Folding Polyominoes into (Poly)Cubes

We study the problem of folding a polyomino $P$ into a polycube $Q$, allowing faces of $Q$ to be covered multiple times. First, we define a variety of folding models according to whether the folds (a) must be along grid lines of $P$ or can divide squares in half (diagonally and/or orthogonally), (b) must be mountain or can be both mountain and valley, (c) can remain flat (forming an angle of $180^\circ$), and (d) must lie on just the polycube surface or can have interior faces as well. Second, we give all the inclusion relations among all models that fold on the grid lines of $P$. Third, we characterize all polyominoes that can fold into a unit cube, in some models. Fourth, we give a linear-time dynamic programming algorithm to fold a tree-shaped polyomino into a constant-size polycube, in some models. Finally, we consider the triangular version of the problem, characterizing which polyiamonds fold into a regular tetrahedron.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figures, full version of extended abstract that appeared in CCCG 2015. (Change over previous version: Fixed a missing reference.

Development of intuitive rules: Evaluating the application of the dual-system framework to understanding children's intuitive reasoning

This is an author-created version of this article. The original source of publication is Psychon Bull Rev. 2006 Dec;13(6):935-53 The final publication is available at www.springerlink.com Published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF0321390

Cognitive finance: Behavioural strategies of spending, saving, and investing.

Research in economics is increasingly open to empirical results. The advances in behavioural approaches are expanded here by applying cognitive methods to financial questions. The field of "cognitive finance" is approached by the exploration of decision strategies in the financial settings of spending, saving, and investing. Individual strategies in these different domains are searched for and elaborated to derive explanations for observed irregularities in financial decision making. Strong context-dependency and adaptive learning form the basis for this cognition-based approach to finance. Experiments, ratings, and real world data analysis are carried out in specific financial settings, combining different research methods to improve the understanding of natural financial behaviour. People use various strategies in the domains of spending, saving, and investing. Specific spending profiles can be elaborated for a better understanding of individual spending differences. It was found that people differ along four dimensions of spending, which can be labelled: General Leisure, Regular Maintenance, Risk Orientation, and Future Orientation. Saving behaviour is strongly dependent on how people mentally structure their finance and on their self-control attitude towards decision space restrictions, environmental cues, and contingency structures. Investment strategies depend on how companies, in which investments are placed, are evaluated on factors such as Honesty, Prestige, Innovation, and Power. Further on, different information integration strategies can be learned in decision situations with direct feedback. The mapping of cognitive processes in financial decision making is discussed and adaptive learning mechanisms are proposed for the observed behavioural differences. The construal of a "financial personality" is proposed in accordance with other dimensions of personality measures, to better acknowledge and predict variations in financial behaviour. This perspective enriches economic theories and provides a useful ground for improving individual financial services

An EEG Source-Space Analysis of the Neural Correlates Underlying Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is the cognitive process of controlling our thoughts and behaviors to be aligned with our goals. This process is used in many different contexts and has been associated with contributions from several brain regions. This research aimed to investigate differences in four prefrontal areas of the brain while participants applied four different self-regulation strategies. We recorded EEG while participants (N = 132) performed three tasks which engaged each of the four self-regulation strategies: the AX-CPT task engaged proactive and reactive control, the Go/Nogo task engaged inhibitory control, and the hybrid Flanker Global/Local task engaged the resolution of response conflict. This study used the N2 event-related potential (ERP) to capture the neural activity related to each self-regulation strategy and then source-space analyses (eLORETA) were conducted to estimate the activity in four regions of interest (ROIs): dorsolateral (DL) PFC, ventrolateral (VL) PFC, ventromedial (VM) PFC, and dorsal ACC. The dorsal ACC was most activated for proactive control, indicative of performance monitoring. The right VLPFC was indicative of conflict adaptation in reactive control and response conflict, and indicative of motor inhibition in inhibitory control. DLPFC was most active for goal maintenance during proactive and reactive control. The left VLPFC was most active during reactive control, indicating its importance in memory of goal information. These results are in line with much of the previous literature. VMPFC did not show any differences across the strategies likely due to the lack of emotional context. This study builds on the extant literature by directly comparing neural processes across four different self-regulation strategies within one large sample, highlighting the fact that various self-regulation strategies recruit unique patterns of activation and thus future research should not collapse across these strategies

Does the seriousness of a crime impact memory detection? A mock-crime experiment combining the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) with eye-tracking.

