Fundamental Principles of Neural Organization of Cognition

The manuscript advances a hypothesis that there are few fundamental principles of neural organization of cognition, which explain several wide areas of the cognitive functioning. We summarize the fundamental principles, experimental, theoretical, and modeling evidence for these principles, relate them to hypothetical neural mechanisms, and made a number of predictions. We consider cognitive functioning including concepts, emotions, drives-instincts, learning, “higher” cognitive functions of language, interaction of language and cognition, role of emotions in this interaction, the beautiful, sublime, and music. Among mechanisms of behavior we concentrate on internal actions in the brain, learning and decision making. A number of predictions are made, some of which have been previously formulated and experimentally confirmed, and a number of new predictions are made that can be experimentally tested. Is it possible to explain a significant part of workings of the mind from a few basic principles, similar to how Newton explained motions of planets? This manuscript summarizes a part of contemporary knowledge toward this goal

Unconscious ignorance in the representation of research

The aim of this study was to analyze the social representations of research held by university students enrolled in the certification process at Universidad Técnica de Machala to detect the misconceptions that prove the learned ignorance. The research design was qualitative. We worked with 140 students. Forty percent of the students were female, and sixty percent of them were male. Students belonged to different Colleges; Business Administration (36%), Social Sciences (50%), Civil Engineering (8%), Agricultural Sciences (4%), and Chemistry and Health Sciences (2%). We selected the participants through an intentional opinion sampling. Data was collected by having the students complete an online questionnaire about the representations of research. The validity of the data was guaranteed by triangulation of researchers and the return of the findings to the informants. The results showed that the unconscious ignorance is rooted in the methodological normative as an ontological and epistemological conditioning of research. The following symptoms were revealed: ideological asepsis of research, reductionism of knowledge and denial of diversity, uncritical transfer of the method, and the expert as the main actor of research. It was concluded that the constitution of unconscious ignorance arises from the uncritical adoption and legitimation of the method, which maintains that research is a consequence of the method and the presence of its actors. Such fact contradicts the constructive, ideological, and interactional notion of research. The rigidity of these concepts forces the object of study to enter the methodical canon as a guarantee of scientific nature.</p

Critical thinking and discourse analysis of pre-service teachers in the initiation to the teaching practicum course

En Colombia, hay una gran cantidad de investigaciones dentro del campo de la Enseñanza del Inglés como Lengua Extranjera, especialmente en el aspecto instruccional de la práctica docente; sin embargo, pocos estudios han tenido como enfoque principal las ideologías de los profesores en formación colombianos. Este estudio busca determinar las ideologías y Rasgos Intelectuales Valiosos tales como Autonomía Intelectual, Perseverancia Intelectual y Empatía Intelectual propuestos por Paul & Elder (2010), que se derivan del campo del pensamiento crítico y que son revelados en el discurso y las reflexiones de los docentes en formación del curso de Iniciación a la Práctica Pedagógica. Para esto, las reflexiones escritas y los resultados de la aplicación de un Protocolo del Pensamiento Informado son analizados bajo un Enfoque Basado en Corpus, utilizando el Análisis del Discurso como metodología de investigación. Después de analizar la información, los resultados determinaron que sí existe evidencia de la presencia de pensamiento crítico en los discursos de los participantes y que sus ideologías revelan la existencia de jerarquías dentro de sus comunidades de práctica y una fuerte conexión con ideologías políticas que influencian sus discursos y comportamientos en el aula..

