Madison Lee Mason, Caleb Vatral, Clayton Cohn
et al.
Abstract Although the “eye-mind link” hypothesis posits that eye movements provide a direct window into cognitive processing, linking eye movements to specific cognitions in real-world settings remains challenging. This challenge may arise because gaze metrics such as fixation duration, pupil size, and saccade amplitude are often aggregated across timelines that include heterogeneous events. To address this, we tested whether aggregating gaze parameters across participant-defined events could support the hypothesis that increased focal processing, indicated by greater gaze duration and pupil diameter, and decreased scene exploration, indicated by smaller saccade amplitude, would predict effective task performance. Using head-mounted eye trackers, nursing students engaged in simulation learning and later segmented their simulation footage into meaningful events, categorizing their behaviors, task outcomes, and cognitive states at the event level. Increased fixation duration and pupil diameter predicted higher student-rated teamwork quality, while increased pupil diameter predicted judgments of effective communication. Additionally, increased saccade amplitude positively predicted students’ perceived self-efficacy. These relationships did not vary across event types, and gaze parameters did not differ significantly between the beginning, middle, and end of events. However, there was a significant increase in fixation duration during the first five seconds of an event compared to the last five seconds of the previous event, suggesting an initial encoding phase at an event boundary. In conclusion, event-level gaze parameters serve as valid indicators of focal processing and scene exploration in natural learning environments, generalizing across event types.
Amandine Cimier, Beatrice Biancardi, Jérome Guegan
et al.
In this research, we investigated the role of multisensorial manipulation on creativity, and the influence of inspirational objects on creative outcomes. Object manipulation may support embodied cognition during a generative creative phase (emergence of motor, spatial, emotional ideas, etc.) then exploratory phase (creative fixation, development of a functional creation, etc.). Our protocol involved 136 engineering students divided into 34 groups which were provided with inspirational cubes illustrating manufacturing inventive principles or basic volumes from the Creative Mental Synthesis Task. They could manipulate these objects either in a visuo-haptic condition, or in a visuo-imaginative condition. Our results highlighted a main effect of manipulation, showing that visual-haptic condition led to higher creativity than visual-imaginative condition. We also observed several effects in favor of inspirational cubes with regard to basic volumes: significantly higher creativity, more subjective and inter-subjective facilitation behaviors, more cognitive and emotional operations. Participants also showed at an individual level a better mobilization of the multisensorial senses. Creative thinking may be stimulated when an active manipulation phase is set up before the creative production. This could contribute to improving practice for engineers, particularly for using additive manufacturing and/or during their training at school.
The drive to find one unifying theory, one overarching universal principle that would subsume and explain all, has been a common theme of human striving for knowledge for many centuries. It reflects, perhaps, a deep intuition that within every experience there is such a unifying singular essence, present yet ordinarily hidden, which when discovered would restore one to the wholeness of authentic being. Indeed, as contemplative traditions tell us, that singular essence is consciousness itself, that which is, and has been, aware or conscious in all our experiences. This nondual awareness, free from mental representations and their constructs, appears uncaused by anything other than itself and remains, once realized, relatively unchanged in different experiences. So, metaphorically, it is without birth or death. While the current increase in our understanding of consciousness has been, in many respects, exponential, our understanding of nondual awareness appears still elusive and more like a slowly ascending spiral, where each generation makes their unique contributions while still making largely the same mistakes. Like nondual awareness itself, then, many issues in understanding and researching it seem to be eternal as well. Previously, I have introduced nondual awareness and discussed why its non-representational reflexivity makes it unique and distinct from perceptual, affective, and cognitive contents, from various global states both natural and altered, and from functions of consciousness like attention, memory, meta-cognition, etc. Here, I will sketch out some issues related to ontology, epistemics, participant reports, and experiment design.
