Artificial Moral Agents: A Survey of the Current Status

Science and Engineering Ethics - One of the objectives in the field of artificial intelligence for some decades has been the development of artificial agents capable of coexisting in harmony with...     

Metacognitions in patients with hallucinations and obsessive-compulsive disorder: the superstition factor

On the basis of the analogy between intrusive thoughts and auditory hallucinations established by Morrison et al. [(1995). Intrusive thoughts and auditory hallucinations: a cognitive approach. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 23, 265-280], the present work compares the metacognitive beliefs and processes of five groups of patients (current hallucinators, never-hallucinated people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, recovered hallucinators, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, and a clinical control group) and a non-clinical group. The results show that of the five metacognitive factors considered in this study, two were found to be different in the current hallucinators group in comparison to any other group in the design. Likewise, it is found that the metacognitive beliefs of the current hallucinators coincide with those of the OCD patients in various factors, particularly that relating to superstition, and this is interpreted as lending support to the model of Morrison et al. (1995). Furthermore, the results are discussed in the light of existing research on Thought-Action Fusion, stressing the role that may be played by superstitious beliefs and magical thinking in auditory hallucinations and OCD.     

Learning to vary and varying to learn

We compared two sources of behavior variability: decreased levels of reinforcement and reinforcement contingent on variability itself. In Experiment 1, four groups of rats were reinforced for different levels of response-sequence variability: one group was reinforced for low variability, two groups were reinforced for intermediate levels, and one group was reinforced for very high variability. All of the groups experienced three different reinforcement frequencies for meeting their respective variability contingencies. Results showed that reinforcement contingencies controlled response variability more than did reinforcement frequencies. Experiment 2 showed that only those animals concurrently reinforced for high variability acquired a difficult-to-learn sequence; animals reinforced for low variability learned little or not at all. Variability was therefore controlled mainly by reinforcement contingencies, and learning increased as a function of levels of baseline variability. Knowledge of these relationships may be helpful to those who attempt to condition operant responses.     

Constraint, alcoholism, and electrodermal response in aversive classical conditioning and mismatch novelty paradigms

This study investigated whether low levels of the personality trait of constraint and early-onset alcoholism would be associated with deficits in aversive conditioning and smaller responses to novelty in a stimulus mismatch protocol. Personality traits (constraint and socialization) and skin conductance responses (SCRs) during conditioning and novelty paradigms were assessed in alcoholics (n=41) and non-alcoholics (n=32). The conditioning protocol involved measuring SCRs after conditioned stimuli (CS+: tones) paired with shock, CS− tones unpaired with shock, and CS+ probes unpaired with shock. The mismatch protocol involved measuring SCRs to auditory stimuli consisting of a series of 5 pure tones of the same pitch followed a shorter white noise stimulus (the novel stimulus). Contrary to the hypothesis, alcoholics did not differ from non-alcoholics in SCRs to CS+ probes or on the mismatch measure (SCR novel tone—SCR to 5^th tone). Higher levels of constraint and self-reports of fear during conditioning were associated with smaller responses to both the CS+ probes and the CS− tones as well as the mismatch measure within non-alcoholics, but not within alcoholics. In alcoholics, low constraint was associated with greater habituation to CS+ probes, and poor differential conditioning on measures of change across trials in SCR to CS+ probes and CS− stimuli. The results suggest that different processes influence levels of constraint in non-alcoholics and alcoholics. The data indicate that low constraint in non-alcoholics is associated with allocating fewer processing resources to potentially significant stimuli, rather than being associated with a specific deficit in aversive conditioning per se.     

