7,936 research outputs found
The brain is a prediction machine that cares about good and bad - Any implications for neuropragmatics?
Experimental pragmatics asks how people construct contextualized meaning in communication. So what does it mean for this field to add neuroas a prefix to its name? After analyzing the options for any subfield of cognitive science, I argue that neuropragmatics can and occasionally should go beyond the instrumental use of EEG or fMRI and beyond mapping classic theoretical distinctions onto Brodmann areas. In particular, if experimental pragmatics âgoes neuroâ, it should take into account that the brain evolved as a control system that helps its bearer negotiate a highly complex, rapidly changing and often not so friendly environment. In this context, the ability to predict current unknowns, and to rapidly tell good from bad, are essential ingredients of processing. Using insights from non-linguistic areas of cognitive neuroscience as well as from EEG research on utterance comprehension, I argue that for a balanced development of experimental pragmatics, these two characteristics of the brain cannot be ignored
Ranking and Selecting Multi-Hop Knowledge Paths to Better Predict Human Needs
To make machines better understand sentiments, research needs to move from
polarity identification to understanding the reasons that underlie the
expression of sentiment. Categorizing the goals or needs of humans is one way
to explain the expression of sentiment in text. Humans are good at
understanding situations described in natural language and can easily connect
them to the character's psychological needs using commonsense knowledge. We
present a novel method to extract, rank, filter and select multi-hop relation
paths from a commonsense knowledge resource to interpret the expression of
sentiment in terms of their underlying human needs. We efficiently integrate
the acquired knowledge paths in a neural model that interfaces context
representations with knowledge using a gated attention mechanism. We assess the
model's performance on a recently published dataset for categorizing human
needs. Selectively integrating knowledge paths boosts performance and
establishes a new state-of-the-art. Our model offers interpretability through
the learned attention map over commonsense knowledge paths. Human evaluation
highlights the relevance of the encoded knowledge
Evaluating Biased Attitude Associations of Language Models in an Intersectional Context
Language models are trained on large-scale corpora that embed implicit biases
documented in psychology. Valence associations (pleasantness/unpleasantness) of
social groups determine the biased attitudes towards groups and concepts in
social cognition. Building on this established literature, we quantify how
social groups are valenced in English language models using a sentence template
that provides an intersectional context. We study biases related to age,
education, gender, height, intelligence, literacy, race, religion, sex, sexual
orientation, social class, and weight. We present a concept projection approach
to capture the valence subspace through contextualized word embeddings of
language models. Adapting the projection-based approach to embedding
association tests that quantify bias, we find that language models exhibit the
most biased attitudes against gender identity, social class, and sexual
orientation signals in language. We find that the largest and better-performing
model that we study is also more biased as it effectively captures bias
embedded in sociocultural data. We validate the bias evaluation method by
overperforming on an intrinsic valence evaluation task. The approach enables us
to measure complex intersectional biases as they are known to manifest in the
outputs and applications of language models that perpetuate historical biases.
Moreover, our approach contributes to design justice as it studies the
associations of groups underrepresented in language such as transgender and
homosexual individuals.Comment: to be published in AIES 202
The Impact of Context on Affective Norms: A Case of Study With Suspense
The emotional response to a stimulus is typically measured in three variables called
valence, arousal and dominance. Based on such dimensions, Bradley and Lang (1999)
published the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW), a corpus of affective ratings
for 1,034 non-contextualized words. Expanded and adapted to many languages, ANEW
provides a corpus to evaluate and to predict human responses to different stimuli, and
it has been used in a number of studies involving analysis of emotions. However, ANEW
seems not to appropriately predict affective responses to concepts when these are
contextualized in certain situational backgrounds, in which words can have different
connotations from those in non-contextualized scenarios. These contextualized affective
norms have not been sufficiently contrasted yet because the literature does not provide
a corpus of the ANEW list in specific contexts. On this basis, this paper reports on the
creation of a new corpus of affective norms for the original 1,034 ANEW words in a
particular context (a fictional scene of suspense). An extensive quantitative data analysis
comparing both corpora was carried out, confirming that the affective ratings are highly
influenced by the context
Being-in-the-world-with: Presence Meets Social And Cognitive Neuroscience
In this chapter we will discuss the concepts of âpresenceâ (Inner Presence) and âsocial presenceâ (Co-presence) within a cognitive and ecological perspective. Specifically, we claim that the concepts of âpresenceâ and âsocial presenceâ are the possible links between self, action, communication and culture. In the first section we will provide a capsule view of Heideggerâs work by examining the two main features of the Heideggerian concept of âbeingâ: spatiality and âbeing withâ. We argue that different visions from social and cognitive sciences â Situated Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Approach, Situated Simulation, Covert Imitation - and discoveries from neuroscience â Mirror and Canonical Neurons - have many contact points with this view. In particular, these data suggest that our conceptual system dynamically produces contextualized representations (simulations) that support grounded action in different situations. This is allowed by a common coding â the motor code â shared by perception, action and concepts. This common coding also allows the subject for natively recognizing actions done by other selves within the phenomenological contents. In this picture we argue that the role of presence and social presence is to allow the process of self-identification through the separation between âselfâ and âother,â and between âinternalâ and âexternalâ. Finally, implications of this position for communication and media studies are discussed by way of conclusion
Teaching Science in Light of World View: The Effect of Contextualized Instruction on the Scientific Compatibility of Religious College Students\u27 World Views
Authors of recent science reform documents promote the goal of scientific literacy for all Americans (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989, 1993). Some students, however, feel apprehensive about learning science due to perceptions that science is antagonistic to their world views (Alters, 2005; Esbenshade, 1993). This study investigated the effect of an introductory science course taught in the context of a Christian, theistic world view on the scientific compatibility of religious college students\u27 world views. For the purposes of this study, students\u27 understanding of the nature of science, affective attitudes toward science, and beliefs regarding creation were used as indicators of the scientific compatibility of their world views. One hundred and seventy-one students enrolled in a core curriculum, introductory science course at a Christian university participated in this study by completing pre-instruction and postinstruction survey packets that included demographic information, the Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry questionnaire (Liang et al., 2006), the Affective Attitude toward Science Scale (Francis & Greer, 1999), and the Origins Survey (Tenneson & Badger, personal communication, June, 2008). Two-tailed paired samples t tests were used to test for significant mean differences in the indicator variables at a .05 level before and after instruction. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to determine if relationships were present among the indicator variables at a .05 level before and after instruction. Students\u27 self-identified positions regarding creation were analyzed using a chi-square contingency table. Results indicated that there were statistically significant changes in all indicator variables after instruction of the contextualized course. The direction of these changes and shifts in students\u27 self-identified positions regarding creation supported the conclusion that students developed a more scientifically compatible world view after contextualized instruction based on the indicators used in this study. Weak positive correlations were found between nature of science understanding and young earth creation before and after instruction; weak negative correlations were found between nature of science understanding and old earth creation and evolutionary creation before, but not after, instruction. Conclusions, implications for practice, and recommendations for future research are included
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