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PubMed1998

Similarity as an explanatory construct.

Theories can be found throughout cognitive science that give an explanatory role to similarity. Such theories can be contrasted with those that model thought using abstract rules. We lay out four possible explanatory roles for similarity. We then review the computational pros and cons of similarity- and rule-based models and outline the empirical work that speaks to the psychological plausibility of the two frameworks. We conclude that an adequate model of human thought must take advantage of both the flexibility of similarity-based inference and the compositionality and certainty associated with rule-based inference.

Attention↗
PubMed1998

Why are different features central for natural kinds and artifacts?: the role of causal status in determining feature centrality.

Ahn and Lassaline [Ahn, W., Lassaline, M.E., 1995. Causal structure in categorization. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 521-526] recently proposed a causal status hypothesis which states that features that play a causal role in a relational structure are more central than their effects. This hypothesis can account for previous research demonstrating that compositional features are generally important for natural kinds but functional features are generally important for artifacts. The causal status hypothesis explains this category-feature interaction effect in terms of differences in the causal status of compositional and functional features between natural kinds and artifacts. Experiments 1 and 2 examined real-life categories used in previous studies, and found positive correlations between the causal status of the features and their centrality across natural and artifactual kinds. Experiments 3 and 4 manipulated the causal status of compositional and functional features in artificial categories, and showed that it was causal status rather than the interaction between the type of feature and the type of category per se that accounted for feature centrality. The implications of these results on the distinctions between natural kinds and artifacts are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Phonology and neuropsychology of the English past tense.

The double dissociation between the regular and irregular past tense in English has been explained in terms of dual and single mechanism accounts. In previous research we have argued that problems with the regular past tense in patients with left inferior frontal damage arise from morpho-phonological parsing difficulties [Trends in Cognitive Science 2 (1998) 428]. This claim has recently been challenged by a single mechanism connectionist account which argues that a general phonological processing deficit causes the poor performance on the regular past tense, with morphological factors playing no explicit role [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96 (1999) 7592]. We used a speeded judgement task with four patients who have documented difficulties with the regular past tense to contrast the claims made by these different approaches. We compared patients' ability to detect the difference between the past tense and stem of regular (hugged/hug) and irregular (taught/teach) past tense verbs, as well as matched "pseudo" pairs (trade/tray and port/peach). These real word conditions were accompanied by matched sets of non-words (e.g. nugged/nug). Patients' latencies to the regular past tense real word-pairs were consistently slower than in any other condition. To test for a general phonological processing deficit, we conducted several tests of phonological processing ability. The results show that the patients had a range of difficulties in phonological processing, from very mild to severe. This did not correlate with their performance on the speeded judgement task. We interpret this pattern of results as support for a specialised morpho-phonological processing mechanism which can be dissociated from other phonological processes and which is used directly in the processing of the regular past tense in a dual-mechanism system.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Evolutionary neurocontrollers for autonomous mobile robots.

In this article we describe a methodology for evolving neurocontrollers of autonomous mobile robots without human intervention. The presentation, which spans from technological and methodological issues to several experimental results on evolution of physical mobile robots, covers both previous and recent work in the attempt to provide a unified picture within which the reader can compare the effects of systematic variations on the experimental settings. After describing some key principles for building mobile robots and tools suitable for experiments in adaptive robotics, we give an overview of different approaches to evolutionary robotics and present our methodology. We start reviewing two basic experiments showing that different environments can shape very different behaviours and neural mechanisms under very similar selection criteria. We then address the issue of incremental evolution in two different experiments from the perspective of changing environments and robot morphologies. Finally, we investigate the possibility of evolving plastic neurocontrollers and analyse an evolved neurocontroller that relies on fast and continuously changing synapses characterized by dynamic stability. We conclude by reviewing the implications of this methodology for engineering, biology, cognitive science and artificial life, and point at future directions of research.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1999

Organization of face and object recognition in modular neural network models.

