The parent?infant dyad and the construction of the subjective self

Developmental psychology and psychopathology has in the past been more concerned with the quality of self-representation than with the development of the subjective agency which underpins our experience of feeling, thought and action, a key function of mentalisation. This review begins by contrasting a Cartesian view of pre-wired introspective subjectivity with a constructionist model based on the assumption of an innate contingency detector which orients the infant towards aspects of the social world that react congruently and in a specifically cued informative manner that expresses and facilitates the assimilation of cultural knowledge. Research on the neural mechanisms associated with mentalisation and social influences on its development are reviewed. It is suggested that the infant focuses on the attachment figure as a source of reliable information about the world. The construction of the sense of a subjective self is then an aspect of acquiring knowledge about the world through the caregiver's pedagogical communicative displays which in this context focuses on the child's thoughts and feelings. We argue that a number of possible mechanisms, including complementary activation of attachment and mentalisation, the disruptive effect of maltreatment on parent-child communication, the biobehavioural overlap of cues for learning and cues for attachment, may have a role in ensuring that the quality of relationship with the caregiver influences the development of the child's experience of thoughts and feelings

Knowledge-Based Systems. Overview and Selected Examples

The Advanced Computer Applications (ACA) project builds on IIASA's traditional strength in the methodological foundations of operations research and applied systems analysis, and its rich experience in numerous application areas including the environment, technology and risk. The ACA group draws on this infrastructure and combines it with elements of AI and advanced information and computer technology to create expert systems that have practical applications. By emphasizing a directly understandable problem representation, based on symbolic simulation and dynamic color graphics, and the user interface as a key element of interactive decision support systems, models of complex processes are made understandable and available to non-technical users. Several completely externally-funded research and development projects in the field of model-based decision support and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) are currently under way, e.g., "Expert Systems for Integrated Development: A Case Study of Shanxi Province, The People's Republic of China." This paper gives an overview of some of the expert systems that have been considered, compared or assessed during the course of our research, and a brief introduction to some of our related in-house research topics

Simulation modelling of spatial problems

The thesis presents a simulation modelling strategy for spatial problems which uses a data structure based on spatial relationships. Using this network based approach, two domain specific data-driven models are developed in which the movement of people is modelled as a quasi-continuous process. The development of simulation modelling technology is examined to find reasons why there should be a reluctance to use the technique. With particular reference to problems which are spatially related, the established simulation modelling techniques, together with their diagrammatic representations, are evaluated for their helpfulness at the model building stage. Using a specimen example, it is demonstrated that the commonly used approaches for digital discrete event simulation, which use a procedural paradigm, give little help with problems which involve the allocation of a resource and have spatial constraints. Two domain specific generic models are demonstrated which adopt an object-oriented approach, for which the model description, including the logical constraints, are given in the data-file. A method for modelling the movement of people at different levels of congestion as a quasi-continuous process is validated using results from reported surveys of people's movement rates and direct observations, and this is applied in both models. The first models the emergency evacuation of a building, using a graph structure to represent the spatial components. This is implemented using object-oriented code and test runs are compared with evacuation times from a building at the University of North London. The second provides an experimental tool for comparing the effect upon ward function of different layouts and was influenced by a published survey of a nurse activity analysis carried out in fourteen different wards. The nurse activity model uses two graph structures and an object class to model the nurses who move, with reference to, and informed by, the spatial graph structure. The successful application of the method in the two problem domains confirms its potential usefulness for spatial problems

The Best Game in Town: The Re-Emergence of the Language of Thought Hypothesis Across the Cognitive Sciences

Mental representations remain the central posits of psychology after many decades of scrutiny. However, there is no consensus about the representational format(s) of biological cognition. This paper provides a survey of evidence from computational cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and social psychology, and concludes that one type of format that routinely crops up is the language of thought (LoT). We outline six core properties of LoTs: (i) discrete constituents; (ii) role-filler independence; (iii) predicate-argument structure; (iv) logical operators; (v) inferential promiscuity; and (vi) abstract content. These properties cluster together throughout cognitive science. Bayesian computational modeling, compositional features of object perception, complex infant and animal reasoning, and automatic, intuitive cognition in adults all implicate LoT-like structures. Instead of regarding LoT as a relic of the previous century, researchers in cognitive science and philosophy of mind must take seriously the explanatory breadth of LoT-based architectures. We grant that the mind may harbor many formats and architectures, including iconic and associative structures as well as deep-neural-network-like architectures. However, as computational/representational approaches to the mind continue to advance, classical compositional symbolic structures—i.e., LoTs—only prove more flexible and well-supported over time

National character and European identity in Hungarian literature 1772-1848

My thesis examines late 18th and early 19th century Hungarian literature in its European context, demonstrating its complex fusion of nationally specific and fundamentally European elements. In comparing the social background to, and central ideas of, the West European Enlightenment with the conditions and aspirations of the Hungarian literary renewal in the years 1772-95, Chapter One challenges the conventional characterisation of this period in Hungarian literature as a "belated" Age of Enlightenment. Chapter Two argues the essential continuity between West European and Hungarian culture at the end of the 18th century, in a period bom of the Enlightenment's inner crisis, and draws on Schiller's notion of the sentimental in characterising the new cultural moment in Europe. Chapter Three offers a detailed account of the 'sentimental dilemma' in late 18th century Hungarian literature, while Chapter Four traces the origins of the literary preoccupation with folk culture which was to play a leading role in the development of the national literature throughout the 19th century. I interpret the growing identification with the 'simplicity', 'naturalness' and national character of folk culture as an attempt to resolve the sentimental crisis of identity. Here I draw on Schiller's concept of the naive and on Herder's distinction between natural and art poetry. Chapter Five considers the development of the 'naive' identification with folk culture in the Age of Reform, while Chapter Six examines the conscious 'literary populism' of the 1840s which categorically rejects foreign influences and promotes folk poetry as the basis for an 'organic' and 'authentic' national poetry. Chapter Seven attempts to recover a series of profoundly European Romantic initiatives in early 19th century Hungarian literature which have been neglected by the popular-national tradition. My conclusion considers the survival of these tensions between European influence and national character in Hungarian literature after 1848

Integrated knowledge-based hierarchical modelling of manufacturing organizations

The objective of this thesis is to research into an integrated knowledge-based simulation method, which combines the capability of knowledge based simulation and a structured analysis method, for the design and analysis of complex and hierarchical manufacturing organizations. This means manufacturing organizations analysed according to this methodology can manage the tactical and operational planning as well as the direct operation of shop floor. [Continues.