case
for the familiar object and for the unfamiliar objects, respectively.
This first impression is confirmed by the goodness-of-fit measures,
as listed in Table 1. Although no golden standard exists for these
measures, it can be said that the absolute value deviation is rather high
with a mean RMSSD = 4.53. The data trends, however, were matched rather well, as indicated by the high r2 values (Fig. 1).
Discussion
The presented study showed that the model can validly replicate
certain training effects in mental rotation. It can therefore be seen as a
promising approach for modeling mental rotation and, with further
research, mental imagery.
As briefly discussed, the model assumptions are partially based on
eye movement data. Therefore, further model validation data should
be provided in a follow-up study in which eye movement during a
mental rotation task is predicted by the model and evaluated
experimentally.
Condition
RMSSD
r2
Familiar object
5.03
.74
Unfamiliar object
4.02
.80
Mean
4.53
.77
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If that study is successful, the model can be extended to further
types of stimuli and to more complex, application-oriented tasks
including mental imagery.
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verbs referring to movements in vertical space (e.g., rise vs. fall)
facilitate upwards or downwards oriented sensorimotor processes,
depending on the meaning of the word that is being processed
(Lachmair, Dudschig, De Filippis, de la Vega and Kaup 2011;
Dudschig, Lachmair, de la Vega, De Filippis and Kaup 2012). This
finding presumably reflects an association of words with experiential
traces in the brain that stem from the readers interactions with the
respective objects and events in the past. When later the words are
being processed in isolation, the respective experiential traces become
reactivated, providing the possibility of interactions between language
processing and the modal systems (cf. Zwaan and Madden 2005).
Such interactions are also known from other cognitive domains, such
as for instance number processing (Fischer, Castel, Dodd and Pratt
2003). Here high numbers facilitate sensorimotor processes in upper
vertical space and low numbers in lower vertical space (Schwarz and
Keus 2004). The question arises whether the observed spatial-association effects in the two domains are related. A recent study
conducted in our lab investigated this question. The reasoning was as
follows: If number processing activates spatial dimensions that are
also relevant for understanding words, then we can expect that processing numbers may influence subsequent lexical access to words.
Specifically, if high numbers relate to upper space, then they can be
expected to facilitate understanding of an up-word such as bird.
The opposite should hold for low numbers which should facilitate the
understanding of a down-word such as root. This is exactly what
we found in an experiment in which participants saw one of four
digits (1,2,8,9) prior to the processing of up- and down-nouns in a
lexical decision task (Lachmair, Dudschig, delaVega and Kaup 2014).
In the present study we aimed at extending these findings by investigated whether priming effects can be observed for the processing of
verbs referring to movements in the vertical dimension (e.g., rise vs.
fall).
Method
Participants (N = 34) performed a lexical decision task with 40 verbs
denoting an up- or downwards oriented movement (e.g., rise vs. fall)
and 40 pseudowords. Verbs were controlled for frequency, length and
denoted movement direction. The words were preceded by a number,
one of the set {1, 2, 8, 9}. Correctly responding to the verbs required a
key press on the left in half of the trials and on the right in the other
half. The order of the response mapping was balanced across participants. Each trial started with a centered fixation cross (500 ms),
followed by a number (300 ms). Afterwards the verb/pseudo-word
stimulus appeared immediately and stayed until response. Response
times (RTs) were measured as the time from stimulus onset to the key
press response. Each stimulus was presented eight times, resulting in
a total of 640 experimental trials (320 verb-trials + 320 pseudo wordtrials), subdivided into 8 blocks, separated by a self-paced break with
error information. Each experimental half started with a short practice
block. To ensure the processing of the digits, the participants were
informed beforehand that they should report the numbers they had
seen in a short questionnaire at the end of the experiment. The design
of the experiment was a 2 (number magnitude: low vs. high) x 2 (verb
direction: up vs. down) x 2 (response mapping) design with repeated
measurements in all variables.
Results
The data of six participants were excluded due to a high number of
errors ([10 %) in all conditions. Responses to pseudo words,
responses faster than 200 ms, and errors were excluded from further
analyses. We found no main effect of number magnitude (Fs \ 1.8),
no effect of response mapping (Fs \ 1), but a main effect of verb
direction with faster responses for down- compared to up-verbs
(F1(1,26) = 5.61, p \ .05; F2 \ 1; 654 ms vs. 663 ms). Interestingly,
we also found a significant interaction of number magnitude and verb
direction, F1(1,26) = 5.23, p \ .05; F2(1,38) = 3.46, p = .07, with
slower responses in congruent compared to incongruent trials [up
verbs: 668 ms vs. 658 ms; down verbs: 654 vs. 654 ms]. To obtain
123
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more information with regard to whether this effect depends on how
deeply the number primes were being processed, we conducted post
hoc analyses. Participants were subdivided into two groups, with
Group 1 including all participants who had correctly reported the
numbers at the end of the experiment (N = 14), and Group 2 including
the remaining participants. Group 1 again showed an interaction
between number magnitude and verb direction (F1(1,26) = 9.47,
p \ .01; F2(1,38) = 3.38, p = .07), however Group 2 did not
(Fs \ 1). Mean RT of both groups are displayed in Fig. 1.
Discussion
The present findings show that reading verbs denoting an up- or
downwards oriented movement is affected by the preceding processing of high and low numbers. As such, the presented findings
provide evidence for the view that spatial associations observed in
number and word processing may share a common basis (Barsalou
2008). Interestingly, in contrast to Lachmair et al. (2014), the results
show interference instead of facilitation in spatially congruent conditions. Possibly, this deviating findings reflect the fact that verbs
referring to movements in vertical space (such as rise or fall) are
rather complex and implicitly refer to two spatial locations, namely
the starting point and the end point of the movement. Maybe participants dynamically simulated the described movements beginning
with the starting point. Considering that verbs are assumed to trigger
complex comprehension processes (see Vigliocco, Vinson, Druks,
Barber and Cappa 2011), it seems plausible to assume that our
experimental task may have tapped into early rather than late simulation processes. This in turn may explain why interference rather
than facilitation was observed in the present experiments.
One could of course argue that this explanation is not very convincing considering that the study by Dudschig et al. (2012) also
presented participants with verbs referring to upwards or downwards
directed movements (as in the current study) and nevertheless
observed facilitation in spatially congruent conditions, not interference. However, we think that differences concerning temporal aspects
of the experimental task may explain the different results. The study
by Dudschig et al. (2012) investigated the speed with which upwards
123
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S117
It is Bratmans main argument that the described complex of
interrelated intentions and attitudes functions together as one characteristic form of shared intention (2009). Due to the constructivist
and functionalist nature of his approach it may yet not be the only
kind of shared intention. The author himself admits the possibility
that there may be other kinds and that shared intention may thus be
multiply realizable.
Bratmans conception of shared intention seems to be a convincing characterization of how cognitively mature agents act together. In
contrast to this, some researchers doubt whether his approach is suited
to account for joint action in young children. This issue is closely
related to the developmental onset of socio-cognitive abilities. The
common knowledge condition of Bratmans substantial account presupposes that the system of intentions in question is in the public
domain. Furthermore, there has to be mutual knowledge of the others
intentions plus knowledge of the others knowledge. The cognitive
basis for common knowledge thus rests on a variety of capacities. The
agents in joint action ought to have: a) the ability to form beliefs and
higher-order beliefs (beliefs about beliefs), b) the ability to attribute
mental states to themselves and others, and c) the capacities needed
for recursive mindreading. All in all, they must thus have a robust
theory of mind. With respect to this, critics of Bratmans account state
that he characterizes shared intention in a way that is too complex to
accommodate for joint action of young children (Tollefsen 2005;
Pacherie 2011; Butterfill 2012).
Tollefsens (2005) critique is based on evidence suggesting that
young children lack a robust theory of mindparticularly, a proper
understanding of others beliefs. This evidence comes from different
false-belief tasks (Wellman et al. 2001). Without such a proper
understanding of other agents beliefs, so Tollefsen argues, the
common knowledge condition in Bratmans conception could not be
fulfilled. Hence, children could not take part in shared intentional
activities of such a sort. Similarly, Pacherie (2011) claims that
Bratmans shared intention requires cognitively sophisticated agents
who have both concepts of mental states like intentions and attitudes
and the ability to represent the mental states of others. From her point
of view, small children lack such fully developed mentalizing and
meta-representational capacities. Therefore, shared intention cannot
account for joint action in young children. A problem for Bratmans
account thus stems from the fact that there is evidence of children
engaging in joint activities before they develop the putatively necessary socio-cognitive abilities. Findings from developmental
psychology (Brownell 2011) suggest that children engage in different
forms of joint action together with adults from around 18 months of
age and, from the end of the 2nd year of life, also with peers.
We will show that said criticisms rest on rather shaky grounds.
First, they both attack Bratmans substantial account, which only
presents sufficient conditions for the presence of a shared intention.
Thus, there might be other constructions in a Bratmanian sense that
avoid these flaws. Furthermore, both critiques rely on controversial
empirical claims about the onset of childrens mindreading capacitiesfor example, with respect to the starting point of false belief
understanding in children (Bargailleon et al. 2010; De Bruin and
Newen 2012) and the development of an early understanding of
common knowledge (Carpenter 2009). Thus, the critiques by Pacherie
and Tollefsen do not present convincing arguments against Bratmans
account per se. Still, they highlight an important issue by questioning
the cognitive standards imposed on participating agents in joint action.
Butterfill (2012) takes a different route in criticizing Bratmans
approach. His objection focuses on the necessary conditions for
shared intention: the functional roles that shared intention is supposed to play. Butterfill claims that the coordinating and structuring
of relevant bargaining, which shared intention is supposed to
ensure, sometimes require monitoring or manipulating of other
agents intentions. With regard to accounts that stress the importance of joint action for cognitive and socio-cognitive development
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in infants (Tomasello et al. 2005; Moll and Tomasello 2007), joint
action would thus presuppose psychological concepts and capacities
whose development it should explain in the first place. The contribution of joint activities to the development of our cognitive
capacities is the core argument of Tomasello and colleagues
hypothesis on shared intentionality. As long as one stresses its role
in cognitive and socio-cognitive development, Butterfill claims that
early joint action of children can hence not involve shared intention
in Bratmans sense.
Bratmans conception can thus not account for childrens joint
actions. At least, if it is supposed to explain the development of their
understanding of minds. Yet, his approach is suited to explain joint
action of adults as mature cognitive agents. Especially, this is the case
for those kinds of joint action that involve planning, future-directed
intentions and deliberation.
We will conclude our talk by offering an alternative account of
childrens ability for joint action, which turns, in a way, the circularity
upside down: If joint action is indeed pivotal for the development of
socio-cognitive abilities, they cannot be developed in small children.
Thus, joint action as displayed by small children has to be grounded
in other abilities. Our proposal is that it is the lack of the concept of a
mental state (esp intentions) that produces behavior which looks like
joint action (we will not discuss whether the term should be applied to
these cases or not). If a child has not yet learned that a mental state is
something that belongs to single persons, it cannot be said to have
acquired the concept of a mental state. However, the child might be,
at the same time, able to introspect the content of the own intentions,
such that the childs introspection can be paraphrased as there is the
intention to J. In other words, the child has not yet learned to make a
difference between the own intentions and those of others. The effect
of this lack of abilities will result in a behavior that looks like joint
action (at least in cases in which the intention of the adult and the
child match). Such behavior might be initiated by different triggers in
the surrounding world that establish a common goal in the first place.
Candidates for this could be pointing gestures, affordances and
alignment between the agents.
This account does not only offer new perspectives for the
explanation of autism (Frith 1989; Vosgerau 2009), it also offers a
way to specify the thesis that (seemingly) joint action is pivotal to
the acquisition of socio-cognitive abilities: Joint action sets up an
environment in which children are able to gradually learn that
intentions can differ between individuals. The result of this learning
phase will ultimately be the acquisition of the concept of a mental
state, which includes that mental states belong to persons and that
thus mental states can differ between individuals (this knowledge
is then tested in the false-belief-task). In other words, the learning
of a theory of mind starts with acquiring the concept of a mental
state, and this concept can be best acquired in (seemingly) joint
action scenarios, in which children directly experience the effects of
differing mental states (intentions and beliefs). Accordingly,
empirical research has already suggested that the acquisition of
mental state concepts is dependent on the use of mental state terms
(Rakoczy et al. 2006), which are presumably most often used in
joint action scenarios.
Some empirical results have been interpreted to show that very
young children already possess the socio-cognitive abilities needed
for cooperative activities and act on a rather sophisticated understanding of the mental states of self and other (Carpenter 2009).
Following this line of argument, researchers propose that infants
already understand others knowledge and ignorance (Liszkowski
et al. 2008), they can act on a shared goal (Warneken et al. 2006;
Warneken and Tomasello 2007), and exploit the common ground they
shared with an adult (Liebal et al. 2009; Moll et al. 2008). While
appreciating the importance of this research as such, we will present
alternative interpretations of these findings that are cognitively less
demanding and thus consistent with our proposal.
