Reading the Readers: Modelling Complex Humanities Processes to Build Cognitive Systems

The ink and stylus tablets discovered at the Roman Fort of Vindolanda are a unique resource for scholars of ancient history. However, the stylus tablets have proved particularly difficult to read. This paper describes the initial stages in the development of a computer system designed to aid historians in the reading of the stylus tablets. A detailed investigation was undertaken, using Knowledge Elicitation techniques borrowed from Artificial IntelliJOURce, Cognitive Psychology, and Computational Linguistics, to elicit the processes experts use whilst reading an ancient text. The resulting model was used as the basis of a computer architecture to construct a system which takes in images of the tablets and outputs plausible interpretations of the documents. It is demonstrated that using Knowledge Elicitation techniques can further the understanding of complex processes in the humanities, and that these techniques can provide an underlying structure for the basis of a computer system that replicates that process. As such it provides significant insight into how experts work in the humanities, whilst providing the means to develop tools to assist them in their complex task

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) art in care of ageing society: focus on dementia

open access articleBackground: Art enhances both physical and mental health wellbeing. The health benefits include reduction in blood pressure, heart rate, pain perception and briefer inpatient stays, as well as improvement of communication skills and self-esteem. In addition to these, people living with dementia benefit from reduction of their noncognitive, behavioural changes, enhancement of their cognitive capacities and being socially active. Methods: The current study represents a narrative general literature review on available studies and knowledge about contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in creative arts. Results: We review AI visual arts technologies, and their potential for use among people with dementia and care, drawing on similar experiences to date from traditional art in dementia care. Conclusion: The virtual reality, installations and the psychedelic properties of the AI created art provide a new venue for more detailed research about its therapeutic use in dementia

Effects of cardiorespiratory fitness on cognitive function and brain plasticity on aging adults

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a rapidly growing public health concern causing severe challenges to the health care system. Affecting the lives of more than 5 million Americans, it is characterized by brain-related morphological changes coupled with decrements in performance on tasks involving cognitive function such as those assessing memory and problem-solving abilities. Fortunately, current scientific research provides evidence that this trend towards rapid cognitive decline in older adults is not immutable, but rather can be attenuated through a simple adjustment to regular engagement in aerobic exercise. To date, numerous studies have associated regular cardiovascular exercise to changes in brain function and structure. In particular, aerobic exercise has been shown to have a direct effect on the hippocampus (HC), one of the earliest regions of the brain to be affected in AD, which plays an important role in learning and memory. Scientific research on animal models has demonstrated increased adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN), or the birth of new neurons, in the dentate gyrus (DG) subregion of the hippocampus as a response to increases in aerobic exercise. Such findings have led to the hypothesis that aerobic exercise can improve cognitive performance, more specifically hippocampal-dependent learning and memory, through the formation of new hippocampal neurons. Similarly, in human studies, previous research has shown that significant improvements in cardiovascular fitness are positively correlated with increased hippocampal volume. Structural increases in hippocampal volume are thought to be mediated by increased angiogenesis, or the generation of new blood vessels, which in turn are correlated with significant improvements in spatial memory, a task determined by memory function. The benefits of aerobic exercise, nonetheless, are not limited to the hippocampus. As people age, atrophy of the brain is also inclusive of the prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in planning and decision making. Scientific literature has shown, that similar to the hippocampus, increases in aerobic exercise, directly result to increases in grey matter volume in the prefrontal lobe and increases in white matter volume in the genu of the corpus callosum. Such structural changes in the prefrontal lobe are correlated with enhanced decision making on cognitive tasks, an essential component of executive function. For the purposes of this study, an effective method of evaluating whether changes in brain structure due to higher cardiorespiratory fitness have an association with cognitive function was through the administration of the Digital Clock Drawing Test (dCDT). The dCDT is a recently developed cognitive test based on the traditional Clock Drawing Test (CDT) that uses a digital pen and allows for the measurement of several parameters such as “Ink time” and “Think time.” Recent scientific studies report that such parameters may have a potential enhanced sensitivity to detecting cognitive change as compared to the traditional CDT. Therefore, the dCDT has come forward as an advantageous approach for testing cognitive skills in aging individuals such as those assessing executive and motor function, and semantic memory, as it happens in real time. DCDT parameters such as total time to complete the clock drawing, total ink time, total think time, total ink length, and clock size have been shown to differ significantly among subjects of varying degrees of cognitive impairment such as AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and healthy, non-demented controls. Patients who were clinically diagnosed as cognitively impaired spent a greater amount of time thinking and drawing on both the command and copy clocks conditions as compared to healthy, non-demented individuals. Similarly, patients affected by greater cognitive impairments, such as AD, tended to draw smaller clocks in terms of height and width of the clock face that required less total ink length to complete the clock drawing, when compared to healthy controls and MCI participants. Findings showed that AD patients appeared to be working longer (greater time of completion) though producing less output (smaller clock and shorted ink length) as compared to non-impaired individuals. Variations of graphomotor latencies in the dCDT performance, therefore, are associated with individual’s cognitive capacities. The goal of this study is to investigate the associations between cardiorespiratory fitness based on VO2 max testing and cognitive constructs such as memory, executive function, and gross motor processing speeds as measured by graphomotor latencies and drawing patterns using the dCDT in healthy, non-demented older adults. I hypothesize that greater cardiorespiratory fitness will be negatively associated with graphomotor timed latencies in various parameters of the dCDT, given that exercise has known effects on the brain regions responsible for executive function and memory. To test these hypotheses, cardiorespiratory fitness and dCDT data from 12 sedentary older adults between the ages of 55 and 85 years from a larger study in the Brain Plasticity and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Boston University were collected and analyzed. A multiple regression analysis was used to predict the dCDT measures from individual’s cardiorespiratory fitness using estimated VO2 max levels. Results showed that cardiorespiratory fitness in older adults is inversely associated with graphomotor times in both the command and copy test conditions as predicted by our hypothesis. In particular, greater cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with shorter total ink time for both clock drawing testing conditions. These results held when controlled for age, sex, and education; higher cardiorespiratory fit older adults performed better (a shorter time is needed to achieve the same outcome) on tasks requiring greater cognitive constructs such as memory, executive function, and motor processing speeds. Therefore, it can be concluded that cardiorespiratory fitness may be a neurodegenerative protector in aging adults supporting its beneficial role as a therapeutic agent for cognitive decline in older adults

Measuring cognitive load and cognition: metrics for technology-enhanced learning

This critical and reflective literature review examines international research published over the last decade to summarise the different kinds of measures that have been used to explore cognitive load and critiques the strengths and limitations of those focussed on the development of direct empirical approaches. Over the last 40 years, cognitive load theory has become established as one of the most successful and influential theoretical explanations of cognitive processing during learning. Despite this success, attempts to obtain direct objective measures of the theory's central theoretical construct – cognitive load – have proved elusive. This obstacle represents the most significant outstanding challenge for successfully embedding the theoretical and experimental work on cognitive load in empirical data from authentic learning situations. Progress to date on the theoretical and practical approaches to cognitive load are discussed along with the influences of individual differences on cognitive load in order to assess the prospects for the development and application of direct empirical measures of cognitive load especially in technology-rich contexts

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge