Using the antisaccade task to investigate the relationship between the development of inhibition and the development of intelligence

A number of authors have proposed models of cognitive development that explain improvements in intelligence over the course of childhood via changes in the efficiency of inhibitory processes ( Anderson, 2001 ; Bjorklund & Harnishfeger, 1990 ; Dempster, 1991 , 1992 ; Dempster & Corkill, 1999a ; Harnishfeger, 1995 ; Harnishfeger & Bjorklund, 1993 ). A review of the literature reveals little empirical support for the thesis. This is largely due to a failure to distinguish between age‐related and non‐age‐related changes in both inhibitory ability and intelligence. Empirical evidence is presented from a developmental study employing the antisaccade task to provide support for the role of inhibitory processes in the development of intelligence. Additionally, a case is made for a functional difference underlying antisaccade errors that are subsequently corrected and those that remain uncorrected.     

Emotion Regulation: The Interplay of Culture and Genes

Given the mounting empirical evidence to support both the cultural and biological shaping of emotional processes, there is a clear need to integrate these determinants of emotional processes. Much in the same vein as these efforts, in our research on gene‐culture interactions, we have examined how cultural and biological factors jointly influence emotion regulation. The present paper specifically aims to present research considering both cultural and genetic factors as two interacting influences that shape emotion regulation. A series of studies conducted to test the gene‐culture interaction involving OXTR rs53576 consistently show that individuals with the variant that is associated with socio‐emotional sensitivity tend to utilize culturally normative forms of emotion regulation more than those without it. These findings underscore the importance of considering the interplay between socio‐cultural and genetic factors that shape social behaviors.     

Neurocognitive development of relational reasoning

Relational reasoning is an essential component of fluid intelligence, and is known to have a protracted developmental trajectory. To date, little is known about the neural changes that underlie improvements in reasoning ability over development. In this event‐related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, children aged 8–12 and adults aged 18–25 performed a relational reasoning task adapted from Raven's Progressive Matrices. The task included three levels of relational reasoning demands: REL‐0, REL‐1, and REL‐2. Children exhibited disproportionately lower accuracy than adults on trials that required integration of two relations (REL‐2). Like adults, children engaged lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and parietal cortex during task performance; however, they exhibited different time courses and activation profiles, providing insight into their approach to the problems. As in prior studies, adults exhibited increased rostrolateral PFC (RLPFC) activation when relational integration was required (REL‐2 > REL‐1, REL‐0). Children also engaged RLPFC most strongly for REL‐2 problems at early stages of processing, but this differential activation relative to REL‐1 trials was not sustained throughout the trial. These results suggest that the children recruited RLPFC while processing relations, but failed to use it to integrate across two relations. Relational integration is critical for solving a variety of problems, and for appreciating analogies; the current findings suggest that developmental improvements in this function rely on changes in the profile of engagement of RLPFC, as well as dorsolateral PFC and parietal cortex.     

Artificial intelligence and metaphor making: Some philosophic considerations

This article argues that the metaphors presently employed in describing artificial intelligence represent the use of personification and anthropomorphism. They attempt to develop an isomorphic relationship between the human mind and a computer’s logic. It is suggested that an analogic metaphor is more appropriate in describing this relationship and is more epistemologically correct. Reprinted from Knowledge and Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, Spring 1990, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 46–61. His current research interests include the behavioral and philosophic aspects of artificial intelligence and expert computer systems in work situations, and the behavioral perceptions of decision processes in the workplace.     

A computational analysis of general intelligence tests for evaluating cognitive development

The progression in several cognitive tests for the same subjects at different ages provides valuable information about their cognitive development. One question that has caught recent interest is whether the same approach can be used to assess the cognitive development of artificial systems. In particular, can we assess whether the ‘fluid’ or ‘crystallised’ intelligence of an artificial cognitive system is changing during its cognitive development as a result of acquiring more concepts? In this paper, we address several IQ tests problems (odd-one-out problems, Raven’s Progressive Matrices and Thurstone’s letter series) with a general learning system that is not particularly designed on purpose to solve intelligence tests. The goal is to better understand the role of the basic cognitive operational constructs (such as identity, difference, order, counting, logic, etc.) that are needed to solve these intelligence test problems and serve as a proof-of-concept for evaluation in other developmental problems. From here, we gain some insights into the characteristics and usefulness of these tests and how careful we need to be when applying human test problems to assess the abilities and cognitive development of robots and other artificial cognitive systems.     