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processes of his model of visual information processing (e.g., the
generation of a three-dimensional depth structure) are specified by
particular formal algorithms, which are physically implemented in
the human brain. Therefore it is recognized, that functional processes also have a physical reality, but functional models fail to
provide a framework for the exact circumstances, conditions,
constraints, etc. of such implementation relations. Admittedly, the
connectionist approach has fulfilled this task better by generating
models of neural networks that are more likely to describe the
actual processes in our minds (see Rumelhart, McClelland 1986;
Smolensky 1988), but ultimately does not offer clear multi-level
model of the mind either.
It is important that the way of physical implementation as
described by Marr is usually understood in terms of physical realization. Therefore, the causal profile of an abstract functional property
(behavioral inputs and outputs) must be determined by a conceptual
analysis in order to identify those physical (neural) structures that
have exactly that causal profile (cf. Levine 1993; Kim 1998, 2005).
Maybe the realization theory is intended to provide an explanatory
approach of how abstract, functionally characterized properties as
postulated by cognitive sciences can be a part of the physical world.
An abstract, theoretical phenomenon is realized (quasi materialized)
in this sense through concrete physical conditions, while it can be
different physical systems to bring the computational or connectionist
formalism into the world (see Fodor 1974). The ontological status of
an abstract functional description or a second-order property remains
highly questionable.
In contrast, much is gained if the functionalist approach is extended
and partially adjusted by the mechanistic rendition of mental properties. A mechanism can be understood as a set of activities organized
such that they exhibit the phenomenon to be explained (Craver 2007,
p 5). The mechanistic approach individuates a phenomenon about
which tasks or causal roles it holds for the system concerned. So if the
mechanism behind a phenomenon is explored, one has explained the
phenomenon itself. As Bechtel (2008) says, a mechanism is a structure
performing a function in virtue of its component parts, component
operations, and their organization (p 13). Figure 1 shows the general
formal structure of mechanistic levels.
To the explanatory phenomenon at the top of the mechanism
(S) is w. By contributed suffix -ing and the course of the arrows
the process-related nature of mechanisms should be expressed. The
phenomenon w can decomposed into subcomponents. Craver used
X as a term for the functioning as a component of W entities and u
as a name for their activity patterns. While functionalism respectively realization theory focuses on the relationship of abstract
information processing and certain processes in the brain, the
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mechanistic approach extends this concern to a question of
embedding a given (mental) phenomenon in a structural hierarchy
of natural levels of organization characterized by the part-whole
relationship.
If we take a cognitive property like spatial orientation or spatial
memory, it is not simply the question of which brain structure realized
this property, rather than it has to be shown which causally relevant
mechanisms are installed at various levels of a mereologically construed mechanistic hierarchy (see Craver 2007). Thus the functional
structure, as described by cognitive science, is undoubtedly an
explanatorily essential description of this mental property. So we can,
for example, explain the behavior of a person in a given situation in
terms of the components and predictions of working memory theory
(Baddeley 1986). But the same mental event can described at different levels of organization. In this way the mental event has a
neuronal structure which, among other things, consists of a hippocampal activity. In addition, the mental property has a molecular
reality which is primarily characterized by the NMDA receptor
activation and so on. So a mental phenomenon has a (potentially
infinite) sequence of microstructures, none of them can be understood
as the actual reality of the target property.
From the fact that the installed part-whole relation implies a
spatio-temporal coextensivity of the different microstructures, so I
will argue, it can be deduced that we have a mereologically based
form of psychophysical identity. Nevertheless this identity thesis does
not have the crude reductionistic implications like the classical
philosophical thesis of psychophysical identity (see Place 1956; Smart
1959). Likewise, it can be shown that the dictum that only functionalism guarantees the autonomy of psychology (Fodor 1974)
and it is jeopardized by every conception of psychophysical identity,
is fundamentally wrong. Quite the opposite is true. If we strictly
follow Fodor, then psychological concepts and theories are to be
preferred, which have a small inter-theoretical fit or low degree of
correspondence to physical processes. Especially under these conditions, psychology risks to fall prey to crudely reductionist programs
such as the new wave reductionism. This means that an inferior theory, which does not have good inter-theoretical fit, should be replaced
by lower-level theories (Bickle 1998, 2003). And even worse because
of the rejection of any psychophysical identity conception psychologist would have to accept a microphysicalism, entailing micro levels
have an ontological and explanatory priority. On the basis of the
mechanistic approach (and its identity-theoretical interpretation) both
the integrity of psychology can be justified as well as the inter-theoretical fit of their concepts and theories. Mental properties form a
higher level in the natural organization of a (human) organism, but at
the same time they form a mutually inseparable unit with its physical
microstructures.
It is the mental properties that characterize diffuse nexus of neuronal events in terms of certain functional units in the first place. In
this sense the mind is the structure-forming or shaping principle at all
levels of the natural organization of the brain. Not despite but because
of its coextensivity with diverse natural organizational levels is the
mental both a real and a causally potent phenomenon. Despite the fact
that with recourse to these micro levels of e.g. neurobiology some
characteristics of mental phenomena can be well explained, there is
neither an ontological nor an explanatory primacy of the micro levels
or their explanations. The adoption of such primacy is merely the
product of a cognitive bias, a misguided interpretation of scientific
explanations and the process of scientific knowledge discovery
(Wimsatt 1976, 1980, 2006).
References
Baddeley AD (1986) Working memory. Oxford University Press,
Oxford
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Fig. 1 Tolmans notion of spatial long-term memory as a meansends-field (from Tolman 1932). This seems to be the first account of
the cognitive map as a graph of states (objects) and actions
(means-ends-relations) in which alternative routes can be found by
graph search
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memory. As a consequence, computationally costly transformations
between non-egocentric long-term memories and egocentric working
memories are often assumed.
In this paper, we give a consistently view-based account of spatial
working- and long-term memories and discuss a recent experiment
supporting the model.
View-based spatial memory
Places
By the term view, we denote an image of an environment taken at a
view-point x and oriented in a direction u. Both x and u may be
specified with respect to a reference frame external to the observer,
but this is not of great relevance for our argument. Rather, we assume
that each view is stored in relation to other views taken at the same
place x but with various viewing directions u. The views of one place
combine to a graph with a simple ring topology where views taken
with neighboring viewing directions are connected by a graph link
(see Fig. 2a). This model of a place representation differs from the
well-known snapshot-model from insect navigation (Cartwright,
Collett 1982; for the role of snapshots in human navigation, see
Gillner et al. 2008) by replacing the equally sampled, panoramic
snapshot by a set of views that may sample different viewing directions by different numbers of views. It is thus similar to view-based
models of object recognition, where views may also be sampled
inhomogeneously over die sides or aspects of an object (Bulthoff,
Edelman 1992). As in object recognition, places may therefore have
canonical views from which they are most easily recognized.
Long-term memory
The graph approach to spatial long-term memory has been extended
from place-graphs to graphs of oriented views by Scholkopf, Mallot
(1995). As compared to the simple rings sufficient to model place
memory, we now allow also for view-to-view links representing
movements with translatory components such as turn left and move
ahead or walk upstairs. The result is a graph of views with links
labeled by egocentric movements. Scholkopf, Mallot (1995) provide a
formal proof that this view-graph contains the same information as a
graph of places with geocentric movement labels.
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A sketch of the view-graph for an extended area is given in
Fig. 2b. The place-transitions are shown as directed links whereas the
turns within a place work either way. In principle, the view-graph
works without metric information or a global, geocentric reference
frame, but combinations with such data types are possible.
Working memory
Spatial working memory tasks may or may not involve the interaction with long-term memory. Examples for stand-alone
processes in working memory include path integration, perspective
taking, and spatial updating while spatial planning requires interaction with spatial long-term memory. Models of spatial working
memory presented e.g. by Byrne et al. (2007), Tatler, Land (2011),
or Loomis et al. (2013) assume a local egocentric map in which
information about landmarks and the environment is inscribed. In
contrast, Wiener, Mallot (2003) suggested a working-memory
structure formed as local graph of places in which more distant
places are collapsed into regional nodes. In order to reconcile this
approach with the view-graph model for long-term memory, we
consider a local subgraph of the view-graph containing (i) the
current view, (ii) all views connected to this view by a fixed number
of movement steps, and (iii) some local metric information represented either by egocentric position-labeling of the included views
or by some view transformation mechanism similar to the one
suggested in object recognition by Ullman, Basri (1991), or both.
This latter component is required to account for spatial updating
which is a basic function of spatial working memory.
Frames of reference
While perceptions and spatial working memory are largely organized
in an egocentric way, long-term memory must be independent of the
observers current position and orientation and is therefore often
called allo- or geo-centric. These terms imply that a frame of
reference is used, much as a mathematical coordinate system within
which places are represented by their coordinates (e.g., Gallistel
1990). Clearly, the assumption of an actual coordinate frame in the
mental map leads to severe problems, not the least of which are the
representation of (coordinate) numbers by neurons and the choice of
the global coordinate origin. The view-graph approach avoids these
problems. Long-term memory is independent of egos position and
orientation since the views and their connections are carried around
like a portfolio, i.e. as abstract knowledge that does not change upon
egos movements. Working memory may rightly be called egocentric
since it collects views as they appear from the local or a close-by
position. In the view-based model, the transform between the poseindependent long-term memory and the pose-dependent (egocentric) working memory reduces in the view based model to a simple
selection process of the views corresponding to the current pose and
their transfer into working memory.
Predictions and experimental results
The sketched model of spatial memory interplay makes predictions
about the recollections that subjects may make of distant places. The
task of imagining a distant place is a working-memory task where an
image of that place may be built by having an imagined ego move
to the target place. Bisiach, Luzzatti (1978) show that hemilateral
neglect in the recall of landmarks around the Piazza del Duomo in
Milan, Italy, affects the landmarks appearing left when viewed from
an imagined view-point, but not the landmarks on the respective right
side. This result can be expressed by assuming that neglect entails a
loss of the left side of spatial working memory, into which no longterm memory items can be loaded; the long-term memory items
themselves are unaffected by the neglect condition.
For the imagery of distant places, two mechanisms can be
assumed. In a mental-travel mechanism, an observer might imagine a travel from his or her current position to the requested target
place, generate a working memory and recall the image from this
working memory. In a recall from index-mechanism, place names
might be recalled from long-term memory without mental travel, e.g.,
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exist in relation to computer vision (CV) algorithms. Here, we argue
that the implications of the systematicity of vision, in terms of what
behavior is expected from CV algorithms, is important for the
development of such algorithms. In particular, the fact that systematicity is a strong argument for compositionality should be relevant
when designing computer vision algorithms and the representations
they work with. In this paper, we discuss compositionality and systematicity in CV applications and present a CV system that is based
on compositional representations.
Keywords
Systematicity, Compositionality, Computer Vision
Systematicity and Compositionality
In their seminal paper (Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988), Fodor and Pylyshyn address the question of systematicity of cognition. Systematicity
is the property by which related thoughts or sentences are understood.
Anyone able to understand the sentence John loves the girl should
be able to understand the related sentence The girl loves John. This
can be explained because both sentences are syntactically related. It is
because there is a structure on the sentences that language, and
thought, exhibit systematic behavior. The compositionality principle
states that the meaning, or the content, of a sentence is derived from
the semantic contribution of its constituents and the relations between
them (Szabo 2013). It is because John, the girl, and loves make the
same semantic contribution to the sentence John loves the girl, and
to The girl loves John, that we are able to systematically understand both of them. In the case of language, systematicity is achieved
by a compositional structure of constituents. In general, systematicity
is a strong argument for compositionality (Szabo 2013): we are able
to understand an immense number of sentences which we have never
seen before.
This can be extended to vision: we are able to make sense of
scenes we have never seen before because they are composed of items
we know. The systematicity of vision is defended by several authors.
Already in (Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988), Fodor and Pylyshyn foresee
that systematicity is probably a general property of cognition that is
not limited to verbal capabilities. In the cognitive science literature,
there are several arguments that support that vision is systematic
(Aparicio 2012; Tacca 2010): if a subject is capable of visually
representing a red ball then he must be capable of representing: i) the
very same red ball from a large number of different viewpoints (and
retinal inputs); ii) a number of similar red balls []; and iii) red
objects and ball- shaped objects in general. (Aparicio 2012).
In this paper, we are concerned with the sort of systematic behavior
that should be expected when a scene is observed from different points
of view: a systematic CV algorithm should be able to determine the
visual elements that compose the images and find the correspondences
between them over time. Some authors claim that systematicity in
vision can be achieved without having compositionality (Edelman and
Intrator 2003, 2000). However, the models they provide have not
shown to be applicable in real world CV problems. We argue that from
a computer scientist point of view, recurring to compositionality is
beneficial when designing CV algorithms.
