A socially-based distributed self-organizing algorithm for holonic multi-agent systems: Case study in a task environment

Holonic multi-agent systems (HMASs) have recently attracted many researches in multi-agent systems community. Inspired from the multi-level and self-similar structures of social and biological system, holonic multi-agent systems have been widely used to model and solve complex real-world problems. The main concern in deploying HMASs is the problem of building the hierarchical holonic structure, called holarchy, and dynamically managing it during its lifetime. The way an HMAS is organized has a great impact on its applicability and performance. This paper proposes a self-organizing algorithm to build and manage the holoic structures in multi-agent systems. This algorithm is based on the local information of the agents about other agents they can communicate with. Using common social concepts, like skills, diversity, social exchange theory, and norms in definition of the algorithm, the outcomes of this research can be used in wide ranges of distributed applications. The proposed model is extensively tested in a task allocation problem; and its performance based on various design parameters is studied. Empirical results show that the proposed model properly increases the performance of the system in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.     

Exploring interhemispheric collaboration in older compared to younger adults

Physical and Name Identity letter-matching tasks were used to explore differences in interhemispheric collaboration in younger and older adults. To determine whether other factors might also be related to across/within-hemisphere processing or visual field asymmetries, neuropsychological tests measuring frontal/executive functioning were administered, and comparisons were made for participants split into low and high efficiency groups based on performance on the letter-matching tasks. A Task by Across/Within interaction was found for both groups, but with a stronger within-hemisphere advantage for the Physical Task and a weaker across-hemisphere advantage for the Name Task for older participants. More efficient groups and better performers on several neuropsychological tasks showed a reduced across-hemisphere advantage for the Name Identity task. Findings suggest that computational complexity, specific task demands, and perhaps trade-offs between age-related changes in gray and white matter all contribute to whether processing loads are distributed across or within hemispheres as we age.     

Learning data-driven decision-making policies in multi-agent environments for autonomous systems

Autonomous systems such as Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs), assistive robots are set improve the way we live. Autonomous systems need to be equipped with capabilities to Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a type of machine learning where an agent learns by interacting with its environment through trial and error, which has gained significant interest from research community for its promise to efficiently learn decision making through abstraction of experiences. However, most of the control algorithms used today in current autonomous systems such as driverless vehicle prototypes or mobile robots are controlled through supervised learning methods or manually designed rule-based policies. Additionally, many emerging autonomous systems such as driverless cars, are set in a multi-agent environment, often with partial observability. Learning decision making policies in multi-agent environments is a challenging problem, because the environment is not stationary from the perspective of a learning agent, and hence the Markov properties assumed in single agent RL does not hold. This paper focuses on learning decision-making policies in multi-agent environments, both in cooperative settings with full observability and dynamic environments with partial observability. We present experiments in simple, yet effective, new multi-agent environments to simulate policy learning in scenarios that could be encountered by an autonomous navigating agent such as a CAV. The results illustrate how agents learn to cooperate in order to achieve their objectives successfully. Also, it was shown that in a partially observable setting, an agent was capable of learning to roam around its environment without colliding in the presence of obstacles and other moving agents. Finally, the paper discusses how data-driven multi-agent policy learning can be extended to real-world environments by augmenting the intelligence of autonomous vehicles.     

The role of collaborative planning in children's source-monitoring errors and learning.

The aim of this research was to provide empirical evidence for a cognitive process that may contribute to children's learning from another person. A cornerstone of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory is that knowledge is internalized from others; however, the cognitive processes that support this transformation are underspecified. In a series of three studies, kindergarten children (mean age 5 years 8 months) participated in a categorization task with an adult in several collaborative and noncollaborative conditions and then were tested on their memory of who had performed which actions in the task. After the memory task, children were asked to recategorize the items on their own. Source-monitoring patterns and children's learning varied across conditions according to predictions. A measure of recoding was related to children's planning language that, in turn, predicted learning among the children. The results suggest that one process that contributes to children's internalization of knowledge may involve recoding of agent information and that recoding can be indexed by source-monitoring performance.     

