Hinton diagrams: Viewing connection strengths in neural networks

A graphical analysis similar to that used by Hinton and Shallice (1991) was applied to the hair cells of a simulated auditory transducer. The graphical analysis made it apparent that there were hair cells that responded to a narrow range of frequencies, as would be predicted by the tonotopic organization of the real physiology. In short, this study demonstrates the efficacy of using graphic techniques to examine the nature of the autopoetic organization of the hidden layer of back-propagation networks.     

Place and action in children's representations of stories

The purpose of the four experiments was to examine the prominence of place and action information in the story representations of second (7-year-old), fifth (10-year-old), and sixth (11-year-old) grade children and college students. The subjects were read short stories in which the information in a premise and an outcome sentence were consistent or inconsistent in describing place or action information. Judgments about story adequacy and the conditional probability of an inadequacy judgment given inconsistency detection were measures of prominence in the story representation, and prominence was manipulated by providing place titles, action titles, or no titles. The results showed that place inconsistency is more important than action inconsistency in children's judgments of story adequacy, except when the action involves the story theme. Developmental differences in story judgments generally were larger for inconsistent actions than for inconsistent places, perhaps due to children's problems in abstracting an action theme early in story processing.     

Separate visual representations in the planning and control of action

Evidence for a dichotomy between the planning of an action and its on-line control in humans is reviewed. This evidence suggests that planning and control each serve a specialized purpose utilizing distinct visual representations. Evidence from behavioral studies suggests that planning is influenced by a large array of visual and cognitive information, whereas control is influenced solely by the spatial characteristics of the target, including such things as its size, shape, orientation, and so forth. Evidence from brain imaging and neuropsychology suggests that planning and control are subserved by separate visual centers in the posterior parietal lobes, each constituting part of a larger network for planning and control. Planning appears to rely on phylogenetically newer regions in the inferior parietal lobe, along with the frontal lobes and basal ganglia, whereas control appears to rely on older regions in the superior parietal lobe, along with the cerebellum.     

Traces of the artist: Sensitivity to the role of the artist in children's pictorial reasoning

In three studies we investigated the question of whether children consider the attributes of the artist (sentience, age level, affective style, emotion) when making judgments about the traces (drawings) made by that artist. In Study 1, 2–5‐year‐old children were asked to find pictures drawn by a machine, an adult, an older and a younger child. Results indicated that children younger than 4 years do not consider the artists' attributes when making judgments, but 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds do. Furthermore, whereas the oldest children were adept at both machine‐person (sentience) and person‐person (age) contrasts, 4‐year‐olds succeeded only with person‐person contrasts. In Study 2, videotaped artists displayed differences in degree of agitation (affective style) while drawing, and this attribute was manipulated in the drawing by varying line density, asymmetry, line overlap and line gap, or all four features, across stimuli. Three‐ and five‐year‐old children judged whether a calm or agitated person drew the stimuli. Findings showed that five‐year‐old, but not 3‐year‐old, children easily completed the task. In Study 3, 3‐, 5‐ and 7‐year‐old children judged whether happy or sad artists made paintings of matching emotional tone. Performance on this picture judgment task was contrasted with performance on three theory of mind tasks (false belief, emotion and interpretative). The results indicated that 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds successfully judged the impact of artists' emotions on paintings, but 3‐year‐olds did not. Performance on the picture task was related to that on the false belief task, but not to the emotion or interpretive tasks. Taken together, the results suggest that children's view of visual symbols includes a consideration of the qualities of the artist beginning around 5 years, and there appears to be a common link between judgments of the mind behind the visual symbol in the picture task and judgments of mental state reasoning in the false belief task.     

Disappointment expression evokes collective guilt and collective action in intergroup conflict: the moderating role of legitimacy perceptions

Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members’ expression of disappointment with one’s ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about outgroup’s (Palestinians) expression of emotions (disappointment, fear, or none). As predicted, outgroup’s expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings.     

