EU accession and Poland's external trade policy

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Cognitive and neuronal bases of expertise

This thesis examines the cognitive and neural bases of expertise. In so doing, several psychological phenomena were investigated-imagery. memory and thinking-using different tasks, and a variety of techniques of data gathering, including standard behavioural experiments, questionnaires, eye-movement recording, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Chess players participated in all the studies, and chess tasks were used. The data confirmed the versatility and power of chess as a task environment, since the results provided fruitful information for the understanding of different human cognitive processes. The role of practice in this domain of expertise was examined. The strong view that extended deliberate practice is a necessary and sufficient condition for the acquisition of expert performance, did not receive support in this thesis. Alternatively, a less extreme position was adopted: extended practice is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the acquisition of expert performance. A search for individual differences in factors unrelated to chess practice was carried out. The sources of these individual differences, as well as the cognitive abilities in which individual differences may exist, were considered. One of the sources-the age at which serious practice starts-was a good predictor of chess skill. Handedness, which is supposed to be determined by environmental factors in utero, slightly differentiated chess players from non-players, but no differences in this variable were found between strong and the weak players. Regarding the cognitive abilities, chess players performed slightly better than the non-chess players in a spatial task. Individual differences were also considered within a single leyel of expertise-master level. Differences in forgetting rate in long-term memory and reaction time were observed for one of the masters. These results contributed to the improvement of an extant theory of expertise-template/CHREST [CHunks and REtrieval STructures] theory-by estimating values for some of its parameters based on the empirical data obtained, and by proposing the addition of a spatial short-term memory

Cognitive Activity Support Tools: Design of the Visual Interface

This dissertation is broadly concerned with interactive computational tools that support the performance of complex cognitive activities, examples of which are analytical reasoning, decision making, problem solving, sense making, forecasting, and learning. Examples of tools that support such activities are visualization-based tools in the areas of: education, information visualization, personal information management, statistics, and health informatics. Such tools enable access to information and data and, through interaction, enable a human-information discourse. In a more specific sense, this dissertation is concerned with the design of the visual interface of these tools. This dissertation presents a large and comprehensive theoretical framework to support research and design. Issues treated herein include interaction design and patterns of interaction for cognitive and epistemic support; analysis of the essential properties of interactive visual representations and their influences on cognitive and perceptual processes; an analysis of the structural components of interaction and how different operational forms of interaction components affect the performance of cognitive activities; an examination of how the information-processing load should be distributed between humans and tools during the performance of complex cognitive activities; and a categorization of common visualizations according to their structure and function, and a discussion of the cognitive utility of each category. This dissertation also includes a chapter that describes the design of a cognitive activity support tool, as guided by the theoretical contributions that comprise the rest of the dissertation. Those that may find this dissertation useful include researchers and practitioners in the areas of data and information visualization, visual analytics, medical and health informatics, data science, journalism, educational technology, and digital games

The role of chunking and schemas in learning and drawing

Learning by drawing raises questions related to the organization and internal processing involved during graphical production. This thesis explores how and to what extent, spatial and semantic information influences learning through drawings. It investigates the roles of chunking and schemas in learning through drawings by manipulating the spatial and semantic content of the presented stimuli, which participants reproduced using different methods over repeated sessions. Over three experiments with adult participants, multiple measures were used, including: pause durations between drawn elements, numbers of reproduced objects, error rates, sequences of element production, and transitions among chunk patterns. The first exploratory study investigated the effects of chunking in the drawing of a complex abstract diagram. Five participants reproduced a single stimulus in four types of tasks, which involved delayed recall, tracing, copying and immediate recall across 10 sessions. It was found that participants learned the diagram surprisingly quickly. They used chunking in order to aid the learning processes. This effect was most obvious in the delayed recall task and least so in the tracing. The analysis of the participants' sequence of chunk production revealed that they used a spatial schema to organise the chunks. This appears to explain their rapid learning. The second study investigated the effects of semantic and spatial schemas in learning. Twelve participants drew four types of stimuli (i.e. no-structure, semantic, spatial and spatial-semantic) across six sessions. Learning was easiest in the presence of both spatial and semantic coding, followed by semantic coding alone. By contrast, it was most difficult when the stimuli had neither semantic nor spatial information. Contrary to the predictions, the spatial stimulus was far worse to learn than the semantic. The third study manipulated the strength of the spatial and semantic information in the stimulus to investigate the effects on learning of the weak and strong organisation of information in the two types of schemas. Twelve participants performed four drawings (i.e. strong-semantic, weak-semantic, strong-spatial, weak-spatial) in four sessions. In line with the hypothesis, the findings revealed that the strong semantic stimulus is a better type of stimulus for learning than the weak semantic one. The opposite applies, however, to the strong and weak spatial stimuli. A detailed analysis of the performance of these two stimuli showed that the weak stimulus had evoked a stronger schema than the strong stimulus, which reveals that spatial properties may contribute to the strength of a schema. The concluding results of these studies proposed that even purely diagrammatic stimuli are likely to be encoded semantically, as well as spatially. Furthermore, learning based on spatial coding alone may be difficult to achieve, in contrast to learning based on semantic coding alone. The combined spatial and semantic coding, however, facilitates learning better than either coding alone. These findings suggest key features that need to be considered for diagrammatic presentations used for learning in scientific and technical domains

