Cogmic space for narrative-based world representation

Representing a world or a physical/social environment in an agent’s cognitive system is essential for creating human-like artificial intelligence. This study takes a story-centered approach to this issue. In this context, a story refers to an internal representation involving a narrative structure, which is assumed to be a common form of organizing past, present, future, and fictional events and situations. In the artificial intelligence field, a story or narrative is traditionally treated as a symbolic representation. However, a symbolic story representation is limited in its representational power to construct a rich world. For example, a symbolic story representation is unfit to handle the sensory/bodily dimension of a world. In search of a computational theory for narrative-based world representation, this study proposes the conceptual framework of a Cogmic Space for a comic strip-like representation of a world. In the proposed framework, a story is positioned as a mid-level representation, in which the conceptual and sensory/bodily dimensions of a world are unified. The events and their background situations that constitute a story are unified into a sequence of panels. Based on this structure, a representation (i.e., a story) and the represented environment are connected via an isomorphism of their temporal, spatial, and relational structures. Furthermore, the framework of a Cogmic Space is associated with the generative aspect of representations, which is conceptualized in terms of unconscious- and conscious-level processes/representations. Finally, a proof-of-concept implementation is presented to provide a concrete account of the proposed framework.     

当代中国的社会转型

本文以我国社会生活发生的广泛而深刻的变化为背景,深入揭示了这种变化深层的社会转型。这种转型就是：由权力社会走向能力社会;由人治社会走向法治社会;由人情社会走向理性社会;由依附社会走向自立社会;由身份社会走向实力社会;由注重先天给定社会走向注重后天努力社会;由一元化社会走向多样化社会;由人的依赖社会走向物的依赖社会;由静态社会走向流动社会;由“国家”社会走向“市民”社会。     

On the a priori and a posteriori assessment of probabilities

We argue that in spite of their apparent dissimilarity, the methodologies employed in the a priori and a posteriori assessment of probabilities can both be justified by appeal to a single principle of inductive reasoning, viz., the principle of symmetry. The difference between these two methodologies consists in the way in which information about the single-trial probabilities in a repeatable chance process is extracted from the constraints imposed by this principle. In the case of a posteriori reasoning, these constraints inform the analysis by fixing an a posteriori determinant of the probabilities, whereas, in the case of a priori reasoning, they imply certain claims which then serve as the basis for subsequent probabilistic deductions. In a given context of inquiry, the particular form which a priori or a posteriori reason may take depends, in large part, on the strength of the underlying symmetry assumed: the stronger the symmetry, the more information can be acquired a priori and the less information about the long-run behavior of the process is needed for an a posteriori assessment of the probabilities. In the context of this framework, frequency-based reasoning emerges as a limiting case of a posteriori reasoning, and reasoning about simple games of chance, as a limiting case of a priori reasoning. Between these two extremes, both a priori and a posteriori reasoning can take a variety of intermediate forms.     

Karen Horney: Theorist in Psychoanalysis and Feminine Psychology

Karen Horney is unique and unparalleled in personality theory. She has the distinction of being the only woman whose theory is detailed in personality textbooks. Horney is known as a neo-Freudian for her revision of Freudian thought; a social psychological theorist for her emphasis on cultural and social influences; a humanist for her holistic view and emphasis on self-realization; and a feminist for her development of a feminine psychology. She was a founder of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and founder and dean of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, a training institute. She was a teacher who could simplify the most difficult concepts; a therapist with deep human involvement; Editor of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis ; a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association; a regular contributor to scientific sessions; and a prolific writer. She was personally and professionally a "well-rounded balance of an abundance of striving and creative possibility."     

Exploring a recognition-induced recognition decrement

Four experiments were performed to explore a recognition decrement that is associated with the recognition of a word from a short list. The stimulus material for demonstrating the phenomenon was a list of words of different syntactic types. A word from the list was recognized less well following a decision that a word of the same type had occurred in the list than following a decision that such a word had not occurred in the list. A recognition decrement did not occur for a word of a given type following a positive recognition decision to a word of a different type. A recognition decrement did not occur when the list consisted exclusively of nouns. It was concluded that the phenomenon may reflect a criterion shift but, probably, does not reflect a list strength effect, suppression, or familiarity attribution consequent to a perceived discrepancy between actual and expected fluency.     