Experience,action and representations: Critical realism and the enactive theory of vision

This paper defends a dynamic model of the way in which perception is integrated with action, a model I refer to as ‘the navigational account’. According to this account, employing vision and other forms of distance perception, a creature acquires information about its surroundings via the senses, information that enables it to select and navigate routes through its environment, so as to attain objects that satisfy its needs. This form of perceptually guided activity should be distinguished from other kinds of semi-automatic responses to visual stimuli that do not necessarily involve conscious experiences. It essentially involves inner states, which involve both the awareness of phenomenal qualities, and also a representational component. The navigational account is compared here with the enactive approach to perception, which opposes the view that perceptual experiences are inner states. This paper argues that a full account of perception raises a number of different questions. One central explanatory project concerns questions about the kinds of processes that currently enable a creature to identify and respond appropriately to distant objects: the answer, it is argued, lies in acknowledging the role of conscious inner representations in guiding navigational behaviour through complex environments. The fact that perception and action are interdependent does not conflict with the claim that inner representational states comprise an essential stage in visual processing.

On the relations between action planning, object identification, and motor representations of observed actions and objects

Recent evidence suggests that viewing a static prime object (a hand grasp), can activate action representations that affect the subsequent identification of graspable target objects. The present study explored whether stronger effects on target object identification would occur when the prime object (a hand grasp) was made more action-rich and dynamic. Of additional interest was whether this type of action prime would affect the generation of motor activity normally elicited by the target object. Three experiments demonstrated that grasp observation improved the identification of grasp-congruent target objects relative to grasp-incongruent target objects. We argue from this data that identifying a graspable object includes the processing of its action-related attributes. In addition, grasp observation was shown to influence the motor activity elicited by the target object, demonstrating interplay between action-based and object-based motor coding.     

Activity level: A comparison between actometer scores and observer ratings

Activity level of 13 boys (aged 9–13) from a day hospital program was measured using actometers in classroom, gym, woodshop, and group therapy settings. Ratings of Ss' activity were obtained from mothers using the Werry scale, and from six clinical staff familiar with the Ss using the Davids scale. It was predicted that activity ratings would have situationally specific relationships with actometermeasured activity level according to the rater's opportunities for observation. Comparisons between measures indicated that all clinical staff ratings correlated significantly with actometer activity in the classroom (r=.49 to r=.73), while mothers' ratings correlated significantly with actometer activity in gym (r=.67), and woodshop (r=.77), and with overall activity (r=.65), a combined measure derived from actometer scores in the four conditions tested. Five of six clinical staff raters showed significant interrater reliability (r=.58 to r=.83). Results are discussed in terms of their implications for solution of current problems in assessment of activity level and hyperactivity.     

On the connection between sickness and sin: a commentary.

In response to the articles by Eibach and Groenhut in this issue, I argue that there is a general connection between sickness and the entrance of sin into the world. There are times when there is a causal link between more specific sin and sickness, though often the patient is the one who has been sinned against. Illness can also expose sin in a patient's life. Integrating the reality of illness into the life history of a patient is a significant pastoral care issue and can be done with humility and sensitivity if done in accordance with the teaching of Job and Ecclesiastes. These books argue that "under the sun" or this side of eternity, human beings can't grasp the coherence of life, including the "why" of illness. Rather, God provides His loving presence, through His people as a comfort to those suffering from illness.     

Pulling out the intentional structure of action: the relation between action processing and action production in infancy

Adults and children readily construct action representations organized with respect to an ultimate goal. These representations allow one to predict the consequences of action, interpret and describe actions, and categorize action sequences. In this paper, we explore the ontogeny of hierarchically organized action representations, and its relation to infants' ability to produce similar sequences. To do so, we examine infants' perception and performance of a means-end sequence: pulling a cloth to retrieve a toy. Using a visual habituation paradigm, we demonstrate that 12-month-old infants understand that the initial step of the cloth-pulling sequence is directed toward the ultimate goal of attaining the toy, and use their knowledge of the causal constraints of the sequence to make this goal attribution. Ten-month-olds, however, appear transitional with respect to this understanding: their ability to identify the goal of the cloth-pulling sequence is related to their own ability to planfully solve a similar sequence. These findings are consistent with a burgeoning body of literature suggesting an intimate link between action production and perception, and suggest that this link is in place by at least 10 months of age.     

Evidence for separate representations for action and location in implicit motor sequencing

We examined sequential learning of actions in an experiment in which four different actions (push, twist, pinch, switch) were placed at four horizontal locations. At transfer, participants responded to a sequence that required performing the same sequence of actions at different locations and to a different sequence of actions at the same sequence of locations. Participants with explicit knowledge demonstrated only learning the sequence of response locations. However, participants with implicit knowledge learned the sequence of actions just as well as the sequence of locations, and performance on individual sequences was just as good as performance when both sequences were presented. These results demonstrated that two types of sequences, one of actions and another of response locations, can be learned simultaneously, suggesting that parallel representations are involved in implicit motor skill acquisition.     

