INVESTIGATIONS ON COGNITIVE COMPUTATION AND COMPUTATIONAL COGNITION

This Thesis describes our work at the boundary between Computer Science and Cognitive (Neuro)Science. In particular, (1) we have worked on methodological improvements to clustering-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging data, which is a technique that allows to collectively assess, in a quantitative way, activation peaks from several functional imaging studies, in order to extract the most robust results in the cognitive domain of interest. Hierarchical clustering is often used in this context, yet it is prone to the problem of non-uniqueness of the solution: a different permutation of the same input data might result in a different clustering result. In this Thesis, we propose a new version of hierarchical clustering that solves this problem. We also show the results of a meta-analysis, carried out using this algorithm, aimed at identifying specific cerebral circuits involved in single word reading. Moreover, (2) we describe preliminary work on a new connectionist model of single word reading, named the two-component model because it postulates a cascaded information flow from a more cognitive component that computes a distributed internal representation for the input word, to an articulatory component that translates this code into the corresponding sequence of phonemes. Output production is started when the internal code, which evolves in time, reaches a sufficient degree of clarity; this mechanism has been advanced as a possible explanation for behavioral effects consistently reported in the literature on reading, with a specific focus on the so called serial effects. This model is here discussed in its strength and weaknesses. Finally, (3) we have turned to consider how features that are typical of human cognition can inform the design of improved artificial agents; here, we have focused on modelling concepts inspired by emotion theory. A model of emotional interaction between artificial agents, based on probabilistic finite state automata, is presented: in this model, agents have personalities and attitudes that can change through the course of interaction (e.g. by reinforcement learning) to achieve autonomous adaptation to the interaction partner. Markov chain properties are then applied to derive reliable predictions of the outcome of an interaction. Taken together, these works show how the interplay between Cognitive Science and Computer Science can be fruitful, both for advancing our knowledge of the human brain and for designing more and more intelligent artificial systems

Investigating Abstract Algebra Students' Representational Fluency and Example-Based Intuitions

The quotient group concept is a difficult for many students getting started in abstract algebra (Dubinsky et al., 1994; Melhuish, Lew, Hicks, and Kandasamy, 2020). The first study in this thesis explores an undergraduate, a first-year graduate, and second-year graduate students' representational fluency as they work on a "collapsing structure", quotient, task across multiple registers: Cayley tables, group presentations, Cayley digraphs to Schreier coset digraphs, and formal-symbolic mappings. The second study characterizes the (partial) make-up of two graduate learners' example-based intuitions related to orbit-stabilizer relationships induced by group actions. The (partial) make-up of a learner's intuition as a quantifiable object was defined in this thesis as a point viewed in R17, 12 variable values collected with a new prototype instrument, The Non-Creative versus Creative Forms of Intuition Survey (NCCFIS), 2 values for confidence in truth value, and 3 additional variables: error to non-error type, unique versus common, and network thinking. The revised Fuzzy C-Means Clustering Algorithm (FCM) by Bezdek et al. (1981) was used to classify the (partial) make-up of learners' reported intuitions into fuzzy sets based on attribute similarity

The development of 'for experts systems' as heuristic reasoning platforms in risk decision support: a consideration of tool design, technology transfer and compatability with Bayesian decision analysis

This work considers the creation of two risk and decision support systems, one for the National Air Traffic Services of the UK and one for Unilever, a multi-national. Their development contributes to risk decision science in the area of decision support in particular. This contribution is based on the development real-life systems, it has three key elements. One, it addresses the fact that, for practical environments like these, the science of risk and decisions is insufficiently resolved to be accepted and easily used. Two, the systems share an arena with subjective Bayesian decision analysis. The benefits of a hybrid form of the two approaches to generate higher levels of user acceptance and organisational transfer is discussed. Three, they take the unique approach of being 'for experts' systems rather than 'expert systems'. This approach offers a number of benefits to applied user communities. These include: a decision support system which remains grounded within the reasoning world view of the decision makers; an expansion and refinement of the existing 'natural heuristics' that decision makers use currently; a scoring and visualisation environment which is both fast and flexible but allows for, previously unavailable, levels of reasoning transparency and comparison. Taken in total the combination of the tool design, the heuristic artefacts within them and their influence on the hosts organisations, the two systems have proven they can provide an effective and valued 'heuristic reasoning platform' for risks and issues. A future research direction is to explore ways in which the highly transferable heuristic artefacts in these systems, particularly measurement and data manipulation, might be strengthened via hybridisation with more powerful, but less transferred, formal systems like Bayes decision analysis