Konrad Juszczyk, Barbara Konat, Małgorzata Fabiszak
Metaphors, arguments and emotional appeals have considerable persuasive power in political discourse, yet they are rarely studied together. To explore the interactions between these interrelated phenomena, we employ three methods of analysis: Metaphor Identification Procedure, Inference Anchoring Theory, and lexicon-based sentiment analysis. Our data come from Polish political debates broadcasted during the 2019 pre-election campaign. We test hypotheses about the frequency of the associations between metaphors, arguments and emotional appeals. Hypothesis 1 predicts that arguments containing metaphors are more frequent than arguments without metaphors, hypothesis 2 predicts that arguments containing emotional appeals are more frequent than arguments without them, and hypothesis 3 predicts that arguments with metaphors and emotional appeals are more frequent than any other combination. The results show that metaphorical arguments do not outnumber non-metaphorical ones (H1 is falsified), and arguments that are both metaphorical and emotional do not outnumber the sum of all other types (H3 is falsified). Emotional arguments are more common than non-emotional ones (H2 is verified). We suggest that when political actors articulate their arguments, they often choose a particular metaphor to evoke positive or negative emotions in their audience.
The article focuses on the problems of conceptual modelling, which during the last decades was used in cognitive linguistics on the basis of the frame model (a cognitive model that structures mental spaces), linguistic networks, schemes, prototypes and gestalts. In the field of cognitive onomasiology, the Ukrainian researcher Olena Selivanova proposed a new type of conceptual model. It is known as a mental-psychonetic complex (MPC) or, in other words, a multi-substrate unit of knowledge that describes the motivational basis of the internal programming of verbal signs. The model of the mental-psychonetic complex was tested by school representatives on the material of nominative classes of various languages, as well as in the analysis of the nominative and cognitive nature of phraseological units of the Ukrainian language and poetic syntax. Conceptual analysis of signs of various types using the mental-psychonetic complex model enabled a new approach to the problem of motivation, development of its new typology, development of non-linear positional schemes of syntactic structures of a non-propositional (metaphorical) nature. The term “psychonetics” was first used by Japanese futurists to describe a post-information society in which efficient data processing operations are valued more than data accumulation. A psychonetic approach to modelling concepts involves a broader view of the problems of cognition and manipulation of concepts. The model covers the interaction of conscious and unconscious mental processes. MPC aims to represent the concept as a dynamic structure consisting of multiple overlapping and interacting layers and planes. Different aspects of consciousness, such as intelligence, emotions, perception, memory and other cognitive functions are combined into a complex that determines the specifics of human behaviour and thinking. The model takes into account that the course of mental processes is influenced not only by individual experience, but also by universal symbols and archetypes that exist in the collective unconscious, which is shared by all people. Thanks to the integration of various aspects of mental activity, individuals develop a higher degree of self-awareness, which significantly increases the efficiency of cognitive data processing.
Lucrezia Lonardo, Christoph J. Völter, Robert Hepach
et al.
Abstract The ability to make sense of and predict others’ actions is foundational for many socio-cognitive abilities. Dogs (Canis familiaris) constitute interesting comparative models for the study of action perception due to their marked sensitivity to human actions. We tested companion dogs (N = 21) in two screen-based eye-tracking experiments, adopting a task previously used with human infants and apes, to assess which aspects of an agent’s action dogs consider relevant to the agent’s underlying intentions. An agent was shown repeatedly acting upon the same one of two objects, positioned in the same location. We then presented the objects in swapped locations and the agent approached the objects centrally (Experiment 1) or the old object in the new location or the new object in the old location (Experiment 2). Dogs’ anticipatory fixations and looking times did not reflect an expectation that agents should have continued approaching the same object nor the same location as witnessed during the brief familiarization phase; this contrasts with some findings with infants and apes, but aligns with findings in younger infants before they have sufficient motor experience with the observed action. However, dogs’ pupil dilation and latency to make an anticipatory fixation suggested that, if anything, dogs expected the agents to keep approaching the same location rather than the same object, and their looking times showed sensitivity to the animacy of the agents. We conclude that dogs, lacking motor experience with the observed actions of grasping or kicking performed by a human or inanimate agent, might interpret such actions as directed toward a specific location rather than a specific object. Future research will need to further probe the suitability of anticipatory looking as measure of dogs’ socio-cognitive abilities given differences between the visual systems of dogs and primates.
Carlos J. Desme, Anthony S. Dick, Timothy B. Hayes
et al.