Tietotekniikan luova käyttö uusiin käyttötarkoituksiin ihmisen ja tietokoneen vuorovaikutuksessa

Vaikka vuorovaikutteiset teknologiat kuten tietokoneiden ja matkapuhelinten ohjelmat yleensä kehitetään ennalta mietittyihin käyttötarkoituksiin, käyttäjät usein muokkaavat niitä omiin tarpeisiinsa sopiviksi. Heidän sanotaan tällöin approprioivan laitteita uusiin käyttötarkoituksiin. Appropriaatioon liittyy sekä sosiaalisia että yksilön ajatteluun liittyviä tekijöitä. Sosiaalisia tekijöitä on jo tutkittu aktiivisesti. Niitä ovat mm. teknologian käytön käytäntöjen muuttuminen ja uusien oppiminen. Sitä vastoin yksilön ajatteluun liittyviä tekijöitä on tutkittu vähän. Tässä väitöskirjassa kehitetään teoriaa sellaisille appropriaatioille, joissa yksilöt keksivät teknologioille käyttötarkoituksia, jotka eivät olleet tulleet heille aiemmin mieleen. Tällaista tapahtuu esimerkiksi silloin, kun yksilö keksii kiertotavan jonkin tehtävän suorittamiseen. Häneltä voi puuttua esimerkiksi kynä ja paperia sellaisessa tilanteessa, jossa hän haluaisi tehdä muistiinpanoja jostain näkemästään asiasta. Tällöin hän saattaa keksiä käyttää matkapuhelimensa kameraa muistiinpanovälineenä. Väitöskirjassa käytetään kognitiotieteen ja psykologian teorioita ongelmanratkaisusta, luovuudesta ja ympäristön havainnoinnista siihen, että yllä kuvatun kaltaiset appropriaatiot voidaan selittää psykologisesti. Pohjana teorian kehittelylle on neljä appropriaatioita koskenutta tutkimusta. Niistä kolme oli avoimia kenttätutkimuksia matkapuhelinten multimediapalveluista. Neljäs oli www-kysely digitaalikameroiden luovista käyttötavoista. Kaikille neljälle oli yhteistä se, että kyseisiä teknologioita käytetään kuvapitoisen sisällön luontiin pieninä kokonaisuuksina. Väitöskirja ehdottaa, että approprioidessaan yksilö muodostaa mielessään uudenlaisen kytkennän teknologisten, sosiaalisten ja fyysisten tilannetekijöiden välille. Kytkiessään tilannetekijöitä tavoitteisiinsa hän oppii uuden ratkaisumallin teknologian käyttötavasta. Väitöskirja esittää kolme vaihtoehtoista aivoissa tapahtuvaa prosessia, joilla kytkennät voivat muodostua. Ne perustuvat analogiseen päättelyyn sekä ympäristön hyödyntämiseen ajatteluprosessien tukena. Väitöskirja ehdottaa myös, että käyttäjien teknologinen asiantuntemus edesauttaa näitä kolmea kytkemisprosessia. Tulokset tarjoavat suunnittelusuosituksia ihmisen ja tietokoneen vuorovaikutuksen kehittämiseen sekä lähtökohtia uusiin kognitiotieteellisiin tutkimuksiin