全球化语境下的多元文化能力模型及其在跨文化合作中的应用

全球化带来了丰富的多元文化经验, 开阔了人们视野的同时, 也造成了认知负担, 进而可能引发对外文化群体的抵触情绪和排斥行为。多元文化经验的普遍性和两面性突显了对其进行合理管理和灵活应用的重要性。然而, 现有的文化能力的理论大多在全球化研究早期提出, 已经无法应对全球化带来的新变化。在文化会聚主义理论框架下, 将文化视为动态发展的系统, 建构以元知识为核心的多元文化能力模型将有助于深入理解全球化问题。新模型的效用检验计划从文化知识管理和群际接触应对两方面检验多元文化能力在跨文化合作情境中的效用与机制, 以期为全球化环境中个人与组织开展跨文化交流与合作的实践提供理论指导。     

External communication of automated vehicles in mixed traffic: Addressing the right human interaction partner in multi-agent simulation

The urban traffic system is most likely to change in the next years to a mixed traffic with human drivers, vulnerable road users, and automated vehicles. In the past, the development of external communication approaches for automated vehicles focused on scenarios where an automated vehicle communicates with either a pedestrian or a human driver. However, interactions with more than one traffic partner are more realistic. Therefore, a study with 42 participants was conducted with a multi-agent simulation in which an automated vehicle interacted simultaneously with two participants, a pedestrian and a driver of a manual vehicle. In this study, two main scenarios were investigated in order to evaluate the safety and efficiency of the interactions and to determine whether the human road users feel correctly addressed. In one scenario, the pedestrian had to cross the road in front of the automated and the manual vehicle, which were approaching from different sides. In the other, the manual vehicle had to drive through a bottleneck in front of the oncoming automated vehicle, while the pedestrian had to cross the road after both vehicles passed. The communication approach of the automated vehicle consisted of implicit signals using a speed profile and lateral offset within its lane, and explicit signals using an external human–machine interface. The results of the study show that no collisions were observed in terms of safety and no significant negative effects on efficiency were measured. However, in contrast to single agent interactions, a majority of participants felt wrongly addressed in situations where the automated vehicle signals the right-of-way to the other human road user. It can be concluded that the communication approach of the automated vehicle needs to be modified in order to address certain road users more clearly.     

Benefits of interhemispheric collaboration can be eliminated by mixing stimulus formats that involve different cortical access routes

Previous studies indicate that the benefits of dividing an information processing load across both cerebral hemispheres outweigh the costs of interhemispheric transfer as tasks become more difficult or cognitively complex. This is demonstrated as better performance when two stimuli to be compared are presented one to each visual field and hemisphere than when both stimuli are presented to the same single hemisphere (an across-hemisphere advantage). Two experiments indicate that this finding does not generalize to complex tasks that require matching numeric quantities represented by two very different visual formats whose processing involves somewhat different cortical areas: digits and dice-like dot patterns. In fact, mixing these stimulus formats consistently produces a within-hemisphere advantage. We propose that, when two simultaneously presented stimuli are presented in sufficiently different visual formats, identification of the two stimuli may take place in parallel, via different cortical access routes and with little or no interference, even when they are presented to the same cerebral hemisphere.     

Interaction in planning vocalizations and grasping

Previous studies have shown a congruency effect between manual grasping and syllable articulation. For instance, a power grip is associated with syllables whose articulation involves the tongue body and/or large mouth aperture ([kɑ]) whereas a precision grip is associated with articulations that involve the tongue tip and/or small mouth aperture ([ti]). Previously, this effect has been observed in manual reaction times. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate whether this congruency effect also takes place in vocal responses and to investigate involvement of action selection processes in the effect. The congruency effect was found in vocal and manual responses regardless of whether or not the syllable or grip was known a priori, suggesting that the effect operates with minimal or absent action selection processes. In addition, the effect was observed in vocal responses even when the grip was only prepared but not performed, suggesting that merely planning a grip response primes the corresponding articulatory response. These results support the view that articulation and grasping are processed in a partially overlapping network.     