Reinforcement of behavioral patterns: shaping a scallop

Temporal patterns of key pecking by pigeons were shaped by a schedule in which the delivery of food was contingent upon a measure of the overall extent to which the temporal pattern of behavior within a 5-sec trial conformed to a required pattern. This pattern approximated a constant rate of change in the rate of key pecking throughout the 5-sec trial. In comparison with behavior maintained by a classical fixed-interval 5-sec schedule, the new schedule controlled a better approximation to a "scallop" within individual trials and greatly reduced intersubject variability. These results are consistent with the view that the delivery of a reinforcer after a behavioral pattern a few seconds in duration may strengthen the entire pattern as a unit, or operant. The response topography contiguous with reinforcement may be a negligible fraction of the strengthened operant. One implication of this view is that mean response rate for such brief responses as key pecks and lever presses is a byproduct of whatever patterns are strengthened, and generally will not reveal fundamental controlling relationships, whenever a reinforcer is not contiguous with all the behavior on which it is contingent.     

Consider the source: One step in assessing premise acceptability

Premise acceptability is conceptually connected to presumption. To say that a premise is acceptable just when there is a presumption in its favor is to give a first approximation to this connection. A number of popular principles of presumption suggest that whether there is a presumption for a premise, belief, or claim depends on the sources which vouch for it. Sources consist of internal belief-generating mechanisms and external testimony. Alvin Plantinga's notion of warrant lays down four conditions upon a source for the belief which it generates to be warranted. We argue that there is a presumption for a premise, belief, or claim if and only if there is a presumption of warrant for that premise,belief or claim. This amounts to the thesis that there is a presumption for a belief from a challenger's point of view if and only if there is a presumption from that person's point of view that her cognitive faculties which have generated the belief have been functioning properly, in an appropriate cognitive environment, in accord with a segment of her design plan aimed at the truth, and that these faculties are reliable. In light of our argument for this thesis, we may legitimately claim that one way to determine that there is a presumption for a belief is to determine that there is a presumption of warrant for that belief, and thus that in determining whether there is a presumption for a belief or premise, we may consider the source.     

Some new luminance-gradient effects

Three compelling luminance-gradient effects are described. The first effect concerns a brightness enhancement and a luminous mist spreading out from a central area having the same luminance as the white background and surrounded by four rectangular inducers shaded with a linear luminance gradient. The second effect is perceived with a photographically reversed configuration, and concerns what may be considered a brightness reduction or the enhancement of a darkness quality of a target area of the visual scene. The third effect concerns the perception of a self-luminous disk inside a somewhat foggy medium. The effects are worthy of further examination because they challenge current theories of luminosity perception and brightness perception in general.     

Studies in social influence: V. Minority influence and conversion behavior in a perceptual task

The effects of influence attempts by a majority and by a minority were examined on both a manifest response level and a latent perceptual level. Female subjects were exposed to a series of blue slides that were consistently labeled as green by a female confederate. The confederate was presented as a member of either a majority or a minority. On each trial, subjects were required to indicate the color of the slide presented and the color of the afterimage perceived on a white screen following removal of the slide. It was predicted that (a) the subject's judgment of the chromatic afterimage would be modified when the influence agent represented a minority, and (b) this modification will be more pronounced when the source of influence is absent than when it is present. The results supported the prediction in both the main study and its replication.     

Perceiving a calling, living a calling, and job satisfaction: testing a moderated, multiple mediator model

The current study examined the relation between perceiving a calling, living a calling, and job satisfaction among a diverse group of employed adults who completed an online survey (N = 201). Perceiving a calling and living a calling were positively correlated with career commitment, work meaning, and job satisfaction. Living a calling moderated the relations of perceiving a calling with career commitment and work meaning, such that these relations were more robust for those with a stronger sense they were living their calling. Additionally, a moderated, multiple mediator model was run to examine the mediating role of career commitment and work meaning in the relation of perceiving a calling and job satisfaction, while accounting for the moderating role of living a calling. Results indicated that work meaning and career commitment fully mediated the relation between perceiving a calling and job satisfaction. However, the indirect effects of work meaning and career commitment were only significant for individuals with high levels of living a calling, indicating the importance of living a calling in the link between perceiving a calling and job satisfaction. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The effects of near wins and near losses on self-perceived personal luck and subsequent gambling behavior

Which person would be most likely to continue gambling? A person who has just experienced a big win or a person who has just experienced a big loss? The answer appears often to be whichever gambler feels personally luckier. Two experiments investigated how perceptions of luck, understood as a personal quality, are affected by near, but unrealized outcomes during a game of chance. In Experiment 1, a near big loss at a gambling game heightened perceptions of personal luck relative to a near big win, even though all participants actually won the same modest amount. In addition, participants who experienced a near big loss generated significantly more downward counterfactuals than did those participants in the near big win condition. Most importantly, differences in self-perceived luck influenced future gambling behavior. Participants who experienced a near big loss on a wheel-of-fortune wagered significantly more on the outcome of a subsequent game of roulette than did those participants who experienced a near big win. Experiment 2 extended these results by testing the possible influence of a different type of near outcome and by including a control group. The discussion focuses on the emerging picture of how people understand luck.     