Regionally distributed architecture for dynamic e-learning environment (RDADeLE)

e-Learning is becoming an influential role as an economic method and a flexible mode of study in the institutions of higher education today which has a presence in an increasing number of college and university courses. e-Learning as system of systems is a dynamic and scalable environment. Within this environment, e-learning is still searching for a permanent, comfortable and serviceable position that is to be controlled, managed, flexible, accessible and continually up-to-date with the wider university structure. As most academic and business institutions and training centres around the world have adopted the e-learning concept and technology in order to create, deliver and manage their learning materials through the web, it has become the focus of investigation. However, management, monitoring and collaboration between these institutions and centres are limited. Existing technologies such as grid, web services and agents are promising better results. In this research a new architecture has been developed and adopted to make the e-learning environment more dynamic and scalable by dividing it into regional data grids which are managed and monitored by agents. Multi-agent technology has been applied to integrate each regional data grid with others in order to produce an architecture which is more scalable, reliable, and efficient. The result we refer to as Regionally Distributed Architecture for Dynamic e-Learning Environment (RDADeLE). Our RDADeLE architecture is an agent-based grid environment which is composed of components such as learners, staff, nodes, regional grids, grid services and Learning Objects (LOs). These components are built and organised as a multi-agent system (MAS) using the Java Agent Development (JADE) platform. The main role of the agents in our architecture is to control and monitor grid components in order to build an adaptable, extensible, and flexible grid-based e-learning system. Two techniques have been developed and adopted in the architecture to build LOs' information and grid services. The first technique is the XML-based Registries Technique (XRT). In this technique LOs' information is built using XML registries to be discovered by the learners. The registries are written in Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) format. The second technique is the Registered-based Services Technique (RST). In this technique the services are grid services which are built using agents. The services are registered with the Directory Facilitator (DF) of a JADE platform in order to be discovered by all other components. All components of the RDADeLE system, including grid service, are built as a multi-agent system (MAS). Each regional grid in the first technique has only its own registry, whereas in the second technique the grid services of all regional grids have to be registered with the DF. We have evaluated the RDADeLE system guided by both techniques by building a simulation of the prototype. The prototype has a main interface which consists of the name of the system (RDADeLE) and a specification table which includes Number of Regional Grids, Number of Nodes, Maximum Number of Learners connected to each node, and Number of Grid Services to be filled by the administrator of the RDADeLE system in order to create the prototype. Using the RST technique shows that the RDADeLE system can be built with more regional grids with less memory consumption. Moreover, using the RST technique shows that more grid services can be registered in the RDADeLE system with a lower average search time and the search performance is increased compared with the XRT technique. Finally, using one or both techniques, the XRT or the RST, in the prototype does not affect the reliability of the RDADeLE system.Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu - Directorate General For Jubail Project Kingdom of Saudi Arabi

The Future of Humanoid Robots

This book provides state of the art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the field of humanoid robotics and its applications. It is expected that humanoids will change the way we interact with machines, and will have the ability to blend perfectly into an environment already designed for humans. The book contains chapters that aim to discover the future abilities of humanoid robots by presenting a variety of integrated research in various scientific and engineering fields, such as locomotion, perception, adaptive behavior, human-robot interaction, neuroscience and machine learning. The book is designed to be accessible and practical, with an emphasis on useful information to those working in the fields of robotics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computational methods and other fields of science directly or indirectly related to the development and usage of future humanoid robots. The editor of the book has extensive R&D experience, patents, and publications in the area of humanoid robotics, and his experience is reflected in editing the content of the book

The mental model comparison of expert and novice performance improvement practitioners