Compositionality in Computer Vision Algorithms
The systematicity problem is rarely addressed in computational
models of vision. In Edelman and Intrator (2000), the authors
acknowledge that structural descriptions are the preferred theory about
human vision that allows for view- point abstraction and novel shape
recognition. In the structural approaches to vision, the visual information is explained in terms of atomic elements and the spatial
relations that hold between them (Edelman 1997). One example is the
Recognition-by-Components theory of Biederman (1987). In this
theory, object primitives are represented by simple geometric 3D
components called geons. However, extracting such primitive elements from images is by no means a trivial task in CV. Approaches
that attempt to extract such primitives to explain the visual phenomena
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are hard to realize in practice, and according to Andreopoulos, Tsotsos
(2013) there is no method that works reliably with natural images
(Andreopoulos and Tsotsos 2013). Here, we suggest to generate such
primitive elements by grouping mechanisms realized by segmentation
methods which are well investigated in CV. In the following section,
we propose a computer vision system that bases on such perceptually
coherent segments to represent scenes in a compositional way.
A Compositional Approach for Visual Scene Matching
Here, we present a compositional vision system that is able to represent a scene in terms of perceptually coherent components and the
relations between them with help of a graph representation. A graph
matching algorithm enables to match components between different
viewpoints of a scene and, thus, enables a scene representation that is
temporally consistent. In contrast to geons, our segments are easily
extracted with standard segmentation algorithms; we use the wellknown Mean Shift segmentation algorithm (Comaniciu and Meer
2002). Mean Shift produces a segmentation based on the proximity of
pixels in spatial and color spaces. We construct a graph where the
nodes represent segments, and the edges the neighborhood of segments. We use labeled edges, where the labels correspond to the
relations between segments. These are of two types, part of and
attached to, and can be obtained automatically from the image by
simple procedures. To compute whether two segments that share a
common border (attached to relation) it is enough to perform two
morphological operations: first to dilate, and then intersect
both segments. The remaining pixels will constitute the shared contour and will indicate that this relation is present. To find whether
segment A is part of segment B is enough to check whether the outer
contour of segment B is the same as the outer contour of the union of
A and B.
Once the graphs are built, we can apply a graph matching algorithm to establish correspondences between nodes, and thus, between
segments. Suppose we have two graphs G1 V1 ; E1 ; X1 and
G2 V2 ; E2 ; X2 defined by a set of nodes V, edges E, and attributes
measured on the nodes X. We want to find a labelling function f that
assigns nodes from G1 to nodes in G2: f:G1 ? G2. We base our
approach for matching on (Wilson and Hancock 1997). The authors
propose a relaxation algorithm for graph matching that locally
updates the label of each node based on an energy functional F
defined on the labelling function f. By defining F f as the maximum
PX1 ; X2 jf Pf
pX1 ; X2
v2V2
Fig. 1 First row: original non-consecutive images. Rows 2 & 3: results of the matching between the corresponding pair of frames. Matches are
displayed with the same colors. Segments for which no match was found are shown in black
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gestures, bodily postures, tone and tempo of voice can provide others with
information about her emotions, intentions and other mental states, and
thereby help to sustain interpersonal understanding and support joint
actions. And when such information flows back and forth among two or
more mutually responsive participants in an interaction, the ensuing
alignment can promote social cohesion, enhancing feelings of connectedness and rapport (Lakin and Chartrand 2003; Bernieri 1988; Valdesolo
et al. 2010). Indeed, by enhancing rapport, interactive alignment may also
increase participants willingness to cooperate with each other (van
Baaren et al. 2004; Wiltermuth and Heath 2009) andequally importantlytheir mutual expectations of cooperativeness even when interests
are imperfectly aligned, as in scenarios such as the prisoners dilemma
(Rusch et al. 2013). Moreover, interactive alignment may even enhance
interactants ability to understand each others utterances (Pickering and
Garrod 2009) and to communicate their level of confidence in their
judgments about situations (Fusaroli et al. 2012), thereby enhancing
performance on some joint actions. Finally, interactive alignment may
also increase interactants ability to coordinate their contributions to joint
actions (Valdesolo et al. 2010) because synchronization increases interactants attention to one anothers movements, and because it may be
easier to predict and adapt to the movements of another person moving at
a similar tempo and initiating movements of a similar size, duration, and
force as oneself.
It is no surprise, then, that recent decades have seen a dramatic
increase in the amount of attention paid to various kinds of interactive
alignment in the cognitive sciences. However, although there is a broad
consensus about the importance of interactive alignment processes for
social interaction and social cognition, there are still many open questions. How do these diverse processes influence each other? Which ones
contributeand in what waysto interpersonal understanding, cooperativeness and/or performance in joint actions? Is alignment
sometimes counterproductive? To what extent can alignment processes
be deliberately controlled and flexibly combined, replaced, tweaked or
enhanced? This latter question may be especially relevant for individuals who have impairments in some form of bodily expressiveness, and
who therefore may benefit by compensating with some other form of
expressiveness. In the present study, we investigated social interactions
involving just such individuals, namely a population of teenagers with
Mobius Syndrome (MS)a form of congenital, bilateral facial paralysis resulting from maldevelopment of the sixth and seventh cranial
nerves (Briegel et al. 2006).
Since people with MS are unable to produce facial expressions, it is
unsurprising that they often experience difficulties in their social
interactions and in terms of general social well-being. We therefore
implemented a social skills intervention designed to train individuals
with facial paralysis owing to MS to adopt alternative strategies to
compensate for the unavailability of facial expression in social interactions (e.g. expressive gesturing and prosody). In order to evaluate the
effectiveness of this intervention, each of the 5 participants with MS
(MS-participants) engaged in interactions before and after the intervention with partners who did not have MS (Non-MS-participants).
These social interactions consisted of two separate tasks, a casual getting-to-know-you task and a task designed to tap interpersonal
understanding. Participants filled out rapport questionnaires after each
interaction. In addition, the interactions were videotaped and analyzed
by independent coders, and we extracted two kinds of linguistic data
relating to the temporal organization of the conversational behavior:
prosody (fundamental frequency) and speech rate. We used this latter
data to calculate indices of individual behavioral complexity and of
alignment using cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA).
We found several interesting results. First, intervention increased
observer-coded rapport. Secondly, observer-coded gesture and expressivity increased in participants with and without MS after
intervention. Thirdly, fidgeting and repetitiveness of verbal behavior
decreased in both groups after intervention. Fourthly, while we did in
general observe alignment (compared to surrogate pairs), overall
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linguistic alignment actually decreased after intervention, and pitch
alignment was negatively correlated with rapport.
These results suggest that the intervention had an impact on MS
interlocutors, which in turn impacted non-MS interlocutors, making
them less nervous and more engaged. Behavioral dynamics can statistically predict observer-coded rapport, thus suggesting a direct link
between them and experience of the interaction.
This pattern of findings provides initial support for the conjecture
that a social skills workshop like the one employed here can not only
affect the participants with MS but alsoand perhaps even more
importantlyaffect the interaction as a whole as well as the participants without MS. One reason why this is important is because some of
the difficulties experienced by individuals with MS in social interactions may arise from other peoples discomfort or uncertainly about
how to behave. In other words, individuals without MS who interact
with individuals with MS may interrupt the smooth flow of interaction
through their uncertainty about how to interact in what is for them a
new and sensitive situation. Moreover, this may also be true in other
instances in which people interact with others who appear different or
foreign to them (because of other forms of facial difference, skin color,
etc.) Thus, this issue points to a possible direction in which further
research may be conducted that would extend the findings far beyond
the population of individuals with MS. More concretely, one obvious
comparison would be to individuals with expressive impoverishment
due to Parkinsons disease. Do these individuals also employ some of
the same kinds of compensatory strategies as individuals with MS? If
so, what effects does that have upon interactive alignment within
social interactions? What differences does it make that their condition
is an acquired rather than a congenital one?
Finally, one additional question for further research is whether
some compensatory strategies are more easily automated than others.
For example, it is possible that increasing hand gesturing or eye
contact can be quickly learned and routinized, but that modulating
ones prosody cannot. If there are such differences among the degrees
to which different processes can be automated, it would be important
to understand just what underlies them. On a theoretical level, this
could provide useful input to help us understand the relationship
between automatic and controlled processes. On a more practical
level, this could be important for three concrete reasons. First of all, it
may be taxing and distracting to employ deliberate strategies for
expressing oneself in social interactions, and people may therefore
find it tiring, and be less likely to continue doing it. Secondly, it may
be important that some interactive alignment processes occur without
peoples awareness. Thus, attempting to bring them about deliberately
may actually interfere with the implicit processes that otherwise
generate alignment. Indeed, there is evidence that behavioral mimicry
actually undermines rapport if people become aware that it is being
enacted deliberately (Bailensen et al. 2008). Thirdly, it would be
important for future social skills workshops to examine whether some
compensatory strategies are more effectively taught indirectlye.g.
rather than telling people to use more gestures, it may be advantageous to employ some other means which does not require them to
deliberately attend to their gestures or prosody, for example by using
more gestures and prosody when interacting with children with MS,
by asking them to watch videos in which actors are highly expressive
in their gestures and prosody, or by engaging them in role-playing
games in which a high level of gesture and/or prosody is appropriate.
References
Bailenson JN, Yee N, Patel K, Beall AC. (2008) Detecting digital
chameleons. Comput Hum Behav 24:6687
Bernieri FJ, Rosenthal R (1991) Interpersonal coordination: behavior
matching and interactional synchrony. In: Feldman RS, Rime B
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Application Areas
The presented EyeSee3D approach can be applied as a method to
accurately an- notate fixations in 3D environments as required for
scientific studies. We have already tested this approach in two studies.
Both studies involve settings with two interacting interlocutors (no
confederates) sitting face-to-face at a table.
In the first study, we were interested in gaze-patterns of joint
attention (Pfeiffer-Lessmann, Pfeiffer, Wachsmuth 2013). We placed
23 figures of a LEGO Duplo set on a table, each of which facing
either of the interlocutors. The experimenter then describes a certain
figure and the interlocutors have to team up to identify the figure. The
task, however, is not as simple as it sounds: the information given
might only be helpful for one of the interlocutors, as it might refer to
features of the figure only visible from a certain perspective. Even
more, the interlocutors are instructed to neither speak nor gesture to
communicate. This way we force the participants to use their gaze to
guide their partners attention towards the correct figure. The set-up
used in this experiment will be used later in this paper to illustrate the
EyeSee3D method.
In the second study, we were interested in creating computational models for predicting the targets of pointing gestures and
more generally areas which in the near future will be occupied by
a human interlocutor during interaction (Renner, Pfeiffer, Wachsmuth 2014). This research is motivated by human-robot interaction
in which we want to enable robots to anticipate human movements
in order to be more responsive, i.e., in collision-avoidance
behavior.
Besides eye tracking, in this study we also combined the EyeSee3D approach with an external motion-tracking system to track the
hands and the faces of the interlocutors. Using the same principles as
presented in the next section, also the targets of pointing gestures as
well as gazes towards the body of the interlocutor can be identified
computationally without the need for manual annotations.
EyeSee3D
The EyeSee3D approach is easy to set-up Fig. 1 on the left shows a
snapshot from one of our own studies on joint attention between two
human interlocutors (Pfeiffer-Lessmann, N., Pfeiffer, T., Wachsmuth,
I. (2013). In this study we had 12 pairs of interaction partners and a
total of about 160 min of gaze video recordings. It would have taken
about 40 h to manually annotate the gaze videos, excluding any
additional second annotations to test for annotation reliability.
The process followed by EyeSee3D is presented in Fig. 2. In a
preparation phase, we covered the environment with so-called fiducial
markers, highly visible printable structures that are easy to detect
using computer-vision methods (see Fig. 1, mid upper half). We
verified that these markers did not attract significant attention by the
participants. As a second step, we created proxy geometries for the
relevant stimuli, in this example small toy figures (see Fig. 3). For our
set- up, a simple approximation using bounding boxes is sufficient,
but any complex approximation of the target may be used. When
aiming for maximum precision, it is possible to use 3D scans with
exact replications of the hull of the target structure. The whole process for setting up such a table will take about 30 min. These
preparations have to be made once, as the created model can be used
for all study recordings.
Based on these preparations, we are now able to conduct the study
and record the eye-tracking data (gaze videos and gaze data). EyeSee3D then automatically annotates the recorded gaze videos. For
each frame of the video, the algorithms detect fiducial markers in the
image and estimate the position and orientation of the scene camera in
3D space. For this process to succeed at least one fiducial marker has
to be fully visible in each frame. The camera position and orientation
are then used together with the gaze information provided by the eye
tracker itself to cast a gaze ray into the 3D proxy geometries. This
gaze ray intersects the 3D proxy geometries exactly at the point (see
Fig. 1, right) that is visualized by the gaze cursor in the scene camera
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variation phase. The neural activation patterns can also help unravel
the cognitive processes underlying reading and processing of the
premise information. First experiments utilizing recorded neural
activation with PET (and later with fMRI) were conducted by Goel
et al. in 1998. The initial motivation was to get an answer about which
of several then popular psychological theories were correct (cp Goel
2001), simply by examining the involvement of respective brain areas
that are connected to specific processing functions. Such an easy
answer has not yet been found. However, previous analyses (e.g.,
Knauff 2006; Knauff 2009) across multiple studies showed the
involvement of the frontal and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC),
especially for relational reasoning. Roughly speaking, the role of the
PPC is to integrate information across modalities (Fig. 1) and its
general involvement has been shown consistently in studies (Knauff
2006).
