A Multi-disciplinary Approach to the Investigation of Aspects of Serial Order in Cognition

Serial order processing or Sequence processing underlies many human activities such as speech, language, skill learning, planning, problem solving, etc. Investigating the\ud neural bases of sequence processing enables us to understand serial order in cognition and helps us building intelligent devices. In the current paper, various\ud cognitive issues related to sequence processing will be discussed with examples. Some of the issues are: distributed versus local representation, pre-wired versus\ud adaptive origins of representation, implicit versus explicit learning, fixed/flat versus hierarchical organization, timing aspects, order information embedded in sequences, primacy versus recency in list learning and aspects of sequence perception such as recognition, recall and generation. Experimental results that give evidence for the involvement of various brain areas will be described. Finally, theoretical frameworks based on Markov models and Reinforcement Learning paradigm will be presented. These theoretical ideas are useful for studying sequential phenomena in a principled way

A taxonomy for interactive educational multimedia

Learning is more than knowledge acquisition; it often involves the active participation of the learner in a variety of knowledge- and skills-based learning and training activities. Interactive multimedia technology can support the variety of interaction channels and languages required to facilitate interactive learning and teaching. We will present a taxonomy for interactive educational multimedia that supports the classification, description and development of such systems. Such a taxonomy needs to embed multimedia technology into a coherent educational context. A conceptual framework based on an integrated interaction model is needed to capture learning and training activities in an online setting from an educational perspective, describe them in the human-computer context, and integrate them with mechanisms and principles of multimedia interaction

A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia

Learning is more than knowledge acquisition; it often involves the active participation of the learner in a variety of knowledge- and skills-based learning and training activities. Interactive multimedia technology can support the variety of interaction channels and languages required to facilitate interactive learning and teaching. A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia can support the development of such multimedia systems. Such an architecture needs to embed multimedia technology into a coherent educational context. A framework based on an integrated interaction model is needed to capture learning and training activities in an online setting from an educational perspective, to describe them in the human-computer context, and to integrate them with mechanisms and principles of multimedia interaction

Intelligent flight control systems

The capabilities of flight control systems can be enhanced by designing them to emulate functions of natural intelligence. Intelligent control functions fall in three categories. Declarative actions involve decision-making, providing models for system monitoring, goal planning, and system/scenario identification. Procedural actions concern skilled behavior and have parallels in guidance, navigation, and adaptation. Reflexive actions are spontaneous, inner-loop responses for control and estimation. Intelligent flight control systems learn knowledge of the aircraft and its mission and adapt to changes in the flight environment. Cognitive models form an efficient basis for integrating 'outer-loop/inner-loop' control functions and for developing robust parallel-processing algorithms

Making sense of step-by-step procedures

Procedural instructions that consist of only a sequence of steps will probably be executable, but nevertheless ¿meaningless¿ to users of technical devices. The paper discusses three features that can make procedural instructions more meaningful: adding functional coordinating information, adding information about the use of the technical device in real life, and adding operational information about how the device works. The research literature supports the effectiveness of the first feature, but offers little evidence that real life elements enhance understanding of instructions. As for operational information, the research suggests that users are willing to read it, and that it contributes to better understanding and performance in the long term, but only if it is closely related to the procedure. As a conclusion, we propose a theoretical framework that assumes three levels of mental representation of instructions: syntactical, semantic, and situationa

The Knowledge Level in Cognitive Architectures: Current Limitations and Possible Developments

In this paper we identify and characterize an analysis of two problematic aspects affecting the representational level of cognitive architectures (CAs), namely: the limited size and the homogeneous typology of the encoded and processed knowledge. We argue that such aspects may constitute not only a technological problem that, in our opinion, should be addressed in order to build articial agents able to exhibit intelligent behaviours in general scenarios, but also an epistemological one, since they limit the plausibility of the comparison of the CAs' knowledge representation and processing mechanisms with those executed by humans in their everyday activities. In the final part of the paper further directions of research will be explored, trying to address current limitations and future challenges

Probing physics students' conceptual knowledge structures through term association

Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and structure of students' knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set of term-association tasks (the "ConMap" tasks) was developed to probe the interconnections within students' store of conceptual knowledge. The tasks have students respond spontaneously to a term or problem or topic area with a sequence of associated terms; the response terms and timeof- entry data are captured. The tasks were tried on introductory physics students, and preliminary investigations show that the tasks are capable of eliciting information about the stucture of their knowledge. Specifically, data gathered through the tasks is similar to that produced by a hand-drawn concept map task, has measures that correlate with inclass exam performance, and is sensitive to learning produced by topic coverage in class. Although the results are preliminary and only suggestive, the tasks warrant further study as student-knowledge assessment instruments and sources of experimental data for cognitive modeling efforts.Comment: 31 pages plus 2 tables and 8 figure

The benefits of targeted memory reactivation for consolidation in sleep are contingent on memory accuracy and direct cue-memory associations

Objectives: To investigate how the effects of targeted memory reactivation (TMR) are influenced by memory accuracy prior to sleep and the presence or absence of direct cue-memory associations. Methods: 30 participants associated each of 50 pictures with an unrelated word and then with a screen location in two separate tasks. During picture-location training, each picture was also presented with a semantically related sound. The sounds were therefore directly associated with the picture locations but indirectly associated with the words. During a subsequent nap, half of the sounds were replayed in slow wave sleep (SWS) (TMR). The effect of TMR on memory for the picture locations (direct cue-memory associations) and picture-word pairs (indirect cue-memory associations) was then examined. Results: TMR reduced overall memory decay for recall of picture locations. Further analyses revealed a benefit of TMR for picture locations recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep, but not those recalled with a high degree of accuracy. The benefit of TMR for low accuracy memories was predicted by time spent in SWS. There was no benefit of TMR for memory of the picture-word pairs, irrespective of memory accuracy prior to sleep. Conclusions: TMR provides the greatest benefit to memories recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep. The memory benefits of TMR may also be contingent on direct cue-memory associations