Impacts of artificial intelligence on organizational decision making

Of all of the new technologies emerging in the late 20th century, the production of artificial intelligence may provide the most profound impacts on organizational decision making. Because the development of artificial intelligence technologies and models has largely been based on psychological models of human cognition, the effects of their implementation in complex social settings have not been thoroughly examined. This paper is an attempt to generate research which will develop a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of artificial intelligence and its role in complex organizations. A set of 11 hypotheses has been developed which examine the relationships between artificial intelligence technologies and the dimensions of organizational decision making. It is argued here that the implementation of expert systems will lead to less complex and political decision processes, while the implementation of natural language systems will lead to more complex and political decision processes.     

Quantitative Studies of Verbal Reinforcement in Classroom Situations: II. Occurrence of Error and Correct Responses Related to a Change in Stimulus Conditions

This study explores the representational processes underlying the young child's creation of the human figure, and examines the developmental origins, effects of socioeconomic status, IQ, age, sex, and function of verbalization to the task. Tasks were selected which required extensive use of symbolic processes and consisted of human figure drawing, figure completion, two form puzzles composed of geometric forms, and drawing on dictation. Ss were 151 preschoolers ranging in age from 2.3 to 5.7, enrolled in a day care center or nursery school. Ss came from two distinct socioeconomic backgrounds: upper-middle and working-class families. The study revealed the sensorymotor origins of representation and pointed toward an autonomous, perhaps universal, development of these representational processes. The results indicated major effects of IQ and age, minor effects of sex, and the absence of socioeconomic status effects on the five tasks. Achievement scores and the child's verbalization to the tasks suggested that the function of verbalization is explanatory rather than problem solving.     

The Interface Between Attachment and Intersubjectivity: Perspective from the Longitudinal Study of Disorganized Attachment

This article considers the interface between the concepts of attachment and intersubjectivity in light of accumulated research on infant development. Both Tomasello (1999) and Hobson (2002) have argued persuasively that the flexible human capability for sharing mental states with others reframes and revolutionizes our older, more highly channeled primate biological heritage. In contrast to this emphasis on discontinuity from primate to human evolution, attachment theorists have stressed the continuities between human attachment and attachment in other primates. The implication of new work on infant intersubjectivity for reframing aspects of attachment theory is first explored. By the same token, however, the extent to which the infant–caregiver attachment relationship functions to maintain positive engagement and regulate the infant's fearful arousal will have escalating consequences over development for the organization of intersubjectivity. Therefore, attachment research has much to offer in understanding the development of joint attention and the sharing of mental states under conditions of increased emotional arousal. The potential contributions of attachment research for understanding the development of intersubjectivity are discussed in light of recent work from the author's lab on forms of young adult symptomatology associated with deviance in the early intersubjective dialogue between mother and infant. The clinical implication emerging from all these diverse areas of research is that fostering more collaborative forms of communication may lie at the heart of evolutionary change, developmental change, and changes resulting from psychodynamic psychotherapy.     

Nap‐dependent learning in infants

Sleep has been shown to aid a variety of learning and memory processes in adults ( Stickgold, 2005 ). Recently, we showed that infants’ learning also benefits from subsequent sleep such that infants who nap are able to abstract the general grammatical pattern of a briefly presented artificial language ( Gomez, Bootzin & Nadel, 2006 ). In the present study, we demonstrate, for the first time, long‐term effects of sleep on memory for an artificial language. Fifteen‐month‐old infants who had napped within 4 hours of language exposure remembered the general grammatical pattern of the language 24 hours later. In contrast, infants who had not napped shortly after being familiarized with the language showed no evidence of remembering anything about the language. Our findings support the view that infants’ frequent napping plays an essential role in establishing long‐term memory.     