Mental Imagery in Humanoid Robots

Mental imagery presents humans with the opportunity to predict prospective happenings based on own intended actions, to reminisce occurrences from the past and reproduce the perceptual experience. This cognitive capability is mandatory for human survival in this folding and changing world. By means of internal representation, mental imagery offers other cognitive functions (e.g., decision making, planning) the possibility to assess information on objects or events that are not being perceived. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that humans are able to employ this ability in the early stages of infancy. Although materialisation of humanoid robot employment in the future appears to be promising, comprehensive research on mental imagery in these robots is lacking. Working within a human environment required more than a set of pre-programmed actions. This thesis aims to investigate the use of mental imagery in humanoid robots, which could be used to serve the demands of their cognitive skills as in humans. Based on empirical data and neuro-imaging studies on mental imagery, the thesis proposes a novel neurorobotic framework which proposes to facilitate humanoid robots to exploit mental imagery. Through conduction of a series of experiments on mental rotation and tool use, the results from this study confirm this potential. Chapters 5 and 6 detail experiments on mental rotation that investigate a bio-constrained neural network framework accounting for mental rotation processes. They are based on neural mechanisms involving not only visual imagery, but also affordance encoding, motor simulation, and the anticipation of the visual consequences of actions. The proposed model is in agreement with the theoretical and empirical research on mental rotation. The models were validated with both a simulated and physical humanoid robot (iCub), engaged in solving a typical mental rotation task. The results show that the model is able to solve a typical mental rotation task and in agreement with data from psychology experiments, they also show response times linearly dependent on the angular disparity between the objects. Furthermore, the experiments in chapter 6 propose a novel neurorobotic model that has a macro-architecture constrained by knowledge on brain, which encompasses a rather general mental rotation mechanism and incorporates a biologically plausible decision making mechanism. The new model is tested within the humanoid robot iCub in tasks requiring to mentally rotate 2D geometrical images appearing on a computer screen. The results show that the robot has an enhanced capacity to generalize mental rotation of new objects and shows the possible effects of overt movements of the wrist on mental rotation. These results indicate that the model represents a further step in the identification of the embodied neural mechanisms that might underlie mental rotation in humans and might also give hints to enhance robots' planning capabilities. In Chapter 7, the primary purpose for conducting the experiment on tool use development through computational modelling refers to the demonstration that developmental characteristics of tool use identified in human infants can be attributed to intrinsic motivations. Through the processes of sensorimotor learning and rewarding mechanisms, intrinsic motivations play a key role as a driving force that drives infants to exhibit exploratory behaviours, i.e., play. Sensorimotor learning permits an emergence of other cognitive functions, i.e., affordances, mental imagery and problem-solving. Two hypotheses on tool use development are also conducted thoroughly. Secondly, the experiment tests two candidate mechanisms that might underlie an ability to use a tool in infants: overt movements and mental imagery. By means of reinforcement learning and sensorimotor learning, knowledge of how to use a tool might emerge through random movements or trial-and-error which might reveal a solution (sequence of actions) of solving a given tool use task accidentally. On the other hand, mental imagery was used to replace the outcome of overt movements in the processes of self-determined rewards. Instead of determining a reward from physical interactions, mental imagery allows the robots to evaluate a consequence of actions, in mind, before performing movements to solve a given tool use task. Therefore, collectively, the case of mental imagery in humanoid robots was systematically addressed by means of a number of neurorobotic models and, furthermore, two categories of spatial problem solving tasks: mental rotation and tool use. Mental rotation evidently involves the employment of mental imagery and this thesis confirms the potential for its exploitation by humanoid robots. Additionally, the studies on tool use demonstrate that the key components assumed and included in the experiments on mental rotation, namely affordances and mental imagery, can be acquired by robots through the processes of sensorimotor learning.Ministry of Science and Technology, the Thai Governmen

Observation inflation and self-action inflation. Investigation of source memory errors as a result of action observation and action performance

This thesis investigates two source memory errors: observation inflation, where observed actions are misremembered as being performed; and self-action inflation in which self-performed actions are misremembered as having been performed by somebody else. It has been proposed that these inflations occur because of overlapping brain activity during observation and performance. This has been attributed to mirror neurone activity. To test this, observation and self-action inflations are investigated for different types of actions (meaningful, meaningless and communicative) known to evoke different mirror neurone activity. Different age groups (young adult, and elderly) were studied as were the effects of relative ethnicity between observer and performer. The Remember-Know-Guess paradigm was used. This showed that people make inflations with high qualitative details and confidence. As anticipated, elderly participants made significantly more observation inflations than young adults. Across both age groups, significantly more inflations occurred for communicative and meaningful actions than for meaningless actions supporting the idea that mirror neurones may be involved in formation of inflations. However when the effects of relative ethnicity were included in the paradigm it was found that significantly more observation inflations were formed after observing different ethnicity actors. It has been hypothesised that if mirror neurone involvement is involved in observation inflations then the highest number of inflations are expected for the same ethnicity condition because of the overlap between participant and performer. This thesis therefore suggests a less simplistic explanation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for these types of memory error

Testing Matching and Mirroring With Homophily in Onboarding Leadership Socialization