There is strong evidence that face processing in the brain is localized. The double dissociation between prosopagnosia, a face recognition deficit occurring after brain damage, and visual object agnosia, difficulty recognizing other kinds of complex objects, indicates that face and non-face object recognition may be served by partially independent neural mechanisms. In this paper, we use computational models to show how the face processing specialization apparently underlying prosopagnosia and visual object agnosia could be attributed to (1) a relatively simple competitive selection mechanism that, during development, devotes neural resources to the tasks they are best at performing, (2) the developing infant's need to perform subordinate classification (identification) of faces early on, and (3) the infant's low visual acuity at birth. Inspired by de Schonen, Mancini and Liegeois' arguments (1998) [de Schonen, S., Mancini, J., Liegeois, F. (1998). About functional cortical specialization: the development of face recognition. In: F. Simon & G. Butterworth, The development of sensory, motor, and cognitive capacities in early infancy (pp. 103-116). Hove, UK: Psychology Press] that factors like these could bias the visual system to develop a processing subsystem particularly useful for face recognition, and Jacobs and Kosslyn's experiments (1994) [Jacobs, R. A., & Kosslyn, S. M. (1994). Encoding shape and spatial relations-the role of receptive field size in coordination complementary representations. Cognitive Science, 18(3), 361-368] in the mixtures of experts (ME) modeling paradigm, we provide a preliminary computational demonstration of how this theory accounts for the double dissociation between face and object processing. We present two feed-forward computational models of visual processing. In both models, the selection mechanism is a gating network that mediates a competition between modules attempting to classify input stimuli. In Model I, when the modules are simple unbiased classifiers, the competition is sufficient to achieve enough of a specialization that damaging one module impairs the model's face recognition more than its object recognition, and damaging the other module impairs the model's object recognition more than its face recognition. However, the model is not completely satisfactory because it requires a search of parameter space. With Model II, we explore biases that lead to more consistent specialization. We bias the modules by providing one with low spatial frequency information and the other with high spatial frequency information. In this case, when the model's task is subordinate classification of faces and superordinate classification of objects, the low spatial frequency network shows an even stronger specialization for faces. No other combination of tasks and inputs shows this strong specialization. We take these results as support for the idea that something resembling a face processing "module" could arise as a natural consequence of the infant's developmental environment without being innately specified.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Source-monitoring deficits for self-generated stimuli in schizophrenia: multinomial modeling of data from three sources.

INTRODUCTION: Schizophrenia patients, particularly those with specific types of hallucinations and delusions, may have a deficit in monitoring the generation of thought. This deficit, termed autonoetic agnosia, may result in the conclusion that self-generated thoughts come from an external source. METHODS: This study assessed autonoetic agnosia in 29 schizophrenic patients and 19 controls by applying a recently developed technique from cognitive science: multinomial modeling of source-monitoring data. RESULTS: Schizophrenic patients demonstrated deficits in monitoring the source of self-generated information, yet performed similarly to controls in monitoring the source of visual and auditory information. Schizophrenic patients with specific "target" symptoms such as auditory hallucinations and thought insertion had greater deficits than other patients in recognizing self-generated information. CONCLUSION: This study offers partial support for the notion that schizophrenic patients manifest autonoetic agnosia.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Internal models for motor control and trajectory planning.

A number of internal model concepts are now widespread in neuroscience and cognitive science. These concepts are supported by behavioral, neurophysiological, and imaging data; furthermore, these models have had their structures and functions revealed by such data. In particular, a specific theory on inverse dynamics model learning is directly supported by unit recordings from cerebellar Purkinje cells. Multiple paired forward inverse models describing how diverse objects and environments can be controlled and learned separately have recently been proposed. The 'minimum variance model' is another major recent advance in the computational theory of motor control. This model integrates two furiously disputed approaches on trajectory planning, strongly suggesting that both kinematic and dynamic internal models are utilized in movement planning and control.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

The probabilistic approach to human reasoning.

A recent development in the cognitive science of reasoning has been the emergence of a probabilistic approach to the behaviour observed on ostensibly logical tasks. According to this approach the errors and biases documented on these tasks occur because people import their everyday uncertain reasoning strategies into the laboratory. Consequently participants' apparently irrational behaviour is the result of comparing it with an inappropriate logical standard. In this article, we contrast the probabilistic approach with other approaches to explaining rationality, and then show how it has been applied to three main areas of logical reasoning: conditional inference, Wason's selection task and syllogistic reasoning.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

Radical embodiment: neural dynamics and consciousness.

We propose a new approach to the neuroscience of consciousness, growing out of the 'enactive' viewpoint in cognitive science. This approach aims to map the neural substrates of consciousness at the level of large-scale, emergent and transient dynamical patterns of brain activity (rather than at the level of particular circuits or classes of neurons), and it suggests that the processes crucial for consciousness cut across the brain-body-world divisions, rather than being brain-bound neural events. Whereas standard approaches to the neural correlates of consciousness have assumed a one-way causal-explanatory relationship between internal neural representational systems and the contents of consciousness, our approach allows for theories and hypotheses about the two-way or reciprocal relationship between embodied conscious states and local neuronal activity.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Synthesis of autonomous robots through evolution.

Evolutionary robotics is the attempt to develop robots through a self-organized process based on artificial evolution. This approach stresses the importance of the study of systems that have a body and that are situated in a physical environment, and which autonomously develop their own skills in close interaction with the environment. In this review we briefly illustrate the method and the main concept of evolutionary robotics, and examine the most significant contribution in this area. We also discuss some of the contributions that this research area is making to the foundational debate in cognitive science.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

RAP: a new framework for visual categorization.

Cognitive science might almost be defined as several disciplines communicating their different perspectives on the mind, the common object of study. However, domain-specific concepts and techniques can prevent, rather than foster, a communication of viewpoints. In this article, we develop a new framework for visual categorization in which the interaction between Represented (R) information and Available (A) information determine the Potent (P) information (symbolically, R ? A approximately P). We argue and illustrate that this framework helps to establish a common language to articulate issues common to low-, mid-, and high-level vision. More importantly, we present new techniques with which to visualize the so-far elusive constructs of representation and potent information.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Genetics and general cognitive ability (g).