In this article we briefly introduce state-of-the-art neural findings
for relational reasoning. We present an overview of the current studies
and report two studies form our lab. Subregions within the PPC, e.g.,
the SPC, are differentiated to allow a more fine-grained description of
their role for the mental model construction and manipulation process.
The Associated Activation in Relational Reasoning
Main activations during reasoning about relations found in a metastudy conducted by Prado et al. (2011) identified the role of the PPC
and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Although we know that these
regions are involved in the reasoning process about relations, exact
functions of these areas, the role of the subregions, and problemspecific differences remain unclear. Studies by Fangmeier, Knauff
and colleagues (Fangmeier et al. 2006; Fangmeier, Knauff 2009;
Knauff et al. 2003) additionally compared activations across the
reasoning process. They analyzed the function of the PPC during the
processing and integration of premise information and the subsequent
model validation phase. The PPC is mainly active in the last phase
model validation.
We included all studies mentioned in Prado et al. (2012) and
Knauff (2006) and additionally searched the three databases Pubmed,
Google scholar, and Science Direct with the keywords: relational
reasoning or deductive reasoning in combination with the terms
neuroimaging or fMRI, and searched for studies that were cited in the
respective articles.
Of these 26 studies we included 23 in our analysis; all those which
(i) report coordinates (either Tailarach or MNI), (ii) had a reasoning
vs. non-reasoning contrast, and (iii) used healthy participants, i.e.,
excluding patient studies. We transformed all coordinates to the MNI
coordinate system for the peak voxel analysis.
Only few studies report temporal activation. Mainly activation in
the middle temporal gyrus was found, possibly related to language
processes. Activation in the occipital cortex probably is due to the
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Anatomical probabilities for the peak coordinates located within the lateral (with the SPL as a subregion) and the medial SPC (with the precuneus
as a subregion) according to the SPM anatomy toolbox (Eickhoff et al. 2007) are reported. Reports of SPC activation in the original publications
which showed an anatomical probability of less than 30 % for the SPC are depicted in brackets. MC = motor cortex, PMC = premotor cortex,
dlPFC = dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, AG = angular gyrus, TPJ = temporoparietal junction, SMG = supramarginal gyrus; left half-circle = left lateral, right half-circle = right lateral, circle = bilateral
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parietal lobe activation during transitive inference in humans.
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y.: 1991), 12(12):13121321
Brzezicka A, Sedek G, Marchewka A, Gola M, Jednorg K, Krlicki L,
Wrbel A (2011) A role for the right prefrontal and bilateral
parietal cortex in four-term transitive reasoning: an fMRI study
S131
Waechter RL, Goel V, Raymont V, Kruger F, Grafman J (2013)
Transitive inference reasoning is impaired by focal lesions in
parietal cortex rather than rostrolateral prefrontal cortex. Neuropsychologia 51(3):464471
Walsh P-L (2003) Transcranial magnetic stimulation: A neurochronometrics of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge
Wendelken C, Bunge SA (2010) Transitive inference: distinct contributions of rostrolateral prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus.
J Cogn Neurosci 22(5):837847
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Goal
Module
Goal
Buffer
Declarative
Module
Retrieval
Buffer
Im aginal
Buffer
Procedural
Module
nxtmove
nxttouched
nxtvisual
nxtdistance
nxtmotor
nxttouch
nxtvision
nxtdistance
Environment
http://webexperiment.iig.uni-freiburg.de/mind-r/index.html.
For Intel-based Macs users: make sure to install the cor- rect driver
for your platform. For GNU/Linux no support is provided.
10
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11
Fig. 4 Productions that read the distance from the ultrasonic sensor
S133
Fig. 5 Production rules that control the engines: left moves forward,
right turns right
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Burgard W, Roth D (eds) Proceedings of the 25th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Press, San Francisco, CA
Rizzardi E (2013) Cognitive robotics: Cognitive and perceptive
aspects in navigation with landmarks. Masters thesis, Universita
degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia, Italy
Trafton G, Hiatt L, Harrison A, Tamborello F, Khemlani S, Schultz A
(2013) Act-r/e: An embodied cognitive architecture for humanrobot interaction. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction 2(1):3055
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Indeed, increasing tracking difficulty either by decreasing the predictability of the tracked target or by changing the complexity of the
controller dynamics has been shown to attenuate P3 responses in the
secondary auditory monitoring task (Wickens et al. 1983; Wickens,
Kramer and Donchin 1984).
In contrast, increasing tracking difficultyby introducing more
frequent direction changes of the tracked target (i.e. including higher
frequencies in the function that describes the motion trajectory of the
target)has been shown to bear little influence on the secondary
tasks P3 response (Wickens, Israel and Donchin 1977; Isreal,
Chesney, Wickens and Donchin 1980). Overall, the added requirement of a steering task consistently results in a lower P3 amplitude,
relative to performing auditory monitoring alone (Wickens et al.
1983; Wickens et al. 1977; Isreal et al. 1980).
Using a dual-task paradigm for indexing workload is not ideal.
First, it requires participants to perform a secondary task. This prevents it from being applied in real-world scenarios; users cannot be
expected to perform an unnecessary task that could compromise their
critical work performance. Second, it can only be expected to work if
the performance of the secondary task relies on the same mental
resources as those of the primary task (Wickens, Yeh 1983), requiring
a deliberate choice of the secondary task. Thus, it is fortunate that
more recent studies have demonstrated that P3 amplitudes can be
sensitive to MWL, even if the auditory oddball is ignored (Ullsperger,
Freude and Erdmann 2001; Allison, Polich 2008). This effect is said
to induce a momentary and involuntary shift in general attention,
especially if recognizable sounds (e.g. a dog bark, opposed to a pure
sound) are used (Miller, Rietschel, McDonald and Hatfield 2011).
The current work, containing two experiments, investigates the
conditions that would allow novelty-P3, the P3 elicited by the
ignored, recognizable oddball, to be an effective index for the MWL
of compensatory tracking. Compensatory tracking is a basic steering
task that can be generalized to most implementations of vehicular
control. In both experiments participants were required to use a joystick to counteract disturbances of a horizontal plane. To evaluate the
generalizability of this paradigm, we depicted this horizontal plane as
either a line in a simplified visualization or as the horizon in a realworld environment. In the latter, participants experienced a large
field-of-view perspective of the outside world from the cockpit of an
aircraft that rotated erratically about its heading axis. The task was the
same regardless of the visualization. In both experiments, we
employed a full factorial design for the visualization (instrument,
world) and 3 oddball paradigms (in experiment 1) or 4 levels of task
difficulty (in experiment 2) respectively. Two sessions were conducted on separate days for the different visualizations, which were
counter-balanced for order. Three trials were presented per oddball
paradigm (experiment 1) or level of task difficulty (experiment 2) in
blocks, which were randomized for order. Overall, we found that
steering performance was worse when the visualization was provided
by a realistic world environment in experiments 1 (F (1, 11) = 42.8,
p \ 0.01) and 2 (F (1, 13) = 35.0, p \ 0.01). Nonetheless, this
manipulation of visualization had no consequence on our participants
MWL as evaluated by a post-experimental questionnaire (i.e., NASATLX) and EEG responses. This suggests that MWL was unaffected by
our choice of visualization.
The first experiment, with 12 participants, was designed to identify
the optimal presentation paradigm of the auditory oddball. For the
EEG analysis, two participants had to be excluded, due to noisy
electrophysiological recordings (more than 50 % of rejected epochs).
Whilst performing the tracking task, participants were presented with
a sequence of auditory stimuli that they were instructed to ignore.
This sequence would, in the 1-stimulus paradigm, only contain the
infrequent odd- ball stimulus (i.e., the familiar sound of a dogs bark
(Fabiani, Kazmerski, Cycowicz and Friedmann 1996)). In the
2-stimulus paradigm this infrequently presented oddball (0.1) is
accompanied by a more frequently presented pure tone (0.9) and in
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the 3-stimulus paradigm the infrequently presented oddball (0.1) is
accompanied by a more frequently presented pure tone (0.8) and an
infrequently presented pure tone (0.1). These three paradigms are
widely used in P3 research (Katayama, Polich 1996). It should be
noted, however, that the target to target interval is 20 s regardless of
the paradigm. To obtain the ERPs the epochs from 100 ms before to
900 ms after the onset of the recognizable oddball stimulus, were
averaged. Mean amplitude measurements were obtained in a 60 ms
window, centered at the group- mean peak latency for the largest
positive maximum component between 250 and 400 ms for the
oddball P3, for each of the three mid-line electrode channels of
interest (i.e., Fz, Cz, Pz). In agreement with previous work, the
novelty-P3 response is smaller when participants had to perform the
tracking task compared to when they were only presented with the
task-irrelevant auditory stimuli, without the tracking task (F (1,
9) = 10.9, p \ 0.01). However, the amplitude of the novelty-P3
differed significantly across the presentation paradigms (F (2,
18) = 5.3, p \ 0.05), whereby the largest response to our task-irrelevant stimuli was elicited by the 1- stimulus oddball paradigm. This
suggests that the 1-stimulus oddball paradigm is most likely to elicit
novelty-P3 s that are sensitive to changes in MWL. Finally, the
attenuation of novelty-P3 amplitudes by the tracking task varied
across the three mid-line electrodes (F (2, 18) = 28.0, p \ 0.001).
Pairwise comparison, Bonferroni corrected for multiple comparisons,
revealed P3 amplitude to be largest at Cz, followed by Fz and smallest
at Pz (all p \ 0.05). This stands in contrast with previous work that
found control difficulty to attenuate P3 responses in parietal electrodes (cf., Isreal et al. 1980; Wickens et al. 1983). Thus, the current
paradigm that uses a recognizable, ignored sound is likely to reflect an
underlying process that is different from previous studies, which
could be more sensitive to the MWL demands of a tracking task.
Given the result of experiment 1, the second experiment with 14
participants, investigated whether the 1-stimulus oddball paradigm
would be sufficiently sensitive in indexing tracking difficulty as
defined by the bandwidth of frequencies that contributed to the disturbance of the horizontal plane (cf., Isreal et al. 1980). Three
different bandwidth profiles (easy, medium, hard) defined the linear
increase in the amount of disturbance that had to be compensated for.
This manipulation was effective in increasing subjective MWL,
according to the results of a post- experimental NASA-TLX questionnaire (F (2, 26) = 14.9, p \ 0.001) and demonstrated the
expected linear trend (F (1, 13) = 23.2, p \ 0.001). This increase in
control effort was also reflected in the amount of joystick activity,
which grew linearly across the difficulty conditions (F (1, 13) = 42.2,
p \ 0.001). For the EEG analysis two participants had to be excluded
due to noisy electrophysiological recordings (more than 50 % of
rejected epochs). A planned contrast revealed that the novelty- P3 was
significantly lower in the most difficult condition compared to the
baseline viewing condition, where no tracking was done (F (1,
11) = 5.2, p \ 0.05; see Fig. 1a). Nonetheless, novelty-P3 did not
differ significantly between the difficulty conditions (F (2,
22) = 0.13, p = 0.88), nor did it show the expected linear trend (F (1,
11) = 0.02, p = 0.91). Like (Isreal et al. 1980), we find that EEGresponses do not discriminate for MWL that is associated with controlling increased disturbances. It remains to be investigated, whether
the novelty-P3 is sensitive for the complexity of controller dynamics,
like it has been shown for the P3.
The power spectral density of the EEG data around 10 Hz (i.e.,
alpha) has been suggested by (Smith, Gevins 2005) to index MWL. A
post hoc analysis of our current data, at electrode Pz, revealed that
alpha power was significantly lower for the medium and hard conditions, relative to the view-only condition (F (1, 11) = 6.081,
p \ 0.05; (F (1, 11) = 6.282, p \ 0.05). Nonetheless, the expected
linear trend across tracking difficulty was not significant (Fig. 1b).
To conclude, the current results suggest that a 1-stimulus oddball
task ought to be preferred when measuring general MWL with the
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the basal ganglia, thereby influencing the learning of motor sequences
in parietal and (pre-)motor cortical areas (Penhune and Steele 2012).
Along these lines, the proposed model learns to predict segments of
motion patterns given embodied, sensorimotor motion signals. Due to
the resulting perspective taking capabilities, the model essentially
offers a mechanism to activate mirror neuron capabilities.
Neural Network Model
The model consists of three successive stages illustrated in the
overview given in Fig. 1. The first stage processes relative positional
and angular values into mentally rotated, motion-direction sensitive
population codes. The second stage performs a modulatory normalization and pooling of those. Stage III is a self- supervised pattern
segmentation network with sequence forecasting, which enables the
back-propagation of forecast errors. We detail the three stages and the
involved techniques in the following sections.
Stage I: Feature Preprocessing
The input of the network is driven by a number of (not necessarily all)
relative joint positions and joint angles of a person. Initially, the network can be driven by self-perception to establish an egocentric
perspective on self-motion. In this case, the relative joint positions
may be perceived visually, while the perception of the joint angles may
be supported by proprioception in addition to vision. When actions of
others are observed, joint angles may be solely identified visually.