A social psychological perspective on World War II collaboration in the 21st century: A Belgian case

The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of attitudes towards collaboration in the context of World War II (WWII) in Belgium. A survey conducted on 922 Belgian French- and Dutch-speaking participants shows that, on overall, Dutch-speakers perceive collaboration as more moral and support amnesty of the former collaborators at a higher level than their Francophone counterparts. In addition, we show that these attitudes are predicted by the generational belonging, linguistic and national identification of the participants. Finally, we find that attitudes towards WWII collaboration are linked to specific political prospects for the future of the country only among Dutch-speakers. These findings suggest that, 75 years after its end, the issue of collaboration during WWII still divides the Belgian society. Furthermore, they underline the added value of a multilevel approach in the understanding of social psychological phenomena.     

Mapping the state of the field of social psychology in Africa and patterns of collaboration between African and international social psychologists

Patterns of collaboration in social psychology from 2000 to 2010 were mapped to analyse the position of African authors in the international co‐authorship network using bibliographic records from the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. There are very few social psychologists working in Africa, with the majority of these located in South Africa. Indeed, some small European countries boast more social psychologists than the entire continent of Africa. African authors published less than their non‐African collaborators, but had comparable status on joint publications. Co‐authorship relationships between African researchers from different African countries were generally mediated by partners from other continents, and direct collaboration between non‐compatriot African authors was very rare. The small size, and extremely sparse connection of the African co‐authorship network, is likely to be an obstacle both in the development of social psychology as a universally relevant discipline and in the penetration of social psychological knowledge in Africa.     

The effect of preview eccentricity in a lexical decision task

We report lexical decision experiments in which eye movements and lexical decision time were analysed. The results show that nonwords produced more fixation than words, and that the time to make a lexical decision was also greater for nonwords. Further, a preview of the stimulus was presented on some occasions either at fixation or peripherally. When the presentation was peripheral the number of refixations and lexical decision times were reduced. Parafoveal previews of words also reduced word length effects on refixations and lexical decision time. These effects decreased (for nonwords) when the case of the letters was changed in the preview. These results are compatible with the idea that the peripheral preview benefit derives from word visual structure in addition to information about word length, word envelope, and single letter identities.     

Degrees of freedom and motor planning in purposive movement

This paper presents empirical evidence suggesting that healthy humans can perform a two degree of freedom visuo-motor pursuit tracking task with the same response time delay as a one degree of freedom task. In contrast, the time delay of the response is influenced markedly by the nature of the motor synergy required to produce it. We suggest a conceptual account of this evidence based on adaptive model theory, which combines theories of intermittency from psychology and adaptive optimal control from engineering. The intermittent response planning stage has a fixed period. It possesses multiple optimal trajectory generators such that multiple degrees of freedom can be planned concurrently, without requiring an increase in the planning period. In tasks which require unfamiliar motor synergies, or are deemed to be incompatible, internal adaptive models representing movement dynamics are inaccurate. This means that the actual response which is produced will deviate from the one which is planned. For a given target-response discrepancy, corrective response trajectories of longer duration are planned, consistent with the principle of speed-accuracy trade-off. Compared to familiar or compatible tasks, this results in a longer response time delay and reduced accuracy. From the standpoint of the intermittency approach, the findings of this study help make possible a more integral and predictive account of purposive action.     

Combining scenario planning and multi-criteria decision analysis in practice

The integrated use of scenario planning and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been advocated as a powerful combination for providing decision support in strategic decisions. Scenario planning helps decision makers in devising strategies and thinking about possible future scenarios; while MCDA can support an in-depth performance evaluation of each strategy, as well as in the design of more robust and better options. One of the frameworks proposed recently, by Goodwin & Wright, suggests the use of scenario planning with multi-attribute value theory, a mathematically simple, yet extensively researched and widely employed multi-criteria method. However, so far, such framework has been presented only using hypothetical problems. In this paper, we describe two case studies where this approach was used to support real-world strategic decisions. We discuss the challenges and limitations we encountered in applying it and suggest some possible improvements that could be made to such framework. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