The double meaning of a single act: influences of the perceiver and the perceived on cooperative behaviour

The present research examines how a single behaviour that is informative of both the morality and intelligence of a person influences impressions, degree of cooperative behaviour expected from that person, and degree of cooperative behaviour displayed toward that person in a mixed‐motive interdependence situation (i.e., a social dilemma). Furthermore, it is investigated how individual differences in social value orientation influence these processes. Participants were provided with behavioural information that could be construed in terms of both morality (high/low) and intelligence (high/low). Consistent with the morality‐importance hypothesis, participants assigned greater weight to morality than to intelligence aspects of the information. Congruent with the social value orientation hypothesis (i) only proselfs and not prosocials expected more cooperation from unintelligent than from intelligent others, and (ii) prosocials attended more strongly to morality aspects than proselfs in deciding on own cooperation. Finally, consistent with the relative benefit hypothesis, people overall expected more cooperation than they were willing to display, and this tendency was especially pronounced with others described by moral/unintelligent behaviour, and for people with a proself value orientation. The authors discuss a model describing influences of the perceiver and the perceived on cooperative behaviour. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Introduction: Attaining a New Stage

The current issue of The Journal of Adult Development addresses one of the threads of adult development, namely stage and stage change. There are four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified: positive adult development, directionless change, stasis, and decline. The first of the four forms, positive adult developmental processes, is divided into at least six areas of study: hierarchical complexity (orders, stages), knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality. The topic of this special issue, stage and stage change, is therefore part of the study of positive adult developmental processes. Finally, the manner in which these topics are studied both in this special issue and elsewhere can be characterized in terms of three broad classifications (Commons & Bresette, 2000, Commons & Miller, 1998) for the acquisition of knowledge and the verification of truth in general. These classifications include analytic, experiential, and empirical means to reach truth.     

Dennett's Mind

Drawing on data from contemporary experimental psychology and research in artificial intelligence, Dennett argues for a multiple drafts model of human consciousness, which he offers as an alternative to what he calls Cartesian materialism. I argue that the considerations Dennett advances do not, in fact, call for the abandonment of Cartesian materialism. Moreover, the theory presented by Dennett does not, as he claims, succeed in explaining consciousness; in particular, it fails to do justice to qualia. Illuminating though Dennett's discussion is, in many ways, it nevertheless leaves the traditional mind‐body problem intact.     

Beyond the exclusively propositional era

Contemporary epistemology has assumed that knowledge is represented in sentences or propositions. However, a variety of extensions and alternatives to this view have been proposed in other areas of investigation. We review some of these proposals, focusing on (1) Ryle's notion of knowing how and Hanson's and Kuhn's accounts of theory-laden perception in science; (2) extensions of simple propositional representations in cognitive models and artificial intelligence; (3) the debate concerning imagistic versus propositional representations in cognitive psychology; (4) recent treatments of concepts and categorization which reject the notion of necessary and sufficient conditions; and (5) parallel distributed processing (connectionist) models of cognition. This last development is especially promising in providing a flexible, powerful means of representing information nonpropositionally, and carrying out at least simple forms of inference without rules. Central to several of the proposals is the notion that much of human cognition might consist in pattern recognition rather than manipulation of rules and propositions.The preparation of this article was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grants No. NICHD-19265 and NICHD-06016. We would like to thank Rita Anderson, David Blumenfeld, Robert McCauley, and Patricia Siple for helpful discussions on points in this paper.     

Epistemology of AI Revisited in the Light of the Philosophy of Information

Artificial intelligence has often been seen as an attempt to reduce the natural mind to informational processes and, consequently, to naturalize philosophy. The many criticisms that were addressed to the so-called “old-fashioned AI” do not concern this attempt itself, but the methods it used, especially the reduction of the mind to a symbolic level of abstraction, which has often appeared to be inadequate to capture the richness of our mental activity. As a consequence, there were many efforts to evacuate the semantical models in favor of elementary physiological mechanisms simulated by information processes. However, these views, and the subsequent criticisms against artificial intelligence that they contain, miss the very nature of artificial intelligence, which is not reducible to a “science of the nature”, but which directly impacts our culture. More precisely, they lead to evacuate the role of the semantic information. In other words, they tend to throw the baby out with the bath-water. This paper tries to revisit the epistemology of artificial intelligence in the light of the opposition between the “sciences of nature” and the “sciences of culture”, which has been introduced by German neo-Kantian philosophers. It then shows how this epistemological view opens on the many contemporary applications of artificial intelligence that have already transformed—and will continue to transform—all our cultural activities and our world. Lastly, it places those perspectives in the context of the philosophy of information and more particularly it emphasizes the role played by the notions of context and level of abstraction in artificial intelligence.     