In each single interstage Ia in the relative position pathway, a
single, positional body landmark relation is transformed into a
directional velocity by time-delayed inhibition, in which way the
model becomes translation-invariant. Interstage Ib implements a
mental rotation of the resulting directional velocity signals using a
neural rotation module Rl. It is driven by auto-adaptive mental
rotation angles (Euler angles in a 3D space), which are implemented
by bias neurons. The rotational module and its influence on the
directional velocity signals are realized by gain field-like modulations
of neural populations (Andersen et al. 1985). All positional processing
stages apply the same mental rotation Rl, by which multiple error
signals can be merged at the module. This enables orientationinvariance on adequate adaptation of the modules biases. In interstage Ic, each (rotated) D-dimensional directional motion feature is
convolved into a population of 3D - 1 direction-responsive neurons.
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where neuron j is the last winner neuron that differed from the current
winner in the pattern layer. In consequence, the outgoing weight
vector of a pattern neuron forecasts the input to the pooling layer
while the next pattern neuron is active. The forecasting error can be
backpropagated through the network to adapt the mental
transformation for error minimization (cf. red arrows in Fig. 1).
Thus, perspective adaptation is driven by the difference between the
forecasted and actually perceived motion. The difference di is directly
fed into the pooling layer by the outstar weights:
dit Dwji t;
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(corresponding to one left and one right walking step). The simulation
provides the 3D positions of all 12 limb endpoints relative to the
bodys center x1 . . .x12 as well as 8 angles a1 . . .a8 between limbs
(inner rotations of limbs are not considered). The view of the walker
can be rotated arbitrarily before serving as visual input to the model.
Furthermore, the simulation allows the definition of the appearance
and postural control of the walker. Each of the implied parameters
(body scale, torso height, width of shoulders/hips and length of arms/
legs, as well as minimum/maximum amplitude of joint angles on
movement) can be varied to log-normally distributed variants of an
average walker, which exhibits either female or male proportions.
Randomly sampled resulting walkers are shown in Fig. 2.
Perspective-Taking on Action Observation with Morphological
Variance
We first trained the model on the egocentric perspective of the
average male walker for 40 k time steps. The rotation biases were
kept fixed since no mental rotation has to be applied during selfperception. In consequence, a cyclic series of 4 to 11 winner patterns
evolved from noise in the pattern layer. Each represents i) a sufficiently linear part of the walking via its instar vector and ii) the next
forecasted, sequential part of the movement via its outstar vector.
After training, we fed the model with an arbitrarily rotated (uniform
distribution in orientation space) view of a novel walker, which was
either female or male with 50 % probability. Each default morphology parameter was varied by a log-normal distribution
LN0; r2 with variance r2 = 0.1, postural control parameters were
not varied. Instar/outstar learning was disabled from then on, but the
mental rotation biases were allowed to adapt according to the
backpropagated forecast error to derive the orientation of the shown
walker.
Figure 3 shows the mismatch of the models derived walker orientation, which we term orientation difference (OD), over time. We define
the OD by the minimal amount of rotation needed to rotate the derived
orientation into the egocentric orientation about the optimal axis of
rotation. In result, all trials converged to a negligible OD, which means
that the given view of the walker was internally rotated to the previously
learned, egocentric orientation. The median remaining OD converged
to * 0.15 with quartiles of * 0.03. The time for the median OD to
S139
Grossberg S (1976) on the development of feature detectors in the
visual cortex with applications to learning and reactiondiffusion
systems. Biological Cybernetics 21(3):145159
Grossman E, Donnelly M, Price R, Pickens D, Morgan V, Neighbor
G, Blake R (2000) Brain areas involved in perception of biological motion. Journal of cognitive neuroscience 12(5):711720
Penhune VB, Steele CJ (2012) Parallel contributions of cerebellar,
striatal and m1 mechanisms to motor sequence learning.
Behavioral brain research 226(2):579591
Schrodt F, Layher G, Neumann H, Butz MV (2014) Modeling perspective-taking by correlating visual and proprioceptive
dynamics. In: 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science
Society, Conference Proceedings
fall short of 1 was 120 time steps. These results show that morphological differences between the self-perceived and observed walkers
could be generalized over. This is because the models scale-invariance
applies to every positional relation perceived by the model.
Perspective-Taking on Action Observation with Postural Control
Variance
In this experiment, we varied the postural control parameters of the
simulation on action observation by a log-normal distribution with
variance r2 = 0.1, instead of the morphological parameters. Again,
female as well as male walkers were presented. The perspective of all
shown walkers could be derived reliably, but with a higher remaining
OD of * 0.67 and more distal quartiles of * 0.32. The median
OD took longer to fall short of 1, namely 154 time steps. This is
because the directions of joint motion are influenced by angular
parameters. Still, variations in postural control could largely be
generalized over (Fig. 4).
Conclusions and Future Work
The results have shown that the developed model is able to recognize
novel perspectives on BM independent from morphological and largely independent from posture control variations. With the previous
model, motion segments are also recognized if their input sequence is
reordered, such that additional, implicitly learned attractors may exist
for the perspective derivation. The introduced, explicit learning of
pattern sequences forces the model to deduce the correct perspective
by predicting the patterns of the next motion segment rather than the
current one. It may well be the case, however, that the combination of
both predictive mechanisms may generate even more robust results.
Future work needs to evaluate the current model capabilities and
limitations as well as possible combinations of the prediction mechanisms further. Currently, we are investigating how missing or
incomplete data could be derived by our model during action
observation.
We believe that the introduced model may help to infer the current
goals of an actor during action observation somewhat independent of
the current perspective. Experimental psychological and further
cognitive modeling studies may examine the influence of motor
sequence learning on the recognition of BM and the inference of
goals. Also, an additional, dynamics-based modulatory module could
be incorporated, which could be used to deduce emotional properties
of the derived motionand could thus bootstrap capabilities related
to empathy. These advancements could pave the way for the creation
of a model on the development of a mirror neuron system that supports learning by imitation and is capable of inferring goals,
intentions, and even emotions from observed BM patterns.
References
Andersen RA, Essick GK, Siegel RM (1985) Encoding of spatial location
by posterior parietal neurons. Science 230(4724):456458
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the order A-B and BC (the example above is of this type with
A = trains to Bayreuth, B = local trains, and C = are on
time), and Figure IV, the term order B-A BC. While Figure I
allows for a transitive rule to be applied, Figure IV does not. Additionally, conclusions can be drawn in two directions, relating A to C
(A-C conclusion) or C to A (C-A conclusion). Several theories of
classical syllogistic reasoning have been postulated based on formal
rules (e.g. (Rips 1994)), mental models (e.g. Bucciarelli, JohnsonLaird 1999), or heuristics (e.g. Chater, Oaksford 1999). However, none of them provides a satisfying account of native
participants syllogistic reasoning behavior (Khemlani, Johnson-Laird
2012).
While most theories only provide predictions for reasoning with
the classical quantifiers, some theories apply equally to generalized
quantifiers. One of the most important approaches in this field is the
Probability Heuristics Model (PHM) introduced by Chater and
Oaksford (1999). It states that reasoners solve syllogisms by simple
heuristics, approximating a probabilistic procedure. Within this
framework, generalized quantifiers like most are treated as probabilities of certain events or features. Another theory to explain human
syllogistic reasoning is the Matching Hypothesis (Wetherick, Gilhooly 1995), which states that the choice of the quantifier for the
conclusion matches the most conservative quantifier contained in the
premises. Extending this approach with most and normally could
result in the order:
All \ Normally \ Most \ Some = Some not \ None
Considering the example above from this perspective, normally is
preferred over all; hence a reasoner would, incorrectly, respond that
normally trains to Bayreuth are on time.
Do people actually reason when confronted with syllogisms or are
responses the result of a superficial automatic process, as suggested
by the Matching-Hypothesis? Mental Models are an approach that
assumes individuals engage in a reasoning process, thus allowing for
more sophisticated responses. Yet individual differences exist.
Therefore, we suggest Minimal Models as a hybrid approach, combining mental models and heuristics. It is assumed that a deductive
process based on an initial model is guided by the most conservative
quantifier of the premises. Reasoners will try to verify this quantifier
in the initial model, which is minimal with respect to the number of
individuals represented, and tend to formulate a conclusion containing
this quantifier. For example, for the syllogism Most A are B,
Some B are C, some is more conservative and tested in the following initial (minimal) model (left):
Table 1 Significant choices for Figure I and the percentage of participants who drew these conclusions
First premise
Second premise
All [A]
Some [I]
Most [M]
Normally [N]
All [A]
I (78 %)
M (72 %)
N (60 %)
Some [I]
I (78 %)
I (79 %)
I (67 %)
I (69 %)
Most [M]
M (74 %)
I (74 %)
M (67 %)
Normally [N]
N (69 %)
I (79 %)
N (69 %)
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Table 2 Significant choices for Figure IV and the percentage of participants who drew these conclusions
First premise
Second premise
All [A]
Some [I]
Most [M]
Normally [N]
All [A]
A (74 %)
I (66 %)
M (50 %)
N (50 %)
Some [I]
Most [M]
Normally [N]
Conclusions marked with * are conclusions in C-A direction, all others are in A-C direction. NV = not valid conclusion
Wilcoxon test, z = 2.65, p = .004). According to our Minimal Model
approach, for 26 tasks System 2 leads to responses differing from the
heuristic ones. In eight cases, this prediction was confirmed by the
data, i.e., in those cases a significant proportion of participants drew
the respective System 2 conclusion.
The quantitative interpretation of the quantifiers is depicted in
Fig. 1 for the quantifiers some, most, and normally. Note that the
values for the quantifier all are not illustrated, as with one exception
all participants assigned a minimal value of 100 to it. For several
participants normally is equivalent to all, i.e., no exceptions are
possiblein contrast to most. The direct comparison of the quantifiers
most and normally revealed that, as expected, normally
(mean = 75.5) is attributed a significantly (Wilcoxon text, z = 2.39,
p = .008) higher value than most (mean = 69.0).
Discussion
Our distinction between frequency-based quantifiers (e.g., normally)
and set-based quantifiers (e.g., most) in reasoning isto the best of
our knowledgenew. Although both, in principle, allow for exceptions, depending on the underlying semantics, four reasoners gave the
same semantics for normally as for all. For most all reasoners
assumed the possibility for exceptionspossibly applying a principle
similar to the Gricean Implicature (Newstead 1995). This principle
assumes that whenever we use expressions that allow for exceptions,
these can be typically assumed.
So far the PHM (Chater, Oaksford 1999) does not provide any
predictions for reasoning with the quantifier normally; however, given
our quantitative evaluation of this quantifier, the PHM could be
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Speaking of perceptual salience, which is not absolute but contrast-defined, a high contrast of the landmark to the surrounding will
lead to easy and fast identification and recognition (Presson, Montello
1988). Nevertheless, given a high contrast, also color preference itself
might influence the visual salience of an object. In a non-spatial
context, blue to purple colors were found to be preferred whereas
yellowish-green colors were most disliked (Hurlbert, Ling 2007).
The cause of these preferences is discussed in light of different theories and explanations ranging from evolutionary adaption of our
123
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30
25
22.77
20
17.86
17.41
14.29
15
12.95
uniform distribution
10.27
10
3.57
0.89
0
red
green
21.88
21.43
blue
yellow
violet
orange
black
white
Fig. 1 Schematic city area and range of colors and shapes participants could choose from as presented to the participants. The route
from start (Start) to destination (Ziel) is indicated by a dashed
line. White quadratic fields are the optional locations for the created
landmarks
optional location for a landmark. Participants could choose from eight
colors (violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red) or luminances (white,
black), respectively, and eight shapes (diamond, hexagon, square,
rhomboid, ellipse, circle, cross, triangle).
Procedure
Instructions were given on a separate paper. Only one landmark
should be built for every intersection and each color and shape could
only be used once. The landmark was to be positioned at one of the
four corners of an intersection. The shape, therefore, had to be drawn
with the selected color in one of the four white corners of an intersection. The task was to use the subjectively preferred combinations
to build the landmarks in order to facilitate wayfinding for a notional,
nonlocal person. Participants were instructed to imagine giving a
verbal route description to this nonlocal person, including their built
landmarks.
Results
Overall 224 decisions for shapes, colors, and positions, respectively
(56 participants * 4 landmarks to build), were analyzed with nonparametric Chi Square tests. Frequencies for selection of shapes and
colors can be seen in Fig. 2.
When analyzing single colors (Bonferroni correction a = .006),
red was significantly above uniform distribution (v2(1) = 21.592,
p \ .001), black (v2(1) = 16.327, p \ .001) and white
(v2(1) = 27.592, p \ .001) were below. Regarding the shapes, results
show that participants have a significant preference for the triangle
(v2(1) = 18, p \ .001) and the circle (v2(1) = 16.327, p \ .001). On
the other hand, ellipse (v2(1) = 13.224, p = .001), hexagon
(v2(1) = 14.735, p \ .001), and rhomboid (v2(1) = 19.755,
p \ .001) were rarely chosen at all. Green, blue, yellow, violet,
orange, and square, diamond and cross did not deviate from average
frequencies.