普通高校高水平运动员职业生涯规划的SWOT分析

“教体结合”模式已经成为高校高水平运动员培养和教育的重要形式,不仅有利于高水平运动员培养的可持续发展,而且有利于进一步提升校园文化内涵。但目前普遍存在的一个问题就是高水平运动员入校后,学训矛盾突出,职业生涯规划也难以开展,有待进一步探索。本文借鉴人力资源管理职业生涯规划理论和市场营销SWOT理论为基础,以SWOT分析为工具探讨如何科学实施高水平运动员职业生涯规划。     

Whole-body posture planning in anticipation of a manual prehension task: Prospective and retrospective effects

This study examined the extent to which the anticipation of a manual action task influences whole-body postural planning and orientation. Our participants walked up to a drawer, opened the drawer, then grasped and moved an object in the drawer to another location in the same drawer. The starting placement of the object within the drawer and the final placement of the object in the drawer were varied across trials in either a blocked design (i.e., in trials where the same start and end location were repeated consecutively) or in a mixed fashion. Of primary interest was the posture adopted at the moment of grasping the drawer handle before pulling it out prior to the object manipulation task. Of secondary interest was whether there were sequential effects such that postures adopted in preceding trials influenced postures in subsequent trials. The results indicated that the spatial properties of the forthcoming object manipulation influenced both the postures adopted by the participants and the degree to which the drawer was opened, suggesting a prospective effect. In addition, the adopted postures were more consistent in blocked trials than in mixed trials, suggesting an additional retrospective effect. Overall, our findings suggest that motor planning occurs at the level of the whole body, and reflects both prospective and retrospective influences.     

Simultaneous processing of visual information and planning of hand movements in a visuo-manual search task

When searching for a target with eye movements, saccades are planned and initiated while the visual information is still being processed. If hand movements are needed to perform a search task, can they too be planned while visual information from the current position is still being processed? To find out we studied a visual search task in which participants had to move their hand to shift a window through which they could see the items. The task was to find an O in a circle of Cs. The size of the window and the sizes of the gaps in the Cs were varied. Participants made fast, smooth arm movements between items and adjusted their movements, when on the items, to the window size. On many trials the window passed the target and returned, indicating that the next movement had been planned before identifying the item that was in view.     

Hierarchy and scope of planning in subject–verb agreement production

Two subject–verb agreement error elicitation studies tested the hierarchical feature-passing account of agreement computation in production and three timing-based alternatives: linear distance to the head noun, semantic integration, and a combined effect of both (a scope of planning account). In Experiment 1, participants completed subject noun phrase (NP) stimuli consisting of a head NP followed by two prepositional phrase (PP) modifiers, where the first PP modified the first NP, and the second PP modified one of the two preceding NPs. Semantic integration between the head noun and the local noun within each PP was held constant across structures. The mismatch error pattern showed an effect of linear distance to the head noun and no influence of hierarchical distance. In Experiment 2, participants completed NP PP PP stimuli in which both PPs modified the head noun, and both the order of the two PPs and the local nouns’ degree of semantic integration with the head noun were varied. The pattern of mismatch errors reflected a combination of semantic integration and linear distance to the head noun. These studies indicate that agreement processes are strongly constrained by grammatical-level scope of planning, with local nouns planned closer to the head having a greater chance of interfering with agreement computation.     

Motor planning and execution in left- and right-handed individuals during a bimanual grasping and placing task

The issue of handedness has been the topic of great interest for researchers in a number of scientific domains. It is typically observed that the dominant hand yields numerous behavioral advantages over the non-dominant hand during unimanual tasks, which provides evidence of hemispheric specialization. In contrast to advantages for the dominant hand during motor execution, recent research has demonstrated that the right hand has advantages during motor planning (regardless of handedness), indicating that motor planning is a specialized function of the left hemisphere. In the present study we explored hemispheric advantages in motor planning and execution in left- and right-handed individuals during a bimanual grasping and placing task. Replicating previous findings, both motor planning and execution was influenced by object end-orientation congruency. In addition, although motor planning (i.e., end-state comfort) was not influenced by hand or handedness, motor execution differed between left and right hand, with shorter object transport times observed for the left hand, regardless of handedness. These results demonstrate that the hemispheric advantages often observed in unimanual tasks do not extend to discrete bimanual tasks. We propose that the differences in object transport time between the two hands arise from overt shifting visual fixation between the two hands/objects.