This study was designed to test the relationship between matching and mirroring (MM) and homophilous perceptions (PHM) in leadership socialization. Elevated PHM levels were hypothesized to affect workplace acceptance levels. The need for testing leadership socialization skills was magnified with the current demographic shift known as the leadership succession crisis, creating problems with onboarding strategies. The theoretical foundations of the study were based on the social identity theory, the social presence theory, the leader-member exchange theory, and the similarity-attraction paradigm. The study conducted at Workforce Solutions North Texas in Wichita Falls, Texas was sampled based on the calculated strength of the effect in a pilot study. Test group participants engaged in MM enhanced social conversation with a coached candidate and control group participants conversed with an uncoached participant from the general population engaging in normal conversation. MM processes were differentiated from natural synchronic tendencies using specialized software and Kinect-® sensors. A contrasted group, quasi-experiment was examined with an analysis of covariance. No statistically significant difference was found between groups on PHM levels, correcting for age, gender, ethnicity, height, glasses, hobbies, and professions. However, PHM and coworker acceptance were statistically significant but with no difference between groups. Further research is needed to test PHM as a metric for rapport in socialization strategies. Nevertheless, the homophily lens rather than the rapport lens can help organizational development and human resource professionals quantify and develop more effective socialization strategies aimed at solving problems associated with the leadership succession crisis

Function and structure of the mirror neuron system in autism

&nbsp;Utilizing MRI, this thesis identified wide-spread brain abnormalities in autism. White matter deficits were more pronounced in the left hemisphere, attributable to atypical myelination. Regarding the mirror neuron system, functional anomalies were situated in the right, dorsal, premotor cortex which further demonstrated reduced functional connectivity with the inferior parietal lobule

How to make sense: Sensory modification in grinder subculture

This doctoral research examines the Canadian and American grinder scenes to gain insight into the role of senses in understanding and responding to social problems. Grinders, a subset of biohackers, aim to enhance themselves by assimilating emerging material technologies (including, but not limited to, electronics) with their bodies through experiments and surgeries. They opt for a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach in order to maintain a sense of agency that might be lost if pursued through traditional means, such as ‘normalized’ medical research, ethically constrained university research, or market-driven private industry. How do grinders make sense (literally and figuratively) of their bodies as a site for enhancement? The research design included three years of virtual ethnography of online grinder hubs, which were connected and contrasted with a concurrent two years of ‘real world’ participant observation ethnography at grinder laboratories and events. Data analysis applied actor-network theory to trace grinders’ sensory assemblages through a variety of on- and off-line sources. These included internet forum posts, IRC chat logs, and blogs, as well as 40 in-depth interviews, dozens of informal interviews, and direct observations of grinders planning, surgically implanting, and using their ‘enhancements.’ Results demonstrated how grinders position their bodies both broadly in relation to their current social circumstances, as well as specifically through three case studies involving magnetic implants, RFID tags, and body-computer interfaces. This study is situated in Cyborg Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies to understand the relationship between bodies, technology, and culture. Findings suggest grinders conceive of the human body as an ironic hybrid of positivism and constructionism, determined by its techno-biological material yet simultaneously amenable to endless modification. In practice, however, the results of the tension between stability and variability tend to reinforce hegemonic social and economic relationships. What grinders ultimately enhance is the ability to adapt their physical bodies to social uncertainty brought about by the accelerating digital economy of information

How Do We Construct Worlds With Words? A Study of Metaphors and Conceptions of Outer Space in Parisian French

In this thesis, I employ Critical Discourse Analysis (Van Dijk 1997) and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) (Charteris-Black 2004) in order to examine data I collected in forty interviewees with the goal of documenting the metaphoric process used by 40 Parisians when they imagined and spoke about the unknown beyond the Earth. My research extends the traditional boundaries of CMT in order to analyse the metaphoric process at work when interviewees imagine and describe the unknown. What role does language, especially metaphor, play in the process of understanding the unknown and how does it influence how we conceive of and ‘build’ new worlds? Past research indicates that analogy and metaphor are fundamental to human language and cognition (Kövecses 2002, Hofstadter and Sander 2010). A metaphor is composed of a source domain and a target domain, both ‘known’ to a speaker through her previous experience or generalized cultural knowledge. However, the function of metaphor in discourse concerning the imaginary or unknown is less studied than the function of metaphors in traditional metaphorical schemas. Understanding how metaphor makes the unknown known is key to our understanding of how language functions in ‘wor(l)d-building’ (or the mutual construction of worlds and words) (Black 2018) by facilitating cognitive processes that bridge human imagination and emergent reality. Based on the analysis of 40 interviews conducted in Paris, and a year of participant observation, my thesis will be developed in 11 chapters. By focusing on language and the construction of worlds through words, I participate in a classic debate in linguistic anthropology concerning the creation of meaning. If our metaphors are motivated by our previous knowledge and experience, how do we come to know something truly new, to innovate, or to incite profound social change