Abstract Spatial ability is defined as a cognitive or intellectual skill used to represent, transform, generate, and recall information of an object or the environment. Individual differences across spatial tasks have been strongly linked to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) interest and success. Several variables have been proposed to explain individual differences in spatial ability, including affective factors such as one’s confidence and anxiety. However, research is lacking on whether affective variables such as confidence and anxiety relate to individual differences in both a mental rotation task (MRT) and a perspective-taking and spatial orientation task (PTSOT). Using a sample of 100 college students completing introductory STEM courses, the present study investigated the effects of self-reported spatial confidence, spatial anxiety, and general anxiety on MRT and PTSOT. Spatial confidence, after controlling for effects of general anxiety and biological sex, was significantly related to performance on both the MRT and PTSOT. Spatial anxiety, after controlling for effects of general anxiety and biological sex, was not related to either PTSOT or MRT scores. Together these findings suggest some affective factors, but not others, contribute to spatial ability performance to a degree that merits advanced investigation in future studies.
Why do we divide (‘chunk’) long tasks into a series of shorter subtasks? A popular view is that limits in working memory (WM) prevent us from simultaneously maintaining all task relevant information in mind. We therefore chunk the task into smaller units so that we only maintain information in WM that is relevant to the current unit. In contrast to this view, we show that long tasks that are not constrained by WM limits are nonetheless chunked into smaller units. Participants executed long sequences of standalone but demanding trials that were not linked to any WM representation and whose execution was not constrained by how much information could be simultaneously held in WM. Using signs well-known to reflect beginning of new task units, we show that such trial sequences were not executed as a single task unit but were spontaneously chunked and executed as series smaller units. We also found that sequences made of easier trials were executed as longer task units and vice-versa, further suggesting that the length of task executed as one unit may be constrained by cognitive limits other than WM. Cognitive limits are typically seen to constrain how many things can be done simultaneously e.g., how many events can be maintained in WM or attended at the same time. We show a new aspect of these limits that constrains the length of behaviour that can be executed sequentially as a single task-unit.
Objective Amantadine has both anti-glutamatergic and dopaminergic action and may improve restless legs syndrome (RLS). We compared the efficacy and adverse-effect profile of amantadine and ropinirole in RLS.
David Rudrauf, Grégoire Sergeant-Perthuis, Yvain Tisserand
et al.
Consciousness has been described as acting as a global workspace that integrates perception, imagination, emotion and action programming for adaptive decision making. The mechanisms of this workspace and their relationships to the phenomenology of consciousness need to be further specified. Much research in this area has focused on the neural correlates of consciousness, but, arguably, computational modeling can better be used toward this aim. According to the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM), consciousness is structured as a viewpoint-organized, internal space, relying on 3D projective geometry and governed by the action of the Projective Group as part of a process of active inference. The geometry induces a group-structured subjective perspective on an encoded world model, enabling adaptive perspective taking in agents. Here, we review and discuss the PCM. We emphasize the role of projective mechanisms in perception and the appraisal of affective and epistemic values as tied to the motivation of action, under an optimization process of Free Energy minimization, or more generally stochastic optimal control. We discuss how these mechanisms enable us to model and simulate group-structured drives in the context of social cognition and to understand the mechanisms underpinning empathy, emotion expression and regulation, and approach–avoidance behaviors. We review previous results, drawing on applications in robotics and virtual humans. We briefly discuss future axes of research relating to applications of the model to simulation- and model-based behavioral science, geometrically structured artificial neural networks, the relevance of the approach for explainable AI and human–machine interactions, and the study of the neural correlates of consciousness.
Julija Vaitonytė, Maryam Alimardani, Max M. Louwerse
Abstract Virtual faces have been found to be rated less human-like and remembered worse than photographic images of humans. What it is in virtual faces that yields reduced memory has so far remained unclear. The current study investigated face memory in the context of virtual agent faces and human faces, real and manipulated, considering two factors of predicted influence, i.e., corneal reflections and skin contrast. Corneal reflections referred to the bright points in each eye that occur when the ambient light reflects from the surface of the cornea. Skin contrast referred to the degree to which skin surface is rough versus smooth. We conducted two memory experiments, one with high-quality virtual agent faces (Experiment 1) and the other with the photographs of human faces that were manipulated (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed better memory for virtual faces with increased corneal reflections and skin contrast (rougher rather than smoother skin). Experiment 2 replicated these findings, showing that removing the corneal reflections and smoothening the skin reduced memory recognition of manipulated faces, with a stronger effect exerted by the eyes than the skin. This study highlights specific features of the eyes and skin that can help explain memory discrepancies between real and virtual faces and in turn elucidates the factors that play a role in the cognitive processing of faces.
