Investigating joint attention mechanisms through spoken human-robot interaction

Referential gaze during situated language production and comprehension is tightly coupled with the unfolding speech stream ( [Griffin, 2001] , [Meyer et al., 1998] and [Tanenhaus et al., 1995] ). In a shared environment, utterance comprehension may further be facilitated when the listener can exploit the speaker’s focus of (visual) attention to anticipate, ground, and disambiguate spoken references. To investigate the dynamics of such gaze-following and its influence on utterance comprehension in a controlled manner, we use a human–robot interaction setting. Specifically, we hypothesize that referential gaze is interpreted as a cue to the speaker’s referential intentions which facilitates or disrupts reference resolution. Moreover, the use of a dynamic and yet extremely controlled gaze cue enables us to shed light on the simultaneous and incremental integration of the unfolding speech and gaze movement.We report evidence from two eye-tracking experiments in which participants saw videos of a robot looking at and describing objects in a scene. The results reveal a quantified benefit-disruption spectrum of gaze on utterance comprehension and, further, show that gaze is used, even during the initial movement phase, to restrict the spatial domain of potential referents. These findings more broadly suggest that people treat artificial agents similar to human agents and, thus, validate such a setting for further explorations of joint attention mechanisms.     

Voice as Materialistic Principle

In this reply, three core notions from Schürmann’s comment The materiality of the abstraction “voice” are picked out and discussed: the ethos, the so called trialogical self and vocality as principle. The notion of ethos is explored through the word’s history, coming to say that ethos develops in relation to a certain geographical place and is determined by the social practices of a historically situated community. Thus, the concept allows to see how current scientific activities are rooted in reality, taken in the socio-cultural sense. The “trialogical self” is discussed in its implications, leading to firmly retain “dialogical self” as sign of a movement leading through the other to self. Schürmann’s distinction of voice as phenomenon and vocality as principle is seen as fruitful supplement to own ideas, especially as it highlights the fact that it is the act of uttering in different modes which matters for a language notion based in addressivity.     

The Materiality of the Abstraction Voice

The comment on Bertau's paper underlines the importance of the internally social character of the dialogical self, which is not trivial and can not be taken for granted. A consistent theory of this internal character demands specific theoretical means native to a tradition of Leibniz' philosophy. In consequence the concept of dialogical self is presented as a non-empirical one based in an ethos. We, and not nature, are responsible for the modes of conceptualising.     

Illusory trust: Kanizsa shapes incidentally increase trust and willingness to invest

Previous research has shown that the completion of basic perceptual processes is intrinsically pleasant. In the absence of diagnostic and objective cues to trustworthiness, nondiagnostic factors such as positive affect can incidentally lead to reported and behavioral trust. On the basis of these two premises, it was tested whether positive affect from the completion of perceptual processes has implications for the formation of trust in first-time business-consumer interactions. We tested this hypothesis in four experiments, using the famous Kanizsa illusion as an exemplary perceptual process that has been shown to trigger positive affect. We found that participants trusted companies who featured a Kanizsa shape as their logo more than companies with closely matched logos that did not allow for the completion of a basic perceptual process. This was evident on self-reported (Experiment 1) as well as behavioral (Experiments 2–4) measures of trust. This effect even persisted under incentivized conditions (Experiment 4) and was partially mediated by the intrinsic pleasantness of perception (Experiment 3). These findings for the first time demonstrate that positive affect is not the only consequence of perception, but rather has further trickle-down consequences for social judgments and economic decision making. Perceptual illusions seem to elicit illusory trust. Therefore, these novel findings bear important implications not only for both logo design and marketing but also for consumer decision making.     

Endings as gain: The capacity to end and its role in creating space for growth

The paper describes an application of child psychotherapy in a paediatric setting. It examines the crucial part that attention to endings played in a clinical intervention where the phantasy of going on for ever threatened to inhibit growth. Case material is used to illustrate the different meanings and functions of endings and their significance in terms of parenting issues and developmental tasks. In this context the concept of negative elasticity is put forward as a useful tool for exploring the nature of boundaries. The final part of the paper focuses on the value of the external-reality experience of ending, its relationship to potential professional omnipotence and the importance of sustaining a tension between inner- and outer-world factors.     

《老子》形而上学研究

善是道德价值。它是私意的表达。因此,《老子》认为,善恶是非不分,需要破除。言即知识,是对事实的陈述。它有所限定,即局限性,彼此有别,因此也要放弃。有即万物。有具有主体性。有即现象,为假,不是事物的本来。事物的本来即道。作为本来的道,即本、即生。作为本的道是某种可能性,故不可说。作为生的道,未能成形,故不可说。道不可道。假的有、巧的真、善的名都遮蔽了道：事物的本来。故需要反,即还原。     

Mechanisms behind hazard perception of warning signs: An EEG study

Warning signs are the most effective way to alert people to hazards in the industries, architecture, and transportation. To better understand how these warning signs prompted hazard, this study investigated the intrinsic mechanism of hazard perception of warning signs, including warning words (low versus high hazard levels) and surrounding shapes (upright triangle versus circle). We recruited 18 participants and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG). We found that a combination of high-hazard-level words and an upright triangle shape significantly elicited more negative N300 and increased theta-band (3–8 Hz) synchronization, but reduced beta-band (15–30 Hz) desynchronization. The N300 component represented the emotional arousal strength, theta oscillations reflected the engagement of retrieval of emotional experiences from episodic memory, and beta oscillation connoted the semantic encoding. Thus, these findings suggested that a high-hazard-level combination had the ability to obtain high priority in cognitive processing. The EEG pattern changes allowed us to assess whether the hazard perception of warning signs was high or low, which could be an accurate indicator to better evaluate the design of warning signs.     

“It's hip to be square”: Grounding moral traits in geometric shapes

To examine the hypothesis that there is a metaphoric link between geometric shapes (square vs. circle) and moral traits (integrity vs. deviousness), we conducted three experiments in China. In Study 1, integrity-related words were classified faster when embedded in a square than in a circle. Conversely, deviousness-related words were classified faster in a circle than in a square. Study 2 found that a person who preferred squares was perceived as more righteous and that a person who preferred circles was perceived as more devious. Study 3 revealed that the participants were more likely to pair a square with integrity-related words and a circle with deviousness-related words in a memory task. Given the negation of square-integrity and circle-deviousness emotional congruence, the findings of this research show that shape-related information is a meaningful part of the mental representations of moral traits.     

Learning of letter names follows similar principles across languages: Evidence from Hebrew

Letter names play an important role in early literacy. Previous studies of letter name learning have examined the Latin alphabet. The current study tested learners of Hebrew, comparing their patterns of performance and types of errors with those of English learners. We analyzed letter-naming data from 645 Israeli children who had not begun formal reading instruction: a younger group (mean age 5 years 2 months) and an older group (mean age 6 years 2 months). Children's errors often involved letters with similar shapes or letters adjacent to one another in the alphabet. Most Hebrew letter names are not very similar to one another phonologically, and there were fewer phonologically based confusions than in English. We found both general frequency effects and frequency effects that reflected the letters in individual children's names. On average, girls knew more letter names than did boys. The results suggest that letter name learning follows similar principles across languages.