openThe identification of a memory trace related to a specific event is a crucial issue in forensic contexts. In the last years, the research on memory detection techniques has led to the identification of several neurophysiological and behavioral indices. Among the behavioral approaches, those based on reaction-times (RTs) have been extensively studied and the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) is considered one of the most reliable techniques for forensic applications, despite some limitations. For instance, an open question is whether the use of neuroscientific techniques in forensic contexts can be differentially impacted by the type and the degree of a crime. This is a critical issue, especially in relation to crimes associated with sexual harassment. The aim of this study is to examine whether and how the performance at the aIAT can be affected by the degree of a crime (i.e., soft vs. hard) and whether the combination of aIAT and eye-tracking can outperform the aIAT alone in identifying the true memory. We expect behavioral performance to be modulated by the severity of the crime, with soft crimes being detected less accurately by focusing on the aIAT alone. Nevertheless, we expect accuracy to be higher when the behavioral performance is analyzed together with its oculomotor correlates

The factor structure of executive function in childhood and adolescence

Executive functioning (EF) plays a major role in many domains of human behaviour, including self-regulation, academic achievement, and even sports expertise. While a significant proportion of cross-sectional research has focused on the developmental pathways of EF, the existing literature is fractionated due to a wide range of methodologies applied to narrow age ranges, impeding comparison across a broad range of age groups. The current study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the factor structure of EF within late childhood and adolescence. A total of 2166 Flemish children and adolescents completed seven tasks of the Cambridge Brain Sciences test battery. Based on the existing literature, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed, which indicated that a unitary factor model provides the best fit for the youngest age group (7–12 years). For the adolescents (12–18 years), the factor structure consists of four different components, including working memory, shifting, inhibition and planning. With regard to differences between early (12–15 years) and late (15–18 years) adolescents, working memory, inhibition and planning show higher scores for the late adolescents, while there was no difference on shifting. The current study is one of the first to administer the same seven EF tests in a considerably large sample of children and adolescents, and as such contributes to the understanding of the developmental trends in EF. Future studies, especially with longitudinal designs, are encouraged to further increase the knowledge concerning the factor structure of EF, and the development of the different EF components

Hypnotic trait and attentional functions: a psychophysiological study

In questo lavoro abbiamo studiato le capacità attentive di individui con diversa suscettibilità all’ipnosi allo scopo di evidenziare possibili differenze legate al tratto ipnotico. La suscettibilità ipnotica fa riferimento ad un tratto individuale, presente all’incirca nel 10-15% degli individui sani, che li rende capaci di accettare suggestioni modificando, conseguentemente, le loro esperienze coscienti. Recentemente, nell’ambito dell’ipnosi sperimentale il concetto che l’ipnotizzabilità sia strettamente legata a particolari caratteristiche attentive dei soggetti è ormai largamente condiviso. Tuttavia, è ancora dibattuto se, durante la veglia, il sistema attentivo dei soggetti altamente suscettibili all’ipnosi (highs, H) sia effettivamente più efficiente rispetto a quello dei soggetti non suscettibili (lows, L). La prima parte di questa tesi ha cercato di studiare l’esistenza di una relazione tra suscettibilità ipnotica e funzioni attentive, concentrandosi sugli effetti della manipolazione dell’attenzione durante test di attenzione visiva effettuati su individui svegli con diversi livelli di ipnotizzabilità. Nel primo esperimento è stato studiata la possibile relazione tra ipnotizzabilità e attenzione spaziale mediante l’Attention Network Test (ANT). Nel secondo esperimento abbiamo studiato gli effetti della manipolazione dell’attenzione sulla memoria implicita di highs e lows. Nel terzo abbiamo cercato di analizzare le dinamiche temporali dell’attenzione visiva in highs e lows utilizzando l’Attentional Blink (AB) test. I risultati sui tre test mostravano un andamento comune con tempi di reazione più brevi per gli highs rispetto ai lows e una capacità di utilizzare le risorse attentive in ambito visivo che risentiva meno delle limitazioni temporali. Questi dati vengono discussi in termini di una possibile interazione tra regioni frontali e locus coeruleus. Questi risultati suggeriscono che le differenze legate all’ipnotizzabilità possono interessare anche le dinamiche del processamento attentivo. Per quanto riguarda l’ultima parte della tesi presentiamo i risultati iniziali di uno studio psicofisiologico, mirato ad indagare le possibili differenze tra highs e lows a partire dalle fasi più precoci dell’elaborazione degli stimoli uditivi, mediante l’impiego di test con tempi di reazione e la registrazione degli ERP. Nonostante i risultati preliminari, i dati risultavano diversi rispetto a quelli ottenuti nel dominio visivo. L’analisi effettuata sulla latenza e l’ampiezza dei picchi delle componenti prese in considerazione (P100, N170, P200 e N400) ha indicato che durante la fase precoce del processamento delle parole highs e lows presentavano differenze sia nella latenza che nell’ampiezza delle varie componenti nonchè una diversa distribuzione emisferica