Figure 3 and Table 1 comprise findings comparing landmark
positions. When focusing on landmark positions dependent of the
direction of turn, it could be shown that position D in front of the
intersection, in direction of turn is by far most frequently selected
(71.88 %), followed by the other, associated position lying in direction of turn but behind the intersection position B (25 %). Positions
opposite to the direction of turn (A and C) lag far behind, suggesting
that the significant difference between direction independent positions
in front of and behind the intersection (1 and 2 against 3 and 4) is
solely driven by the popularity of D.
30
25
20
15
17.86
14.73
12.95
uniform distribution
10
4.46
4.02
*
2.68
a| Position independent of
direction of turn
Position dependent of |b
direction of turn
12.5%
14.29%
1.34%
25%
37.5%
35.71%
1.79%
71.88%
Discussion
This study examined the selection of three different landmark features, namely color, shape, and location. Participants were instructed
to select according to their own persuasion what kind of landmark is
most qualified to aid a nonlocal person to find her way following a
route description. Most favored by the participants was the color red
(followed by green and blue, which, due to a error correction did not
differ from chance). The least preferred colors were the luminances
black and white. As for shapes triangle and circle were most frequently selected (ensued by square, although, without significant
difference from chance). Least preferred were ellipse, hexagon, and
rhomboid. A significant prominence of the position D was found.
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S144
Table 1 Multiple Chi Square comparisons for the two types of definition for landmark location
Independ.
12
v2(1)
0.267
Depend.
.699
AB
v2(1)
47.610
p
\.001*
13
28
\.001*
AC
0.143
14
25.037
\.001*
AD
152.220
\.001*
23
23.310
\.001*
BC
45.067
\.001*
24
20.571
\.001*
BD
50.806
\.001*
34
0.098
.815
CD
149.388
\.001*
1.000
The neglect of the luminances black and white is in line with the
assumptions concerning visual salience, namely, that a low contrast to
the grey and white background of the experimental material is not
preferable in a wayfinding context. Results suggest that participants
were aware of the positive impact of contrast. Interestingly, neither
former results of color preferences (Hurlbert, Ling 2007) nor benefit in
recognition (Wahl et al. 2008) are perfectly mirrored in our data, suggesting that selection process was not based on either of these levels.
Instead, it seems to be plausible to suggest a selection strategy preferring landmark features according to familiarity. As red, blue, and green
constitute the three primary colors every western pupil gets taught in
school and as they are probably the most used colors in street signs, they
might also be best established and conceptualized in the knowledge of
an average person, selecting these colors. For the visual and semantic
salience of shapes a similar explanation may be consulted. Shapes are
preferred, which are highly common and easy to identify by everyone:
triangles and circles. Furthermore, the low complexity of these shapes
compared to rhomboid or hexagon might have affected the selection as
well. It seems that the sharpness of the contour of an object was
immaterial in this task. The clearest and most reliable result is the
preference for position D (allocentric), the position before the intersection and in direction of the turn. Also Waller, Lippa (2007) pointed
out the advantages of landmarks in directions of turn as they serve as
beacons (as compared to associative cues). Merely recognizing these
landmarks is sufficient to know where to go, since their position reveals
the correct direction response at an intersection.
Overall, it seems that participants did not choose object properties according to a mere personal feature preference. Their
selection process probably involved preference with respect to perceptibility, easiness of memorization, and usability in terms of
wayfinding (this works fine as a landmark). To what extent the
selection was based on a conscious or unconscious process cant be
determined here. Also, if the fact of guiding another person (compared to oneself) played an important role in creating a landmark
cant be sufficiently answered at this point. Furthermore, if these
preferences really help people to learn a route faster or easier yet is
another question. For the task of building a landmark, which shall
aid other people to find the same way, we found evidence that
people show clear preference for best-known and most common
colors and shapes. Moreover, the high frequency of the selection of
the position before the turn and in the direction of turn is striking.
This study, the task of creating a landmark, is a small contribution
to the expanding research on visual as well as semantic, and
structural salience of landmarks.
References
Bar M, Neta M (2006) Humans prefer curved visual objects. Psychol
Sci 17:645648
Hurlbert AC, Ling Y (2007) Biological components of sex differences
in color preference. Curr Biol 17:R623R625
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constitutively related. Contra Carruthers, the relationship between a
first order and a second order thought is not a constitutive but a causal
associative one. Thought and language are not constitutively
connected.
Evidence for LASSO: Language & perceptual categorization
The suggested view enjoys significant empirical support, e.g. from
evidence showing that perceptual categorization depends on language. This evidence could in turn be used against the communicative
conception of language. For instance, in a series of experiments,
Davidoff, Robertson (2004) examined LEWsa patient with language impairments and close to the profile of high-level Wernickes
aphasia, abilities to categorize visually presented color stimuli, and
found that color categories did not pop-out for LEW. Instead, he
retreated to a comparison between pairs, which in turn resulted in his
poor performance in the categorization tasks. From this, Davidoff,
Robertson argue that color categorization is essentially a rule-governed process. And even though colors are assigned to a given
category on the basis of similarity, it is similarity to a conventionally
named color that underlines this assignment. LEWs inability to
categorize simple perceptual stimuli is because names are simply not
available to him.
With regards to his performance in the color and shape categorization tasks, they argue that it is not the case that LEW has simply lost
color or shape names. He is rather unable to consciously allocate
items to perceptual categories. To this extent, they argue that LEWs
impairment is not related to a type-of-knowledge but rather to a typeof-thought story. Furthermore, they argue that there is a type of
classification, independent of feature classification, which is
unavailable to aphasics with naming disorders. This evidence does not
suggest a constitutive relation between language and thinking. Instead
it suggests a strong relation between naming and categorization
impairments, which could be explained by appealing to a strong
association between a linguistic label and a concept. This in turn lends
support to LASSO.
Evidence against a constitutive relation between language &
cognition
Evidence in favor of LASSO and against a constitutive relation
between language and cognition can be found in results showing that
grammara constitutive part of languageis neither necessary nor
sufficient for thinking and more specifically in Theory of Mind (ToM)
reasoning. For instance, Siegal, Varley, Want (2001) show a double
dissociation between grammar and ToM reasoning, which in turn
indicates that reasoning can occur largely independently from grammatical language. Even though ToM understanding and
categorization is not all there is to cognition, had it been the case that
there was a constitutive relation between language and (conscious)
cognitionin the way Carruthers argues for instancethen a double
dissociation between grammar and ToM reasoning would have never
occurred.
Focusing on the relation between grammar and cognition in
aphasia, Varley and Siegal (2000) show that subjects with severe
agrammatic aphasia and minimal access to propositional language
performed well in different ToM tests and were capable of simple
causal reasoning. On these grounds, Siegal, Varley, Want (2001)
argue that reasoning about beliefs as well as other forms of sophisticated cognitive processes involve processes that are not dependent
on grammar. By contrast to the previous evidence, Siegal et al. report
that non-aphasic subjects with right-hemisphere (non-language
dominant) lesions exhibited impaired ToM reasoning and had difficulties understanding sarcasm, jokes and the conversational
implications of questions (Siegal et al. 1996; Happe et al. 1999). This
double dissociation between grammar on the one hand and causal
reasoning and ToM on the other, suggest a non-constitutive relation
between language and cognition, and in turn favors LASSO.
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Objections to LASSO
Qua inherently associationistic, LASSO might be subject to the
objection that it cannot account for propositional thinking or for
compositionality of thought. For it might be that LASSO at best
describes how inter-connected concepts become activated without
explaining the propositional-syntactic properties that thoughts in the
form of inner speech have. In reply, a single thought becomes
propositional in structure and content by piggybacking on language.
The conventional grammatical unity and structure of the sentence
unifies these concepts and orders them in a certain way.
Another challenge facing associationistic accounts of thinking is
that it is unclear how they can account for the characteristic of concepts to combine compositionally. In reply, I appeal to Prinzs
semantic account (2002), according to which, in order for c to refer to
x, the following two conditions have to be fulfilled:
a) xs nomologically covary with tokens of c
b) An x was the (actual) incipient cause of c
In the suggested view the concept petfish, like all concepts, is a
folder that contains perceptual representations. The incipient causes
of petfish can either be instances of petfish or representations of pets
and representations of fish. Crucially, in terms of semantics, petfish
has to nomologically covary with petfish rather than a disjunction of
pet and fish. The reason why petfish nomologically covaries with
petfish is that the concepts functional role is constrained by the
constraints on the uses of the word that are set by the agents locking
into the conventions about conjunction formation. In this sense,
agents participate in a convention and it is via the association between
the word and the concept that the functional role of the conjunctive
concept is constrained. In terms of the constitutive representations of
petfish, these can be representations of pets like cats and dogs as well
as representations of fish. Crucially, these representations are idle in
the functional role of the concept; the latter is more constrained by its
link to the words.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Finn Spicer, Anthony Everett and Jesse Prinz for
comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Research for this paper has
been partly funded by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit
Foundation (ZF 075) and partly by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (SFB 991_Project A03).
References
Barsalou LW (1999) Perceptual symbol systems, Behav Brain Sci 22:
577609. doi:10.1017/s0140525x99002149
Berk L and Garvin R (1984) Development of private speech among
low-income Appalachian children. Dev Psychol 20 2: 271286.
doi:10.1037/0012-1649.20.2.271
Brandom R (1994) Making it explicit: Reasoning, representing, and
discursive commitment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
MA
Carruthers P (1998) Conscious thinking: Language or elimination?
Mind Lang 13 4: 457476. doi:10.1111/1468-0017.00087
Carruthers P (2005) Consciousness: Essays from a higher order perspective. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Clark A (1998) Magic words: How language augments human computation. In Carruthers P and Boucher J (ed) Language and
thought: Interdisciplinary themes, pp 162183. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Clark A and Chalmers DJ (1998) The extended mind. Analysis 58
1:719. doi:10.1111/1467-8284.00096
Damasio AR (1989) Time-locked multiregional retroactivation: A systems-level proposal for the neural substrates of recall and recognition.
Cognition 33: 2562. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(89)90005-X
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The products of rewiring have an additional characteristic that is
relevant to the brain: they are modular networks (Rubinov et al.
2009a). This means that they form community structures that interact
via hubs. The hubs are specialized nodes that network evolution has
given the role of mediating connections between communities. They
synchronize, sometimes with one and sometimes with another and can
be considered as agents of change in the behavior of the regions to
which they are connected.
Several studies have explored, and help extend, the notion that
adaptive rewiring leads to modular small worlds. It was already
shown early on (Gong and van Leeuwen 2003) that combining
rewiring with network growth results in a modular network that is
also scale-free in the distribution of its connectivity (Barabasi and
Albert 1999). Kwok et al. (2007) have shown, that the behavior of
these networks is not limited to coupled maps, but could also be
obtained with more realistic, i.e. spiking model neurons. Other than
the coupled maps, these have directed connections. As the system
proceeds its evolution, the activity in the nodes changes. Initial
bursting activity (as observed in immature neurons, see e.g. Leinekugel et al. 2002, an activity assumed to be random but in fact, like
that of the model, shows deterministic structure, see Nakatani et al.
2003), gives way to a mixture of regular and irregular activity characteristic of mature neurons.
Van den Berg et al. (2012) lesioned the model and showed that there
is a critical level of connectivity, at which the growth of small-world
structure can no longer be robustly sustained. Somewhat surprisingly,
this results in a break-down, not primarily in the connections between
the clusters, but in the local clustering. In other words, the network shifts
towards randomness. This corresponds to observations in patients
diagnosed with schizophrenia (Rubinov et al. 2009b). The model,
therefore, could suggest an explanation of the anomalies in large-scale
connectivity structures found in schizophrenic patients.
Despite these promising results, a major obstacle towards realistic
application of the model has been the absence of any geometry. A
spatial embedding for the model would allow us to consider the effect of
biological constraints such as metabolic costs and wiring length. In a
recent study, Jarman et al. (2014) studied networks endowed with
metrics, i.e. a definition of distance between nodes, and observed its
effects on adaptive rewiring. A cost function that penalizes rewiring
more distant nodes, leads to a modular small world structure with
greater efficiency and robustness, compared to rewiring based on synchrony alone. The resulting network, moreover, consists of spatially
segregated modules (Fig. 2, left part), in which within-module connections are predominantly of short range and their inter-connections
are of long range (Fig. 2, right part). This implies that the topological
principle of adaptive rewiring and the spatial principle of rewiring costs
operate in synergy to achieve a brain-like architecture. Both principles
are biologically plausible. The spatially biased rewiring process,
therefore, may be considered as a basic mechanism for how large-scale
architecture of the cortex is formed.
The models developed so far have been no more (and no less)
than a proof of principle. To some extent, this is how it should be.