Eyebrow semantic description via clustering based on Axiomatic Fuzzy Set

In this paper, we aim to extract the eyebrow semantic descriptors based on the Axiomatic Fuzzy Set (AFS) theory. First, we normalize the image of the eyebrows and automatically mark it by using a recently proposed facial landmarks detector. Second, a recent clustering algorithm based on AFS theory for eyes semantics abstraction is used to cluster these detected eyebrow landmarks and give semantic descriptors for each eyebrow. Finally, BU-4DFE and Multi-PIE databases are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Furthermore, the eyebrow descriptions with different expressions and similar expressions are investigated and we show that the semantic descriptors are closely related to expressions. The experimental results show that the eyebrow semantic concepts obtained by the AFS clustering algorithm are better than the results produced by the traditional clustering methods (k-means and FCM) in terms of consistency for different expressions. This article is categorized under: Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Knowledge Representation Algorithmic Development > Biological Data Mining

The ethical patiency of cultural heritage

Current treatments of cultural heritage as an object of moral concern (whether it be the heritage of mankind or of some particular group of people) have tended to treat it as a means to ensure human wellbeing: either as ‘cultural property’ or ‘cultural patrimony’, suggesting concomitant rights of possession and exclusion, or otherwise as something which, gaining its ethical significance from the roles it plays in people’s lives and the formation of their identities, is the beneficiary at most of indirect moral obligations. In contrast, I argue that cultural heritage, as something whose existence can go well or badly, can itself qualify as a moral patient towards which we may have obligations which need not be accounted for in terms of subsequent benefits to human beings. Drawing inspiration from environmental ethics and suggesting that heritage, like an ecosystem, is a complex network of interrelations which invites a holistic understanding, I develop a framework for thinking about cultural heritage which shows how such a thing can feature in our ethical reflections as intrinsically worthy of respect in spite of its most obvious differences from the ‘natural’ world: the very human origins of cultural heritage and its involvement with human life in all its forms. As part of the development of this framework I consider the epistemic difficulties which arise when for all our holistic sophistication we do find ourselves in the predicament of having to judge the moral worth of some item of heritage, possibly someone else’s heritage and possibly something which we find ourselves disposed to value more because of than despite any mysteries surrounding it. I conclude by offering some tentative illustrations of how such a framework might operate in the practical course of normative moral reasoning about what should be done with items of cultural heritage

Science and corporeal religion: a feminist materialist reconsideration of gender/sex diversity in religiosity

This dissertation develops a feminist materialist interpretation of the role the neuroendocrine system plays in the development of gender/sex differences in religion. Data emerging from psychology, sociology, and cognitive science have continually indicated that women are more religious than men, in various senses of those contested terms, but the factors contributing to these findings are little understood and disciplinary perspectives are often unhelpfully siloed. Previous scholarship has tended to highlight socio-cultural factors while ignoring biological factors or to focus on biological factors while relying on problematic and unsubstantiated gender stereotypes. Addressing gender/sex difference is vital for understanding religion and how we study it. This dissertation interprets this difference by means of a multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological approach. This approach builds upon insights from the cognitive and evolutionary science of religion, affect theory and affective neuroscience, and social neuroendocrinology, and it is rooted in the foundational insights of feminist materialism, including that cultural and micro-sociological forces are inseparable from biological materiality. The dissertation shows how a better way of understanding gender/sex differences in religion emerges through focusing on the co-construction of biological materiality and cultural meanings. This includes deploying a gene-culture co-evolutionary explanation of ultrasociality and an understanding of the biology of performativity to argue that religious behavior and temperaments emerge from the enactment and hormonal underpinnings of six affective adaptive desires: the desires for (1) bonding and attachment, (2) communal mythos, (3) deliverance from suffering, (4) purpose, (5) understanding, and (6) reliable leadership. By hypothesizing the patterns of hormonal release and activation associated with ritualized affects—primarily considering oxytocin, testosterone, vasopressin, estrogen, dopamine, and serotonin—the dissertation theorizes four dimensions of religious temperament: (1) nurturant religiosity, (2) ecstatic religiosity, (3) protective/hierarchical religiosity, and (4) antagonistic religiosity. This dissertation conceptualizes hormones as chemical messengers that enable the diversity emerging from the imbrication of physical materiality and socio-cultural forces. In doing so, it demonstrates how hormonal aspects of gender/sex and culturally constructed aspects of gender/sex are always already intertwined in their influence on religiosity. This theoretical framework sheds light on both the diversity and the noticeable patterns observed in gender/sex differences in religious behaviors and affects. This problematizes the terms of the “women are more religious than men” while putting in place a more adequate framework for interpreting the variety of ways it appears in human lives

Tematski zbornik radova međunarodnog značaja. Tom 3 / Međunarodni naučni skup “Dani Arčibalda Rajsa”, Beograd, 3-4. mart 2015.

