Perception as abduction: turning sensor data into meaningful representation

This article presents a formal theory of robot perception as a form of abduction. The theory pins down the process whereby low-level sensor data is transformed into a symbolic representation of the external world, drawing together aspects such as incompleteness, top-down information flow, active perception, attention, and sensor fusion in a unifying framework. In addition, a number of themes are identified that are common to both the engineer concerned with developing a rigorous theory of perception, such as the one on offer here, and the philosopher of mind who is exercised by questions relating to mental representation and intentionality.     

Source recall enhances children's discrimination of seen and heard events

The effects of rehearsing actions by source (slideshow vs. story) and of test modality (picture vs. verbal) on source monitoring were examined. Seven- to 8-year-old children (N = 30) saw a slideshow event and heard a story about a similar event. One to 2 days later, they recalled the events by source (source recall), recalled the events without reference to source (no-source-cue recall), or engaged in no recall. Seven to 8 days later, all children received verbal and picture source-monitoring tests. Children in the source recall group were less likely than children in the other groups to claim they saw actions merely heard in the story. No-source-cue recall impaired source identification of story actions. The picture test enhanced recognition, but not source monitoring, of slide actions. Increasing the distinctiveness of the target events (Experiment 2) allowed the picture test to facilitate slideshow action discrimination by children in the no-recall group.     

Retrieving text inferences: Controlled and automatic influences

Bridging inferences contribute to text coherence by identifying the connections among ideas, whereas elaborative inferences simply specify sensible extrapolations from text. Bridging inferences have been indistinguishable from explicit text ideas on numerous measures, suggesting similar longterm memory (LTM) representations for the two, whereas elaborative inferences are inferior. To evaluate the LTM representations of text ideas, we used the extended process-dissociation procedure (Buchner, Erdfelder, & Vaterrodt-Plunnecke, 1995; Jacoby, 1991) to partition the controlled, recollective contributions to text retrieval from the automatic, familiarity-based contributions. The automatic contribution to the recognition of implied concepts was consistently negligible, an outcome consistent with the absence of perceptual processing of those concepts during the original reading. In addition, the controlled basis of recognition was consistently higher for explicit than for implicit concepts, which suggests a more robust conceptual representation for explicit text ideas (Yonelinas, 2002). These results were interpreted to reflect the asymmetric representation of explicit ideas and inferences (elaborative and even bridging inferences) in the surface, propositional textbase, and situational levels of text representation.     

Removing eyebrows impairs recognition of famous faces, or doesn't, depending on how the eyebrows are removed

Matching photos of famous people's faces with their names was as fast with photos that had eyebrows masked by adhesive plaster as with unretouched original photos. But matching was slower with photos that had eyebrows erased and replaced with adjacent skin texture and colour than with original photos. The conjecture that erasure impairs recognition because it alters a face's configuration was examined by repeating the experiment with the photos shown upside down, the rationale being that because configural information is difficult to encode from inverted faces the erasure effect should diminish. With inverted faces, matching was no different for original, eyebrows-masked, and eyebrows-erased photos. Eyebrows appear to be less important for face recognition as informative parts and features than as sources of information about a face's configuration.     

From sensory processes to conscious perception

In recent years, cognitive neuroscientists have began to explore the process of how sensory information gains access to awareness. To further probe this process, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used while testing subjects with a paradigm known as the "attentional blink." In this paradigm, visually presented information sporadically fails to reach awareness. It was found that the magnitude and time course of activation within the anterior cingulate (BA 32), medial prefrontal cortex (BA 9), and frontopolar cortex (BA 10) predicted whether or not information was consciously perceived during the critical period for the attentional blink. These results are discussed in light of a neural framework for conscious processing.     

Families created through surrogacy arrangements: parent-child relationships in the 1st year of life

Findings are presented of a study of families created through surrogacy arrangements. Forty-two surrogacy families were compared with 51 egg-donation families and 80 natural-conception families on standardized interview and questionnaire measures of the psychological well-being of the parents, the quality of parent-child relationships, and infant temperament. The differences that were identified between the surrogacy families and the other family types indicated greater psychological well-being and adaptation to parenthood by mothers and fathers of children born through surrogacy arrangements than by the natural-conception parents.     

Verbal mediation of number knowledge: evidence from semantic dementia and corticobasal degeneration

Patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) appear to have impaired number knowledge. We examined the nature of their number deficit while we tested the hypothesis that comprehension of larger numbers depends in part on verbal mediation. We evaluated magnitude judgments and performance on number conservation measures rooted in Piagetian theory in nonaphasic patients with CBD (n=13) and patients with a fluent form of progressive aphasia known as semantic dementia (SD; n=15). We manipulated the numbers of the arrays and the visual-spatial properties of the stimuli being compared during magnitude judgments and Piagetian conservation measures. CBD patients were consistently impaired judging the magnitudes of larger numbers (4-9), while they had minimal difficulty with smaller numbers (magnitudes < or = 3). By comparison, SD patients performed all measures of number knowledge at a ceiling level regardless of number magnitude. Neither patient group was significantly impacted by manipulations of the spatial properties of the stimuli. CBD patients' impairment with larger numbers despite minimal aphasia, and SD patients' intact performance despite an aphasia, challenge the proposal that understanding larger numbers depends on verbal mediation.     

The relationship between interpersonal perception and post-traumatic stress disorder-related functional impairment: a social relations model analysis

This study used Kenny's social relations model to examine the relationship between Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-related impairment and interpersonal perceptions. Participants were 124 students who had previously completed the Post-traumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale as part of a larger study. After engaging in brief dyadic conversations with 3 other students, participants recorded perceptions of personality traits for themselves, their interaction partners and how they believed their partners saw them (metaperceptions). Results indicated that those with more severe post-traumatic stress disorder-related impairment saw themselves negatively and believed their interaction partners also viewed them negatively. However, these individuals were not seen differently by others, except that they were rated as less dependable. Our findings suggest that post-traumatic stress disorder is associated with negative beliefs about the self that may influence self-esteem and interpersonal relationships.