Ordinary computing machines prohibit self-reference because it leads to logical inconsistencies and undecidability. In contrast, the human mind can understand self-referential statements without necessitating physically impossible brain states. Why can the brain make sense of self-reference? Here, we address this question by defining the Strange Loop Model, which features causal feedback between two brain modules, and circumvents the paradoxes of self-reference and negation by unfolding the inconsistency in time. We also argue that the metastable dynamics of the brain inhibit and terminate unhalting inferences. Finally, we show that the representation of logical inconsistencies in the Strange Loop Model leads to causal incongruence between brain subsystems in Integrated Information Theory.
Rouder and Haaf (2020) posed the important question if there are some individuals whose behavior is not in accordance with well-established experimental effects and whether these individual differences are quantitative or qualitative in nature. In our commentary, we discuss the distinction between quantitative and qualitative individual differences and between individual and average causal effects and come to the conclusion that this is not a new question, but in fact one that has already been discussed by Gordon W. Allport (1937) and Donald B. Rubin (1974, 1978). Moreover, we critically examine their proposed rule of thumb to collect about 100 trials per experimental condition to reliably measure individual differences in typical experimental effects. Based on simulation results, we suggest to not rely on any general rule of thumb, but to use simulation studies and the convenient quid function provided by the authors to make more informed decisions regarding trial numbers for specific experimental designs.
Abstract Background This study investigated the impact of handedness on a common spatial abilities task, the mental rotation task (MRT). The influence of a right-handed world was contrasted with people’s embodied experience with their own hands by testing both left- and right-handed people on an MRT of right- and left-hand stimuli. An additional consideration is the influence of matching the shape of the hand stimuli with the proprioception of one’s own hands. Two orthogonal hypothesis axes were crossed to yield four competing hypotheses. One axis contrasted (i) embodied experience versus (ii) world knowledge; the other axis contrasted (a) the match between the visual image of a hand on the screen and one’s own hand versus (b) the resemblance of the shape outline information from the hand stimuli with the proprioception of one’s own hands. Results Among people with mixed handedness, right-handers performed more accurately for left-hand stimuli, while left-handers had a trend for higher accuracy for right-hand stimuli. For people with extreme handedness, right-handers outperformed left-handers. Regardless of group, there was no significant variation in performance for left-hand stimuli, with only right-hand stimuli producing significant variation. Conclusions No hypothesis fully aligned with all the data. For left-hand stimuli, the consistent performance across groups does not provide support for embodied experience, while world knowledge might influence all groups similarly. Alternatively, the within-group variation for mixed-handed people supports embodied experience in the hand MRT, likely processed through visual-proprioceptive integration.
Emilie A. Caspar, Salvatore Lo Bue, Pedro A. Magalhães De Saldanha da Gama
et al.
Working in military structures implies a reduction in individual autonomy, in which agents must comply with hierarchical orders. Here, the authors show that working within such a structure is associated with a reduced sense of agency and outcome processing for junior cadets, but this relationship is absent in trained officers.
The continuity hypothesis (1) posits that there is continuity, of some form, between waking and dreaming mentation. A recent body of work has provided convincing evidence for different aspects of continuity, for instance that some salient experiences from waking life seem to feature in dreams over others, with a particular role for emotional arousal as accompanying these experiences, both during waking and while asleep. However, discontinuities have been somewhat dismissed as being either a product of activation-synthesis, an error within the consciousness binding process during sleep, a methodological anomaly, or simply as yet unexplained. This paper presents an overview of discontinuity within dreaming and waking cognition, arguing that disruptions of consciousness are as common a feature of waking cognition as of dreaming cognition, and that processes of sleep-dependent memory consolidation of autobiographical experiences can in part account for some of the discontinuities of sleeping cognition in a functional way. By drawing upon evidence of the incorporation, fragmentation, and reorganization of memories within dreams, this paper proposes a model of discontinuity whereby the fragmentation of autobiographical and episodic memories during sleep, as part of the consolidation process, render salient aspects of those memories subsequently available for retrieval in isolation from their contextual features. As such discontinuity of consciousness in sleep is functional and normal.