Efforts at biological realism can sometimes obscure the cognitive,
neurodynamical principles on which a model is based. Some predictions, such as what happens when lesioning the model, could
already be made with a purely topological version, with its extreme
simplification of the neural dynamics. Yet, in order to be relevant,
future model development will have to engage more with neurobiology. We are doing this step by step Jarman et al. (2014) have
overcome an important hurdle in applying the model by showing
how spatial considerations could be taken into account. Yet, more is
needed. First, we need to resume our work on realistic (spiking)
neurons (Kwok et al. 2007): We will consider, distinct (inhibitory
and excitatory) neural populations, realistic neural transmission
delays, spike-timing dependent plasticity and more differentiated
description of mechanisms that guide synaptogenesis in the
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p (i.e. non-p) (cf. Bellers 2003, closed-world principle). Imagine
homogeneity of non-p with P(q|p) = P(q|non-p) = .82 (e.g., if one
does p then one gets chocolate q but for non-p cases one gets
chocolate with the same probability as well.) Here it seems inappropriate to assign the high probability of P(q|p) to P(p & [ q) as well,
since the antecedent does not make a difference. However, consider a
similar case were non-p is heterogeneous. Take nine subclasses in
which P(q|non-p) = .9 and one in which P(q|non-p) = .1 (this yields
the same average of P(q|non-p) = .82). For such a heterogeneous
contrast class, the conditional is indeed taken to singles out only the
specific subclass p (similar to the conditional probability approach),
since there is at least one potential contrast in one subclass of nonp For the homogeneous case, however, the probability of the conditional is claimed to reflect the overall situation, and a high probability
here would involve a difference between P(q|non-p) and P(q| p).
(3) BMMC represents the simpler, antecedent-only models of
conditionals, not as extensional probabilities, or relative frequencies
of (observed or imagined) conditionals, but as subjective estimates of
generative probabilities that have produced them. Although similar to
a conditional probability approach, i.e. PE(q|p), this measure depends
on priors and sample size. For flat priors observing a [4; 1] input
(f(p&q), f(p&non-q)) yields a lower P(p * [q) than for a larger
sample size, e.g. [40; 10]. Particularly for low sample sizes, priors
may overrule likelihoods, reversing high and low conditional probability judgments.
Formally, the model uses cases of q or non-q, conditional on p, as
input (taken as Bernoulli trials with an unchanging generative probability h). Given a value of h the Binomial distribution provides us
with the likelihood of the data, P(D| h), with input k = f(q|p) in
n = f(q|p) + f(q|p) trials:
n k
Bkjh; n
h 1 hnk
k
We obtain a likelihood density function for all h (cf. middle
Fig. 1), resulting in a Beta distribution, now with the generative
probability h as an unknown parameter (with a-1 = f(x = q|p) and
b-1 = f(x = :q|p):
Betaa; b Phja; b const: ha1 1 hb1
As prior for h we take the conjugate Beta distribution (e.g.,
Beta(1,1) as flat prior) to calculate easily a Beta posterior probability
Fig. 1 Example for the prior for h, the Binomial likelihood and the
Beta posterior distribution over h
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distribution for h (Fig. 1) that depends on sample size and priors. Its
mean is a rational point estimate for the subjective probability of
q given p.
(4) In contrast, given fully represented conditionals (no heterogeneous contrast class), the probability of a conditional even more
clearly differs from (extensional) conditional probabilities (cf. Leitgeb 2007). One option would be to apply a general probabilistic
pattern logic (von Sydow 2011) to conditionals. In this case, conditionals, however, would yield the same results as inclusive
disjunctions P(p & [ q) = P(:p _ q). Albeit here concerned with all
four cells of a logical truth table, another option is that conditionals
have a direction even in non-causal settings. This assumption will be
pursued here. A hypothetical causal-sampling assumption that asserts
hypothetical antecedent-sampling for conditionals (Fiedler 2000), as
if assuming that the antecedent would have caused the data (cf.
Stalnaker 1968; Evans, Over 2004). (In the presence of additional
causal knowledge, one may correct for this, but this is not modelled
here.) Based on the generative models of conditional probabilities
(Step 3), here generative versions of delta P (Allan, Jenkins 1980) or
causal power (Cheng 1997) are suggested as another possible formalization of a full conditional.
Formally, the two conditional probability distributions (for q|p and
q|non-p) are determined based Step 3. To proceed from the two beta
posterior distributions on the interval [0, 1], to a distribution for Delta
P, relating to P(q|p)-P(q|non-p) in the interval [- 1, 1], one can use
standard sampling techniques (e.g. inversion or rejection method,
Lynch 2007). For the sequential learning measure for causal power
one proceeds analogously. The means of the resulting probability
distributions may be taken as point estimates. However, these Delta P
and causal power may not be flexible enough (see Step 6).
(5) Let us first return to incomplete conditionals (Step 3). Even
here the probability of a conditional P(p * [ q) may have to be
distinguished from the conditional probability, even if modelled as a
generative conditional probability (Step 3). To me there are to other
plausible options: One option would be to model probabilities of
conditionals along similar lines as other connectives have been
modelled in von Sydow (2011). Here I propose another option, closely related to another proposal von Sydow (2014). This builds on the
general idea of high probability accounts (Adams 1986; Schurz 2001,
cf. 2005; Foley 2009), here specifying acceptance intervals over h.
This seems particularly suitable if concerned with the alternative
testing of the hypotheses p * [ q, p * [ non-q, and,
p * [ q_non-q (e.g., if one does p then one either gets chocolate
q or does not). This links to the debate concerning conjunction
fallacies and other inclusion fallacies (given p, q_non-q refers to the
tautology and includes the affirmation q; cf. von Sydow 2011, 2014).
Formally, we start with ideal generative probabilities on the h
scale (hq = 1; hnon-q = 0; p and hq_non-q = .5) (cf. von Sydow 2011).
We then vary for each of the three hypotheses H, the acceptance
threshold e (over all, or all plausible, values). For e = .2, the closed
acceptance inter-val for the consequent q would be [.8, 1]; for non-q,
[0, .2]; and for q_non-q, [.4, .6]. Based on Step 3 we calculate for all
tested hypotheses the integral over h in the specified interval of the
posterior probability distribution:
h2
r Posterior distributionh; H
h1
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to one of the two dimension poles. Preliminary studies in our research
group revealed that in some cases an estimate of about 50 participants
had to be investigated for cognitive style with the VVQ in order to
clearly assign 23 people to one of the two groups, which is not very
useful and also not very economic for further research.
In the present study, our aim is to translate the VVQ into German
language. It seems to be necessary to translate and evaluate this
questionnaire, since it is not evaluated and because of the lack of an
equivalent tool freely available for research on the visualizer-verbalizer-dimension in the German-speaking area.
Experiment
Method
Participants
A total of 476 participants (377 female/99 male), ranging from 18 to
50 years (M = 24.14 years) were examined anonymously in an
online study during the period from 12/16/2013 to 01/14/2014. Most
of the participants highest educational attainment was claimed to be a
high-school diploma (n = 278), followed by university degree
(n = 195) and other school graduation (n = 3). All participants were
told that the study served to evaluate several translated forms of
questionnaires, which included the VVQ. Participation was voluntary
and was not compensated for in any way.
Materials
The used material was the VVQ in its translated form. Table 1 shows
the translation of the whole inventory. The questionnaire was translated in three steps. In the first step, the VVQ was translated by the
first author of this study. Negatively formulated items were formulated negatively in German as well. Then in step two the translation
was corrected by the two co-authors. In the third step, a bilingual
member (native English- and German-speaking) of the research group
of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science corrected the
translated items on colloquial subtleties.
After the translation process the online-study was setup with
LimeSurvey, a tool for creating and conducting online studies.
Procedure
Participants were recruited with an E-Mail containing basic information and the Hyperlink to the study webpage. Forwarded to the
webpage via the Hyperlink, participants first received a short introduction about the aim of the study, followed by three standard
demographical questions (gender, age, and level of education; Fig. 1).
A specific instruction marked the start of the VVQ. Participants
were asked to answer each item with either yes or no and, if they were
not able to answer an item neither with yes nor no, they were asked to
choose the answer that most likely applied to them. The translated
items of the VVQ were presented in the same order as in the original
version of the questionnaire.
Results
Before reporting the results of the VVQ, it should be noted that we
were unable to compare our findings with the original data, due to the
lack of statistical data in the original study by Richardson (1977).
After reversing the code of negatively formulated items, we analyzed
the VVQ with a factor analysis and Varimax rotation. The assumed
two factors were preset. Each of the two factors had an eigenvalue
above two (2.32 and 2.42) and taken together, these factors explained
31.59 % of the variance. Table 2 shows the results of the factor
analysis in detail. We only found eight items matching their predicted
scale, while each scale contains four items. The other seven items
could not clearly be assigned to one of these scales. Figure 2 shows a
diagram of the items in the rotated space to illustrate the distribution
of each item to the respective underlying factor.
Cronbachs alpha (a = .04) of the translated version is very weak,
when considering the whole inventory, but reaches at least a moderate
level (a = .57), when items 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 13 and 14 are
eliminated.
123
VVQ_02
VVQ_03
VVQ_04
VVQ_05
VVQ_06
I seldom dream
Ich traume selten
VVQ_07
VVQ_08
VVQ_09
Discussion
The investigation of the VVQ reveals a large deviation between the
original VVQ and the translated version. The data suggests that the
translated VVQ contains the two predicted main factors (visualizer
and verbalizer). These two factors or in other words the two extreme
poles of the visualizer-verbalizer-dimension are covered with four
items each. These are the items 02, 05, 11 and 15 for the visualizerpole and the items 01, 03, 04 and 12 for the verbalizer-pole. The
remaining seven items cannot clearly be attributed to one of the poles.
S153
Verbalizer
Visualizer
01
.754
02
.006
.037
.618
03
.684
-.034
04
.655
.068
05
.216
.423
06
.032
-.619
07
08
-.300
-.097
-.030
-.280
09
-.058
-.214
10
.127
-.151
.657
11
-.087
12
.587
.073
13
-.089
-.692
14
-.655
-.131
15
.011
.533
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S154
Acknowledgment
We thank Sarah Jane Abbott for help within the translations process
and for proof-reading the manuscript.
References
Baddeley AD, Hitch G (1974) Working memory. In Bower GH (ed)
The psychology of learning and motivation: advances in
research and theory. Academic Press, New York, pp 4789
Blajenkova O, Kozhevnikov M, Motes MA (2006) Object-spatial
imagery: a new self-report imagery questionnaire. Appl Cogn
Psychol 20:239263
Edwards JE, Wilkins W (1981) Verbalizer-visualizer questionnaire:
relationship with imagery and verbal-visual ability. J Mental
Imagery 5:137142
Jonasson DH, Grabowski BL (1993) Handbook of individual differences, learning, and instruction. Erlbaum, Hillsdale
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Author Index
For each author, references are given to the type of contribution, if (s)he is the first author, or to the first author, if (s)he is a
co-author. Within each type, contributions are ordered alphabetically.
Afsari Z.
Albrecht R.
Alex-Ruf S.
Aschersleben G.
Augurzky P.
Bader M.
Bahnmueller J.
Baier F.
Baumann M.
Bech M.
Bekkering H.
Bennati S.
Bergmann K.
Bernhart N.
Besold T. R.
Bianco R.
Biondi J.
Blascheck T.
Blasing B.
Bogart K.
Bohn K.
Bott O.
Brandenburg S.
Brandi M.
Brauer R. R.
Braun C.
Braun D. A.
Brauner C.
Brock J.
Buchel C.
Bulthoff H. H.
Burch M.
Burigo M.
Buschmeier H.
Butz M. V.
Caruana N.
Chang D.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS (2);
ORAL PRESENTATIONS (2)
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
? SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
? ORAL PRESENTATIONS (2);
Ellsiepen, E.
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Hamburger, K.
? SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Michael, J.
? KEYNOTE LECTURE; SYMPOSIUM
(Koester)
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Rizzardi, E.
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
? POSTER PRESENTATION,
ORAL PRESENTATION
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Blasing, B.
? TUTORIAL (Raschke)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
ORAL PRESENTATION; Seegelke, C.
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Michael, J.
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Kandylaki, K.
? SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
? SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
? SYMPOSIUM (Himmelbach)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Fischer, N.M.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (de la Rosa); POSTER
PRESENTATION; Leibfried, F.
? SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Caruana, N.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Wache, S.
? POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(5);
ORAL PRESENTATION (2);
Chang, D; Glatz, C; Hohmann, M.R.;
Meilinger, T.; Symeonidou, E.;
Chang, D.; Scheer, M.
? TUTORIAL (Raschke)
? SYMPOSIUM (Knoeferle, Burigo)
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; ORAL
PRESENTATIONS (2); Lohmann, J.;
Ehrenfeld, S.; Schrodt, F.
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
ORAL PRESENTATION
Chuang L. L.
Ciaunica A.
Colombo M.
Coogan J.
Coyle D.
Cremers A. B.
Damaskinos M.
Daroczy G.
de la Rosa S.
de la Vega I.
de Lange F. P.
Demarchi G.
Demberg V.
Dittrich K.
Domahs U.
Dorner D.
Dowker A.
Dshemuchadse M.