Translating transitional justice: the Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission

This paper contends that although the Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission replicated the structure and operation of a truth commission based on a globalised and placeless theory of best practice in transitional justice, it was not adequately contextualised or integrated with local approaches to reconciliation and peacebuilding and therefore fell short of its ambitious mandate. Introduction The Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was the first truth commission in the Pacific, established under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act 2008  (TRC Act) in an effort to ‘promote national unity and reconciliation’ following the civil conflict which troubled the country between 1998 and 2003. The commission was publicly launched in 2008 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Chair of the South African TRC, and officially began operations in 2010 for two years. The commission presented its five-volume final report to Prime Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo in February 2012; however, the report has yet to be publicly released or presented to parliament, despite requirements in the Act to do so. The ongoing silence of the government led to the editor of the final report, long-term Solomon Islands resident Bishop Terry Brown, unofficially releasing the report electronically in early 2013. The TRC conducted exhumations, research, closed hearings and statement taking across six of the nine provinces,  overcoming financial constraints, logistical challenges and difficult terrain. Several regional and thematic public hearings were also held and broadcast on the radio. The final report was handed over to the prime minister within the allocated two-year time frame. In light of these achievements, the Solomon Islands TRC could be considered a ‘success’ insomuch as it fulfilled its mandated duties and produced a final report — a challenging and remarkable achievement itself. This success, however, was arguably superficial, a performance of reconciliation in the theatre of post-conflict peacebuilding. A wider perspective of post-conflict peacebuilding and reconciliation in the Solomon Islands shows the TRC was a minor player on a crowded stage. Many Solomon Islanders were unaware of the TRC, and those familiar with its acronym or name were often unaware of its role or mandate. This paper contends that although the Solomon Islands TRC replicated the structure and operation of a truth commission based on a globalised and placeless theory of best practice in transitional justice, the TRC was not adequately contextualised or integrated with local approaches to reconciliation and peacebuilding and therefore fell short of its ambitious mandate. The commission did, however, produce a final report which in and of itself may serve as a positive outcome of the commission’s work. The experience of the Solomon Islands TRC demonstrates not only the conceptual and practical challenges faced and friction experienced of implementing a truth commission, but also the potential that truth commissions offer for promoting reconciliation and peacebuilding in post- conflict contexts in Melanesia. This paper is divided into six parts. First, a brief background of the Solomon Islands conflict is outlined. Second, the recent evolution of the peacebuilding and transitional justice fields are discussed to offer a background for the Solomon Islands TRC. Third, the various conflict management and reconciliation practices in Solomon Islands are outlined, leading to the fourth part which introduces and describes the background of the Solomon Islands TRC. The challenges of and failures to adapt the TRC to the local context are illustrated in the fifth part, with a discussion focused on the mistranslation of the meaning and value of both ‘truth’ and ‘reconciliation’ in post- conflict Solomon Islands. Finally, the sixth part argues that despite being initially championed by civil society actors, rather than becoming a ‘hybridised’ institution, the commission had a veneer of adaptation, and was ‘replicated’ according to normative transitional justice discourse

The Influence Of Television Pacing On Attention And Executive Functioning

Television shows, especially cartoons, are one of the most common types of media in children’s lives. Although there is a well-established connection between television exposure and difficulties with attention, it is unclear if all types of television are equally impactful. Given the amount of time children are exposed to television, there is a need to better understand which components of shows may or may not impact one’s attentional and executive functioning abilities. One such factor is the pace of the content. The current study expands on this limited area of the literature by utilizing a 9-minute 30-second long cartoon video, which has been edited at both a fast and slow pace, to examine the influence of pace on measures of attention and executive functioning (the Stop Signal Task and the Attentional Network Test) in both Typically Developing children (N = 24) and children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD; N = 17). Two (group; children with ADHD vs. Typically Developing children) x two (pace; fast vs. slow) ANCOVAs were conducted separately with each outcome measure as the dependent variable, group (ADHD and Typically Developing) and pace (fast and slow) as the independent variables, and IQ and Internalizing Problems as covariates. Findings suggested that although the majority of results were non-significant, effect sizes for group and pace (and associated covariates) varied across outcome measures. The Alerting and Executive Control ANT Networks also had non-significant but small effect sizes for the group by pace interactions. Planned comparisons of estimated marginal means revealed a non-significant and small effect of pace for children with ADHD, but no effect for Typically Developing children, for both interactions. Implications for those who work with and care for children are reviewed, and study limitations and future research directions are discussed