Can object affordances impact on human social learning of tool use?

The author describes "higher" and "uniquely human" sociocognitive skills that he argues as being necessary for tool use. We propose that those skills could be based on simpler detection systems humans could share with other animal tool users. More specifically, we discuss the impact of object affordances on the understanding and the social learning of tool use.     

Foundations of an ontology of philosophy

We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is oriented around what philosophical literature is about.     

The Patient–Doctor Relationship Questionnaire (PDRQ-9) in Primary Care: A Validity Study

This study assessed the validity of the Patient–Doctor Relationship Questionnaire-9 (PDRQ-9) in a primary care sample (N = 180). Convergent validity was assessed through a correlation between the patient-rated PDRQ-9 and the physician-rated Difficult Doctor Patient Relationship Questionnaire-10 (DDPRQ-10). Discriminant validity was assessed through correlations between the PDRQ-9 and patient age, patient- and physician-reported health and psychological distress. To determine if the PDRQ-9 could discriminate between groups, patient PDRQ-9 ratings were compared between patients who were treated by faculty physicians versus those who were treated by residents. An exploratory factor analysis confirmed that the PDRQ-9 was made up of a single factor. The PDRQ-9 scale was internally consistent (α = .96) and significantly and negatively correlated with the DDPRQ-10 (r = ?.22, p = .003) and was not significantly correlated with patient age, health, or psychological distress. PDRQ-9 ratings were statistically greater in patients who were treated by faculty physicians than those who were treated by residents (p = .01). This study provides additional support for the reliability and validity of the PDRQ-9 as a measure of the doctor–patient relationship in a primary care sample.     

Correction to: A psychophysiological investigation of mourning: There are two sides to the story

Motivation and Emotion - Mourning constitutes an important human emotion, which might cause—among other things—major depressive symptoms when lasting for too long. To date, no study...     

Immobility reaction at birth in newborn infant

Objective

To describe an immobility reaction (IR) that was not previously reported at or immediately after birth in human newborns.

Method

We analyzed 31 videos of normal term vaginal deliveries recorded from Time 0 of birth defined as the as the moment that lies between the birth of the thorax and the pelvis of the infant. We searched for perinatal factors associated with newborn's IR.

Results

IR at birth was observed in 8 of the 31 newborns. The main features of their behavior were immobilization, frozen face, shallow breathing and bradycardia. One of the 8 newborns had sudden collapse 2 h after birth. We found significant relationships between maternal prenatal stress (PS) and IR (p = .037), and a close to significant one between infants’ lividness at Time 0 and IR (p = .053). The first breath of the 31 newborns occurred before and was not associated with the first cry (p < .001).

Discussion

The main features of IR at birth are similar to those of the universal most severe response to severe stress or danger. The relationship with PS suggests that children who had IR at birth might be at risk for similar disorders as those associated with PS. Sudden neonatal collapse of one of the IR newborns needs further research to determine if they are at risk for sudden infant death syndrome.

Conclusion

This first report of an IR reaction at birth in human infants could open up new paths for improving early neonatal care. Further research is needed for maternal PS, stress hormones, umbilical cord blood pH measurements in IR newborns. The challenge of education and support for parents of IR newborns is outlined.     

Targets of the memorized position and visual contexts]

The goal of this study was to determine whether a sensorimotor or cognitive encoding is used to encode a target position and save it into iconic memory. The methodology consisted of disrupting a manual aiming movement to a memorized visual target by displacing the visual field containing the target. The nature of the encoding was inferred from the nature and the size of the errors relative to a control. The target was presented either centrally or in the right periphery. Participants moved their hand from the left to the right of fixation. Black and white vertical stripes covered the whole visual field. The visual field was either stationary throughout the trial or was displaced to the right or left at the extinction of the target or at the start of the hand movement. In the latter case, the displacement of the visual field obviously could only be taken into account by the participant during the gesture. In this condition, our hypothesis was that the aiming error would follow the direction of visual field displacement. Results showed three major effects: (1) Vision of the hand during the gesture improved the final accuracy; (2) visual field displacement produced an underestimation of the target distance only when the hand was not visible during the gesture and was always in the same direction displacement; and (3) the effect of the stationary structured visual field on aiming precision when the hand was not visible depended on the distance to the target. These results suggest that a stationary structured visual field is used to support the memory of the target position. The structured visual field is more critical when the hand is not visible and when the target appears in peripheral rather than central vision. This suggests that aiming depends on memory of the relative peripheral position of the target (allocentric reference). However, in the present task, cognitive encoding does not maintain the "position" of the target in memory without reference to the environment. The systematic effect of the visual field displacement on the manual aiming suggests that the role of environmental reference frames in memory for position is not well understood. Some studies, in particular those of Giesbrecht and Dixon (1999) and Glover and Dixon (2001), suggested differing roles of the environment in the retention of the target position and the control of aiming movements toward the target. The present observations contribute to understanding the mechanism involved in locating and grasping objects with the hand.     

Proximodistal exploration in motor learning as an emergent property of optimization

To harness the complexity of their high‐dimensional bodies during sensorimotor development, infants are guided by patterns of freezing and freeing of degrees of freedom. For instance, when learning to reach, infants free the degrees of freedom in their arm proximodistally, that is, from joints that are closer to the body to those that are more distant. Here, we formulate and study computationally the hypothesis that such patterns can emerge spontaneously as the result of a family of stochastic optimization processes, without an innate encoding of a maturational schedule. In particular, we present simulated experiments with an arm where a computational learner progressively acquires reaching skills through adaptive exploration, and we show that a proximodistal organization appears spontaneously, which we denote PDFF (Proximo Distal Freezing and Freeing of degrees of freedom). We also compare this emergent organization between different arm morphologies—from human‐like to quite unnatural ones—to study the effect of different kinematic structures on the emergence of PDFF.