In front of you is the Thematic Collection of Papers presented at the International Scientific Confer-ence “Archibald Reiss Days”, which was organized by the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies in Belgrade, in co-operation with the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Education, Science and Techno-logical Development of the Republic of Serbia, National Police University of China, Lviv State University of Internal Affairs, Volgograd Academy of the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry, Faculty of Security in Skopje, Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security in Ljubljana, Police Academy “Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ in Bucharest, Academy of Police Force in Bratislava and Police College in Banjaluka, and held at the Academy of Crimi-nalistic and Police Studies, on 3 and 4 March 2015.International Scientific Conference “Archibald Reiss Days” is organized for the fifth time in a row, in memory of the founder and director of the first modern higher police school in Serbia, Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, PhD, after whom the Conference was named.The Thematic Collection of Papers contains 168 papers written by eminent scholars in the field of law, security, criminalistics, police studies, forensics, informatics, as well as members of national security system participating in education of the police, army and other security services from Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Bela-rus, China, Poland, Armenia, Portugal, Turkey, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Srpska and Serbia. Each paper has been reviewed by two reviewers, international experts competent for the field to which the paper is related, and the Thematic Conference Proceedings in whole has been reviewed by five competent international reviewers.The papers published in the Thematic Collection of Papers contain the overview of contemporary trends in the development of police education system, development of the police and contemporary secu-rity, criminalistic and forensic concepts. Furthermore, they provide us with the analysis of the rule of law activities in crime suppression, situation and trends in the above-mentioned fields, as well as suggestions on how to systematically deal with these issues. The Collection of Papers represents a significant contribution to the existing fund of scientific and expert knowledge in the field of criminalistic, security, penal and legal theory and practice. Publication of this Collection contributes to improving of mutual cooperation between educational, scientific and expert institutions at national, regional and international level

Digital work in the planetary market

Many of the world’s most valuable companies rely on planetary networks of digital work that underpin their products and services. This important book examines implications for both work and workers when jobs are commodified and traded beyond local labor markets. For instance, Amazon’s contractors in Costa Rica, India, and Romania are paid to structure, annotate, and organize conversations captured by ‘Alexa’ to train Amazon’s speech recognition systems. Findings show that despite its planetary connections, labor remains geographically “sticky” and embedded in distinct contexts. The research emphasizes the globe-spanning nature of contemporary networks without resorting to an understanding of “the global” as a place beyond space.Aujourd’hui, de nombreux emplois peuvent être exercés depuis n’importe où. La technologie numérique et la connectivité Internet généralisée permettent à presque n’importe qui, n’importe où, de se connecter à n’importe qui d’autre pour communiquer et interagir à l’échelle planétaire. Ce livre examine les conséquences, tant pour le travail que pour les travailleurs, de la marchandisation et de l’échange des emplois au-delà des marchés du travail locaux. Allant au-delà du discours habituel sur la mondialisation « le monde est plat », les contributeurs examinent à la fois la transformation du travail lui-même et les systèmes, réseaux et processus plus larges qui permettent le travail numérique dans un marché planétaire, en offrant des perspectives empiriques et théoriques. Les contributeurs - des universitaires et des experts de premier plan issus de diverses disciplines - abordent une variété de questions, notamment la modération du contenu, les véhicules autonomes et les assistants vocaux. Ils se penchent d’abord sur la nouvelle expérience du travail et constatent que, malgré ses connexions planétaires, le travail reste géographiquement collé et intégré dans des contextes distincts. Ils examinent ensuite comment les réseaux planétaires de travail peuvent être cartographiés et problématisés, ils discutent de la multiplicité productive et de l’interdisciplinarité de la réflexion sur le travail numérique et ses réseaux et, enfin, ils imaginent comment le travail planétaire pourrait être réglementé. Les directeurs Mark Graham est professeur de géographie de l’Internet à l’Oxford Internet Institute et chargé de cours à l’Alan Turing Institute. Il est l’éditeur du livre Digital Economies at Global Margins (MIT Press et CRDI, 2019). Fabian Ferrari est un candidat au doctorat à l’Oxford Internet Institute