Illness, disease and sin: the connection between genetics and spirituality.

The New Testament, while rejecting any superficial connection between illness and sin, does not reject a possible connection between illness and a person's relationship with God. An example can be seen in the story of the young blind man who was healed (St. John 9:3). His blindness does not result from any fault he or his parents had committed but apparently from God's wish to reveal his own healing power. The inner blindness of the Pharisees is a different type of blindness far more difficult to heal. The blind young man was actually healed, not only in body but also in soul. Such miraculous healings are rare nowadays. However, if one takes a closer look at modern genetics and psycho-neuro-immunological findings, one may come to a better understanding of how miracle healings are linked to man's inner life and therefore also to his religiousness. Many diseases have genetic backgrounds. Defective genes, however, do not necessarily lead to subsequent illness. Genes have to be switched on or off. Only activated genes trigger pathological change. The human brain and all of man's thinking and feeling are intimately connected with such activations. We may thus conclude that both inner life and religious outlook on life are relevant to the origin and development of diseases.     

Individual differences in cognitive representations of action influence the activation of goal concepts

Goal representations play a key role in various psychological processes, including behavioral regulation, self-perception and social understanding. Research on cognitive representations of action has identified individual differences in the general tendency to construe actions in terms of their goal (vs. movement parameters), which can be reliably assessed with the Behavior Identification Form (BIF). The aim of the present study was to examine how individual differences in action identification, as measured by the BIF, affect online processing of action in a laboratory study. The main results showed that the level of action identification predicted participants' performance in a task designed to implicitly assess people's automatic processing of action regarding goal features. We discussed the possible role of impaired goal processing in psychological dysfunctions.     

Time flies: investigating the connection between intrinsic motivation and the experience of time

The present study investigated the relationship between intrinsic motivation and the subjective experience of time passing. The Work Preference Inventory, which measures trait intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, was administered to 75 undergraduate participants. Measures of time awareness, time estimation, checking of time, and perceived speed of time were collected using the experience sampling method. Participants carried electronic schedulers for five days and completed questionnaires each time the scheduler sounded (eight times per day). Results showed that higher intrinsic motivation was associated with checking and thinking about time less often, a subjective experience of time passing more quickly, and more of a tendency to lose track of time. The experience of time awareness was accompanied by a subjective sense of time moving slowly, a tendency to overestimate the time, and a more negative affective experience. These findings suggest that time perception is an important dimension of motivational experience.     

Quantifying the interactions between allo- and egocentric representations of space

Under many circumstances, humans do not judge the location of objects in space where they really are. For instance, when a background is added to a target object, the judged position of a target with respect to oneself (egocentric position) is shifted in the opposite direction as the placement of such a background with respect to the body midline. It is an ongoing debate whether such effects are due to a uni- or bi-directional interaction between allo- and egocentric spatial representations in the brain, or reflect a response strategy, known as the perceived midline shift. In this study, the effects of allocentric stimulus coordinates on perceived egocentric position were examined more precisely and in a quantitative manner. Furthermore, it was investigated whether the judged allocentric position (with respect to a background) is also influenced by the egocentric position in space of that object. Allo- and egocentric coordinates were varied independently. Also, the effect of background luminance on the observed interactions between spatial coordinates was determined. Since background luminance had an effect on the size of the interaction between allocentric stimulus coordinates and egocentric judgments, and no reverse interaction was found, it seems that interactions between ego- and allocentric reference frames is most likely only unidirectional, with the latter affecting the former. This interaction effect was described in a quantitative manner.     

Distributed representations of action sequences in anterior cingulate cortex: A recurrent neural network approach

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been the subject of intense debate over the past 2 decades, but its specific computational function remains controversial. Here we present a simple computational model of ACC that incorporates distributed representations across a network of interconnected processing units. Based on the proposal that ACC is concerned with the execution of extended, goal-directed action sequences, we trained a recurrent neural network to predict each successive step of several sequences associated with multiple tasks. In keeping with neurophysiological observations from nonhuman animals, the network yields distributed patterns of activity across ACC neurons that track the progression of each sequence, and in keeping with human neuroimaging data, the network produces discrepancy signals when any step of the sequence deviates from the predicted step. These simulations illustrate a novel approach for investigating ACC function.