Dudschig C.
Egan F.
Ehrenfeld S.
Ehrsson H. H.
Ellsiepen E.
Engelbrecht K.
Engelhardt P. E.
Fard P. R.
Fengler A.
Fernandez L. B.
Fernandez S.R.
Festl F.
Fischer M. H.
Fischer N. M.
Frankenstein J.
Franzmeier I.
? POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(2);
ORAL PRESENTATION; Glatz, C.;
Symeonidou, E.; Scheer, M.
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Morgan)
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Blasing, B.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Limerick, H.
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Garcia, G.M.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
? SYMPOSIUM (de la Rosa); POSTER
PRESENTATIONS (2); ORAL
PRESENTATION Chang, D.;
Hohmann, M.R.; Chang, D.
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS (2);
Wolter, S.
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Braun, S.
? SYMPOSIUM (Knoeferle, Burigo)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Scholtes, C.
? ORAL PRESENTATION;
Kandylaki, K.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Damaskinos, M.
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Frisch, S.
? POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(2);
ORAL PRESENTATION;
de la Vega, I.; Wolter, S.; Lachmair, M.
? SYMPOSIUM (Morgan)
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? KEYNOTE LECTURE
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? ORAL PRESENTATION;
Halbrugge, M.
? SYMPOSIUM (Knoeferle, Burigo)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Yahya, K.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Krause, C.
? SYMPOSIUM (Knoeferle, Burigo)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
ORAL PRESENTATIONS (2);
Lachmair, M.; Rolke, B.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Seibold, V.C.
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk); POSTER
PRESENTATION; Sixtus, E.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Meilinger, T.
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Ragni, M.
123
S156
Freksa C.
Frey J.
Friederici A. D
Friedrich C. K.
Frintrop S.
Frisch S.
Friston K.
Fusaroli R.
Garbusow M.
Garcia G. M.
Giese M. A.
Giewein M.
Glatz C.
Godde B.
Goebel S.
Goldenberg G.
Goltenboth N.
Gomez O.
Goschke T.
Grau-Moya J.
Gray W. D.
Grishkova I.
Grosjean M.
Groer J.
Grosz P.
Gunter T.
Guss C. D.
Halbrugge M.
Halfmann M.
Hamburger K.
Hardiess G.
Hartl H.
Heege L.
Hein E.
Heinz A.
Hellbernd N.
Henning A.
Herbort O.
Hermsdorfter J.
Hesse C.
Himmelbach M.
Hinterecker T.
Hofmeister J.
Hohmann M. R.
123
Holle H.
Huber S.
Huys Q.
Jager G.
Jakel F.
Janczyk M.
Javadi A. H.
Joeres F.
Junger E.
Kahl S.
Kandylaki K.
Karnath H.
Kathner D.
Kaul R.
Kaup B.
Keller P.
Keyser J.
Kircher T.
Klauer K. C.
Knoblich G.
Knoeferle P.
Koester D.
Konig P.
Konig S. U.
Kopp S.
Kotowski S.
Krause C.
Kroczek L.
Kruegger J.
Kuhl D.
Kunde W.
Kurzhals K.
Kutscheidt K.
Lachmair M.
Lancier S.
Lappe M.
Le Bigot M.
Leibfried F.
Limerick H.
Lindemann O.
Lindner A.
Lindner N.
Lindner S.
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk); POSTER
PRESENTATION; Radler, P.A.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
? SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
? TUTORIAL (Jakel)
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS;
ORAL PRESENTATION; Groer, J.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
? TUTORIAL (Russwinkel, Prezenski,
Joeres, Lindner, Halbrugge); POSTER
PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
? ORAL PRESENTATION;
Bergmann, K.
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Rennig, J.
? SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
? SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
? POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(2);
ORAL PRESENTATION;
de la Vega, I.; Wolter, S.; Lachmair, M.
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Bianco, R.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Wache, S.
? ORAL PRESENTATION;
Kandylaki, K.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Scholtes, C.
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS (2);
Vesper, C.; Wolf, T.
? SYMPOSIUM (Knoeferle, Burigo)
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester); POSTER
PRESENTATION; Seegelke, C.
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS (2);
Afsari, Z.; Wache, S.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Wache, S.
? POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(2);
ORAL PRESENTATION; Buschmeier,
H.; Grishkova, I.; Bergmann, K.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Michael, J.
? SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Janczyk, M.
? TUTORIAL (Raschke)
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS; ORAL
PRESENTATION; Fernandez, S.R.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Masselink, J.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Grosjean, M.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Sixtus, E.
? SYMPOSIUM (Morgan); POSTER
PRESENTATION; Kutscheidt, K.
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Russwinkel, Prezenski,
Lindner); TUTORIAL (Russwinkel,
Prezenski, Joeres, Lindner, Halbrugge)
?
?
?
?
?
?
Maier S.
Mallot H. A.
?
?
Marmolejo-Ramos F.
Masselink J.
Matthews R.
McRae K.
?
?
?
?
Meilinger T.
Meurers D.
Michael J.
Milin P.
Moeller K.
?
?
?
?
?
Mohler B. J.
Monittola G.
Moore J.
?
?
Morgan A.
Muckli L.
Muller R.
Myachykov A.
Nagels A.
?
?
?
?
?
Neumann H.
Newen A.
Novembre G.
Nuerk H.
Obrig H.
Olivari M.
?
?
?
?
?
Ondobaka S.
Ossandon J.
Ostergaard J. R.
Patel-Grosz P.
Pfeiffer T.
?
?
?
?
?
Pfeiffer-Lessmann N.
Pfister R.
Pfluger H.
Pixner S.
?
?
?
?
Pliushch I.
Popov T.
Prezenski S.
?
?
?
Rabovsky M.
Radanovic J.
Radler P. A.
Ragni M.
?
?
?
?
SYMPOSIUM (Himmelbach)
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
POSTER PRESENTATION
ORAL PRESENTATION; Rolke, B.
ORAL PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Damaskinos, M.
ORAL PRESENTATION; Ragni, M.
POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(3);
ORAL PRESENTATION; Hardiess, G.;
Lancier, S.; Schick, W.
POSTER PRESENTATION; Vaci, N.
POSTER PRESENTATION
SYMPOSIUM (Morgan)
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Rabovsky, M.
POSTER PRESENTATION
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
ORAL PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION; Vaci, N.
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk); POSTER
PRESENTATION; Radler P.A.
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Meilinger, T.
POSTER PRESENTATION; Braun, C.
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Limerick, H.
SYMPOSIUM (Morgan)
SYMPOSIUM (Morgan)
POSTER PRESENTATION
SYMPOSIUM (Knoeferle, Burigo)
ORAL PRESENTATION;
Kandylaki, K.
TUTORIAL (Neumann); ORAL
PRESENTATION; Gomez, O.
POSTER PRESENTATION; Heege, L.
ORAL PRESENTATION; Bianco, R.
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
POSTER PRESENTATION; Krause, C.
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Symeonidou, E.
SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
POSTER PRESENTATION; Afsari, Z.
ORAL PRESENTATION; Michael, J.
SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
POSTER PRESENTATIONS; ORAL
PRESENTATION; Renner, P.
ORAL PRESENTATION; Pfeiffer, T.
SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
TUTORIAL (Raschke)
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Radler, P.A.
POSTER PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION; Braun, C.
SYMPOSIUM (Russwinkel, Prezenski,
Lindner); TUTORIAL (Russwinkel,
Prezenski, Joeres, Lindner, Halbrugge)
POSTER PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION; Vaci, N.
POSTER PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATIONS; ORAL
PRESENTATION (3); Albrecht, R.;
Rizzardi, E.; Steinlein, E.
S157
Rahona J. J
Rapp M. A.
Raschke M.
Rebuschat P.
Renner P.
Rennig J.
Rizzardi E.
Roberts M.
Rohrich W. G.
Rolke B.
Romoli J.
Roser F.
Roth M. J.
Ruiz S.
Russwinkel N.
Safra L.
Sammler D.
Sandamirskaya Y.
Schack T.
Schad D.
Scheer M.
Schenk T.
Scherbaum S.
Schick W.
Schiltz C.
Schmid U.
Schmitz L.
Schneegans S.
Scholtes C.
Schoner G.
Schrodt F.
Schulz M.
Schumacher P.
Schumann F.
Sebanz N.
Sebold M.
Seegelke C.
Sehm B.
Seibold V. C.
? ORAL PRESENTATION;
Fernandez, S.R.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
? TUTORIAL (Raschke)
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS; ORAL
PRESENTATION; Pfeiffer, T.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Mallot, H.A.
? SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke);
POSTER PRESENTATION; ORAL
PRESENTATION; Seibold, V.C.
? SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
? POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(2);
ORAL PRESENTATIONS (2);
Hamburger, K.; Strickrodt, M.;
Wedell, F.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Kutscheidt, K.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Rebuschat, P.
? SYMPOSIUM (Russwinkel, Prezenski,
Lindner); TUTORIAL (Russwinkel,
Prezenski, Joeres, Lindner, Halbrugge);
ORAL PRESENTATION; Joeres, F.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Vesper, C.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
ORAL PRESENTATION; Bianco, R.;
Hellbernd, N.
? TUTORIAL (Sandamirskaya,
Schneegans)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
ORAL PRESENTATION; Blasing, B.;
Seegelke, C.
? POSTER PRESENTATIONS (2);
Rabovsky, M.
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Himmelbach)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Frisch, S.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Damaskinos, M.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Vesper, C.
? TUTORIAL (Sandamirskaya,
Schneegans)
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? KEYNOTE LECTURE
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Russwinkel, Prezenski,
Lindner)
? SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Wache, S.
? KEYNOTE LECTURE; POSTER
PRESENTATIONS (2); Vesper, C.;
Wolf, T.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Krause, C.
? POSTER PRESENTATION; ORAL
PRESENTATION; Rolke, B.
123
S158
Shaki S.
Simmel L.
Sixtus E.
Smolka M.
Soltanlou M.
Sorg C.
Spiegel M. A.
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Steffenhagen F.
Stein S. C.
Steinlein E.
Sternefeld W.
Strickrodt M.
Sutterlutti R.
Symeonidou E.
Szucs D.
Tamosinunaite M.
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Teickner C.
Thuring M.
Tillas A.
Trillmich C. M.
?
?
?
?
Tuason M. T.
Tylen K.
Tzelgov J.
Ugen S.
Ulrich R.
Unger M.
?
?
?
?
?
Vaci N.
van Leeuwen C.
Van Rinsveld A.
Vesper C.
?
?
?
?
Villringer A.
Voelcker-Rehage C.
Vogeley K.
?
?
?
123
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
ORAL PRESENTATION; Blasing, B.
POSTER PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
SYMPOSIUM (Himmelbach)
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Seegelke, C.
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Albrecht, R.
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Sutterlutti, R.
ORAL PRESENTATION
SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
ORAL PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Sutterlutti, R.
POSTER PRESENTATION; Schick, W.
SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
ORAL PRESENTATION
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Hamburger, K.
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Goltenboth, N.
ORAL PRESENTATION; Michael, J.
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
SYMPOSIUM (Brauner, Jager, Rolke)
POSTER PRESENTATION;
Fischer, N.M.
POSTER PRESENTATION
ORAL PRESENTATION
SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
POSTER PRESENTATIONS (2);
Wolf, T.
ORAL PRESENTATION; Bianco R.
SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
SYMPOSIUM (de la Rosa)
von Sydow M.
Vorwerg C.
Vosgerau G.
Wache S.
Wachsmuth S.
Weber L.
Wedell F.
Weigelt M.
Weiss-Blankenhorn P. H.
Weisz N.
Wenczel F.
Westphal B.
Wiese R.
Wiese W.
Wirzberger M.
Wittmann M.
Wohlschlager A.
Wolbers T.
Wolf C.
Wolf T.
Wolska M.
Wolter S.
Wong H. Y.
Woolgar A.
Worgotter F.
Wortelen B.
Wuhle A.
Wunsch K.
Yaghoubzadeh R.
Yahya K.
Zimmermann U. S.
Zohar-Shai B.
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Grishkova, I.
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Lindner, N.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Renner, P.
? SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
? ORAL PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
? SYMPOSIUM (Himmelbach)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Braun, C.
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Ragni M.
? POSTER
PRESENTATIONS
(1);
ORAL PRESENTATION (2);
Albrecht, R.; Albrecht, R.; Albrecht, R.
? ORAL PRESENTATION;
Kandylaki, K.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Pliushch, I.
? SYMPOSIUM (Russwinkel, Prezenski,
Lindner)
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
? SYMPOSIUM (Himmelbach)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Wache, S.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Hamburger, K.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? SYMPOSIUM (de la Rosa)
? ORAL PRESENTATION; Caruana, N.
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Sutterlutti, R.
? SYMPOSIUM (Baumann)
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Braun, C.
? SYMPOSIUM (Koester)
? POSTER PRESENTATION;
Grishkova, I.
? POSTER PRESENTATION
? POSTER PRESENTATION; Schad, D.
? SYMPOSIUM (Nuerk)