Spatial attention and audiovisual interactions in apparent motion

In this study, the authors combined the cross-modal dynamic capture task (involving the horizontal apparent movement of visual and auditory stimuli) with spatial cuing in the vertical dimension to investigate the role of spatial attention in cross-modal interactions during motion perception. Spatial attention was manipulated endogenously, either by means of a blocked design or by predictive peripheral cues, and exogenously by means of nonpredictive peripheral cues. The results of 3 experiments demonstrate a reduction in the magnitude of the cross-modal dynamic capture effect on cued trials compared with uncued trials. The introduction of neutral cues (Experiments 4 and 5) confirmed the existence of both attentional costs and benefits. This attention-related reduction in cross-modal dynamic capture was larger when a peripheral cue was used compared with when attention was oriented in a purely endogenous manner. In sum, the results suggest that spatial attention reduces illusory binding by facilitating the segregation of unimodal signals, thereby modulating audiovisual interactions in information processing. Thus, the effect of spatial attention occurs prior to or at the same time as cross-modal interactions involving motion information.     

Perceptual and decisional contributions to audiovisual interactions in the perception of apparent motion: a signal detection study

Motion information available to different sensory modalities can interact at both perceptual and post-perceptual (i.e., decisional) stages of processing. However, to date, researchers have only been able to demonstrate the influence of one of these components at any given time, hence the relationship between them remains uncertain. We addressed the interplay between the perceptual and post-perceptual components of information processing by assessing their influence on performance within the same experimental paradigm. We used signal detection theory to discriminate changes in perceptual sensitivity (d') from shifts in response criterion (c) in performance on a detection (Experiment 1) and a classification (Experiment 2) task regarding the direction of auditory apparent motion streams presented in noise. In the critical conditions, a visual motion distractor moving either leftward or rightward was presented together with the auditory motion. The results demonstrated a significant decrease in sensitivity to the direction of the auditory targets in the crossmodal conditions as compared to the unimodal baseline conditions that was independent of the relative direction of the visual distractor. In addition, we also observed significant shifts in response criterion, which were dependent on the relative direction of the distractor apparent motion. These results support the view that the perceptual and decisional components involved in audiovisual interactions in motion processing can coexist but are largely independent of one another.     

Familiarity and recollection in fictitious face recognition: implications for recognition models

Using the paradigm, participants were engaged in a fictitious face recognition experiment in which three between-subject conditions were manipulated by either adding or not adding wrinkles on the faces between the study and the recognition tasks (no change, single change, double change). Our hypothesis was that this procedure would maximize judgments based on familiarity, thus determining whether data provided better fit to the models based on the signal detection theory or to predictions of dual models. In global terms, our results support the signal detection model predictions, although we discuss whether these models better fit tasks based on familiarity or tasks based on recollection.     

Gender Differences in Video Game Characters’ Roles, Appearances, and Attire as Portrayed in Video Game Magazines

Video game characters have the potential to shape players’ perceptions of gender roles. Through social comparison processes, players learn societal expectations of appearances, behaviors and roles. Forty-nine articles were coded from current U.S. gaming magazines, resulting in 115 coded characters. This content analysis of video game magazine articles investigated how characters are portrayed, focusing on gender differences. Males were more likely to be heroes and main characters, use more weapons, have more abilities, and were more muscular and powerful. Females were more often supplemental characters, more attractive, sexy, and innocent, and also wore more revealing clothing. Understanding these video game messages is an important first step in understanding the effects games and magazines may have on behavior and attitudes.     

Discriminating speech rhythms in audition,vision, and touch

We investigated the extent to which people can discriminate between languages on the basis of their characteristic temporal, rhythmic information, and the extent to which this ability generalizes across sensory modalities. We used rhythmical patterns derived from the alternation of vowels and consonants in English and Japanese, presented in audition, vision, both audition and vision at the same time, or touch. Experiment 1 confirmed that discrimination is possible on the basis of auditory rhythmic patterns, and extended it to the case of vision, using ‘aperture-close’ mouth movements of a schematic face. In Experiment 2, language discrimination was demonstrated using visual and auditory materials that did not resemble spoken articulation. In a combined analysis including data from Experiments 1 and 2, a beneficial effect was also found when the auditory rhythmic information was available to participants. Despite the fact that discrimination could be achieved using vision alone, auditory performance was nevertheless better. In a final experiment, we demonstrate that the rhythm of speech can also be discriminated successfully by means of vibrotactile patterns delivered to the fingertip. The results of the present study therefore demonstrate that discrimination between language's syllabic rhythmic patterns is possible on the basis of visual and tactile displays.