The primary purpose of this study was to reveal performance improvement practitioner expert and novice mental models and identify differences and similarities between these models. The secondary purpose was to analyze the potential relationships of the professional profile characteristics of performance improvement practitioners with their mental model of expertise derived from Pathfinder scaling algorithm. The study was stemmed from one of the critical research trends in the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT). There are two phases of the study. In the first round of the first phase, experts, who were selected based on several criteria, were contacted to identify the most critical concepts related the HPT. The Online Ranking Questionnaire was utilized. 23 experts were responded, and 11 of 30 concepts were selected. In the second round of the first phase, the experts who responded to the first round were contacted again to share their professional profile characteristics and ratings about the concept-pairs generated from the 11 concepts. These ratings provided the proximity data necessary to generate the common mental models of expert (the expert referent model) in the KNOT using the Pathfinder algorithm. The Professional Profile Characteristics and The Concept-Pairs Comparison online questionnaires were used. 16 experts responded in this round. In the second phase of the study, practitioners in the field were invited to participate in the study via International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) newsletters, The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) discussion forums, and Association for Educational Communications and Technologies (AECT) mailing list. Moreover, professional social networking sites, e.g., Linked-In, and the researcher personal contact list were used as well to increase return-rate. Practitioners were asked to complete the same online questionnaires completed by the experts in the second round of the first phase. 335 practitioners started the questionnaires; 272 completed the Professional Profile Characteristics questionnaire; 242 completed both the Professional Profile Characteristics and the Concept-Pairs Comparison questionnaires. 33 practitioners of 242 were identified as novices who were selected based on the criteria used to select experts. In contrast to the experts, the novices were chosen as those who do not meet all of the criteria. The proximity data of those 33 novices were used to create the common mental model of novices. The common mental model of experts demonstrated more coherent and hierarchical structure. However, the common mental model of novices was in more linear structure. The models were also compared, and the experts\u27 model was different from the novices\u27 model. The expert model had deep structure of practical knowledge; whereas, the novice model contained step-by-step and textbook style structure. The professional profile characteristics of the practitioners and the experts were also presented. Several relationships found between the professional profile characteristics and the mental model of expertise, which was generated from three Pathfinder measures: relatedness, coherence, and similarity. The mental model of expertise was positively associated with the number of organizations worked, the number of completed projects, the diversity of project types, the number of the HPT related courses taught; whereas, it was negatively associated with the total years spent to earn degrees. There were several implications of the current study. The first is either informal or formal approaches for the development of expertise. This study may enlighten the mentoring novices while progressing to expertise in the field. Colleges, universities and other types of institutions providing education or training for performance improvement practitioners may take advantage of the results of this study by improving their course or curriculum designs with additional experiences. Moreover, the professional organizations, such as ISPI and ASTD, may be informed with this study for their certification and designation programs. They may include new rationale and criteria for assessment and evaluation processes. This study also may provide additional information from the expertise perspective to the efforts related to the development of competencies in the performance improvement field. Finally, future studies were recommended. The first recommendation was the replication of the current study with different sample characteristics and sizes. The future studies regarding expertise in HPT may consider different using different research design and knowledge elicitation techniques. Since the current study utilized stand-alone concepts, the studies examining groups of stand-alone concepts with common characteristics may provide more meaningful and overarching interpretations. There were numerous either demographic, e.g., age, or professional, e.g., years of experience, deliberate practice, and so forth, factors influencing in expertise in either general or more specific to performance improvement field. These factors needed to be analyzed to reveal the relationships with the progression to expertise

CernoCAMAL : a probabilistic computational cognitive architecture

This thesis presents one possible way to develop a computational cognitive architecture, dubbed CernoCAMAL, that can be used to govern artificial minds probabilistically. The primary aim of the CernoCAMAL research project is to investigate how its predecessor architecture CAMAL can be extended to reason probabilistically about domain model objects through perception, and how the probability formalism can be integrated into its BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) model to coalesce a number of mechanisms and processes.The motivation and impetus for extending CAMAL and developing CernoCAMAL is the considerable evidence that probabilistic thinking and reasoning is linked to cognitive development and plays a role in cognitive functions, such as decision making and learning. This leads us to believe that a probabilistic reasoning capability is an essential part of human intelligence. Thus, it should be a vital part of any system that attempts to emulate human intelligence computationally.The extensions and augmentations to CAMAL, which are the main contributions of the CernoCAMAL research project, are as follows:- The integration of the EBS (Extended Belief Structure) that associates a probability value with every belief statement, in order to represent the degrees of belief numerically.- The inclusion of the CPR (CernoCAMAL Probabilistic Reasoner) that reasons probabilistically over the goal- and task-oriented perceptual feedback generated by reactive sub-systems.- The compatibility of the probabilistic BDI model with the affect and motivational models and affective and motivational valences used throughout CernoCAMAL.A succession of experiments in simulation and robotic testbeds is carried out to demonstrate improvements and increased efficacy in CernoCAMAL’s overall cognitive performance. A discussion and critical appraisal of the experimental results, together with a summary, a number of potential future research directions, and some closing remarks conclude the thesis