Psychological Needs and the Facilitation of Integrative Processes

ABSTRACT The assumption that there are innate integrative or actualizing tendencies underlying personality and social development is reexamined. Rather than viewing such processes as either nonexistent or as automatic, I argue that they are dynamic and dependent upon social-contextual supports Pertaining to basic human psychological needs. To develop this viewpoint, I conceptually link the notion of integrative tendencies to specific developmental processes, namely intrinsic motivation; internalization; and emotional integration. These processes are then shown to be facilitated by conditions that fulfill psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and forestalled within contexts that frustrate these needs. Interactions between psychological needs and contextual supports account, in part, for the domain and situational specificity of motivation, experience, and relative integration. The meaning of psychological needs (vs. wants) is directly considered, as are the relations between concepts of integration and autonomy and those of independence, individualism, efficacy, and cognitive models of “multiple selves.”     

从人类共情走向智能体共情

随着机器人在人类生活中重要性的增强,人们开始关注其传统智能以外的其它能力,如共情。基于共情的经典理论,本文以新兴的智能体共情（artificial empathy）为主题,同时结合人工智能领域的最新研究,系统地阐述了现有与智能体共情有关的理论模型和实证研究,并结合文献计量学分析,对该领域研究宏观现状进行可视化呈现。指出在未来研究中,借鉴心理学、认知神经科学和计算机科学等学科的研究成果,注重机器人理论模型的建构和研究方法的创新,对机器人共情系统的建构有着重要作用,而其间涉及到的伦理问题同样不容忽视。     

ONLINE BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

I report the findings of a comparative analysis of online Christian and Buddhist responses to artificial intelligence. I review the Buddhist response and compare it with the Christian response outlined in an earlier essay (Tamatea 2008). The discussion seeks to answer two questions: Which approach to imago Dei informs the online Buddhist response to artificial intelligence? And to what extent does the preference for a particular approach emerge from a desire to construct the Self? The conclusion is that, like the Christian response, the Buddhist response is grounded not so much in the reality of AI as it is in the discursive constructions of AI made available through Buddhist cosmology, which (paradoxically), like the Christian response, are deployed in defense of the Self, despite claimed adherence to the notion of anatta, or non‐Self.     

When a Talking‐Face Computer Agent is Half‐Human and Half‐Humanoid: Human Identity and Consistency Preference

Computer‐generated anthropomorphic characters are a growing type of communicator that is deployed in digital communication environments. An essential theoretical question is how people identify humanlike but clearly artificial, hence humanoid, entities in comparison to natural human ones. This identity categorization inquiry was approached under the framework of consistency and tested through examining inconsistency effects from mismatching categories. Study 1 (N = 80), incorporating a self‐disclosure task, tested participants’ responses to a talking‐face agent, which varied in four combinations of human versus humanoid faces and voices. In line with the literature on inconsistency, the pairing of a human face with a humanoid voice or a humanoid face with a human voice led to longer processing time in making judgment of the agent and less trust than the pairing of a face and a voice from either the human or the humanoid category. Female users particularly showed negative attitudes toward inconsistently paired talking faces. Study 2 (N = 80), using a task that stressed comprehension demand, replicated the inconsistency effects on judging time and females’ negative attitudes but not for comprehension‐related outcomes. Voice clarity overshadowed the consistency concern for comprehension‐related responses. The overall inconsistency effects suggest that people treat humanoid entities in a different category from natural human ones.     

Systematic mapping of developmental milestones in wild chimpanzees

Postnatal development is protracted relative to lifespan in many primates, including modern humans (Homo sapiens), facilitating the acquisition of key motor, communication and social skills that can maximize fitness later in life. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what evolutionary drivers led to extended immature periods. While the developmental milestone literature is well established in humans, insight we can gain from one‐species models is limited. By comparing the timing of relatable developmental milestones in a closely related species, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), we can gain further understanding of the evolution of such an extended developmental phase. To date, few studies have specifically attempted to estimate developmental milestones in a manner comparable to the human literature, and existing studies lack sufficient sample sizes to estimate which milestones are more plastic with higher inter‐individual variation in the timing of their emergence. Here, we describe the emergence of gross motor, fine motor, social interaction and communication traits from a longitudinal sample of 19 wild chimpanzee infants (8 females and 11 males), Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. Gross motor traits emerged at a mean of 4 months, communication traits at 12 months, social interaction traits at 14 months and fine motor traits at 15 months, with later emerging milestones demonstrating greater inter‐individual variation in the timing of the emergence. This pattern of milestone emergence is broadly comparable to observations in humans, suggesting selection for a prolonged infantile phase and that sustained skills development has a deep evolutionary history, with implications for theories on primate brain development.