Two recent articles in this journal made the case for the existence and importance of g and reviewed research on cognitive and psychophysical correlates of psychometric g. This review considers g from a genetic perspective. Multivariate genetic research indicates that g accounts for nearly all of the genetic variance of diverse psychometric cognitive tests (genetic g). Recent research suggests not only that elementary cognitive tasks are genetically linked to psychometric g but also that genetic g pervades these tasks. Contrary to the assumption of modularity that dominates cognitive science, genetic g exists in the mind as well as in psychometric tests.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Explaining the ineffable.

The 10th Anniversary Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music was held at Liège, Belgium, on 5-8 April 2002.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2003

What is a visual object?

The concept of an 'object' plays a central role in cognitive science, particularly in vision, reasoning and conceptual development - but it has rarely been given a concrete formal definition. Here I argue that visual objects cannot be defined according to simple physical properties but can instead be understood in terms of the hierarchical organization of visual scene interpretations. Within the tree describing such a hierarchical description, certain nodes make natural candidates as the 'joints' between objects, representing division points between parts of the image that cohere internally but do not perceptually group with one another. Thus each subtree hanging from such a node corresponds to a single perceived 'object'. This formal definition accords with several intuitions about the way objects behave.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2000

Exploring the natural foundations of religion.

A new cognitive approach to religion is bringing fresh insights to our understanding of how religious concepts are maintained, acquired and used to motivate and direct actions. This approach suggests that seemingly extraordinary thoughts and behaviours can be supported by quite ordinary cognition and may thus be termed 'natural'. Simultaneously, this research is expanding the domain of concepts and causal reasoning in general. This review examines recent research into religious rituals, communication and transmission of religious knowledge, the development of god-concepts in children, and the origins and character of religious concepts in adults. Together, these studies consistently emphasize and support the notion that the cultural phenomena typically labeled as 'religion' may be understood as the product of aggregated ordinary cognition. The new cognitive science of religion should eventually provide a fuller account of the distinctive and apparently extraordinary properties of religion.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

'Televaluation' of clinical information systems: an integrative approach to assessing Web-based systems.

The World Wide Web provides an unprecedented opportunity for widespread access to health-care applications by both patients and providers. The development of new methods for assessing the effectiveness and usability of these systems is becoming a critical issue. This paper describes the distance evaluation (i.e. 'televaluation') of emerging Web-based information technologies. In health informatics evaluation, there is a need for application of new ideas and methods from the fields of cognitive science and usability engineering. A framework is presented for conducting evaluations of health-care information technologies that integrates a number of methods, ranging from deployment of on-line questionnaires (and Web-based forms) to remote video-based usability testing of user interactions with clinical information systems. Examples illustrating application of these techniques are presented for the assessment of a patient clinical information system (PatCIS), as well as an evaluation of use of Web-based clinical guidelines. Issues in designing, prototyping and iteratively refining evaluation components are discussed, along with description of a 'virtual' usability laboratory.

Attitude to Computers↗
PubMed2000

Précis of Simple heuristics that make us smart.

How can anyone be rational in a world where knowledge is limited, time is pressing, and deep thought is often an unattainable luxury? Traditional models of unbounded rationality and optimization in cognitive science, economics, and animal behavior have tended to view decision-makers as possessing supernatural powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and endless time. But understanding decisions in the real world requires a more psychologically plausible notion of bounded rationality. In Simple heuristics that make us smart (Gigerenzer et al. 1999), we explore fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules in the mind's adaptive toolbox for making decisions with realistic mental resources. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices quickly and with a minimum of information by exploiting the way that information is structured in particular environments. In this précis, we show how simple building blocks that control information search, stop search, and make decisions can be put together to form classes of heuristics, including: ignorance-based and one-reason decision making for choice, elimination models for categorization, and satisficing heuristics for sequential search. These simple heuristics perform comparably to more complex algorithms, particularly when generalizing to new data--that is, simplicity leads to robustness. We present evidence regarding when people use simple heuristics and describe the challenges to be addressed by this research program.

Decision Making↗
PubMed2000

How hard is mechanism elucidation in catalysis? Combinatorial analysis of C1 chemistry

Most chemical reactions occur over multiple steps whose identity is elucidated by experiment, yielding a reaction mechanism. Knowledge of cognitive science suggests that mechanism elucidation can be viewed as a knowledge-guided search within a combinatorial space. The MECHEM computer program searches this space comprehensively for the simplest plausible mechanisms. We use MECHEM to find mechanisms for Fischer-Tropsch chemistry and CO2 re-forming of methane, both heterogeneous catalytic reactions of current importance. The results reveal hundreds of equally simple mechanisms consistent with evidence. Hence, mechanism elucidation in catalysis is a much harder problem than is ordinarily realized.

Journal Article↗