Sustainable Technologies and Transdisciplinary Futures: From Collaborative Design to Digital Fabrication

This paper argues for hands-on, contextual and problem-solving collaborations, that is, for a transdisciplinary approach that establishes direct connections between social and technical disciplines. It is based on our experience as a team of researchers at the Vitruvius Fab Lab (Digital Fabrication Laboratory) of ISCTE-IUL (University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal). The paper presents a particular research and learning initiative–STTF2013 Summer School ‘Sustainable Technologies and Transdisciplinary Futures: From Collaborative Design to Digital Fabrication’, which served as a testbed for our transdisciplinary, critical and open approach. We address its rationale and main challenges, while also discussing recommendations for other transdisciplinary projects striving to integrate social and technical disciplines in research and innovation.     

Cognitive events in a problem-solving task: a qualitative method for investigating interactivity in the 17 Animals problem

Outside the cognitive psychologist's laboratory, problem-solving is an activity that takes place in a rich web of interactions involving people and artefacts. This interactivity is constituted by fine-grained action–perception cycles, and it allows a reasoner's comprehension of the problem to emerge from a coalition of internal and external resources. Taking an ecological approach to problem-solving, this paper introduces a qualitative method, Cognitive Event Analysis, for studying the fine-grained interactivity between a problem-solving agent and his/her environment. To demonstrate the potential of this method, it is used to study a single subject solving the so-called 17 Animals problem using a material model. The fine-grained procedure allows tracking the solution to a serendipity that was brought about because of the participant's aesthetic considerations and a change in her perceptual figure-ground configuration. While a qualitative single-case method cannot prove specific models of problem-solving, it questions prevalent mentalist models, and it generates new hypotheses on insight problem-solving, because it allows the researcher to attend to outliers and to variability on a fast and fine-grained between-measurement timescale.     

The Attainment of Self-Consistency Through Gender in Young Children

This paper explores young children's motivation for gender-stereotypical preferences by comparing two theories, both based on Kohlberg's stages of cognitive understanding within the cognitive developmental tradition. The first, elaborated by Kohlberg, suggests that gender-stereotypical preferences are the result of the child's cognitive understanding of the constancy of their gender. The second theory suggests that it is precisely the lack of certainty of gender constancy that influences gender-stereotypical behavior. Data from a cross-sectional study of 100 children sampled during their first year of school, and longitudinal case studies of 10 children during the transition to school, are brought to bear on these two theories. The sample was drawn from a range of working class and middle class home backgrounds. The children were mainly White, with 6% Asian-Indian in the cross-sectional sample, and 1 Asian-Indian child in the longitudinal group. The study finds an association between gender-stereotypical behavior and the attainment of gender constancy, suggesting support for the first theory.     

Fitts' Law is Applicable to Trunk Coordination Measurements in a Sitting Position

Trunk coordination is essential for many activities of daily living in wheelchair users. This study investigated whether Fitts' law is applicable to trunk movements in a sitting position. Fourteen healthy adults performed two series of 24 tasks of trunk flexion–extension movements in a sitting position. The results showed significant linear relationships between average group movement time (MT) and index of difficulty (ID) over all tasks (r² = 0.92) and within target distances (0.94 < r² < 1.00). Target distance affected intercept and slope (P < 0.001). Hence, Fitts' law is applicable to the studied trunk movements in a sitting position, indicating these trunk movements tasks could serve as a basis for qualitative trunk coordination tests. Transferability of these conclusions to wheelchair users, and optimal test design should be further investigated.     

Eliciting information and cues to deceit through sketching in interpreter‐based interviews

As interviewees typically say less when an interpreter is present, we examined whether this was caused by interpreters not interpreting everything interviewees says or by interviewees providing less information. We further examined (a) the effect of a model drawing on providing information and (b) the diagnostic value of total details and the proportion of complications as cues to deceit. Hispanic, Russian, and South Korean participants were interviewed by native interviewers or by a British interviewer through an interpreter. Truth tellers discussed a trip they had made; liars fabricated a story. Participants received no instruction (condition 1) or were instructed to sketch while narrating without (condition 2) or with (condition 3) being given examples of detailed sketches. Interviewees said less when an interpreter was present because they provided less information. Truth tellers gave more details and, particularly, obtained a higher proportion of complications than liars. The sketching manipulation had no effect.     

The reciprocal relation between sleep and memory in infancy: Memory‐dependent adjustment of sleep spindles and spindle‐dependent improvement of memories

Sleep spindle activity in infants supports their formation of generalized memories during sleep, indicating that specific sleep processes affect the consolidation of memories early in life. Characteristics of sleep spindles depend on the infant's developmental state and are known to be associated with trait‐like factors such as intelligence. It is, however, largely unknown which state‐like factors affect sleep spindles in infancy. By varying infants’ wake experience in a within‐subject design, here we provide evidence for a learning‐ and memory‐dependent modulation of infant spindle activity. In a lexical‐semantic learning session before a nap, 14‐ to 16‐month‐old infants were exposed to unknown words as labels for exemplars of unknown object categories. In a memory test on the next day, generalization to novel category exemplars was tested. In a nonlearning control session preceding a nap on another day, the same infants heard known words as labels for exemplars of already known categories. Central–parietal fast sleep spindles increased after the encoding of unknown object–word pairings compared to known pairings, evidencing that an infant's spindle activity varies depending on its prior knowledge for newly encoded information. Correlations suggest that enhanced spindle activity was particularly triggered, when similar unknown pairings were not generalized immediately during encoding. The spindle increase triggered by previously not generalized object–word pairings, moreover, boosted the formation of generalized memories for these pairings. Overall, the results provide first evidence for a fine‐tuned regulation of infant sleep quality according to current consolidation requirements, which improves the infant long‐term memory for new experiences.     

On the examination couch: the relationship between the egocentric perspective and the attentional focus

Determined by anatomical characteristics, the binocular visual field has an elliptical shape. Whereas the focus of attention – that area of the visual field in which objects can be consciously perceived – is significantly smaller, its shape is not necessarily dependent on the same factors. Indeed, it is yet unknown if the maximum extents of the attentional focus’ meridians are dimensionally stable or adapt to the egocentric perspective. In this study, we intended to measure the expansion up to which peripheral stimuli can still be perceived while participants were sitting and lying on the left and on the right body side. Results demonstrate that contrary to the visual field the maximum extents along the attentional focus’ meridians remain stable across different head positions with a greater horizontal than vertical alignment. This indicates that the expansion ratios of the meridians of the attentional focus are not dependent on the egocentric perspective. Rather, they appear stable in space and gravity-based. Findings are discussed in terms of our visual environment and current as well as alternative interpretations are weighed against each other.