Processing letters in words at different levels

Subjects indicated whether two letters, two words, or a letter and the first letter of a word were the same. Letter targets were matched more quickly than word targets when the stimuli were presented simultaneously. When the target and comparison stimuli were separated by a 3-sec interval, word targets were matched more quickly than a letter and a letter in a word. It was also shown that the physical similarity of the targets and comparison stimuli had a greater effect in the simultaneous matching conditions. These findings are consistent with a model of word processing in which letters are individually compared prior to word identification at a physical level of processing. At a higher level of processing, words may be encoded as a unit, and the identification of the letters within the word may require a decoding of the word unit.     

Effects of noise on sleep inertia as a function of circadian placement of a one-hour nap.

The purpose of the present study was to analyse the arousing effects of noise on sleep inertia as a function of circadian placement of a one-hour nap. In a first experiment, we measured the effects of sleep inertia in a neutral acoustic environment after a one-hour nap placed either at 0100 or 0400 on response time during a spatial memory test. In a second experiment were analysed the effects of an intense continuous noise on sleep inertia. The results showed that noise produced a total abolition of sleep inertia after an early nap (0000 to 0100). This may be due to the arousing effect of noise; however, results are less clear after a late nap 0300 to 0400 as noise seems to be ineffective. This result is discussed in terms of either a function of time-of-day effect or of prior sleep intensity. Moreover, our data suggest a possible interaction of noise with partial sleep deprivation leading to a slight deleterious effect those subjects who did not sleep at all.     

Task set persistence modulates word reading following resolution of picture-word interference

We extend the finding that word reading slows following successful responses to a color-word Stroop interference task (Masson, Bub, Woodward, & Chan, 2003). Word reading was assessed in a picture-word interference task in which subjects alternated between naming a picture (with either a word or a row of Xs superimposed on it) and reading a word. For the word-reading task, words were presented either in isolation or superimposed on a picture. Word reading was slower after subjects responded to a bivalent stimulus that required resolution of conflict (naming a picture with a word superimposed on it) than after they responded to a stimulus that involved no conflict (naming a picture with Xs superimposed on it), indicating modulation of dominant task performance. This effect was found when word-reading targets were superimposed on pictures but not when those targets were presented in isolation. Modulation of word reading, therefore, appears to be the result of interference from a persistent picture-naming task set, cued by a stimulus configuration that invites execution of both competing tasks.     

Variations in explicitly unpaired training are differentially effective in producing conditioned inhibition

To evaluate a contingency interpretation of conditioned inhibition (CI), rats were given “explicity unpaired” training in which the locus and duration of a CS within the inter-US (shock) interval were systematically manipulated for different groups. Summation and retardation tests in Experiment 1 indicated that stronger CI resulted from both a backward and a trace CS than from a midlocus CS of equal or greater duration. Complementing these findings, the same tests in Experiment 2 showed that, by comparison with novel-stimulus controls, CI developed to a trace CS but not to a mid-locus CS, nor to a trace CS that was accompanied by an immediate signal for the US. These findings argue against a contingency interpretation of CI and favor a contiguity interpretation stressing the short-term rehearsal of stimulus events. Such rehearsal of the US allows a backward CS, but not a mid-locus CS with an extended US-CS interval, to be discriminated as a signal for nonreinforcement, and thus to develop as a conditioned inhibitor. Similarly, excitatory conditioning to the memory trace of a CS allows the nominal trace CS to develop as a signal for nonreinforcement, and thus as a conditioned inhibitor, but not when its memory trace is overshadowed by another CS that immediately precedes the US. In short, the development of CI is facilitated when excitation is mediated by the memorial processing of either the US or a discrete CS for the US rather than by contextual cues.     

Variables affecting establishment of schedule-induced attack on pictorial targets in White King pigeons.

White King pigeons exposed to food schedules before introduction of a colored photograph of a pigeon showed sustained schedule-induced attack on that image; additional birds given an early introduction to both the photograph and the schedule subsequently attacked the image at lower rates. Other pigeons attacked a second photograph of a pigeon regardless of whether it was introduced early or late. The late-introduction procedure was also effective in establishing attack on a projected image of a conspecific. The combined results showed that 14 of 17 White King pigeons given a late introduction to a pictorial target exhibited sustained attack against it and that a pigeon's initial reaction to a photograph of a conspecific when introduced early was a good predictor of subsequent schedule-induced attack on it.