An investigation of the relationship between aphasia and sensorimotor level cognitive functions

It is the purpose of this study to investigate the relationship between the level of severity of aphasia and the classification of aphasia, as determined by the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, and the ability to perform sensorimotor level cognitive tasks as determined by the Uzgiris-Hunt Assessment in Infancy: Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development, adapted for use with an adult aphasic population. It is hypothesized that a disturbance of preverbal perceptual functioning is demonstrated in the responses of the aphasic subjects to the measures of sensorimotor function; that there is a positive relationship between the degree of severity of aphasia and the degree of impairment of sensorimotor functions as measured on seven different scales; that the greater the degree of severity of linguistic disturbance in the aphasic, the lower the scores obtained on each of the seven scales; that there is a significant difference between the classifications of aphasia with regard to the scores obtained on the seven measures of sensorimotor function; that the combination of sensorimotor scale measures will explain a significant proportion of the variance in the degree of severity of linguistic disturbances; and that the combination of sensorimotor scale measures will explain a significant proportion of the variance in classifications of aphasia

Development of artificial empathy

AbstractWe have been advocating cognitive developmental robotics to obtain new insight into the development of human cognitive functions by utilizing synthetic and constructive approaches. Among the different emotional functions, empathy is difficult to model, but essential for robots to be social agents in our society. In my previous review on artificial empathy (Asada, 2014b), I proposed a conceptual model for empathy development beginning with emotional contagion to envy/schadenfreude along with self/other differentiation. In this article, the focus is on two aspects of this developmental process, emotional contagion in relation to motor mimicry, and cognitive/affective aspects of the empathy. It begins with a summary of the previous review (Asada, 2014b) and an introduction to affective developmental robotics as a part of cognitive developmental robotics focusing on the affective aspects. This is followed by a review and discussion on several approaches for two focused aspects of affective developmental robotics. Finally, future issues involved in the development of a more authentic form of artificial empathy are discussed

Human Machine Interaction

In this book, the reader will find a set of papers divided into two sections. The first section presents different proposals focused on the human-machine interaction development process. The second section is devoted to different aspects of interaction, with a special emphasis on the physical interaction

Development of the object concept in infancy

Piaget first observed and described the problems which young infants have in understanding the nature of objects forty years ago. Both his description and his analysis of the development of the object concept are still widely supported today. This thesis, while accepting the Piagetian description of the behaviours involved, suggests that Piaget's account of the underlying cognitive processes is no longer tenable. Alternative theories of object concept development which have been put forward in recent years are also examined and rejected. An identity theory of object concept development is proposed and a series of six interlinked experiments presented in an attempt to provide support for this theory. On the basis of these and the many other experiments reported in the literature, it is suggested that an identity theory alone can adequately cover the variety of appropriate and inappropriate object-related behaviours seen in the first two years of life

The cybernetics of concepts: An integrated system of postulates to explain their nature, origins, use, malfunction and maintenance within a natural neural-molecular medium in the brain. [Original title]

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Behaviourists and Logical Positivists commendably set out to purge prejudiced arguments from science, but where it is obvious that there remains some sort of "ghost" in their rational "machine", it is self-defeating simply to ignore its existence. Freaud, Piaget, and the ethologists have made some progress in grasping this nettle -- moving towards a material explanation of the "other-worldly" properties of the individual -- but their models of the individual remain nebulously structured in their basic elements. Consequently such theories remain disturbingly controversial, and circumscribed in their applicability. [#] The present work accordingly sets out to bridge this gap by postulating plausible functions for existing micro-structure which could account both for observed behavioural phenomena, and for many of the existing vaguer theoretical constructs. Part A develops such an explanation for Piagetian constructs, while Part B fills in some of the technical details concerning quantitative problems of signal generation, transmission, and selective reception. [#] Part C applies these notions to other non-Piagetian descriptions and interpretations of psychological phenomena, thereby offering an integration and reconciliation of various schools of theory. (Major areas considered include Ashby's "homeostat" approach, biological self-organization, sleep-modes and dreaming, Freudian theories of neuroses, and various theories concerning psychosis). The basic theory itself is meanwhile developed in much greater detail. [#] A recurring theme throughout the work is the notion that knowledge-acquisition by any independent system depends not only on "external" interaction with the "real" world, but also on an active seeking for internal consistency within the resulting "internal" model. This concept is crucial to the study in two ways:- (i) The operation of the brain-systems being considered, and (ii) As a guuide to the methodology of the present study itself -- in an area where experimental data is uncomfortably sparse, and likely to remain so

Critical Computation: Digital Automata and General Artificial Thinking

Since the 1980s, computational systems of information processing have evolved to include not only deductive methods of decision, whereby results are already implicated in their premises, but have crucially shifted towards an adaptive practice of learning from data, an inductive method of retrieving information from the environment and establish general premises. This shift in logical methods of decision-making does not simply concern technical apparatuses, but is a symptom of a transformation in logical thinking activated with and through machines. This article discusses the pioneering work of Katherine Hayles whose study of the cybernetic and computational infrastructures of our culture particularly clarifies this epistemological transformation of thinking in relation to machines